Explain and defend your preferred theory of happiness
In this paper I am going to explain and defend my preferred theories of happiness. I will defend the externalist versions, which are the externalist life satisfaction theory and the externalist desire fulfilment theory. In the first section I will describe the theories. In the second section I will argue that neither affective nor objective theories of happiness are correct. Finally in the third section I will argue that the externalist satisfaction theory is the best version of a desire-based theory of happiness. I will not mention all of the theories, but rather focus on the ones I find the most interesting.
Happiness is constituted by desire-fulfilment. It is not only about…show more content… He experiences much pleasure through this, but he does not consider his life as a happy life.
If dividing hedonism into narrow hedonism and preference hedonism, I think preference hedonism is the more plausible theory of happiness. I say this because narrow hedonism argues that happiness is just a feeling, comparable with the feeling of being in love. The example above with the boxer applies well to the view of the narrow hedonism as a narrow hedonist would say that the pain occurred during the fight would make him miserable at that point and will therefore mean that this is not leading to a happy life for him. On the other hand, preference hedonism is more open-minded and says that he can still be happy because he desires that full boxing experience which includes the pain he receives by having the experience of being in a fight. Though I agree with this part of preference hedonism, I do not think this is a good theory of happiness because this theory also states that happenings that one person is not experiencing do not contribute to his happiness. A good example of this is world peace. To an average person, this is not considered an experience, so according to preference hedonism, world peace will not have anything at all to do with an individuals happiness.
The reason I dislike the objective theory is because this
