ABSTRACT
John Kekes describes happiness as lasting satisfaction with one's life as a whole, which he regards as a central and noncontroversial aspect of happiness. Kekes is offering a description of the mental state of satisfaction a person is in when she is happy. The normative theorist would object to the life-satisfaction view, because it provides no way to distinguish the happy person who is deluded, drugged, or in a virtual reality machine from the person who has a justified reason for being happy. Robert Simpson describes a person's satisfaction in terms of doing or getting whatever, it is that she believes to be worthwhile. He believes this is a necessary but not sufficient condition of happiness, because in addition to being successful at pursuing one's ends, those ends themselves must also be worthwhile. Kraut objects to extreme subjectivism, because he does not believe a person's sincere report of being happy is sufficient for happiness.
