The good life as the life in touch with the good

Philosophical Studies 181 (5):1141-1165 (2024)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

What makes your life go well for you? In this paper, we give an account of welfare. Our core idea is simple. There are impersonally good and bad things out there: things that are good or bad period, not (or not only) good or bad for someone. The life that is good for you is the life in contact with the good. We’ll understand the relevant notion of ‘contact’ here in terms of manifestation: you’re in contact with a value when it is manifest in parts of your life or parts of your life are manifest in it. So, the more the good is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the good, the better for you. The more the bad is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the bad, the worse for you. We’ll argue that this account is extensionally adequate: it explains the welfare value of achievements, friendships, knowledge, pleasures and virtues. Moreover, it has a number of explanatory virtues: it’s unified, elegant and explanatorily powerful. So, we’ll suggest, it’s an excellent account of welfare, and in many ways superior to its main competitors.

Other Versions

No versions found

Similar books and articles

On Having a Good.Christine M. Korsgaard - 2014 - Philosophy 89 (3):405-429.
A New Puzzle For Hedonistic Theories of Value.Scott M. James - 2017 - Journal of Philosophical Research 42:115-130.

Analytics

Added to PP
2024-03-06

Downloads
518 (#57,564)

6 months
186 (#20,005)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author Profiles

Adam Lovett
Australian Catholic University
Stefan Riedener
University of Bergen

References found in this work

What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon (ed.) - 1998 - Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Guide to Ground.Kit Fine - 2012 - In Fabrice Correia & Benjamin Schnieder, Metaphysical grounding: understanding the structure of reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 37--80.
Anarchy, State, and Utopia.Robert Nozick - 1974 - Philosophy 52 (199):102-105.
Why We Should Reject S.Derek Parfit - 1984 - In Reasons and Persons. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.

View all 43 references / Add more references