The Pursuit of Happiness
With the fasting month of Ramadhan intersecting with the month of Pancasila, a reflective question is due: What are we truly chasing in our statehood and religiosity?
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Yudi Latif
With the fasting month of Ramadhan intersecting with the month of Pancasila, a reflective question is due: What are we truly chasing in our statehood and religiosity? Psychologist William James once said “How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do”.
A number of thinkers have placed happiness as the noblest of virtues. From Ancient Greece, we have Epicurus who said happiness was the only goal in life. In the late 18th century, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham defined the noblest of virtues as the greatest happiness of the greatest number. He also concluded that the only valuable goal of establishing states, markets and scientific communities was to improve global happiness.