Well-Being: Part 2

Christopher L. Holland
christopher.holland@slu.edu

Saint Louis University

April 22, 2025

Well-Being

What is noninstrumentally good for a person

Well-Being

Theories of well-being attempt to tell us what makes a person’s life better or worse for them.

Synonyms and terms closely associated with well-being include:

  • welfare
  • personal-interest
  • self-interest
  • quality of life
  • eudaimonia
  • happiness
  • flourishing

Theories of Well-being

We can divide theories of well-being into four major types:1

  • hedonism
  • desire satisfactionism
  • eudaimonism
  • objective list theories

Each theory offers a different account of final prudential value.

Objective Theories of Well-being

There are two major types of objective well-being theories:

List Theories
These theories begin with a list of intuitively plausible final goods. Lists vary from theory to theory but often include achievement, friendship, happiness, pleasure, and virtue.
Eudaimonism
Also called nature-fulfillment theory and perfectionism. It is finally good for a person to fulfill (or perfect) their nature. A person is doing well to the extent that they are functioning well, and poorly when they are not.

Attitude-independence

Objective theories are attitude-independent theories of well-being.

Attitude-independence
At least one thing that is basically good [i.e., is finally/non-instrumentally valuable] for subjects of welfare is not “pro-attitude-involving,” in the sense of necessarily being either the object of a satisfied positive attitude on the subject’s part or involving the subject’s having a satisfied positive attitude toward something. (Heathwood 2021, 16–17)

Sample Objective List

Guy Fletcher (brute list)
Achievement, friendship, happiness, pleasure, self-respect, virtue.

Mark Murphy (principled list: Natural Law)
Life, knowledge, aesthetic experience, excellence in work and play, excellence in agency, inner peace, friendship and community, religion, and happiness (meaning success in life plan)

Sample Objective List (Cont.)

Martha Nussbaum (principled list: human capabilities)
(1) Life, (2) Bodily Health, (3) Bodily Integrity, (4) Senses, Imagination, and Thought, (5) Emotions, (6) Practical Reason, (7) Affiliation (incl. social bases of self-respect), (8) Other Species, (9) Play, (10) Control over one’s Environment (political and material)

Eudaimonism

Sometimes called Perfectionism.

  • Broadly Aristotelian
  • Well-being = flourishing
  • Generally,
    • A person is doing well to the extent that they are functioning well or fulfilling their nature
    • A person is doing poorly to the extent that they are functioning poorly or failing to fulfill their nature.

Issues for Objectivism

For Brute List

  • These theories fail to give us unified theory of well-being.
  • People have different intuitions about what to include on the list.

For Principled List/Eudiamonism

Issues for Objectivism

For Brute List

  • These theories fail to give us unified theory of well-being.
  • People have different intuitions about what to include on the list.

For Principled List/Eudiamonism

  • Do we all flourish in the same way? What about people with disabilities or atypical individuals?
  • Can eudaimonism account for the value of pleasure and the disvalue of pain?

Hybrid Theories

Hybrid Theories of Well-being

  • Loving the Good (Adams 1999; Kagan 2009)
    A person is doing well when they enjoy objects of objective merit or worth

  • Desire-Perfectionism (Lauinger 2014, 2021) A person is doing when they both (a) exercise/develop their human capacities (eudaimonism) and (b) desire to do so (desire-satisfaction)

  • Eudaimonic-Hedonic Hybrids (Haybron 2008)
    Haybron’s version: a person is doing well when they have (a) self-fulfillment and (b) pleasure.

Well-Being as one part of the good life (graphic provided by Dan Haybron)

Sources

Adams, Robert M. 1999. Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics. Kindle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bentham, Jeremy. (1789) 1996. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. Edited by J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart. The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Chalmers, David J. 2017. “The Virtual and the Real.” Disputatio 9 (46): 309–52. https://doi.org/10.1515/disp-2017-0009.
———. 2019. “The Virtual as the Digital.” Disputatio 11 (55): 453–86. https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2019-0022.
Crisp, Roger. 2006. “Hedonism Reconsidered.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (3): 619–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2006.tb00551.x.
———. 2021. “Well-Being.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2021. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/well-being/.
Haybron, Daniel M. 2008. The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Heathwood, Chris. 2021. Happiness and Well-Being. Cambridge Elements. Elements in Ethics. Cambridge University Press.
Kagan, Shelly. 2009. “Well-Being as Enjoying the Good: Well-Being as Enjoying the Good.” Philosophical Perspectives 23 (1): 253–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2009.00170.x.
Kneer, Markus, and Daniel Haybron. 2023. “The Folk Concept of the Good Life: Neither Happiness nor Well-Being.” https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.33569.89445.
Lauinger, William A. 2014. Well-Being and Theism: Linking Ethics to God. London: Bloomsbury.
———. 2021. “Defending a Hybrid of Objective List and Desire Theories of Well-Being.” In Measuring Well-Being: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Social Sciences and the Humanities, edited by Matthew T. Lee, Laura D. Kubzansky, and Tyler J. VanderWeele, 229–56. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197512531.003.0009.
Lin, Eden. 2016. “How to Use the Experience Machine.” Utilitas 28 (3): 314–32. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820815000424.
Nozick, Robert. (1974) 2013. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Kindle. New York: Basic Books.
Parfit, Derek. (1984) 1987. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Plato. 2017. Euthyphro. Apology. Crito. Phaedo. Edited and translated by Christopher Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy. Loeb Classical Library 36. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://www.loebclassics.com/view/LCL036/2017/volume.xml.
Rawls, John. (1971) 2005. A Theory of Justice. Original. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjf9z6v.