Finding True Happiness

Satisfying Our Restless Hearts (Happiness, Suffering, and Transcendence, Book 1)

De: Robert J. Spitzer

Narrado por: Joan Jacoby

One of the hottest topics in contemporary culture is happiness - so much so that the United Nations declared an International Happiness Day in response to the immense popularity of Pharrell Williams’ song “Happy”. The explanation for this current fixation seems to lie in the contrary phenomenon - unhappiness. Despite the fact that we have tremendous access to every imaginable form of entertainment, we experience a pervading sense of insecurity, emptiness, and malaise amid sporadic peak experiences.

The problem seems to lie less in the external environment than in the internal one. We seem, in the words of Viktor Frankl, to be suffering from an absence of meaning that pervades both individuals and societies, giving rise to a collective emptiness, loneliness, and alienation.

Finding True Happiness attempts to provide a way out of this personal and cultural vacuum by helping people to identify and then reach for happiness. As Aristotle noted 2,400 years ago, happiness is the one thing we can choose for its own sake - everything else is chosen for the sake of happiness.

After an exhaustive investigation of philosophical, psychological, and theological systems of happiness, author Fr. Spitzer developed the “Four Levels of Happiness”, which he based on the classical thinkers Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas; the contemporary philosophers Marcel, Scheler, Buber, Ricoeur, and Jaspers; and the modern psychologists Maslow, Frankl, Erikson, Seligman, Kohlberg, and Gilligan.

Finding True Happiness is both a philosophical itinerary and a practical guidebook for life’s most important journey - from the mundane and the meaningless to transcendent fulfillment. No other book currently available combines such breadth of practical advice and such depth of philosophical, psychological, and spiritual wisdom.

©2015 Ignatius Press (P)2022 Ignatius Press

profound

Father spitzer has once again blown me away.
I look forward to the next three books in this series with great arter.
this book was profound insightful enlightening and dense. I will certainly have to go through this a few more times to do more than Just scratch the surface.

awakening my faith

I think that the first half of the book flies by, and the end is a lot more work to follow and maintain interest. Fr Spitzer has helped me to regain hope and confident faith; to renew my decision to seek after Jesus in the Catholic Church.

Fabulous information, non-desirable presentation

This is an amazing and informative book about the moral life and how seeking God’s will leads to happiness. The narrator, however, makes the material very dry, at best. There were times when she turned something that could sound very pastoral into something that sounds extremely judgmental. Many people will not get the intended message of seeking happiness because of the tone of the narrator.

amazing

what fr. spitzer has compiled here is truly inspired. opens the heart of reader and shows exactly how to move that heart towards happiness. amazing