Against Happiness | The Category of Fools

Peter Rollins - The Archive

It’s very easy for us to question the possibility of experiencing a lasting happiness. Can we really find it? Is it something that we can hold onto for prolonged periods of time? The answer is likely ‘yes’. Indeed there are many who have dedicated their entire lives to cultivating it, even creating retreats and seminars designed to help others realize it. However, in psychoanalysis there is a price to pay for happiness: the fundamental compromise of your desire. The more that happiness pervades ones life, the more that individual becomes estranged from their unspeakable passion. In this way, people like Žižek refer to happiness as the category of the fool. It is the pursuit undertaken by one who would rather avoid confronting the contradictions and antagonisms that lie within them. Contenting themselves instead with a peace that is opposed to chaos, rather than a peace that is hard won via tarrying with the chaos. In this seminar I explore the chasm that lies between happiness and desire via reference to an ancient Jewish parable and the Lacanian notion of the barred subject.