Spring 2021

LS C160V 001 - LEC 001

Human Happiness

Dacher Keltner

Jan 19, 2021 - May 07, 2021

Mo, We

11:00 am - 11:59 am

Internet/Online

Class #:26211

Units:3

Instruction Mode: Pending Review

Offered through Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Studies

Current Enrollment

Total Open Seats: 0

Enrolled: 293

Waitlisted: 8

Capacity: 293

Waitlist Max: 8

Open Reserved Seats:

1 reserved for Students with Enrollment Permission

Hours & Workload

2 hours of instructor presentation of course materials, 6 hours of outside work hours, and 1 hours of the exchange of opinions or questions on course material.

Other classes by Dacher Keltner

This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to an understanding of happiness. The first part of the course will be devoted to the different treatments of happiness in the world's philosophical traditions, focusing up close on conceptions or the good life in classical Greek and Judeo-Christian thought, the great traditions in East Asian thought (Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism), and ideas about happiness that emerged more recently in the age of Enlightenment. With these different perspectives as a framework, the course will then turn to treatments of happiness in the behavioral sciences, evolutionary scholarship, and neuroscience. Special emphasis will be given to understanding how happiness arises in experiences of the moral emotions, including gratitude, compassion, reverence and awe, as well as aesthetic emotions like humor and beauty.

Class Description

This course will take an interdisciplinary approach to an understanding of happiness. The first part of the course will be devoted to the different treatments of happiness in the world's philosophical traditions, focusing up close on conceptions of the good life in classical Greek and Judeo-Christian thought, the great traditions in East Asian thought (Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism), and ideas about happiness that emerged more recently in the age of Enlightenment. With these different perspectives as a framework, the course will then turn to treatments of happiness in the behavioral sciences, evolutionary scholarship, and neuroscience. Special emphasis will be given to understanding how happiness arises in experiences of the moral emotions, including gratitude, compassion, reverence and awe, as well as aesthetic emotions like humor and beauty.