Why does positive thinking as a whole (positive psychology, positive education, personal development) continue to spread despite obvious failures? For years, hordes of right-thinking people have been repeating the same refrains full of blissful positivity on networks and in companies, but there has never been so much unhappiness in organizations, according to the latest QVTC study from Ipsos : 2 out of 3 employees do not feel fulfilled in their roles, burn-out continues to soar, and work stoppages are increasing. The Public Health France barometer for February 2024 indicates that the mental health of young people is greatly deteriorating. Finally, positive pedagogy has not increased the level of students, quite the contrary, as evidenced by our declining rank in the latest Pisa ranking. Why then do positive ideologies continue to expand, even though their benefits are denied every day?
If educated minds adhere to these positive exhortations, it is because a power is at work there and reason finds interest in it. Let us start from this Kantian presupposition according to which it is interests and not arguments which guide thought as soon as it leaves the scientific sphere. Kant reveals the interests of reason for metaphysical questions (which go beyond the physical and therefore scientific sphere); let’s try to discover what these interests are within the framework of positive approaches (the scientific and neuroscientific backing of which remains largely contested). Unlike doctors, holders of a form of authority in that they possess knowledge of which patients remain forever deprived, the apostles of positive thinking never present themselves as superiors, but as fellow travelers. on the path of existence. Their logic of help is not vertical, but horizontal and full of egalitarian empathy, which can enhance a reason complexed by a feeling of inferiority. Positive thinking also maintains ease and absence of effort through its basic language and elementary thinking.
If only positive thinking came out of its dogmatism…
Reason’s interest in a painless initiation is easily satisfied by this simplifying ready-to-think. Immediacy is also one of the advantages that reason finds in these methods. What is the point of being involved in the long-term nature of a rigorous and demanding activity if quick recipes promise us well-being and fullness in a few weeks? Finally, well-being, happiness, personal accomplishment are no longer just questions of working on oneself, managing emotions and other behavioral techniques for the positive catechism. Reality mutates into a support function, and will into omnipotence. Nothing is more exciting than a feeling of control and a renewed mastery for a misguided reason in search of sovereignty. In short, it is not because they are objective and valid in themselves that certain minds adhere to these positive recipes, but rather because their desires, their lacks, their interests push them to it. Said differently with Spinoza, it is not because a thing is good that we desire it, but it is because we desire it that we judge it to be good.
If no objective and scientific justification comes to legitimize positive thinking, it may not lose all legitimacy. Like religions, devoid of objective truth but carrying subjective meaning for believers, positive thinking could become beneficial. It would still have to maintain its refusal of authoritarianism without denying the contribution of authority; that it retains the egalitarian ideal without mocking excellence; that it maintains the objective of efficiency without refusing long-term effort, without which nothing is robust; that it supports the idea of an active will while remaining grappling with reality and its limits. It is through these adjustments that positive thinking would no longer be just an unpacking of serial nonsense riddled with demagogic clichés, but would finally emerge from its dogmatism… for the happiness of all!
* Julia de Funès is a doctor of philosophy.
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