Hybrid Accounts of Well-Being

While life satisfaction theories (LSTs) of well-being are barely discussed in philosophy, they are popular among social scientists and wider society. When philosophers have discussed LSTs, they are taken to be a distinct alternative to the three canonical accounts of well-being—hedonism, desire theories, the objective list. This essay makes three main claims. First, on closer inspection, LSTs are indistinguishable from a type of desire theory—the global desire theory. Second, the life satisfaction/global desire theories are the only subjectivist accounts of well-being (...) in the sense that they maintain individuals decide what makes their lives go well for them; hedonism and other desire theories are subjectivist only in some alternative senses. Third, subjectivism is implausible, although for different reasons from those that are usually given. I examine what I take to be the two main current objections to LSTs and argue that they are unproblematic. I then raise two different, challenging objections. The first is novel. The second has been noted in passing, but its seriousness underestimated. I close by sketching some non-obvious difficulties that subjectivists will face if they attempt to show rival objectivist theories suffer even more counterintuitive implications. Although subjectivism has a strong intuitive pull, we should be ready to abandon it in favour of an objectivist theory—although it is not my purpose here to say which one. (shrink)

There is a strong intuition that a zombie’s life is never good or bad for the zombie. This suggests that consciousness has a special role in making life good or bad for the one who lives it. What explains this? In this paper, I consider five possible explanations of the intuition that a zombie’s life is never worth living, plus the option of rejecting the intuition. I point out the considerable costs of each option, though making clear which option strikes (...) me as least problematic. (shrink)

This paper argues that relations of mutual recognition (love, respect, esteem, trust) contribute directly and non-reductively to our flourishing as relational selves. -/- Love is important for the quality of human life. Not only do everyday experiences and analyses of pop culture and world literature attest to this; scientific research does as well. How exactly does love contribute to well-being? This chapter discusses the suggestion that it not only matters for the experiential quality of life, or for successful agency, but (...) that it actualizes our nature as “relational selves” (Chen, Boucher & Kraus 2011). I defend a hybrid or pluralist theory, which sees humans not only as subjects of experiences, or agents, or valuers, but also as relational selves. Expanding from love to other interpersonal relations, thriving relations of mutual recognition (love, respect, esteem, trust), contribute directly and non-reductively to our flourishing as relational selves. The paper will start by putting forward the proposal (Section 2), and then discussing it in relation to important alternatives. The focus is on alternatives which hold that love, and other forms of mutual recognition, are important for well-being, but only indirectly. One kind of challenge against the constitutive role of relations to others for well-being comes from the traditional theories that accommodate relations in some indirect ways (Section 3). A second kind of challenge admits that perhaps love is central to well-being in a direct way, but do we have reason to believe that other forms of mutual recognition are as well? (Section 4) Yet another kind of challenge is that love matters for the quality of lives in some other way than contributing to its prudential value: love is good, but is it good for us? (Section 5) A fourth kind of challenge concerns what we are, and the nature of “essentialism” involved in the approach stressing relational selfhood: cannot, say, motherhood contribute to one’s good life even if motherhood is contingent and not essential? (Section 6). In debates on recognition the idea that mutual recognition is also relevant for well-being has been put forward, for example in Axel Honneth’s (1992, ch.9 ) ”formal” theory of good life. Whatever else constitutes good life, relations of recognition form its backbone (cf. Ikäheimo 2014). Surprisingly little however is written about mutual recognition and well-being in detail, or recognition in comparison to traditional theories of well-being. This chapter aims to fill some of that void, and at the same time defend the view that well-being is one of the normative notions with which mutual recognition has a constitutive relationship. (shrink)

Animal welfare theorists tend to assume that most animals in captivity—especially those living in our homes and in sanctuaries—can, with sufficient care and environmental enrichment, live genuinely good lives. This misguided belief stems from the view that animal well-being should be assessed only in terms of the felt experiences of animals. Against this view, I argue that in assessing how well an animal’s life is going, we ought to consider two distinct kinds of welfare: experiential welfare and subject welfare. Once (...) we take seriously the notion of subject welfare, which pertains to the non-sentient nature of animals, we will be forced to accept the unfortunate reality that most, if not all, animals in confinement—including those living in our homes and in sanctuaries—fare quite poorly and live lives that should be characterized as having overall ill-being. (shrink)

Many questions about wellbeing involve metaphysical dependence. Does wellbeing depend on minds? Is wellbeing determined by distinct sorts of things? Is it determined differently for different subjects? However, we should distinguish two axes of dependence. First, there are the grounds that generate value. Second, there are the connections between the grounds and value which make it so that those grounds generate that value. Given these distinct axes of dependence, there are distinct dimensions to questions about the dependence of wellbeing. In (...) this paper, I offer a view of wellbeing that gives different answers with respect to these different dimensions. The view is subjectivist about connections but objectivist about grounds. Pluralist about grounds but monist about connections. Invariabilist about connections but variabilist about grounds. Thus, the view offers a simple account that captures the complexity of wellbeing. (shrink)

What is the best way to account for the badness of pain and what sort of theory of welfare is best suited to accommodate this view? I argue that unpleasant sensory experiences are prudentially bad in the absence of contrary attitudes, but good when the object of positive attitudes. Pain is bad unless it is liked, enjoyed, valued etc. Interestingly, this view is incompatible with either pure objectivist or pure subjectivist understandings of welfare. However, there is a kind of welfare (...) theory that can incorporate this view of the badness of pain and which is very, very close to being a form of subjectivism. Moreover, this hybrid account of welfare is entirely compatible with the deep motivations of subjectivism. I therefore argue that those who lean towards welfare subjectivism should adopt this account of pain, and that we should revise our understanding of subjectivism to count such theories as subjective. (shrink)

According to subjectivism about ill-being, the token states of affairs that are basically bad for you must be suitably connected, under the proper conditions, to your negative attitudes. This article explores the prospects for this family of theories and addresses some of its challenges. This article (i) shows that subjectivism about ill-being can be derived from a more general doctrine that requires a negatively valenced relationship between any welfare subject and the token states that are of basic harm to that (...) subject and (ii) responds to some objections, including the objection that subjectivists about ill-being cannot plausibly explain the badness of pain. (shrink)

Theories of well-being purport to identify the features of lives, and of intervals within lives, in virtue of which some people are high in well-being and others are low in well-being. They also purport to identify the properties that make some events or states of affairs good for a person and other events or states of affairs bad for a person. This article surveys some of the main theories of well-being, with an emphasis on work published since the turn of (...) the century. (shrink)

Affect-based theorists and life satisfaction theorists disagree about the nature of happiness, but agree about this methodological principle: a philosophical theory of happiness should be in line with the folk concept HAPPINESS. In this article, we present two empirical studies indicating that it is affect-based theories that get the folk concept HAPPINESS right: competent speakers judge a person to be happy if and only if that person is described as feeling pleasure/good most of the time. Our studies also show that (...) the judgement that a person is feeling pleasure/good most of the time reliably brings about the judgement that they are satisfied with their life, even if that person is described as not satisfied. We suggest that this direct causal relation between the concepts POSITIVE AFFECT and LIFE SATISFACTION might explain why many philosophers have been attracted to life satisfaction theories. (shrink)

There is an intuitive connection between well-being and happiness. Accordingly, many theories of well-being hold that well-being consists in (either unqualified or properly qualified) happiness. Traditional happiness-based theories are subject, however, to several important objections. The goal in this chapter is to offer a new happiness-based theory that is immune to the main objections raised against traditional happiness-based theories. The authors’ own fitting happiness theory of well-being can be seen as the combination of the following claims. The first is that (...) happiness consists in a broadly positive balance of affective states such as emotions, moods, and sensory pleasures. The second is that emotions, moods, and sensory pleasures are different kinds of perceptual experiences of evaluative properties. The third claim is that, insofar as happiness is constituted by states that have fittingness conditions, it is possible to assess happiness itself as fitting or unfitting. The last claim is that well-being consists in fitting happiness thus defined. (shrink)

Epicurus posited that the best life involves the greatest pleasures. He also argued that it involves attaining tranquillity. Many commentators have expressed scepticism that these two claims are compatible. For, they argue, Epicurus’ tranquil life is so austere that it is hard to see how it could be maximally pleasurable. Here, I offer an Epicurean account of the pleasures of tranquillity. I also consider different ways of valuing lives from a hedonistic point of view. Benthamite hedonists value lives by the (...) sum of pleasures minus the sum of pains, weighted by intensity and duration. Meanwhile, Binmore proposes that Epicurus valued lives by their worst episode. In contrast, I offer an Epicurean argument for why the best life is one in which a person attains tranquillity and tastes its pleasures until death. (shrink)

The paradox of hedonism is the idea that intrinsically desiring nothing other than pleasure can prevent one from obtaining pleasure. In this article, I show how the paradox of hedonism can be used as the basis for an objection against hedonism about well-being, and one that is more defensible than has been commonly recognized. Moreover, I argue that the challenge presented by the paradox can be used to target not only hedonism about well-being, but also desire satisfactionism and the hybrid (...) theory. However, I argue that certain sophisticated versions of all three theories can escape it. (shrink)

This paper extends previous work of mine on a view of human well-being that is a hybrid of objective-list theories and desire theories. Though some of what I say traverses old ground, much of what I say is new – new, that is, not in terms of ultimate conclusions, but rather in terms of (a) routes toward these ultimate conclusions and (b) certain implications of these ultimate conclusions (e.g., implications concerning the measurement of well-being). There are two different visions of (...) what human beings are that I privilege and attempt to synthesize in this paper. One of these visions pushes us toward an objective-list theory. This vision is a broadly Aristotelian one according to which humans have various capacities that are central to their functioning well as the kinds of things they are, that is, as human beings. Though this broadly Aristotelian vision captures something necessary for well-being, it is, as it were, only half of the story. The other half of the story derives from a vision of human beings as unique individuals with different sets of intrinsic desires, and this desire-focused vision of humans is itself informed by Jacques Lacan and his view that each human self is constituted by a particular and dynamic chains-of-signifiers-plus-desire-flow structure. I start by briefly discussing mental state theories (section 1). Then I discuss objective-list theories at some length (sections 2-3), and, while doing this, I occasionally comment on pro-attitude theories (e.g., desire theories). After that, I present the hybrid theory of well-being that I favor and defend it against some objections (section 4). Lastly, I conclude the paper (section 5). (shrink)

There is a widespread belief that for their own safety and for the protection of wildlife, cats should be permanently kept indoors. Against this view, I argue that cat guardians have a duty to provide their feline companions with outdoor access. The argument is based on a sophisticated hedonistic account of animal well-being that acknowledges that the performance of species-normal ethological behavior is especially pleasurable. Territorial behavior, which requires outdoor access, is a feline-normal ethological behavior, so when a cat is (...) permanently confined to the indoors, her ability to flourish is impaired. Since cat guardians have a duty not to impair the well-being of their cats, the impairment of cat flourishing via confinement signifies a moral failing. Although some cats assume significant risks and sometimes kill wild animals when roaming outdoors, these important considerations do not imply that all cats should be deprived of the opportunity to access the outdoors. Indeed, they do not, by themselves, imply that any cat should be permanently kept indoors. (shrink)

Derek Parfit's monumental 1984 book Reasons and Persons contains a little appendix called "What Makes Someone's Life Go Best," a mini-essay on well-being that has taken on a life of its own apart from the body to which it is attached. This paper serves as a critical guide to that appendix. Topics include: the nature of pleasure and pain and its relation to theories of well-being; the unrestricted desire-fulfillment theory and the problem of remote desires; whether a person's actual preferences (...) should determine their counterfactual well-being; summative vs. global desire-fulfillment theories; the single-life repugnant conclusion; and objective vs. subjective vs. hybrid theories of well-being. Opinions being defended include: that Parfit's solution to the problem of remote desires fails; that his view on actual preferences and counterfactual well-being is right; that his arguments for global over summative desire-fulfilment theories fail; and that the single-life repugnant conclusion should be accepted. (shrink)

Well-Being as Value Fulfillment: How We Can Help Each Other to Live Well By TiberiusValerieOxford University Press, 2018. xii + 214 pp.

In this paper, I sketch out a novel theory of well-being according to which well-being is constituted by harmony between mind and world. The notion of harmony I develop has three aspects. First there is correspondence between mind and world in the sense that events in the world match the content of our mental states. Second there is positive orientation towards the world, meaning that we have pro-attitudes towards the world we find ourselves in. Third there is fitting response to (...) the world. Taken together these three aspects make up an ideal of being attuned to, or at home in, the world. Such harmony between mind and world constitutes well-being. Its opposite – being disoriented, ill-at-ease in, or hostile to the world – makes a life go poorly. And, as we shall see, many of the things that intuitively contribute to well-being are instantiating one or more of the three aspects of harmony. (shrink)

‘Hybrid’ theories of personal good, defended by e.g. Parfit, Wolf, and Kagan, equate it, not with a subjective state such as pleasure on its own, nor with an objective state such as knowledge on its own, but with a whole that supposedly combines the two. These theories apply Moore's principle of organic unities, which says the value of a whole needn't equal the sum of the values its parts would have by themselves. This allows them, defenders say, to combine the (...) attractions of purely subjective and purely objective views. This common understanding of the theories is, however, mistaken. At the most fundamental level they don't combine a subjective and an objective element but two objective ones. Once this is understood, their attraction as hybrid theories diminishes: the value in their wholes may be just the sum of the values in their parts. (shrink)

Well-being is that which is non-instrumentally good for a person. It is identical to how well someone's life goes. There are three main theories of well-being: hedonism, desire-fulfillment, and objective list theories. Each of these theories is subject to criticism, which has led some philosophers to posit a hybrid theory in which well-being is defined as taking pleasure in objective goods. One problem that comes with such an account is the possibility of what I will call harmless pleasures; that is, (...) pleasures that while not taken in something bad, are neither linked to objective goods. It is counterintuitive to say that such pleasures do not make a person's life go better, yet this seems to be what hybrid theories entail. I call this the harmless-pleasure objection. In this paper, I argue that there is no obvious solution to this objection and this result casts doubt on hybrid theories of well-being. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that all extant theories of prudential value are either a) enumeratively deficient, in that they are unable to accommodate everything that, intuitively, is a basic constituent of prudential value, b) explanatorily deficient, in that they are at least sometimes unable to offer a plausible story about what makes a given thing prudentially valuable, or c) both. In response to the unsatisfactory state of the literature, I present my own account, the Disjunctive Hybrid Theory or DHT. (...) DHT answers to and remedies each of the above inadequacies in a way that no other approach can. This account has the following general structure:Disjunctive Hybrid Theory (DHT): Thing x is basically good for person P if and only if x is either a) cared about (sufficiently and in the right way) by P, b) a bearer of (the right kind of) attitude-independent value, or c) both.Although it follows other recent accounts in combining elements from objective and subjective theories, DHT is a hybrid theory of a quite new kind. This is because it denies both subjective necessity (the constraint that, if thing x is to be basically good for person P, P must have some pro-attitude toward x) and objective necessity (the constraint that, if thing x is to be basically good for person P, x must have some attitude-independent value). I argue that the rejection of both necessity claims is called for if we are to move beyond the enumerative and explanatory limitations of existing accounts.I begin by outlining the general structure of DHT. I then argue, against various recent authors, that desire-satisfactionism remains the most appealing subjectivist approach to prudential value, in that it is best able to capture the central subjectivist insight. This insight is that a person can confer prudential value upon things by caring about them (sufficiently and in the right way). The subjectivist strand of DHT will thus be a version of desire-satisfactionism, which must be interpreted in line with what I call the object, as opposed to the combo, view. I move on to further motivate and develop the second, objectivist strand of DHT. This part of the theory involves a commitment to robustly attitude-independent prudential goods. I close by addressing some puzzles for the theory, and considering some of its more specific applications. (shrink)

Theories of well-being that give an important role to satisfied pro-attitudes need to account for the fact that, intuitively, the scope of possible objects of pro-attitudes seems much wider than the scope of things, states, or events that affect our well-being. Parfit famously illustrated this with his wish that a stranger may recover from an illness: it seems implausible that the stranger’s recovery would constitute a benefit for Parfit. There is no consensus in the literature about how to rule out (...) such well-being-irrelevant pro-attitudes. I argue, first, that there is no distinction in kind between well-being-relevant and irrelevant pro-attitudes. Instead, well-being-irrelevant pro-attitudes are the limiting cases on the scale measuring how much of a difference pro-attitudes make to the subject’s well-being. Second, I propose a particular scalar model according to which the well-being-relevance of pro-attitudes is measured by either their hedonic tone, or by the subject’s conative commitment. (shrink)

Epicurus argued that the good life is the pleasurable life. He also argued that ‘death is nothing to us’. These claims appear in tension. For if pleasure is good, then it seems that death is bad when it deprives us of deeply enjoyable time alive. Here, I offer an Epicurean view of pleasure and the complete life which dissolves this tension. This view is, I contend, more appealing than critics of Epicureanism have allowed, in part because it assigns higher value (...) to pleasures that we produce by exercising our rational capacities and by establishing control over our lives. (shrink)

This essay contends that the constitutive elements of well-being are plural, partly objective, and separable. The essay argues that these elements are pleasure, friendship, significant achievement, important knowledge, and autonomy, but not either the appreciation of beauty or the living of a morally good life. The essay goes on to attack the view that elements of well-being must be combined in order for well-being to be enhanced. The final section argues against the view that, because anything important to say about (...) well-being could be reduced to assertions about these separable elements, the concept of well-being or personal good is ultimately unimportant. (shrink)

This chapter surveys hybrid theories of well-being. It also discusses some criticisms, and suggests some new directions that philosophical discussion of hybrid theories might take.

Martha Nussbaum’s “influential capabilities approach” offers us a powerful, universal standard of justice. The approach builds off of pioneering work by Amartya Sen in economic development. Much of the contemporary interest in the capabilities approach has focused upon how we might spell out a list of precisely which capabilities must be made universally available and protected, a list that Sen has not provided himself. Nussbaum’s list of capabilities is arguably the most successful attempt at defining these capabilities. In this paper, (...) I will argue for a new problem with the approach that raises new questions about the capabilities approach more generally. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that we might do well to adopt a hybrid theory of well-being: a theory that incorporates both an objective-value constraint and a pro-attitude constraint. Hybrid theories are attractive for two main reasons. First, unlike desire theories of well-being, hybrid theories need not worry about the problem of defective desires. This is so because, unlike desire theories, hybrid theories place an objective-value constraint on well-being. Second, unlike objectivist theories of well-being, hybrid theories need not worry about being (...) overly alienating. This is so because, unlike objectivist theories, hybrid theories place a pro-attitude constraint on well-being. However, from the point of view of objectivists, hybrid theories are not objectivist enough, and this can be seen clearly in missing-desires cases. For instance, hybrid theories entail that, if someone lacks the desire for health, then health is not a component of her well-being. This, objectivists say, is implausible. It is obvious, objectivists say, that someone’s life goes better for herself inasmuch as she is healthy, and hence that health is a component of her welfare. This paper focuses on the missing-desires objection (as leveled by objectivists) to hybrid theories of well-being. My argument is that the missing-desires objection can be answered in a way that is generally convincing and, in particular, in a way that pays a good deal of respect to objectivist intuitions about well-being. My hope, then, is that this paper will help to persuade objectivists about well-being to become hybrid theorists. (shrink)

Well-Being and Theism is divided into two distinctive parts. The first part argues that desire-fulfillment welfare theories fail to capture the 'good' part of ‘good for’, and that objective list welfare theories fail to capture the 'for' part of ‘good for’. Then, with the aim of capturing both of these parts of ‘good for’, a hybrid theory–one which places both a value constraint and a desire constraint on well-being–is advanced. Lauinger then defends this proposition, which he calls the desire-perfectionism theory, (...) against possible objections. -/- In the second part, Lauinger explores the question of what metaphysics best supports the account of well-being defended in the first part. It is argued that there are two general metaphysical routes that might convincingly be taken here, and that each one leads us toward theism. (shrink)

The ‘adjustment strategy’ currently seems to be the most common approach to incorporating objective elements into one's theory of well‐being. These theories face a certain problem, however, which can be avoided by a different approach – namely, that employed by ‘partially objective multi‐component theories.’ Several such theories have recently been proposed, but the question of how to understand their mathematical structure has not been adequately addressed. I argue that the most mathematically simple of these multi‐component theories fails, so I proceed (...) to investigate more sophisticated ways to formulate such a theory. I conclude that one of these – the Discount/Inflation Theory – is particularly promising. (shrink)

The question "What is the good life?" is perhaps the most basic question in all of ethics. The four major paradigms of the good life that have been proposed by various philosophers are: (1) hedonism, (2) various forms of desire-satisfactionism, (3) objective value pluralism, and (4) the hybrid theory--i.e., a combination of (1) and (3). In my dissertation, I critique the leading accounts of flourishing (or wellbeing) and defend an objective value pluralistic theory of flourishing that is based on what (...) I call the "Capacities View of Flourishing" (CVF). According to the central evaluative axiom of the CVF, the flourishing of any creature consists in the development and exercise of the capacities that are essential to that kind of creature. While the basic idea behind the CVF has appealed to an impressive list of philosophers from ancient to modern times, the purported explanatory grounds upon which it is based (about what makes a capacity essential to a given kind of creature) has been difficult to explicate. After considering various popular proposals of what it is for a capacity to be essential to a given kind of creature and showing why they are defective in different ways, I propose a novel modal interpretation of the notion of an essential capacity that is immune to the problems of the other popular accounts. According to the modal interpretation of the CVF, the flourishing of a kind of creature K consists in the development and exercise of the capacities that are necessary to K (i.e., that are required for membership in the class K). In the case of human beings more specifically, I argue that there are four basic capacities that are jointly necessary for membership in the class 'human being.' These are the capacity to know (cognition), the capacity to desire (conation), the capacity to feel (feeling), and the capacity to act (agency). And in the last crucial stage of my defense of the modal interpretation of the CVF, I show how four widely recognized objective goods of knowledge, virtue, pleasure, and achievement are the ideal states of the four basic human capacities of cognition, conation, feeling, and agency. I conclude my defense of objective value pluralism by responding to a famous argument against the objectivity of values: the so-called "argument from relativity." In response to this argument, I first show how the objectivity of values is compatible with a moderate form of (non-conventionalist) evaluative relativism that recognizes a plurality of human goods that are not subsumable under a "unitary" true good. I then argue that the hypothesis that there is a plurality of objective human goods is a better inference to the best explanation of the diversity of human values than the hypothesis that there are no objective human goods at all. Lastly, I show why objective value skepticism has absurd implications as it entails that nothing is genuinely good or bad for anyone. The overall conclusion of my dissertation is that of the leading paradigms of the good life, an objective value pluralistic account of flourishing that explains why certain states are good for us by virtue of their being the ideal realization of the capacities that are essential to us is not only deeply appealing, but on closer scrutiny, the most viable theory of flourishing available. (shrink)

There is disagreement among contemporary theorists regarding human well-being. On one hand there are “substantive good” views, according to which the most important elements of a person’s well-being result from her nature as a human, rational, and/or sentient being. On the other hand there are “agent-constituted” views, which contend that a person’s well-being is constituted by her particular aims, desires, and/or preferences. Each approach captures important features of human well-being, but neither can provide a complete account: agent-constituted theories have difficulty (...) accounting for the normativity of their claims, and substantive good theories have difficulty accounting for how a person’s actually adopted aims shape what is good for her and hence what she has reason to do. I articulate and defend a hybrid view that equals these approaches in systematicity and completeness of explanation yet seeks to surpass them in coherence with our ordinary judgments about what human well-being consists in. This hybrid view maintains, with agent-constituted theories, that a person’s well-being is (1) significantly constituted by her actually adopted aims; (2) deeply contingent; (3) agent-relative; (4) significantly dependent on spatially and temporally remote events; and (5) significantly independent of her experiences. The hybrid view also maintains, with substantive good theories, that a person’s well-being is (6) in part determined by facts independent of her aims, desires, and preferences; (7) such that all her aims are subject to critical evaluation and revision; and (8) constituted by her aims only if these aims are choiceworthy. (shrink)

Theories of well-being are typically divided into subjective and objective. Subjective theories are those which make facts about a person’s welfare depend on facts about her actual or hypothetical mental states. I am interested in what motivates this approach to the theory of welfare. The contemporary view is that subjectivism is devoted to honoring the evaluative perspective of the individual, but this is both a misleading account of the motivations behind subjectivism, and a vision that dooms subjective theories to failure. (...) I suggest that we need to revisit and reinstate certain features of traditional hedonism, in particular the idea that felt experience plays a role that no theory of welfare can afford to ignore. I then offer a sketch of a theory that is subjective in my preferred sense and avoids the worst sins of hedonism as well as the problems generated by the contemporary constraints of subjective theorists. (shrink)

The topic of self-interest raises large and intractable philosophical questions–most obviously, the question “In what does self-interest consist?” The concept, as opposed to the content of self-interest, however, seems clear enough. Self-interest is interest in one's own good. To act self-interestedly is to act on the motive of advancing one's own good. Whether what one does actually is in one's self-interest depends on whether it actually does advance, or at least, minimize the decline of, one's own good. Though it may (...) be difficult to tell whether a person is motivated by self-interest in a particular instance, and difficult also to determine whether a given act or decision really is in one's self-interest, the meaning of the claims in question seems unproblematic. My main concern in this essay is to make a point about the content of self-interest. Specifically I shall put forward the view that meaningfulness, in a sense I shall elaborate, is an important element of a good life. It follows, then, that it is part of an enlightened self-interest that one wants to secure meaning in one's life, or, at any rate, to allow and promote meaningful activity within it. Accepting this substantial conception of self-interest, however, carries with it a curious consequence: the concept of self-interest which formerly seemed so clear begins to grow fuzzy. Fortunately, it comes to seem less important as well. In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit distinguishes three sorts of theories about self-interest–hedonistic theories, preference theories, and what he calls “objective-list theories." Hedonistic theories hold that one's good is a matter of the felt quality of one's experiences. (shrink)

When we compare contemporary moral philosophy with the well-known moral systems of earlier centuries, we should be struck by the fact that a certain assumption about human well being that is now widely taken for granted was universally rejected in the past. The contemporary moral climate predisposes us to be pluralistic about the human good, whereas earlier systems of ethics embraced a conception of well being that we would now call narrow and restrictive. One way to convey the sort of (...) contrast I have in mind is to note that according to Plato and Aristotle, there is one kind of life, that of the philosopher, that represents the summit of human flourishing, and all other lives are worth leading to the extent that they approximate this ideal. Certain other ethical theories of the past were in a way more narrow than this, for whereas Plato and Aristotle maintained that many things are in themselves worthwhile, others argued that there is only one intrinsic good—pleasure according to the Epicureans, virtue according to the Stoics. By contrast, it is now widely assumed that all such approaches are too exclusive, that not only are there many types of intrinsic goods but there is no one specific kind of life—whether it is that of a philosopher or a poet or anyone else—that is the single human ideal. Even hedonism, a conception of the good that had a powerful influence in the modern period, has few contemporary proponents. A consensus has arisen in our time that there is no single ultimate good that provides the measure by which the worth of all other goods must be assessed. (shrink)

Ranging over central issues of morals and politics and the nature of freedom and authority, this study examines the role of value-neutrality, rights, equality, ...

Challenging, with several powerful arguments, some of our deepest beliefs about rationality, morality, and personal identity, Parfit claims that we have a false view about our own nature. It is often rational to act against our own best interersts, he argues, and most of us have moral views that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions (...) that most of us will find very disturbing. (shrink)