Lynne McFall Knihy

What is happiness? McFall distinguishes three conceptions: contentment, affirmation, and justified affirmation of one's life; she focuses on the third. After proposing accounts of personhood and affirmation, she argues that both subjectivism and radical objectivism are, as standards of justification, incoherent. She defends a modified objectivist view, concluding that happiness is rational affirmation of one's life as a whole.