In this unit, we begin to broaden our sense of the research about happiness by considering approaches from two different fields—philosophy and psychology—as well as the insights journalist Adam Sternbergh shares. Both Kesebir and Diener and Sternbergh cover similar territory in their essays. Yet the two essays also have, in some ways, a different focus. Sternbergh is reporting on a course that is designed in part to teach students “the practice of happiness” (4). Kesebir and Diener, in contrast, approach the topic through a very broad survey of the “issues philosophers and other great minds of history have raised regarding happiness,” alongside “the contributions of contemporary psychologists to the understanding of happiness” (117).
Kesebir and Diener’s essay ends with two “questions of great concern”: first, “whether happiness be the aim of formal education”; second, “whether the aim of national policymaking should be the happiness of citizens” (123). Your task in this paper is to focus on one of these questions and then to synthesize elements from both essays—both Sternbergh’s and Kesebir and Diener’s—in order to answer it. Both questions pose ways of taking happiness seriously and putting it at the center of some of our social goals—either education or governmental policy. Drawing from the two essays we have read, what might that look like? What would need to change? Is happiness a viable social goal?
Whichever question you decide to focus on, your purposes in this essay are to do the following:
• Analyze your chosen question in detail, considering multiple perspectives.
• Clearly distinguish your own ideas on the question from those in the source essays.
• Note: Do not use any outside sources other than the Sternbaugh and Kesibir and Diener essays.
Formatting and submission details:
• Documents submitted to Blackboard must be either Microsoft Word or pdf files.
• Name the file [Firstname] [Lastname] Assignment 2. (Make sure your file name is descriptive of whose paper it is.)
• 1-inch margins.
• Standard font (Calibri, Times New Roman, etc.), 11- or 12-point.
• Include your name and the date on the first page.
• Include page numbers.
• Include works cited, in MLA format.
• Target length: 6-7 pages, double-spaced.
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