O mal-estar da atualidade e a cultura do imperativo da felicidade : contribuições da fenomenologia da vida de Michel Henry

Abstract

This study deals with the imperatives of happiness as a source of malaise in current times and its ramifications. Based on the description of the themes which are pertinent to the malaise of the current culture, a philosophic and diagnostical reading of these problems was formulated, provoking a critical reflection about them. The central question of the research is about the existence of a relation between the malaise of the current culture and the imperatives of happiness. In its initial chapter the research describes the characteristics of contemporary society, such as the emancipation of the human being from everything which impeded action in other times, the deconstruction of universal beliefs and the domination of the economy. The research points out these new characteristics of the society as facilitators for the emergence and maintenance of the imperatives of happiness. The second chapter of the research points to the ramifications of these social aspects using the Phenomenology of Life by Michel Henry, who describes current society as the society which lives out the cultural deconstruction as a consequence of the hegemony of modern science. This cultural deconstruction has, as a consequence, forgetting life as a phenomenological concept. The research proposes in its conclusion, based on Henry, remembering life as a way of overcoming the alienation of the ego, making it possible to live joys and modify sufferings.