Transcendence, Chance and Happiness / Anné Hendrik Verhoef

Abstract

When happiness is understood as the overcoming of the fundamental lack or negative of our existence, then we remain stuck in the endless cycle and effort of trying to overcome unhappiness. We can try to do this in so many ways we want, but it remains fundamentally impossible. We remain stuck in negation and eventually unhappiness. Unhappiness remains here a problem for happiness. When happiness is seen as the negation of negation with the embracing of affirmation, unhappiness is robbed of its creative and meaningful potential. In other words, if unhappiness is rejected as something life-denying (as negation), and one only embraces the positive forces, powers and energies of life and nature – of chance – the potential positive meaning and power of unhappiness is denied. It becomes an unhappy task to suppress unhappiness at all cost. Within a dialectical notion of negation and affirmation the potential positive in negation is appreciated. There is a recognition that unhappiness is fundamentally part of happiness. We lack nothing at the core of our existence. There is not an emptiness determined by chance, or fallenness determined by transcendence. There is nothing to fundamentally overcome, not even unhappiness. This is however not a mere acceptance of unhappiness, but a creative tension between negation and affirmation, a complex negotiation between happiness and unhappiness where we have the potential to live with ethical responsibility – with a sense of meaningfulness and a much more happy understanding of happiness.