Morality and politics. Happiness according to the Ancient Greeks and Rousseau

Everyone wants to be happy! But at what cost and how to achieve it? Today, more than ever before, everyone wants to be happy. However, in this time of multiple moral, political, economic and health crises, man languishes, groans and has lost all hope of being happy. The whole point of this analysis in this context, it seems, is to reflect on the different possibilities of knowing happiness beyond contingency. Indeed, based on the conceptual field of the Ancient Greeks and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, we consider how to paint the moral and political dimension of happiness. The former relates to solitude, to the quest for the inner good. It is in his text on Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire that he paints this natural happiness of the solitary man in the middle of nature. Happiness is thus a matter of personal fulfilment, of withdrawal into oneself and therefore away from the cities. The second, on the other hand, is social and relates to living together as his contractualism sets out the rules of the law in Du Contrat social. Concerned about the well-being of his fellow human beings, he undertook to reflect on societal happiness.

Autorentext

Christian Dior MOULOUNGUI ist Philosoph, Autor, politischer Analyst und Doktorand der Philosophie an der Universität Omar Bongo. Zu seinen Werken gehören u.a. L'Afrique et la banalité des diplômés, Paris, Muse, 2024; L'onto-théologie du Mythe de Ma-bwang chez les Punu, Paris, EUE, 2025; Oliguisme: Le renouveau de politique gabonaise?, Paris, EUE, 2025.