Happiness and Well-Being

Catalog description

PHIL 242N : Happiness and Well-Being. 3 credits. (Inter-Domain), (GH), (GS), (BA). This course provides a general introduction to the topics of human happiness and well-being as these topics are both approached from the humanities discipline of philosophy and the social and behavioral science discipline of psychology. The course will introduce the distinct methods of inquiry into the topic of well-being in philosophy and psychology and highlight the disciplinary commitments of the two fields more generally. Students will understand and evaluate the empirical research into well-being and positive psychology in psychology. Students will understand and evaluate the three major theories of well-being in philosophy: hedonism, the desire satisfaction theory, and the objective theory. We will appraise whether the empirical results affect the viability of the philosophical theories. We will appraise whether the philosophical theories affect the significance of the empirical results. We will consider such questions as: What are the strengths, weaknesses, and complementarities of the philosophical and psychological approaches to well-being? Are psychologists and philosophers talking past each other, or can the two disciplines learn from each other's research results and philosophical theories? What implications do the results and theories studied have for concrete choices I should make in order to increase my well-being? Are there implications for choices of social policies aiming to increase well-being?