INTRODUCTION

Ancient moral philosophers, especially Aristotle and his followers, typically shared the assumption that ethics is primarily concerned with how to achieve the final end for human beings, a life of “happiness” or “human flourishing.” This final end was not a subjective condition, such as contentment or the satisfaction of our preferences, but a life that could be objectively determined to be appropriate to our nature as human beings. Character traits were treated as moral virtues because they contributed well toward this ideal life, either as means to it or as constitutive aspects of it. Traits that tended to prevent a “happy” life were considered vices, even if they contributed to a life that was pleasant and what a person most wanted. The idea of “happiness” (or human flourishing) was central, then, in philosophical efforts to specify what we ought to do, what sort of persons we should try to become, and what sort of life a wise person would hope for.

In modern philosophy this ancient conception of happiness has been largely replaced by more subjective conceptions. Not surprisingly, then, happiness plays a different, and usually diminished, role in modern moral theories. Immanuel Kant is a striking, and influential, example of this trend. Viewing happiness as personal contentment and success in achieving the ends we want, he argues that morality is a constraint on the pursuit of a happy life rather than a means to it or an element of it.