The 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a key historical example of how the ideal of happiness can reinforce prescribed gender roles. Ahmed focuses on Rousseau’s educational treatise Émile: On Education, which outlines the ideal upbringing for a boy and his future wife, Sophy. Rousseau argues that Sophy’s education should be directed toward preparing her for her role as a wife and toward pleasing and supporting her husband. Her own education is shaped by the expectation that her happiness will be found through fulfilling these gendered domestic roles.

Ahmed uses Rousseau’s framework to illustrate the concept of “conditional happiness”—a form of happiness that depends on fulfilling conditions established by others. Sophy is first expected to find happiness in what makes her parents happy, while her parents direct her toward marriage by presenting her future happiness as dependent on finding a “good man.” Her eventual relationship with Émile extends this orientation toward marriage and domestic life. This demonstrates how the seemingly benevolent wish for another’s happiness can direct that person toward socially prescribed roles and objects of happiness. By critiquing Rousseau, Ahmed connects his account of Sophy to the longer history behind the feminist challenge to the “happy housewife” figure, showing how women can be taught to understand virtue and happiness through their orientation toward the happiness of others.

The 17th-century philosopher John Locke provides an important philosophical starting point for Ahmed’s theory of “happy objects.” Ahmed begins with Locke’s empiricist argument that we call something “good” if it is apt to increase pleasure or diminish pain. Using Locke’s example of a person who loves grapes because their taste is delightful, Ahmed considers how positive feelings can orient us toward particular objects. Objects that affect us well can become objects we approach, while those associated with pain can become objects we avoid. This creates a personal “horizon of likes” that orients us in the world (211).

Ahmed uses Locke’s model as a foundation that she then complicates. While Locke gives experience an important role in shaping what people like, he also acknowledges that tastes can be acquired and corrected. Ahmed extends this question by considering how objects can already carry positive or negative value through their social histories. We are directed toward certain “happy objects” because they can already circulate as things that are expected to bring happiness. Locke’s account of pleasure and the acquisition of tastes thus becomes, in Ahmed’s hands, a starting point for a cultural critique. She shows how objects can become associated with happiness before an individual's encounter with them, helping to orient people toward particular objects and ways of living.

Aristotle’s philosophy is an important reference point for Ahmed’s critique of happiness as the ultimate goal of life. Aristotle defines happiness (eudaimonia) as the “Chief Good,” chosen for its own sake and associated with living and acting well. Ahmed uses Aristotle to establish the long and influential tradition in Western thought that connects happiness with the good life.

Ahmed focuses on two aspects of this framework. First, Aristotle gives happiness a teleological structure: It is the “end of all ends” (10), while other goods, such as honor, pleasure, and intellect, can be chosen with a view to happiness. Ahmed examines how positioning happiness as the ultimate end allows other goods to function as means toward it. Second, she draws attention to the political economy underlying Aristotle’s vision. The “good life” of philosophical contemplation requires material security and leisure and is therefore available only to some. Ahmed argues that some people must work to give others the time to pursue the good life, so the possibility of philosophical contemplation can depend on other people’s labor. By examining these material conditions, Ahmed shows that ideas of happiness and the good life are connected to social distinctions concerning who has the time and resources to pursue them.