While the pursuit of happiness in the present pervades popular narratives of happiness and the good life, the work of Adorno and Arendt casts doubt on the possibility of this lucrative goal. For Adorno, happiness occurs only in memory, while Arendt is sceptical about the possibility of experience between past and future and uses happiness to demonstrate her suspicion. Meanwhile, GH Mead offers an alternative that rejects these counter-intuitive perspectives by reaffirming that all experiences necessarily take place in the present. This article will assess each of these claims alongside the view that contemporary happiness discourse favours the pragmatic notion of happiness in the present. The article will then conclude by considering the potential for Simmel’s transcending theory of experience – set out in his final major work View of Life (1918) – to resolve these tensions and support a theory of time, experience, emotion and knowledge that is capable of responding to the challenges set out by Adorno, Arendt and Mead.

中文翻译：

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现在有幸福这种东西吗？幸福与时间

虽然当下对幸福的追求遍及幸福和美好生活的流行叙事，但阿多诺和阿伦特的作品对这一有利可图的目标的可能性提出了质疑。对于阿多诺来说，幸福只发生在记忆中，而阿伦特则怀疑过去与未来之间经验的可能性，并用幸福来证明她的怀疑。同时，GH Mead 提供了一种替代方案，通过重申所有经验都必须发生在当下来拒绝这些反直觉的观点。本文将评估这些主张中的每一个，同时认为当代幸福话语支持当下幸福的实用概念。