Abstract
Happiness and well-being are concepts with an evaluative dimension, so happiness research must come to terms with this evaluative content and cannot possibly remain value-free. The recent interest in the concept of eudaimonic well-being can be interpreted as an explicit acknowledgement of the ethical dimension of well-being and the need to preserve its normativity, rather than trying to sideline it. An important corollary of acknowledging the ethical dimension of well-being, however, is an acknowledgement of the person’s freedom of will and the indeterminacy of the right arbitration between competing ends. It is also argued that the ethical aspects of eudaimonic well-being include the two specific conditions (1) that the person feels no (strong) sense of guilt for enjoying whatever benefits she enjoys and (2) that, in case she suffers from (serious) deprivation, she must not be ignorant of any underlying injustices. Eudaimonic well-being is an essential aspect of the good life, but it is not unconditionally good in a comprehensive sense.
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Notes
- 1.
While eudaimonia is now almost always understood in the Aristotelian tradition, there are several classical accounts of eudaimonia that differ in important respects from Aristotle’s view (cf. Haybron, 2008, pp. 35–36).
- 2.
Similar questions can be asked with regard to choice behavior, but my interest here is on valuation rather than choice, and I do not subscribe to the view (prevalent in economics) that choice behavior and valuation (“preferences”) coincide perfectly (for a critique of this view, cf. Sen, 1977).
- 3.
For an example of such a critique, see Bayertz (2013).
- 4.
For example, saying that it is better to balance the pursuit of the summum bonum against, say, following one’s irrational passions would imply the paradoxical conclusion that one can do better than pursue what is best.
- 5.
Dan Haybron (2008, p. 156) calls this view “welfare perfectionism”. Chapter 8 of his book contains an elaborate critical analysis of the role of virtue for well-being, even though he is not specifically concerned with eudaimonic well-being.
- 6.
This is similar to Nozick’s (1989) famous happiness machine objection, but here I am concerned with judgments that have culpably been distorted by others and therefore have a distinctly moral dimension.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful for very helpful reviews of an earlier manuscript by Paul McNamara and by Lorraine Besser-Jones.
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Hirata, J. (2016). Ethics and Eudaimonic Well-Being. In: Vittersø, J. (eds) Handbook of Eudaimonic Well-Being. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42445-3_3
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