Humanistic Perspectives in Happiness Research

This volume provides innovative perspectives on the scholarly connection between the humanities and happiness, and considers the narrative expressions of happiness and recent investigations about happiness, its metrics, and objective insights about human wellbeing. This volume relates intemporal humanistic values to views across social and behavioural sciences, and thereby covers a broad interdisciplinary frame, from philosophy, psychology, literary studies, to the communication sciences. The philosophers in this volume discuss the achievement of happiness through the cultivation of virtue, as well as the logic of the gift as an experience of personal fulfilment and the fact that happiness is inextricably linked to hope. Their chapters take on the approach of the permanent human struggle to generate global horizons of happiness and thus attain eternal bliss. Scholars from other fields of the humanities and communication sciences consider the positive messages of environmental happiness in virtual platforms, where the Homo digitalis finds happiness at the click of a button, often under the endorsement of celebrities, or under the visual fruition of playful objects. They also present the intertextual memory of happiness as a condition for humanistic research. Finally, this volume considers the sphere of education as the best place in which to apply the results of sustainable happiness measurement and research, and to realize this complementary, humanistic perspective on happiness research.

Luísa Magalhães is Assistant Professor and Researcher in Communication Sciences at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, and is especially interested in the relationship between children, media and market behaviours.

Maria José Ferreira Lopes is Assistant Professor and Researcher in Humanities at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa and is particularly interested in the classical heritage and its influence on Portuguese authors.

Bruno Nobre is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa. His main research interests are philosophy of physics, virtue ethics, and philosophy of religion.

João Carlos Onofre Pinto is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa. His main research interests are phenomenology, noology, Spanish contemporary philosophy, and philosophy of religion.