Purpose of Study
As indicated above, the general purpose of this study was to address
the apparent lack in qualities that seemed crucial for leading happy lives:
genuineness and sincerity. I retain this same purpose and to it I add other
purposes and more specific objectives. This thesis will explore the nature of
happiness, with a special interest not in the abstract concept of happiness, but
rather, in how people can live lives that yield happiness. I will adopt and
defend the argument from ‘flourishing’ that sustainable happiness is found in
living well (not in seeking happiness episodes or events), growing and
developing into a functioning person in three main areas, psychologically,
emotionally and socially. I will argue that shame is a pervasive emotion, and
the major threat to leading the life that yields happiness. This argument
naturally requires me to first extensively discuss the phenomenon of shame,
which I will do in my second chapter. My main argument will be, leading a life
that yields happiness, that is, flourishing, requires resilience to shame. In
other words, the degree of flourishing in someone’s life and, consequently, the
measure of happiness or positive emotion are conversely related to their shame
levels. In order to build and defend this argument, this thesis is going to:
·
Provide an extensive discussion on
the emotion shame.
·
Demonstrate that shame is
pervasive and the most dominant human emotion.
·
Defend the argument that
sustainable happiness comes from living well: ‘flourishing’.
·
Discuss the relationship between
shame and flourishing.
·
Give theological reflections on
shame and happiness.
Methodology and Sources
This project is a library based or theoretical one. The primary data
for my thesis therefore is published material accessed from printed matter and
virtual libraries. My task is to analyze, break down and synthesize data from
these sources. The primary methodology of this thesis will be compiling,
comparing and analyzing the existing arguments or academic positions on my
subject matter, that is, shame, happiness and related topics. From these
discussions, I will propose my own original arguments and defend them logically.
In some cases I will pick existing arguments belonging to scholars and defend
them against opposing views.
As I mentioned above, my thesis, just like my major, spans across a
number of academic disciplines. However, the larger part of the material
discussed in this thesis comes from the social sciences, especially psychology.
This is a rather curious position for someone whose major is theology. Because
of the rather interdisciplinary nature of my liberal arts major, I had relative
freedom to choose a subject from any one of a number of fields. The natural
expectation perhaps would be that I address that particular subject from a
theological standpoint. However, from the beginning of this project I found
myself relying heavily on the social sciences, especially psychology. This was
not so much a matter of preference as it was of utility. Internet searches for
words like genuineness, happiness and shame yield mostly psychology articles.
This is only natural, considering psychology, and its counterpart sociology are
the two fields that have human behavior as their core concern. The social
sciences, psychology in particular, became the prime source for my ideas
because these fields offer not only the most content on my chosen subject
matter, but also, the most extensive and consequently reliable material. Thus,
the approach in this thesis is to use social sciences and philosophy to
establish the nature of phenomena, and then to use theology to reflect on these
phenomena.
Many people from both Christian
Theology and psychology consider these fields to be parallel. Some even go as
far as regarding the two as conflicting fields of study that have very little
common ground. Yet, there is a growing number of scholars that recognizing that
psychology just like Christian Theology and arguably most religions share the
same concerns, that is human behavior and well-being. This is the same thinking
that motivates my quest to synthesize social science theories with theology in
this treatise.
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Summary/Structural Outline
This thesis is built on the assumption that everyone wants to be happy.
Based on this assumption, I will make a series of claims that build on each
other. I begin the first chapter with a justification of my assumption about
people and happiness. I will then describe the construct of “flourishing”, a
term from positive psychology that denotes optimum functioning as conceived in
the emerging field of positive psychology is a reliable, and propitious way of
thinking about the nature of happiness and what people can do to attain it.
Through exploring one model of flourishing, I will define components of
happiness, as well as make clear the kind of life style that yields what all
people desire, positive emotion.
In the second chapter, I will set the ground for a claim I will make in
Chapter 3: shame is the major threat there is to flourishing. In order to make
and sustain this claim, I will in Chapter 2 provide a thorough discussion on
shame. I will start off by exploring definitions and conceptions of shame
across various fields. From these conceptions I will analyze the roles played
by shame in people’s emotional and social lives, discussing whether shame is of
any value to people or just a destructive emotion. Through an examination of
different aspects of shame, I hope to provide a comprehensive understanding of
shame. Such an understanding will be crucial for reading my arguments on how
shame interferes with human flourishing and happiness.
The third chapter of my thesis will be a synthesis of shame theories
with the flourishing theory from the first chapter. I will use this synthesis
to show in specific ways how shame not only threatens but also hinders human
flourishing. I will also demonstrate that shame is a pervasive emotion, ever
present in people’s experiences and yet rarely talked about. In the fourth
chapter, I will discuss the implications of this study. The major implication
stands as the main thesis claim: flourishing is realized only after acquiring
some resiliency to shame. One important theme I will discuss under the
implications is the important role that human relationships play in promoting
or impeding flourishing and consequently happiness.
I will
conclude this treatise with brief theological reflections on the themes and
claims of my research. In this section, I will consider the relationship
between my arguments with theological teachings on shame and happiness. I will
pay particular attention to how shame, the fear of disconnection, relates to
the theological view of sin as separation (disconnection) from God. I will also
discuss the apparent convergence of Biblical theology with social sciences on
the importance of relationships for human thriving.
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