Abstract: Objective happiness, defined as a sense of fulfillment in a worthwhile human life, is one of our ordinary conceptions of happiness, and the most plausible interpretation of the Aristotelian idea that happiness is the highest prudential good. Only this conception of happiness can explain both why a man on the rack, no matter how virtuous, cannot be happy, and why a life on the experience machine, no matter how blissful, cannot count as the highest prudential good. A worthwhile life must be self-directed and realistic about the important facts of one’Äôs own life and human life in general. In turn, self-direction and realism, as I understand them, entail the virtues, and so happiness entails the virtues. But empirical psychology does not support the Aristotelian assumption that the virtues are global or that they are immune to the power of the situation. Nor do the facts of human life give us any reason to accept the ancient claim that the perfectly virtuous individual must be happier than the less-than-perfectly virtuous individual. Accepting these claims defuses scepticism about the thesis that happiness entails virtue.