Umberto Galimberti - Alla ricerca della felicità

Is happiness really possible? Professor Galimberti takes us on a journey to discover its historical

evolution, analyzing how this concept has changed over time and which factors

influence our perception of well-being. The journey begins in the Greek world with a sense of

tragedy in which pain is inevitable and must be faced without being overwhelmed by emotions.

Aristotle considered happiness the ultimate goal of life, but at the same time he considered it a difficult state

to achieve. In ancient Greek, the word happiness, eudaimonia, is formed from eu, meaning good,

and daimon, meaning demon. He stated: "Refer to your nature, your vocation,

as the good realization of your ability."

But the Greek world always expressed a strong warning: "Be careful, you may be a good

sculptor, but if you want to be better than Phidias, you will go too far. And if you think you are even better

than Phidias, then you will create your own ruin. You must first know yourself, because if you don't

know yourself, you don't even know what your demon is." Christianity offers a decisive change of perspective with the affirmation of the eternity of life. The idea of ​​the soul that never dies leads to a

new perception of time understood as past, present, and future and introduces the concepts of

unhappiness and mortification as tools for spiritual elevation.

With the modern age, the market and technology become protagonists, profoundly changing the idea

of happiness. The market links happiness to material possessions, increasing nihilism through fashion

and advertising, while technology—observes UMBERTO GALIMBERTI—as the supreme expression of

rationality and with its logic of efficiency and productivity, reduces the space for human

and emotional irrationality. All this leads to an increase in social depression, which has gone

from being a phenomenon linked to guilt to a condition arising from a sense of

inadequacy. Modern man, in his relentless pursuit of success and recognition, finds himself increasingly

distant from authentic happiness. Can it be achieved today?