Intensités. Lumières Sur Les Petits Bonheurs De La Vie Quotidienne Et Des Loisirs

Robert Misrahi underlines the constant longing for a great joy in daily life as well as the effective experience of all forms of joy: the one felt when admiring a landscape or a house, when playing ping pong or executing a ski figure, etc.

The author goes beyond a mere description of these experiences; he brings out their implicit significance: each speak of the little known reality of these joys, and each includes a fundamental and decisive significance. For instance, the ski figure enables to bring out and shed light on the concept of conversion that will make happiness possible later on; ping pong enables to distinguish, in our relationships with others, the simple reversibility and the actual reciprocity; biodiversity enables to link the admiration for beauty to the search for happiness; the expected letter, the conversation or the toast enable to bring out and underline the plenitude of certain relationships with others, and some sort of substantiality through time; the “trip to the islands”, apparently a mere imaginary Desire, enables to underline the reality and the universality of desire…

These experiences show both the effective reality of the experience of joy and the deep significance of these daily joys; they speak of the legitimacy of the pursuit of joy, and above all of the effective possibility of the intended target beyond them: happiness itself.