The Culture of Happiness in the Context of the Felicitary Turn

The felicitous turn of European civilization forms a critical industry – a set of ideas about what happiness should be and how to feel it correctly. In these conceptual ideas, the concepts of “success” and “happiness” are mixed or replaced, and the value experience of experiencing failure is not considered. Experiences of happiness are replaced by ambiguous emotional states associated with the practices of achievement and demonstrative strategies. The doctrine of social success is modal and deprives a person of the freedom to choose alternative lifestyles. The felicitous doctrine is based on the mechanism of social pressure, forcing a person to choose “happy objects”. Happiness in its social sense is imposed, a person is deprived of his free individual happiness. We consider the concept of “happiness” in relation to its oppositions: success, failure. Success requires constant confirmation and carries risks of failure. Failure is seen as a form of happiness, filled with valuable experience necessary for building a future trajectory in life. This allows us to come to the definition of happiness, its socio-philosophical and sociocultural content, and to form a scientific understanding of the culture of happiness. The conclusions are based on the methods of systemic, sociocultural approaches. The culture of happiness characterizes the felicitous experience of humanity. Happiness is a subsystem of the cultural system; it embraces eternal values with a single semantic content, dictates the norms of virtue, performs stabilizing and regulating functions, and manifests itself in symbolic design. The semantic content of happiness connects the terminal (noological) and instrumental (everyday) aspects of a person’s spiritual life and his social practices. Behavioral patterns and symbolism are distributed in accordance with the dual content of the concept of “happiness”.