Series Book - Humanities of Happiness
 
If the purpose of life is happiness, what is happiness? As Aristotle emphasized, the essence
of happiness lies in activities that make you free to do what you want to do. Unfortunately,
however, we don't seem to be happy if we don't do what we want to do, and do it well. The
focus of happiness is concentrated on the question of doing what you want voluntarily or the
opposite. The book, Humanities of Happiness has been published to re-emphasize the fact that
happiness is not a means but a purpose.
 
In the first chapter of Part I, "What is Happiness," the author approached happiness existentially
from the point of view of Erich Fromm and desire. The author concludes that we can be truly happy
only when we realize our existential desires productively. In the second chapter, the author argues
that modern people live in a society that meets the conditions necessary for happiness, although
ironically, people live in a world of unhappiness as if they do not know about happiness.
In Chapter 3, "The Birth of the Meiji Restoration and the Happiness of the People," the author discusses
the relationship between happiness and modernization by taking the example of Japan. The author
argues that happiness is divided into private and public areas. In Part II of Chapter 1 "Can Money Buy
Happiness?", the author deals critically with commercialized healing culture. Chapter 2, "Leisure and
Happiness - Focusing on Resort Travel," focuses on the travel industry, which is promoted as a shortcut
to happiness. In Chapter 3, the author discussed happiness around the piano, which was considered
an essential condition for happiness in the process of modernization. In Part Ⅲ of Chapter 1, "Is a
Happy Society Possible," the literary issue of which society is a happy society through Heinrich Boll's
work is discussed. In Chapter 2, the author addressed the political and existential conditions of happiness.
Part Ⅳ, "What is a happy body?" discussed the relationship between body and happiness. The author
argues that the body is the center of happiness. The last two chapters discussed the question of
happiness from the perspective of Eastern and Western medicine.