Heidegger and Happiness

Heidegger and Happiness

Heidegger and Happiness offers an original interpretation of Heidegger's later thought, within the context of his philosophy as a whole, to develop a new conception of human happiness.

The book redeems the essential content of the Greek notion of eudaimonia and transcends recent debates concerning the objectivity or subjectivity of happiness. The author shows that Heidegger's thinking of being is far from arcane and abstract, and is crucially important in understanding the deepest sources of human well-being. An etymological examination of the word happiness frees the word from the constraints of utilitarian ways of thinking, which suggest that happiness is only peripherally related to eudaimonia.

King demonstrates that a sense of fittingness is essential both to happiness and to eudaimonia, and shows how deep happiness, conceived as dwelling in our fitting-together with being, can serve as a grounding attunement for the thinking of being.