[jjk166]

I think we've known since the time of Socrates that the practice of philosophy is not the practice of happy living. Philosophers tend to be miserable. Socrates himself chose to drink poison over moving to a different city. I think most philosophies, despite their myriad differences, agree that what people tend to want is not what philosophy will give them. Maybe some of the answers philosophy yields can be applied to increase happiness, but philosophy in practice tends to produce questions.

[dkarl]

Most philosophers would not agree that yielding questions instead of answers makes philosophy unhelpful, nor that the happiest life is necessarily the one in which pain is most successfully avoided.