This is made in philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warberton.

Philosophy bites is available at W.

Philosophy bites.com. Philosophy bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.

You're listening to philosophy Bites, so no doubt you're about to enter a period of quiet

contentment, if not outright bliss.

The French intellectual Pascal Bruckner has written a book about

happiness. It traces how our attitude to happiness has changed over the centuries and

how today in his view it's become so distorted that we somehow feel the duty to be happy.

A whole happiness industry has grown up from therapy to plastic surgery.

The unhappy paradox is that the modern pursuit of happiness is self-defeating, resulting

in unnecessary misery.

Pascal Bruckner, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Thank you.

Welcome. The topic we're going to focus on is the pursuit of happiness.

Could we start by just saying what happiness is?

Yes, I would say happiness is a moment of grace and joy in life.

It's also a different quality of life from the ordinary days,

and it's also the feeling which we may have to go into the right directions that our

life is a good track so we can have those three definitions of happiness.

So perhaps we will clarify those.

What do you mean by grace there?

Moment of grace is something that comes on you

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