'All philosophy is a metaphysics of happiness?or it's not worth an hour of trouble' claims Alain Badiou in this lively intervention into one of the most persistent themes in philosophy: what is happiness? And what do I need to do to be happy? The desire to be happy is one of our most universal goals and yet there doesn't seem to be any easy answers or formulas for achieving happiness. And the concept has become so commodified and corrupted to be almost unrecognizable as something worth pursuing. In light of this, should we just give up the aspiration to be happy altogether? Alain Badiou thinks not. While eschewing futile procedures for magically becoming 'happy', Badiou does passionately maintain that in order to be truly happy we need philosophy. And, bolder still, that a life lived philosophically is the happiest life of all!

In this major intervention into contemporary philosophy, Alain Badiou rehabilitates the notion of 'being happy', reclaiming it from the blandness of the self-help industry, consumerist trends and the polluted rhetoric politicians. He suggests happiness has been reduced to satisfaction, and satisfaction for Badiou isn't enough; risk, adventure, peril, feeling and experiencing things that go beyond feeling at peace, deliberating disturbing our equilibrium and asking questions of ourselves is where true happiness lies.

Badiou is also asking a serious political question in his interrogation of happiness: what does it mean, socially and politically, to simply accept one's place in the world?

What defines true happiness has been a fundamental question of philosophy since at least Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Alain Badiou in this little book steals it back from the self-help industry and restores it to its metaphysical grandeur.