ABSTRACT
An ideal of personal Happiness is not rooted in human life by necessity. In the perspectives of world history, or the comparative evolution of cultures, it appears exceptionally as a collective aspiration towards a perfect society. We would like to think that, with the advantage of living in an apparently post-religious society, the temptation to trace Happiness to an invariable (if hidden) truth of the human condition can now be seen for what it was: an ethnocentric conceit of the western mind. And we need no longer, therefore, spend our energies in its vain pursuit, or become anxious over its elusiveness. Along with its family of similarly fictitious absolutes (Truth, Reality, Beauty…), we believe that Happiness has become a harmless concept, no more than a useful means through which we can protect the present by cleansing it of its past.
