Wilhelm Schmid

For some years now, the philosopher Wilhelm Schmid has been writing this slim manual on the art of living. Its pocketbook format not only makes it comfortingly modest in comparison with its (pseudo)psychological siblings. Unglücklich sein - Eine Ermutigung (Unhappiness: An Encouragement) is the title of Schmid’s new book and it warns quite specifically against the “happiness hysteria” that those works impart. Human beings, Wilhelm Schmid reminds us, cannot be happy all the time, if only because they only feel pleasure in contrast to pain and because constant happiness, like intoxication, would end in peoples’ exhaustion, if not sooner. Only when unhappiness and failure are recognised as parts of one’s own and other peoples’ existence can something more realistic than happiness emerge - the fullness of meaning. Wilhelm Schmid appears to emphasise a socially critical element more strongly here than he has done in the past. For “the urgency of striving for happiness is merely an indication of the despair caused by a lack of meaning.” (…) Positive thinking is dishonest. It discriminates against people who are unhappy. And it delegitimises any criticism of situations that cause unhappiness when that unhappiness is objectively justified.

Michael Stallknecht: “Fülle des Sinns in leeren Gläsern”
© Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28 January 2013