Original scientific paper
Happiness and games of chance - Ethical frame for understanding one contemporary phenomenon
Ivan Koprek
Abstract
By their nature human beings are searching for happiness, they want to be happy. The question about happiness is inseparable from ethics. Though, the meaning of happiness remains dubious. Ancient culture, especially philosophy, has appointed the first assumptions on happiness and its possibilities of realization. It seems that the contemporary man on certain way „must“ be happy, in his life battles. He is pressed on it by the common atmosphere in the public life. „Happiness“ has been off ered and suggested all-around, the exact instructions how to achieve happiness have been dealt... Exactly this kind of enforced and imposed „happiness“ makes a man unhappy. It makes him ill. It creates a dangerous atmosphere of risk and irresponsible amusement. Apart from religious domain, wherein play always had an important role, today in many positive sciences various theories of play have been created explaining the animal or human behaviour, culture, society, economy, language... If game is related to the happiness, then the first thought goes towards the games of chance. And on the risk. The game of chance has started to differ conceptually from the notion of the game in which innocent game of skills and strength has the purpose of entertainment, at the moment when the tension of the outcome has been increased. Material aspect of the game has overbalanced, while the final asset seems to be the fi nal aim. Mentality, in which the so-called happiness, or gambler’s combinatorics, will be crucial for success in life, and not its own diligent and hard work, becomes ethically dangerous. Therefore, games of chance, a kind of pathology of hope, have ethically dubious practice.
Keywords
happiness; philosophers and philosophy on happiness; game; game of chance; ethical deliberation on game on chance; risk; work; hope
Hrčak ID:
111334
URI
Publication date:
29.11.2013.
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