This study investigates the eighteenth-century obsession for happiness. After an introductory Hoofdstuk, in which I discuss the questions addressed in this study, and give a general survey of European thought on happiness, a historiographical overview, a sketch of Enlightenment-historiography, a section on sources and method and a short introduction on the concept of happiness respectively, the most important powers behind the debate on happiness are discussed in a second preparatory Hoofdstuk. By way of hypotheses, I argue that it was a combination of changes within the material, the intellectual and the communicational culture, which was responsible for the rise of the Enlightenment debate on happiness. The first part of this study examines the existing traditions within this debate. Happiness was in itself not a new subject and writers could elaborate on both the classical and the Christian traditions. These traditions, however, were not static and subject to several changes. For instance, the classical notion that virtue equates to happiness, became an eighteenth-century commonplace. Between 1750 and 1780, this was the most dominant concept of happiness. In addition, many in the eighteenth-century came to see Christianity as a means to establish happiness on earth, changing meanwhile the Christian outlook from a vertical to a horizontal perspective. The third generally held opinion that happiness was to be found in contentment was embedded in both the Christian and the classical traditions. Towards the end of the eighteenth century this view was intertwined with the new cult of domesticity. Writers from the period of the Enlightenment also added new elements to the debate on happiness. These new departures are discussed in the second part of this study. Testimony for these new developments was, amongst others, the rise of a so-called science of happiness. By analogy to the natural sciences, eighteenth-century writers came to the belief that a science of happiness was possible too. The same laws that governed ...