Life’s Values: Pleasure, Happiness, Well-Being, and Meaning

This book contains new analyses of and insights into the nature of pleasure, happiness, and meaning in life. It reflects on what makes life good to the person living it, seeing a person’s well-being as the satisfaction of her deep rational desires. Individuals will typically desire pleasure, happiness, and meaning in their lives, but they will have different priorities in regard to these states and will rarely be successful aiming at them directly. What they should do is make their desires rational, in other words coherent and relevantly informed of what it will be like to satisfy them. Pleasure and happiness typically result from the satisfaction of other rational desires and then contribute to well-being. Events in life have meaning when they cohere in intelligible narratives.