#823 Owen Flanagan: Against Happiness
The Dissenter
Assuming Universality in Positive Psychology
This chapter discusses the issue of assuming universality in positive psychology and highlights the problem of basing assumptions on Western populations. It explores different interpretations and cultural understandings of happiness, as well as different measures of happiness and subjective well-being.
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Dr. Owen Flanagan is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Duke University. His work is in philosophy of mind and psychiatry, ethics, moral psychology, and cross-cultural philosophy. He is co-author of Against Happiness.
In this episode, we focus on Against Happiness. We talk about the “happiness agenda”, and what is promoted by advocates of happiness as the ultimate goal. We discuss if this agenda is hedonist and utilitarian. We talk about some philosophical issues, and criticisms of positive psychology. We discuss what “happiness” means, and issues with how it is measured. We talk about different hierarchies of values across cultures. We discuss problems with averaging subjective satisfaction scores and comparing countries, and how norms can influence how people answer surveys. We talk about some of the politics of this, and question if promoting happiness is a political virtue, if disadvantaged people want it, and the example of feminism in China. Finally, we discuss what cross-cultural work teaches us about norms and individual differences.
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