One of the main human goals is to achieve the state of happiness. Almost all people ask themselves the question of how to attain this goal. For thousands of years, philosophers and spiritual leaders and, nowadays, researchers representing various disciplines of social sciences, have been searching for the right answer to this question. One of the dilemmas intertwined in the debate about the essence of happiness relates to the tension expressed by the question “to be or to have”; the tension between the spiritual and the material world; between sacrum and profanum. Can accumulation of money and material possessions make us happy? Starting with the message passed on by a German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in his essay “To Have or to Be” and the wisdom derived from the classic philosophical and religious works, I will attempt to define the relation between the state of happiness and the attachment to money and possessions or the attachment to social and transcendent values. This difficult, yet crucial, problem will be analyzed in the context of the current psychological knowledge related to the emotional and cognitive consequences of taking a materialistic approach to life. Erich Fromm and other thinkers who had lived hundreds of years before him, suggested that greed and pursuit of material possessions did not appease the human longing for happiness. The latest experimental research, conducted by psychologists, economists and scholars representing other disciplines of science, seem to strongly confirm these assumptions.

The paper critically considers Alfried Längle’s view presented in his book Gdy rodzi się pytanie o sens. Praktyczne zastosowanie logoterapii [ When the Question of Sense Arises. The Practical Application of Logotherapy] (Warszawa 2016). It invites to reflection focused on the problem of the sense of existence.

Subjective Well-Being is related to the Big-Five and to Individualistic and Collectivistic beliefs of Polish adolescents. In the present study, we examined whether Individualism and Collectivism beliefs mediate between the Big-Five and Subjective Well-being among adolescents, young and middle-aged adults. Adolescents (N = 174, 36% men, aged 14–18), young (N = 254, 45% men, aged 19–24) and middle-aged adults (N = 252, 54% men, aged 40–55) completed the NEO-FFI, the Ind-Col20, and measures of Subjective Well-being. The three groups differed on all dimensions. Adolescents reported the highest Neuroticism, the lowest Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, the highest Individualism and Collectivism beliefs and lowest SWB. Among adolescents, SEM analyses indicated that Subjective Well-being was negatively related to Neuroticism and Agreeableness, positively to Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Horizontal Individualism, Horizontal and Vertical Collectivism. Among young and middle-aged adults Subjective Well-being was negatively related to Neuroticism and Horizontal Collectivism, positively to Openness, Conscientiousness, Horizontal and Vertical Individualism. Beliefs partially mediated the effects of traits. Relationships were different for cognitive and affective Subjective Well-being indices.

John Rawls claims that self‑respect is arguably the most important of social primary goods. It has two aspects: the sense of self‑worth and confidence in one’s abilities. Both attitudes presuppose formation and completion of a reasonable life plan. Realization of a life plan is a stepping stone to personal achievement and happiness. Self‑respect implies acceptance of two rules of justice. Those rules presuppose an equal distribution of the social prerequisites for the growth of self‑respect. Self‑respect supports the sense of justice as well as political and social stability. A well‑ordered society makes it possible for everyone to achieve self‑respect through realization of an ambitious life plan, in accordance with Aristotelian conception of virtue. Virtue is also a prerequisite of happiness. In a poorly‑ordered society achievement of happiness is thwarted by socio‑economic inequality and artificial restrictions on selection of the life plans.

Taking as a starting point Vyacheslav Ivanov’s poem Eden – the epilogue of the 5th book of “metaphysical lyric poetry” Rosarium as well as his critical and philosophical works – the article proposes a culturological interpretation of the key topoi of the poet’s artistic thought: his poetic anthropology. The principal point in these considerations is conceptualisation of the category of paradise/Eden in Ivanov’s writings and the notion of happiness as “metaphysical and religious feeling” connected with a person’s spiritual life in its vertical dimension (relation man – three-personed God). Moreover, the article presents intertextual relationships between Ivanov’s poetry and cultural texts (St Augustine, Petrarch, and others) being the source of European understanding of the concepts: soul, memory, oblivion, paradise.

The study examined the relationships among some demographic factors, self-compassion and interdependent happiness of the married Hindu couples. Using a correlational research design, 600 participants (300 couples) were chosen by a snowball sampling. Self-compassion Scale (Neff, 2003b), Socioeconomic Status Scale (Aggarwal et al., 2005) and Interdependent Happiness Scale (Hitokoto & Uchida, 2015) were used to collect data. Findings revealed that some demographic factors such as age, years of marriage and number of family members were positively correlated with self-compassion while the number of children and socioeconomic status were negatively correlated with it. Age, years of marriage and the number of children had a positive relationship with interdependent happiness. Self-compassion evinced a significant positive correlation with the interdependent happiness of the couples. The nature of family and self- -compassion accounted for significant variance in the scores of interdependent happiness of the couples. The study constitutes one of the limited studies which assessed the relationships among a set of demographic factors, self- -compassion and interdependent happiness on a sample drawn from a collectivistic society. The results have been discussed in the light of extant theoretical and empirical findings of self-compassion and interdependent happiness. The findings may have significant implications for understanding positive life outcomes of people with self-compassion belonging to a collectivistic culture. The theory, practise and policy implications of the findings have been discussed. Directions for future research have also been provided along with some limitations of the study.