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Last broadcast on Mon, 7 Mar 2011, 00:15 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
The British government is seeking to develop a way to accurately measure the happiness of the population. In France such a gauge already exists, but is happiness really the proper goal of life? The French philosopher Pascal Bruckner tells Laurie Taylor that happiness has become a burdensome duty, and that the wave of enthusiasm for pursuing the nebulous quality has the opposite effect of actually promoting unhappiness amongst those who seek it. Much better, says he, to accept that happiness as an unbidden and fragile gift, arrives only by grace and luck.
Also on the programme, Patricia Drentea talks about her new study 'Ethical Capital: What's a Poor Man Got to Leave?'. It looks at the hoped for legacy of people who have no financial assets to leave their families.
Producer: Charlie Taylor.
Patricia Drentea
Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
The University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1530 3rd Avenue South, Birmingham, Alabama 35294-1150 USA
Main Switchboard: (205) 934-4011
Paper: Ethical capital: ‘What’s a poor man got to leave?
Beverley Williams, Lesa Woodby and Patricia Drentea
Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 32 No. 6 2010 I
SSN 0141–9889, pp. 880–897
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2010.01246.x
Pascal Bruckner
Novelist, Philosopher and author of Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to be Happy
Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to be Happy
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN-10: 0691143730
ISBN-13: 978-0691143736
Broadcasts
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Wed 2 Mar 201116:00
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Mon 7 Mar 201100:15
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