Will to happiness: The ultimate will?

The long-discussed dichotomy between “will” and “intellect” could also be explained through various other binaries – nature-culture, objective-subjective, immanent-non-immanent, a priori-a posteriori etc. The concept of will was also analyzed by Nietzsche who remained obsessed with “will to power” or wille zur macht, while Foucault dealt with the idea of “will to knowledge” in relatively recent decades. But, as one takes a cue from Schopenhauer, the battle between “happiness” and “ennui” which is also a bout between life and death is nothing but a quest for that ever-elusive happiness. Thus, be it the hedonistic principle of positive enjoyment of life's pleasure in “will to live” or be it the renunciation or the “denial of the will to live”, all that matters is the quest for “will to happiness”. Thus, this paper is an attempt to introduce the concept of “will to happiness” as the culmination of all other forms of will.