Hedonistic Optimism
The quality of experience is sufficient to justify the value of life.
What it claims
Hedonistic optimism grounds the goodness of life in the quality of its experiences, without requiring a further cosmic purpose or metaphysical guarantee. It rejects both the need for conditions beyond experience—such as authenticity, contact with reality, or objective meaning—and the pessimistic claim that life's balance is generally negative. Its central argument concerns where justification ends.
Nearby positions
Goes together with
Opposed to
Key thinkers
Epicurus · Jeremy Bentham · John Stuart Mill · Fred Feldman · Roger Crisp