Una «candida» felicità. Le peripezie della coscienza borghese nei Lumi francesi

A «candide» happiness. The vicissitudes of bourgeois conscience during French Enlightenment. The essay talks over the success of the thinking on bonheur in the Eighteenth Century France and over its contradictions, paying particular attention to Voltaire thought. The discourse on happiness ends to be just an enquiry of human conscience and of social relationships, since bonheur becomes one of the goal of associated life. However, it is just the quest of happiness which leads to recognition of some pathologies of the soul, like restlessness, boredom, sadism.