On Happiness and the Passions

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines multiple configurations of the relationship between the passions and happiness in the work of French women moralists. Reflection on the passions extends back to classical antiquity, but the term evolved and took on new significance in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The passions had been traditionally viewed as antithetical to happiness, but with the Enlightenment’s valorization of sentiment and sensibility happiness emerges as a key value and increasingly as a human right. Key figures studied include Marguerite de La Sablière, Louise Dupin, Émilie Du Châtelet, Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Thiroux d’Arconville, and Germaine de Staël.