The Secrets of Happiness by Richard Schoch

The Secrets of Happiness by Richard Schoch

The Secrets of Happiness is a philosophical inquiry into the nature of happiness. Combining wit, warmth, and intellectual authority, this book offers us ancient wisdom for modern living. Richard Schoch shows readers how they can enrich their lives by recovering the ancient philosophical and religious traditions of happiness--and then putting them to work in their own lives today. In a journey across cultures and centuries--from the trials of Job to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and from Buddha's Four Noble Truths to the ecstasy of medieval Sufi mystics--Schoch answers questions that, although fundamental to our well-being, are rarely asked: what kind of effort does it take to be happy? do you have a right to be happy? can you be happy if others are unhappy? Although Schoch finds that there is no single answer to these questions, he argues that every strategy for happiness can be placed in one of four categories: Living for Pleasure, Conquering Desire, Transcending Reason, and Enduring Suffering. (The book is divided into these four parts.) The one thing that these disparate strategies do share is that each takes effort. Happiness, Schoch posits, is never an end-point; it is instead a joyful struggle.

Schoch, Richard: - Richard Schoch is Professor of Drama at Queen's University Belfast. He is the author of Shakespeare's Victorian Stage (Cambridge, 1998), Not Shakespeare (Cambridge, 2002), and Queen Victoria and the Theatre of her Age (2004). He has also edited Great Shakespeareans: Macready, Booth, Terry, Irving (2011) and Victorian Theatrical Burlesques (2016). For a popular audience he wrote The Secrets of Happiness (2008), which has been translated into six languages. His books have been shortlisted for the Barnard Hewitt Award and the Theatre Book Prize. Schoch has received fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust, the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Stanford Humanities Center.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780743292931
ISBN 10	0743292936
Title	The Secrets of Happiness
Author	Richard Schoch
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Year published	2008-04-23
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.