I have said before that the implicit yet common understanding of happiness today is preference satisfaction.1 It is the view that sees the standards of happiness to be internal to the agent, existing solely within the purview of the individual. “To each, his own.” This is closely associated with what I have described as cultural existentialism.2 The increasing pluralism of Western society has birthed a state of affairs in which there is no longer a common understanding of the good.3 What remains is the individual’s assessment, protected by law–insofar as he or she does not impinge on the rights of others. But if this view of happiness is pushed to its limits, as it were, the ramifications are unsettling, to say the least.4
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