This book argues that the notions of happiness, unhappiness and chance in the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur offer an overarching conceptualisation of happiness that has significant implications for contemporary popular and philosophical accounts of happiness. This alternative understanding of happiness can serve as a corrective to the kind of happiness presented by the happiness sciences, religion, and consumerism.

By analysing Ricoeur's philosophy, and specifically his two articles on happiness, “Le Bonheur Hors Lieu” (1994) and “L'optatif du bonheur” (2001), Anné H. Verhoef argues that a significant alternative mode of understanding happiness is found in the dialectical thinking of Ricoeur. Ricoeur's dialectic of happiness and unhappiness entails that unhappiness is always part of happiness; not something to be overcome, but something to be integrated in who we are. Unhappiness is not a lack, and happiness is not a desire to not lack the lack. Happiness is always in a dialectical tension with unhappiness.

Furthermore, Ricoeur's recognition of chance as part of happiness opens a recognition for happiness as something received without any effort, while simultaneously keeping the ethical vision of Aristotle intact, namely that one should strive for the good, eudaimonia. There is fragile dialectics of receiving and striving for happiness within the simultaneous dialectic between happiness and unhappiness.