The Power to Feel Fear and The One to Feel Happiness are the Same
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- 作者：Norbert Rath
- 关键词：Adorno ; critical theory ; happiness ; h. and giving ; h. and suffering ; psychoanalytical concept of happiness ; happiness and aesthetic experience
- 刊名：Journal of Happiness Studies
- 出版时间：March 2002
- 出版年：2002
- 期刊代码：127_1389-4978
- 类别：soc
- 卷：3
- 期：1
- 页码：1-21
- 数据来源：sp
摘要
The centre of Adorno''s Critical Theory is occupied by the theme of happiness. He speaks of the impaired life, of the unjustness of society, of murderous prejudices, of the atrocities in history, of the dissonance in art, of the unhappy consciousness, because something better can only be described from a point of opposition. Happiness cannot be objectified as possession, it always needs to be experienced subjectively, somatically. (With happiness it is like with truth: One does not have it, one is in it.) Happiness cannot be prescribed and ordered; nothing can be done to guarantee happiness. (Happiness goes beyond doing.) Happiness (like fear) has to do with being open to experience which can overwhelm the self. Sexual and aesthetical experience are models for such overwhelming happiness. The sensation of happiness always is very personal, but in this experience the individual leaves its particularity behind. One has to differentiate between goal and object: Happiness may be a goal, but not it itself, only what obstructs it, can be an object of Critical Theory.