Politics of Happiness: Connecting the Philosophical Ideas of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Derrida to the Political Ideologies of Happiness

The book examines the relationship between the concpet of happiness and the politcal ideologies that have emerged since the Enlightenment. Each chapter examnes the place that happiness occupies in the construction of ideologies that have shaped the political terrain of the West - including liberalism, socialism, fascism, postmodernism, and religious fundamentalism. Throughout, Hegel's phenomenology, Nietzsche's genealogy, and Derrida's concept of alterity are used to show that the politics of happiness is determined as a clash of fundamental ideas of belonging, overcoming, and ethical responsibility.Stressing that the happiness lies at the foundation of all poliotical movements, the book at its place in the current global order, and analyses the emergence of ideas, such as affective democracy, which challenge conventional notions of privatized, acquistive satisfaction.