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 single desires to be fulfilled, but also about the life-satisfaction as a whole. It is how your life is going on the whole, and how it is satisfying to you. It is not enough only to believe that your life is satisfying, but you must actually be satisfied. We set our own standards for ourselves, which leads to desires that we want to be fulfilled. I believe that Richard Nozick was right to say that a life and self that happiness is a fitting response to, is what we want. We also need to give our life that response. We must correctly believe that out desires are being fulfilled and that this will measure up to our own standards that we set for ourselves. It is not sufficient to be in a psychological state, because the externalists care about more than just how we feel inside. We set plans for ourselves and our judgements of getting what we want must line up with this plan. I think it is the correct thing to say that what makes us happy is setting these goals for ourselves and try to achieve them and realize when they are achieved that our life measures up to our own standards. The externalist theories argue that we will be happy if we