Abstract
Even the very title of this article may cause perplexity. Note that science usually implies studying something that can be grasped, measured, or evaluated in one way or another. As for happiness, the majority of people perceive it as intangible matter, if matter at all. In recent years, however, the word happiness has made increasingly frequent appearances in documents of international organizations and institutes; happiness is studied; attempts are made to use this notion as a criterion of success in the development of states. This necessitates a clear definition of this notion, its connotations, and its place in the series of close categories. In analyzing the respective scope of problems, the authors of this article present their opinion about the meaning of life as the key component of life satisfaction and happiness. As one of the main elements of happiness in collective cultures, they consider collective meanings of life and, as their main source, the national idea, the absence of which in modern Russia gives rise to a number of social illnesses.
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Original Russian Text © A.L. Zhuravlev, A.V. Yurevich, 2014, published in Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, 2014, Vol. 84, No. 8, pp. 715–723.
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Zhuravlev, A.L., Yurevich, A.V. Happiness as a scientific category. Her. Russ. Acad. Sci. 84, 292–299 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331614040091
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331614040091