Rethinking well-being

The aim of substantive political decisions is (or at least ought to be) to increase the chances of persons' lives going well for them. Just what it means for a person's life to go well is less than obvious. 'Subjectivists', including utilitarians, argue that well-being consists in valuable experience; Wayne Sumner argues in particular that activities can only make a person's life better for them if they contribute to their experience such that the person is made 'authentically' happy. On the other hand, 'perfectionists' argue that the good life consists in striving to achieve one's human potential; Christine Sypnowich's pluralist perfectionism holds that people ought to be encouraged to pursue lives of 'flourishing', where they develop intrinsically good intellectual and aesthetic capacities.; The aim of this thesis is to offer a third way of conceiving of the good life. According to Joseph Raz, well-being consists in more than the subjectivists' notion of valuable experience, but is a less stringent concept than as presented by perfectionists. We ought to conceive of the good life as successful engagement with valuable activities. Raz argues that we cannot properly take well-being to be the ultimate aim of substantive politics, as one's quality of life is ultimately up to how one engages with one's environment. Rather than focus on making people's lives go well for them, we ought to instead seek to guarantee for people conditions where they can realistically pursue the good life for themselves; whether or not they achieve it is a matter that ought to be divorced from our substantive political decision-making.