the teaching of not how we should make ourselves happy but how we should come to deserve happiness

Immanuel Kant

 

 

The philosopher says that morality is originally such a thing. He says that you should ask whether you are moral enough to gain happiness first instead of asking for happiness. Although what he says is quite harsh, he also warns that something that looks like happiness is actually a "restricted" state in which you are at the mercy of desire that you cannot control by yourselves. From "The Critique of Practical Reason" (translated by Kinshiro Kashiyama).

 

November 5,  2018

from “Oriori no Kotoba” by Kiyokazu Washida, The Asahi Shimbun