Introduction

One tradition in philosophy imposes artificial constraints on happiness, thereby distorting its meaning. Although the average person may not be able to present a formal definition of happiness that provides the conditions needed to achieve it, she still has some understanding of what this term means, and the author believes that commonsense view ought to constrain our philosophizing. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents and critically evaluates past and present philosophical theories of happiness. The book also includes an appendix, which addresses the famous "Experience Machine" thought experiment posed by Robert Nozick. He argues that pleasure cannot be the key to living a happy life, because if there were a virtual reality machine into which one could plug that would provide nothing but pleasurable experiences of one's choosing, people would not plug in but would prefer to live in reality.