INTRODUCTION
A popular way of dividing up theories of well-being is by classifying them as ‘subjective’ or ‘objective’. As with many philosophical taxonomies, there are several ways of understanding these categories.Footnote 1 In light of this, in what follows I will be abstracting away from any particular understanding of these categories. On my view a theory of well-being is subjective if and only if it treats an individual's having a positive orientation (e.g. desire, attitude, etc.)Footnote 2 towards something as a sufficient condition of that thing's contributing to that individual's well-being. Objective theories deny this sufficiency, arguing either that an individual's having a positive orientation towards a putative objective good is only a necessary condition of that individual's being benefited by that good because objective goods are comprised, at least in part, by a particular positive orientation;Footnote 3 or they argue that something can be (directly or immediately) good for one even if one does not regard it favourably or is not positively oriented towards it.Footnote 4
One of the advantages of dividing theories of well-being into those that are subjective and those that are objective is that each approach seems particularly well-suited to address a major intuition about well-being. Subjective theories of well-being are well suited to explain our intuitions about alienation. Roughly put, we are reluctant to insist that something is good for someone if that individual would not, even upon reflection, agree with that assessment and is thus resiliently alienated from that claim about what is good for him.Footnote 5 Subjective theories that attempt to capture this intuition are perhaps best typified by desire-satisfaction theories of well-being. Most contemporary desire-satisfaction theories are various forms of informed desire-satisfaction accounts. These accounts can be traced, in modern times, to Richard Brandt's view in A Theory of the Good in the Right,Footnote 6 which held that an individual's good consists in the satisfaction of those desires that individual would have after
relevant information [about that individual's pre-existing desires] registered fully . . . if the person's repeatedly represented to themselves, in an ideally vivid way, and at an appropriate time, the available information which is relevant in the sense that it would make a difference to desires and aversions if they thought of it.Footnote 7
Contemporary informed desire-satisfaction theories are differentiated by the ‘idealization’ conditions they stipulate in order to distinguish those desires which contribute to an individual's well-being from those which do not.Footnote 8 Regardless of their particular details, the intuition driving desire-satisfaction theories is the idea that what is good for an individual depends upon what that particular individual is like and that an individual's desires, which typically relate to that individual's aims and goals, seem particularly well-suited to capture those things which matter most to the quality of his life. Otherwise put, we have the intuition that an individual's goodFootnote 9 must be ‘made for’ or ‘suited to’ him such that there is a ‘fit’ between an individual and his good and that something can only be ‘made for’ or ‘suited to’ an individual if a concern for that thing lies within that individual's motivational capacity, e.g. if it is something that individual either does desire or would desire under suitably ideal conditions.Footnote 10 By defining and evaluating the constituents of an individual's well-being solely by reference to that individual's idiosyncratic make-up, subjective theories of well-being, like desire-satisfaction accounts, seem well-suited to explain why it is typically thought that what is good for an individual depends on what that individual is like.
While subjective theories promise to capture our intuitions about alienation, they run into problems when it comes to another central set of intuitions we have about well-being – our intuitions about deprivation. Roughly, we think that in some cases an individual is worse off because he is deprived of some essential or basic human good. We persist in thinking he is worse off because of this deprivation even if he cannot be brought to appreciate that fact. Objective theories of well-being seem well suited to explain what it means for an individual to lead a ‘full life’Footnote 11 and, correspondingly, why it is unfortunate when an individual faces a deprivation by lacking any of the goods contained within such a life. Take, for instance, Thomas Hurka's objective-list theory of well-being in his The Best Things in Life.Footnote 12 According to Hurka, ‘the best things in life’, i.e. those things which contribute to an individual's well-being, are pleasure, knowledge, achievement, virtue and friendship. Other objective theories of well-being, e.g. Aristotelian eudaimonist approaches, provide a substantive account of what the well-being of a particular class, e.g. a species, consists in, thereby having a standard against which they can make judgements concerning whether some particular member of that class is either flourishing or deprived of some good, or goods, characteristic of that class. Accordingly, the primary idea driving our intuitions about deprivation is that one can only know what is good for an individual, or evaluate an individual's level of well-being, if one knows what kind of thing that individual is, i.e. what class it belongs to, and what the well-being of the members of that kind consists in.
While many theories of well-being are able to capture some of our central intuitions about well-being, e.g. avoiding alienation worries, they do so at the cost of not being able to capture others, e.g. explaining deprivation. For example, while desire-satisfaction theories appear well suited to avoid worries about alienation, they are poorly equipped to explain our intuitions concerning deprivation. A classic example which demonstrates this is Rawls's ‘grass counter’: a brilliant Harvard mathematician who is fully rational and informed about his options in life and yet who has an overriding desire to count the blades of grass on Harvard's lawns.Footnote 13 Intuitively we think that in sitting around all day counting blades of grass, this individual is deprived of some important goods in life: friendship, meaningful achievement, etc. If, however, the mathematician's desire(s) are fully rational and informed, then according to subjective theories such as informed desire-satisfaction accounts, counting blades of grass really is what is best for him in life. To the extent that subjective theories offer counter-intuitive verdicts like these, they cannot explain our intuitions about deprivation.
Conversely, objective theories appear well equipped to explain our intuitions concerning deprivation, yet do so at the cost of raising worries about alienation. Consider, for example, Hurka's positing of ‘knowledge’ as an objective good.Footnote 14 Hurka holds that knowledge involves one's believing something which is true and that this is prudentially valuable for one because it gives one a tie to reality. Further, he holds that the wider ranging and more explanatorily fruitful the knowledge one has is, the better off one is. Imagine, however, a particular individual, say, a car mechanic who enjoys the simpler things in life (good food, friends, etc.) and a particular piece of wide-ranging and explanatorily useful knowledge, the confirmation of the existence of the Higgs-Boson particle. Delving into a bit of speculative science fiction, imagine that our mechanic could have a computer chip implanted in his brain that would give him all of the knowledge surrounding the discovery of this particle and its relationship to fundamental issues in particle physics. One can easily imagine that the mechanic could rationally refuse the implementation of this chip on the grounds that the knowledge it would impart to him would be useless; that is, it would not contribute positively to the quality of his life, i.e. his well-being. If one agrees with the mechanic's assessment of his life, then an important upshot of this is that to the extent that objective theories, like Hurka’s, hold that particular instances of some good, e.g. knowledge, are good for one regardless of what one is like, they offer a conception of an individual's good which is entirely insensitive to that individual's idiosyncratic make-up. In doing this they offer a conception of an individual's good from which that individual might be alienated.
In light of the preceding considerations one might wonder whether it is possible for a theory of well-being to cohere completely with both intuitions. I believe that because the standards underlying each intuitionFootnote 15 are incommensurable, there is a sense in which no theory can entirely capture both. In light of this, it is my view that philosophers must come to terms with the tension that exists between the two intuitions and work to develop a theory that best accommodates them both at the same time. In what follows I both sketch a novel account that does this and explain why it is better than more familiar accounts which typically only respond to one set of intuitions and run completely afoul of the other. I develop and defend an objective theory of well-being which is a broadly Aristotelian approach in that it holds that our well-being depends, in part, on our nature qua person, a class whose members are defined by their possession of certain cognitive and volitional capacities, including, most importantly, those capacities constitutive of autonomy. Exercises of these capacities play an important role in a person's determining and shaping the constituents of his well-being. Accordingly, persons, as autonomous agents, are the sorts of beings whose good is defined and achieved through autonomous activity. My view differs from more traditional Aristotelian approaches in that while I concede that one can consider our well-being as consisting in human flourishing, I argue that one ought to consider our well-being qua person because this focus allows one to accommodate our intuitions about alienation and deprivation better than species-based objective theories.
Making the case for a person-centred theory of well-being
In what follows I advocate for my person-centred theory of well-being by identifying its merits in comparison to those subjective and objective theories defended in the existing literature. More specifically, I argue that it can capture the strengths of both subjective and objective species-based theories while avoiding their weaknesses and, in doing so, provide a novel approach to understanding the nature of our well-being. My argument proceeds as follows. I begin by giving an overview of the person-centred theory and demonstrating two important ways in which it is superior to the most predominant subjective theory of well-being: desire-satisfaction accounts. First, it avoids the alienation worries that idealized desire-satisfaction accounts run into. Second, it can avoid ‘the scope problem’, one of the most common and powerful objections levelled against desire-satisfaction accounts. Following this I consider prominent species-based objective theories and argue that while they are correct in holding that the nature of our well-being is dependent upon the nature of the class to which we belong, our species is not the correct class: such appeals court problems with alienation. After illustrating these problems I demonstrate how appealing to our well-being qua person can avoid them. I conclude by further developing the strengths of my person-centred theory; specifically, I demonstrate how it captures certain nuances in our experience of various deprivations, or detractions, from our well-being, something which objective species-based theories cannot.
A PERSON-CENTRED APPROACH TO WELL-BEING
My person-centred theory of well-being holds that an individual's well-being qua person consists in his or her ‘self-realization’. I identify the ‘self’ in self-realization with an individual's identity qua person, an identity that is defined by those aspects of an individual's psychological and volitional make-up to which he has higher-order attitudes and responses. Accordingly, persons are not characterized by, i.e. properly identified with, the mere fleeting impulses, compulsions or desires that occur in them. Instead, as agents, persons are characterized by those aspects of their psychological, volitional and emotional make-up with which they are actively engaged, i.e. autonomous in relation to. Put broadly, these are the things that a person ‘cares about’ and might include, for example, his or her personal ideals, projects, value commitments, etc. In short, they are what we consider as mattering. For ease of exposition in what follows I will simply maintain that persons are characterized by their values. One of the more compelling reasons to define a person's identity in terms of what he values is that an individual's values are those aspects of his psychological and volitional make-up that are internal to him. This ‘internality’ has both a phenomenological component, in that an individual's values will not manifest themselves to him as an external or alien force, and a structural component,Footnote 16 i.e. a person's values play an important structural role in his life because it is through reference to these values that a person guides himself both in what he does with his life and in his conduct.Footnote 17 Paradigmatic examples of values might include an individual's activities, pursuits, commitments and relationships, e.g. a loving relationship with one's partner.Footnote 18
One can situate my theory within the landscape of theories of well-being by again employing the ‘objective’/‘subjective’ distinction. My person-centred theory is objective in that I maintain that an individual's self-realization is good for that individual regardless of that individual's orientation towards his self-realization. While one might worry that such an approach raises worries about alienation, I believe that because self-realization concerns a person's values, such worries are unfounded. That is, because a person's values are those aspects of his identity in relation to which he is autonomous and which are internal to him, he will not be alienated from them. Further, conceiving of persons’ well-being as consisting in their self-realization has significant theoretical advantages over other objective and subjective theories of well-being, including doing a better job capturing our intuitions concerning alienation and deprivation. Again, consider informed desire-satisfaction theories.Footnote 19 These theories stipulate that it is not the satisfaction of one's actual desires that contributes to one's well-being, but only those desires that one would have after others have been filtered out by various idealization conditions. However, the more idealized these desires become, the less they resemble one's actual desires and, by extension, one's idiosyncratic make-up. Pushed far enough these theories end up offering a conception of an individual's goodFootnote 20 from which that individual might very well be alienated.Footnote 21 In contrast, by focusing on an individual's actual values, my view avoids having to stipulate any of the idealization conditions that have traditionally proved problematic.
In addition to avoiding the preceding worries about alienation, understanding persons’ well-being as consisting in self-realization avoids the most common, and what some think to be the most powerful, objection to desire-satisfaction theories of well-being: the scope problem. This objection holds that desire-satisfaction theories make too many things good for an individual, e.g. the satisfaction of desires that will never enter an individual's experience. These are often called ‘irrelevant desires’.Footnote 22 The now classic case exemplifying this is Parfit's ‘terminally’ ill stranger case:Footnote 23 I meet a stranger who has what I believe to be a fatal disease. My sympathy for him is aroused and I come to desire his being cured. We never meet again, I never think about our encounter, and later, unbeknownst to me, the stranger is cured. Informed desire-satisfaction theories are committed to its being the case that if my desire that the stranger be cured is fully rational, informed, vivid, etc.,Footnote 24 then despite the fact that after my encounter with the stranger I will never see or think of him again, the satisfaction of my desire that he be cured contributes to my well-being. Many well-being theorists balk at this conclusion, thinking that the satisfaction of a fleeting desire of mine that will never enter into my experience, i.e. an ‘irrelevant’ desire, is outside the scope of facts that contribute to my well-being. Accordingly, the scope problem arises because desire-satisfaction theories maintain that facts both internal to a person (his desires) and facts external to a person (whether or not his desires are satisfied) are relevant to that person's well-being.
There are two ways in which considering persons’ well-being as consisting in self-realization avoids the scope problem. First, because valuing is an activity, i.e. a manifestation of our agency, ‘irrelevant desires’,Footnote 25 i.e. fleeting desires into whose satisfaction we put no effort and which we never think about once they have been formed, simply do not count as values. As such, their satisfaction does not contribute to a person's self-realizationFootnote 26 and is irrelevant to his well-being. A person's realizing his values is best understood as being a type of activity, i.e. it is something that one does. That being said, what the realization of a particular value consists in depends upon the value in question. The ways in which a person might realize one of his values might include, for example, respect, appreciation, consideration and love.Footnote 27 The important point is that all of these modes of valuation, of self-realization, are activities in which one is engaged with, in one way or another, what one values. This engagement is evidenced by, for instance, the fact that one is susceptible to experience a range of context-dependent emotions regarding what one values and is disposed to treat certain kinds of X-related considerations as reasons for action in relevant deliberative contexts.Footnote 28 Returning to the ‘terminally’ ill stranger, while upon hearing about the stranger's illness I might form the fleeting desire that he somehow be cured, it would stretch credulity to say that his being cured is one of my values. That is, if I never undertake any of the activities appropriate to the realization of some putative value, then I ought not to be considered as having that as one of my values.Footnote 29 The upshot of this is that out of the very notions of ‘value’ and ‘valuing’ one finds a principled way of ruling out irrelevant desires’ relevance to our well-being and avoiding their giving rise to the scope problem.
The second reason why considering our well-being qua person as consisting in our self-realization avoids the scope problem is because of which facts it maintains are relevant to persons’ well-being. I maintain that the limits of a person's well-being, i.e. the subset of facts that are relevant to that person's well-being, are that person's values. Again, consider my chance meeting with the ‘terminally’ ill stranger. Even though I form the fleeting desire that the stranger be cured, because I neither do anything to bring about his being cured, nor do I ever think about him again or become aware of his being cured, it seems counter-intuitive to maintain that the satisfaction of my desire that he be cured affects my well-being. This has led many well-being theorists to think that something can only make a difference to my level of well-being if it makes a difference to me so that the facts that constitute my being well-off must be facts about me. Accordingly, changes in a person's level of well-being must involve changes in that person.Footnote 30 Because the satisfaction of my desire that the stranger be cured does not involve a change in me, i.e. it never affects me or enters into my experience, it cannot cause a change in my level of well-being.
Finally, by offering a theory of well-being which focuses on persons’ values one can capture what many have taken to be an important condition of adequacy for a theory of well-being: that it ‘make your well-being depend on your own concerns: the things you care about, attach importance to, regard as mattering, and so on’.Footnote 31 While desire-satisfaction theories appear well equipped to capture this condition, their idealized versions raise worries about alienation and they face a significant challenge in addressing the scope problem. By holding that persons’ well-being consists in their self-realization, my view is able both to make an individual's well-being depend upon an individual's concerns and to avoid both worries about alienation and the scope problem. It is thus preferable to desire-satisfaction theories of well-being. That being said, considering that our nature qua person plays an important role in the nature of our well-being, more ought to be said about personhood.
The nature of personhood
My person-centred theory of well-being holds that the constituents of a person's well-being are comprised by both that individual's idiosyncratic make-up qua personFootnote 32 and the nature of the class ‘persons’. Following theorists such as Harry Frankfurt, Christine Korsgaard and others,Footnote 33 I hold that what is constitutive of personhood is an individual's possession of a capacity for autonomy, a capacity consisting of various psychological and volitional capacities. These capacities include, for example, self-consciousness and the ability to reflect critically upon and endorse or reject those psychological phenomena that occur in one. The possession of these capacities is important for several reasons; e.g. it is what differentiates persons from other less volitionally complex entities (e.g. lower animals), and it is what allows us to have freedom of the will. Further, a person's developing higher-order attitudes and responses to those psychological phenomena that occur in him is integral to his achieving the status of a responsible person. More specifically, when one reflects upon an attitude, thought, feeling or desire that occurs in one, one can willingly accept or endorse it and, in doing so, transform it into an authentic expression of oneself. In doing this one makes these psychological phenomena more central to one's identity, for purposes of responsibility, attribution and evaluations of well-being, than those mental phenomena which simply occur in one. It is these endorsed phenomena, what I have called a person's ‘values’, that constitute one's identity qua person.
Acts of critical reflection, reflectivity and endorsement, all of which shape and define one's values, are acts of ‘self-constitution’. Following Korsgaard, I hold that in order for one's actions, i.e. one's activity qua person, to be expressive of oneself in the ways that actions must be, i.e. for them to be properly attributable to one qua person, they must result from one's entire nature working as an integrated whole.Footnote 34 Accordingly, there is no you prior to your choices and actions because one's identity is, in a quite literal way, constituted by one's choices and actions, including one's critically reflected-upon and endorsed mental events, i.e. one's values. The upshot of this is that when considering an individual person's well-being one must consider both that individual's idiosyncratic make-up, along with that individual's nature qua member of the volitional class ‘persons’, i.e. his nature as an autonomous self-constituting entity. The latter point is important because it acknowledges the importance of our capacity for autonomy to our well-being: exercises of it shape and define our values, i.e. the constituents of our well-being, a point often overlooked by species-centred objective theories of well-being.
THE WRONG WAY TO DEVELOP AN OBJECTIVE THEORY OF WELL-BEING
Arguably, the most popular type of species-based objective theory is an Aristotelian eudaimonist approach. This is the approach favoured by, for example, Philippa Foot and Rosalind Hursthouse. Foot and Hursthouse both argue that when evaluating an individual's actions or level of well-being as being ‘good’ or not, good ought to be understood as functioning as an ‘attributive’ adjective.Footnote 35 Because it is an attributive adjective, one cannot determine whether something is ‘good’, or what something's good consists in, without considering that thing as being a member of a certain kind. Accordingly, in order to understand what makes for a good F, or what is good for some particular F, one must understand F's nature and the nature of its well-being. Foot and Hursthouse call such goodness ‘intrinsic’ or ‘natural’ goodness and insist that it need not have anything to do with the needs or wants of any particular members of any species. Such goodness is ‘autonomous’ in that it depends directly on the relation of an individual to the ‘life form’ of its species.
The problem with identifying an individual's prudential good with ‘natural goodness’ is that because there is no necessary connection between an individual's being a good F and that individual's idiosyncratic make-up, e.g. his values, species-based objective theories are likely to offer a conception of an individual's good from which that individual is alienated. That is, any correspondence there might be between an individual's good qua person and what a species-based objective theory like Foot or Hursthouse's posits as his well-being qua member of the human species is entirely incidental. It is because of this gapFootnote 36 that objective species-based theories of well-being court worries about alienation. A consideration of the following case vividly demonstrates these problems:
Angela is a high ranking career diplomat for the UK who is contemplating an early retirement at the age of sixty-two. Having served with distinction, Angela is going into retirement with a good deal of money as she and her husband prepare to retire to Tuscany where they will be near family and friends. Such a life would be tremendously satisfying and occupied with good company, food, and drink. Further, this retirement would be a welcomed and much-deserved respite from her demanding job. However, before Angela can settle on her plans, a potentially violent political crisis arises overseas and Angela is asked to take an important post where her considerable wisdom and skills would be of great use. This assignment would be taxing and would frequently involve dealing with unwholesome individuals about matters of extreme gravity often calling for a fair measure of anger and indignation on her part. That being said, the experience would not be grueling or even unpleasant on the whole, as Angela does take pleasure in doing what she does best. Further, the job would not be so taxing that Angela would not be able to spend some time with her family or friends, or achieve a modicum of leisure. It would, however, be far less pleasant than an early retirement.Footnote 37
One can imagine that from Angela's perspective her choice is pretty near a coin toss; she could reasonably choose either alternative. As such, she could refuse the position without regrets.Footnote 38 Despite this, Angela accepts the assignment without regret because she believes that the stakes are so high that she feels that they are probably worth it. Accordingly, she goes on to serve admirably and with a good deal of success in sustaining the peace. Unfortunately it is another six years before Angela can take her retirement, which lasts five relatively sedentary but agreeable years before a massive stroke suddenly takes her life.Footnote 39
It does not seem that Angela acted in her prudential self-interest; that is, she is not better off having taken the job instead of retiring early. Had Angela retired earlier her life would have been more pleasant, substantially happier, and would have been spent pursuing those activities that most appeal to her and bring her the greatest satisfaction.Footnote 40 In other words, this course of action would have contributed more to her well-being. Species-based objective theories appear, however, committed to the view that Angela is better off having taken the job because by any reasonable measure the diplomatic assignment involves greater development, exercise, perfection, etc. of her distinctively human capacities.Footnote 41 That is, the assignment would involve Angela's becoming a ‘more perfect’ specimen of a particular kind (a human). It is my view that species-based objective theories of well-being are flawed to the extent that they must diagnose individuals like Angela as being better off having exercised and developed the mature capacities characteristic of their species regardless of what this exercise and development does to the quality of their lives for them. As Angela's case demonstrates, the exercise and perfection of one's distinctively human capacities may actually detract from one's well-being in almost every way measurable. The upshot of this is that in not having anything to do with the needs or wants of any particular individual, ‘autonomous goodness’ is a conception of prudential good that ignores persons’ idiosyncratic make-ups and evaluative perspectives, i.e. what they value, thereby offering an account of their good from which they may be alienated. By eschewing an appeal to species-membership and holding that an individual's well-being consists in the development and exercise of that individual's distinctively human capacities, my person-centred theory avoids offering an alienating conception of an individual's good.
Even if one ignores worries about alienation, there are several other problems with evaluating or defining the constituents of our well-being against the species-based model of ‘natural goodness’ for humans. To begin with, there may be competing standards for evaluating the natural goodness of a member of a given kind or type of living thing. Hursthouse is aware of this and argues that her list of goals and criteria for natural evaluationFootnote 42 is privileged because of its ‘scientific status’, i.e. its being grounded in the natural sciences. Appealing to her account's ‘scientific status’ is not, however, without its difficulties, because there are several different ways of approaching the scientific study of, for example, animal kinds, so that there are correspondingly many different conceptions of what makes an animal a good instance of its kind.Footnote 43 For example, an evolutionary biologist may evaluate animals according to how successfully they maximize their expected genetic contribution to future generations, while a veterinarian, like doctors concerned about humans’ health, evaluates animals according to their own well-being.Footnote 44 In light of these competing standards, Hursthouse cannot justify her claim that the list of criteria which she believes one ought to evaluate animals (like ourselves) against is the standard that would result from a scientific evaluation that was aimed at evaluating animals qua member of their species. However, without an adequate model to compare animals against, one cannot analogize the case of humans to that of animals, thereby undercutting the viability of approaches like Foot's and Hursthouse’s, which attempt to employ some sort of ‘grand analogy’ with which they could evaluate what is good for humans by employing the model of what is good for animals. This is in addition to the fact that even if one were to grant that an intelligible and authoritative evaluation of an animal qua member of its kind could be given, one still needs to justify why that animal's species is the proper kind on which to focus. That is, even if, for example, one could consider our well-being qua humans, I have given several reasons, e.g. worries about alienation, why this ought not to be considered the unique standpoint from which we ought to evaluate or determine the constituents of our well-being; one should consider our well-being qua person.
The narrowness of species-based appeals
An individual's being autonomous is essential to that individual's being a person. In light of this, if one thinks, as Hursthouse, Foot and other Neo-Aristotelians do, that the sort of autonomy essential to our well-being is exercised through our practical reasoning, making choices, living with the implications of those choices, and responding to norms and reasons, then an objective theory of well-being ought not to appeal to the class ‘humanity’ as a means of explaining why this is so. Further, consider the fact that there are many humans who do not possess these capacities (e.g. the very young, the very old, and those with cognitive deficits) and, as such, lack the sort of autonomy constitutive of personhood.Footnote 45 Accordingly, if an objective theory of well-being holds that autonomy is important to an individual's well-being, then it should not focus on humans (or any species for that matter). It should focus on persons, the class for which autonomy is constitutive and characteristic. The standards that these classes, i.e. the human species and persons, provide for judgements of well-being are distinct so that our judgements about them are incommensurable. An important upshot of this is that there is no sense in which an individual has an overall or cumulative well-being level.
Species-based objective theories which attempt to give an account of human well-being typically do so by relying upon substantive accounts of both human nature and the characteristic ‘good life’ for humans. There is good reason to think that such accounts will inevitably be quite idiosyncratic and raise serious worries about alienation, i.e. whatever one's theory posits as the constituents of ‘the good life’ for humans, there are likely to be serious objections to why those particular items (and not others) belong on the list of ‘distinctively human goods’. In light of this, to the extent that an objective theory seeks to avoid raising worries about alienation and wishes to capture the subjective intuition, it ought to adopt my approach and focus on that class of beings for whom the sort of autonomy they are concerned with is characteristic: persons.
CAPTURING NUANCES IN DEPRIVATION
In addition to my person-centred theory's not having to provide an idiosyncratic and problematic account of ‘human well-being’, which allows it to avoid worries about alienation, its other major theoretical strength is its ability to capture some important nuances concerning our experience of certain deprivations. Take, for example, a putative good like ‘visual beauty’. Species-based objective theories hold that any individual who lacks the ability to appreciate this putative good, or is otherwise cut off from it, is necessarily either experiencing a pro-tanto well-being loss or that this deprivation amounts to an overall worsening of that individual's level of well-being because he or she lacks a characteristic human good.Footnote 46 One might worry that without an appeal to the standard set by some species, my person-centred theory cannot capture the nuance in this sort of case, i.e. that it cannot distinguish between pro-tanto well-being losses and overall losses to an individual's well-being. However, I believe that not only can it capture this nuance, it can also capture certain nuances in other cases that species-based objective theories cannot.
In order to illustrate how my person-centred theory can explain the nuances within our experience of certain deprivations one can look to Jorge Luis Borges's essay ‘Blindness’.Footnote 47 In ‘Blindness’ Borges tells the story of what he calls his ‘modest’ blindness, ‘modest’ in that it is ‘total blindness in one eye, but only partial in the other . . . I can still see blue and green . . . and yellow, in particular, has remained faithful to me.’Footnote 48 As Borges recounts his gradually going blind he describes how losing the world of appearances helped him to rediscover how much he valued, i.e. loved and enjoyed, Anglo-Saxon literature, and it gave him an intellectual discipline and freedom he had not had before, so that ‘blindness has not been for me a total misfortune; it should not be seen in a pathetic way. It should be seen as a way of life: one of the styles of living.’Footnote 49 Subjective theories of well-being are committed to the view that Borges's blindness may be no deprivation at all (it is simply part of his new make-up), while species-based objective theories can capture the idea that while Borges's blindness may be a pro-tanto worsening of his situation, it need not detract from his overall well-being. My person-centred theory can likewise appreciate nuances in situations like Borges’s. Specifically, while Borges may be experiencing some level of deprivation because he values being able to experience visual beauty, this deprivation's severity might be mitigated by Borges's coming to appreciate and value the opportunities and abilities which blindness affords him.Footnote 50 That is, as time goes by he may even see this deprivation and the opportunities and abilities that it affords him as part of ‘who he is’ and may even get happiness out of it, thereby changing his idiosyncratic make-up and self-conception, i.e. his values. Considering this, it appears that for some individual persons, certain deprivations an individual might have qua human can become ‘gifts’ or, more likely, valued parts of that individual's identity qua person. This could thereby mitigate these deprivations’ severity, depending, of course, upon that individual's idiosyncratic make-up, i.e. his values, and his judgements concerning these deprivations. My person-centred theory is able to capture this nuance because of its emphasis on the active role one takes in the shaping and defining of one's idiosyncratic make-up, i.e. one's values, the constituents of one's well-being.
One can imagine, however, cases more ‘extreme’ than Borges's in which species-based objective theories deliver counter-intuitive verdicts about individuals’ well-being while my person-centred theory is able to capture important nuances concerning individuals’ experience of putative deprivations. Take, for instance, a putative good like ‘close personal relationships’. Imagine a religious hermit whose sole aim and joy in life is the quiet contemplation of God's nature. Considering the nature of this activity, one can easily imagine that the quality of the hermit's life, i.e. his level of well-being, would not improve were he to have close personal relationships in his life. In fact, having such relationships might actually distract him from the sole activity that contributes to his well-being, thereby making his life worse. Because ‘close personal relationships’ are widely considered essential to a good human life, species-based objective theories are committed to the hermit's experiencing some loss to his well-being because of his solitude.Footnote 51 However, considering that the hermit experiences no diminishment in the quality of his life because of this lack, and further, were this lack filled, the quality of his life would actually decrease,Footnote 52 species-based objective theories seem committed to a rather counter-intuitive view. The upshot of this is that whether or not an individual fully expresses his human nature by being able to engage in a particular sort of relationship is not necessarily relevant to his well-being qua person. More generally, not all of those things that species-based theories would consider deprivations of our well-being, either pro-tanto or overall, are necessarily detrimental to our well-being qua person.
CONCLUSION
In this article I have attempted to highlight the origins of the worries about alienation and deprivation which species-based objective theories and subjective theories of well-being court, and which my person-centred theory avoids. As I have shown, my person-centred theory is able to capture our intuitions about alienation and deprivation better than other prominent objective theories and subjective theories of well-being. More specifically, it is able to capture the main insight of desire-satisfaction theories, i.e. that a theory of well-being ought to be sensitive to individuals’ idiosyncratic make-ups, while avoiding the scope problem. It is superior to species-based objective theories because it is able to avoid having to provide a highly idiosyncratic account of the constituents of a particular species’s well-being, allowing it to avoid raising worries about alienation.Footnote 53 Instead, by focusing on persons, it focuses on a class of entities that play a significant role in determining and shaping the constituents of their well-being.Footnote 54
