Melancholy and Happiness

This paper explores how increasing focus on enhancing well-being in public policy and democratic debate often avoids more subtle and nuanced understandings of well-being which break from simplistic hedonistic accounts of happiness and well-being. The paper recommends a more multi-layered understanding of well-being being developed in policy public discourse, which explicitly recognises the experience of melancholy as an enhancer of well-being and, what is termed, ‘authentic happiness’. The ASPP conference is one of the major annual events on the calendar at the theoretical end of social justice/political philosophy debates, and so is an important chance to network with colleagues with the view to participating in collaborative research and funding bids.