Richard Kraut was educated at the University of Michigan and Princeton University. He has taught in the Philosophy Departments at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Northwestern University, where he is Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in the Humanities. His recent books in value theory are Against Absolute Goodness (Oxford 2011) and What is Good and Why (Harvard 2007).

Richard Kraut presents a new theory of human well-being. Kraut's principal idea, Aristotelian in spirit, is that 'external goods' have at most an indirect bearing on the quality of our lives. A good internal life - one with quality emotional, intellectual, social, and perceptual experiences - is what well-being consists in.

• 1: The Oyster and the Experience Machine: Two Puzzles in Value Theory


• 2: Well-Being and Ethical Virtue


• 3: Experientialism and the Experience Machine


• 4: Well-Being and Time


• 5: Variations on Aristotelian Themes