Happiness
This theme runs through several big questions. Here are the ones where it plays out.
The questions that illuminate it
What should we do with our desires: affirm them, sort them, or detach from them?
Desire is at once what sets us in motion and what torments us: to extinguish it is to extinguish life, to follow it unchecked is to forfeit peace. To take a position is to say where the drive that makes us live ends and where the servitude that wears us out begins.
Facing the world, should we focus on what is up to us or strive to extend our mastery?
Is the only seat of our power within, in our judgements and desires, the course of the world wholly beyond us, or can we lay hold of that order and reshape it to our hand? To take a position is to say how far our real grip on things extends, and whether freedom is won within us or out in the world.
What makes a life truly good: pleasure, flourishing, or virtue?
"The highest good" is the classical name for happiness in the fullest sense: not the mood of a moment, but what makes an entire life a good one, what the Greeks called eudaimonia. What it consists in is another matter, and the question is far from idle: what fills a life with pleasure can drain it of meaning, and what makes it virtuous can cost it its happiness. Depending on the answer we give, often without ever putting it to ourselves, we do not pursue the same life, and an age does not set itself the same ideal of success.
How should we respond to the enigma of life's meaning?
The enigma is a common one: the meaning of life does not show itself, and everyone knows hours of disorientation when nothing seems to point to it. If there is a meaning, it must be sought and deciphered; if there is none, what remains is to create it, to revolt, or to give it up. To take a position is to say what attitude to hold in the face of this obscurity, and what can give our days their worth.
Should we distrust the pleasures of the body, or celebrate them?
Is giving in to the body's pleasure a way of fulfilling oneself, or of being ruled by what one cannot master? To take a position is to say whether the body is an ally of the good life or a force to keep in check.