Abstract

Contemporary society characterizes itself by a quest for material progress that is established in detriment of human subjectivity/spirituality. In this context “happiness” could mean “the over-all level of happiness of a person with his/her life”, which necessarily means a conciliation between societal quest-for-progress and human subjectivity/spirituality. The objective of the present paper is to present Spinoza’s understanding on how to achieve happiness while coping with human reality. To Spinoza, “happiness” consists in comprehending the way the world works to the point where it becomes possible to be better affected by current events. “Happiness” seems to be related to what Spinoza calls virtuous acting, acting in such a way that one’s actions are meant to be fundamented in adequate intuitive knowledge about how concrete reality works in such an introspected way that refraining apetites becomes a source of true joie de vivre.