ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book combines a wide variety of topics, writing styles, and authors, including several non-academics and many others from fields outside mainstream psychology. It provides a playful yet thought-provoking interlude in the form of an imagined dialogue between a numbers of historical philosophers who discuss how positive psychology appears from their perspective. The book explores, via another dialogue, the importance of including old-fashioned – "hedonistic" rather than "hedonic," perhaps – pleasure on the sometimes rather earnest road to social justice. It argues that it is possible to do this without necessarily endorsing mindless consumerism or acting in ways that reduce the well-being of others. The book examines a number of aspects of contemporary positive psychology.
