Subjectivism draws its appeal from the compelling thought that what counts as a good life for us is somehow rooted in our psychological makeup – that if our subjectivity were sufficiently different, the things we value would be valueless. But, as we will see, subjectivism is neither the only nor the best way of capturing this thought. In the current chapter, I shall argue that subjectivism has various unpalatable implications, both about what does and does not have value and about how value enters into practical deliberation. I shall argue, too, that certain apparently countervailing advantages – in particular, its ability to explain how value motivates, what makes value-claims true, and how value is created – are, in fact, no advantages at all. Then, in the next chapter, I will show how we can accommodate the central subjectivist insight within a recognizably perfectionist framework.

Intuitively, some kinds of activities, traits, and relationships seem far more worthwhile than others. For example, it has already been observed that autonomous lives are, all else being equal, far better than nonautonomous ones. To account for such intuitions, a subjectivist must show that each valuable type of activity, trait, and relationship stands in the right relation to whichever subjective state he takes to be the source of value. But in what follows, I shall argue that this often cannot be shown.