Positive psychology is sometimes perceived as putting a premium on pleasant experiences – what critics call “happiology”. Yet just because pleasure is a positive experience doesn’t mean it’s the only positive experience! Yes, it’s true that thinkers as ancient as Socrates and Aristotle have maintained that people who flourish also experience greater enjoyment in life.Continue reading “That Flourishing Feeling”
Category Archives: Emotions
Opinions, Expectations, and Emotions
Following up on my series of posts about the phenomenon of opinion, I’ve been pondering the relationship between opinions, expectations, and emotions. It’s well known that emotions are based on a conception of how things are or should be (as a simple example, one person might get excited by a Fourth of July fireworks displayContinue reading “Opinions, Expectations, and Emotions”
Jealousy and Envy
A friend recently asked me how I would characterize the difference between jealousy and envy. Here’s how I see it: jealousy is when I want to gain something you have, and envy is when I want you to lose something you have. If I’m jealous of your new Tesla, I want a Tesla too. IfContinue reading “Jealousy and Envy”
Election Survival Guide
Every four years I dread the prospect of yet another election for president of the United States. What a depressing, anxiety-ridden spectacle! It’s almost enough to make me a monarchist (if only we could find the right sort of monarch, of course). As with everything else, 2020 is worse than usual. With every election seasonContinue reading “Election Survival Guide”
A Wider Palette
In my most recent post (“Beyond Binary“), I talked about the need to transcend dichotomies and false alternatives. One aspect of doing so is recognizing what I called a wider palette of viewpoints, which is easy to do in philosophy and psychology but not in politics (at least not in American politics with its two-partyContinue reading “A Wider Palette”
Philosophy and Money
Some great thinkers – Plato, Aristotle, Gautama Siddhartha, Epicurus, Thoreau, Rand, and many more – have reflected deeply on the place of money and wealth in human life. The reasons are not hard to find: In many ways we are a grasping, materialistic, status-driven species. It’s all too easy to have an unhealthy relationship (asContinue reading “Philosophy and Money”
Justifying Anger
In my last post, I extrapolated from the philosophy of Epicurus to indicate how to avoid unjustified anger and its less virulent siblings (annoyance, frustration, disappointment, etc.). Indeed, Epicurus seems to have been the first person to identify what centuries later became the seven deadly sins – one of which was anger. Aristotle, by contrast,Continue reading “Justifying Anger”
Philosophy and Anger
The world is full of anger, both well-founded and ill-founded. In a future post I’ll talk about well-founded anger, but this time I’ll provide some reflections on ill-founded anger. In Chapter 10 of my book Letters on Happiness, I perceived an insight from Epicurus into the nature of anger (although this is an extrapolation from whatContinue reading “Philosophy and Anger”
Peter Saint-Andre, Philosopher-Coach 