Abstract
In “Happiness Is the Wrong Metric,” Amitai Etzioni largely argues that human
beings are motivated by more than just their own happiness, whether conceived in terms of
pleasant experiences or fulfilled preferences, and that the state should attend to more than
merely people’s happiness. He contends that we are often disposed to seek out, and that
public policy ought to promote, what is morally right and good for its own sake. While not
disagreeing with this thrust of Etzioni’s position, I maintain in my contribution that it is too
narrow. There is a large range of goods that people tend to pursue, and that social and
political institutions should plausibly foster, which are reducible to neither happiness nor
morality. They are values that are instead well captured by the concept of what makes a life
meaningful. If Etzioni is correct that the state ought to enable people to live morally upright
lives, then it has no less reason to enable them to live meaningful ones, too.