1

Well-Being
Richard Kraut

The Concept of Well-Being

In ordinary speech, well-being is often used interchangeably with such terms as
health, happiness, and prosperity (see happiness). To be concerned about
someones well-being is to care whether he is doing or faring well. The word well
that appears in these expressions plays an evaluative role it is the adverbial form of
the adjective good, and of course good is a grade we use to evaluate things. If
someone is well-off, his life is good. Hence, it is not surprising that we commonly
move back and forth so easily between well-being and such terms as health,
happiness, and prosperity: most people assume that the life of a human being is
a good one that someone living such a life is faring well only if it has at least some
measure of these goods.
Philosophers nonetheless make a distinction that is not often observed in everyday
speech: they say that to be a constituent of well-being is one thing, and to be a means
to well-being is another. Take physical health, for example: one might believe that it
is a necessary pre-condition of well-being, but that it is to be sought and welcomed
only because of what it leads to or makes possible. In that case, one is not taking it to
be a constituent of well-being. It is not, as we might put it, intrinsically valuable (see
intrinsic value). On the other hand, one might hold that being physically healthy
is in itself good for us, whether or not it leads to further results. In that case, one is
regarding health as a component or constituent of well-being. It is, in other words,
intrinsically good.
The question, What is well-being? can thus be interpreted to mean Which
things are intrinsically good for an individual? So understood, it is the same
question that was raised in antiquity by Greek and Roman philosophers. For such
thinkers or schools of thought as Socrates (469399 bce), Plato (427347 bce),
Aristotle (384322 bce), the Stoics, and the Epicureans, the deepest question of
practical reasoning the one that underlies all other ethical questions is: what is
the highest or ultimate good (see aristotle; hellenistic ethics; highest good;
plato; stoicism)? Aristotle, for example, observes near the beginning of the
Nicomachean Ethics (2000) that some goods are sought for the sake of others, and
then argues that it cannot be that every good we pursue is desirable only for the sake
of something else. There must be something, he insists, that is desirable in itself and
not sought for the sake of anything else, and that goal must be the one for the sake
of which all others are to be sought. He regarded it as an open question, to be
answered by philosophical methods, what that ultimate good is. The word he applies
to it is the common Greek term eudaimonia, which combines the adverb eu, meaning
The International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Edited by Hugh LaFollette, print pages 54425450.
2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ 9781444367072.wbiee099

well, and the word for a god, daimon (see eudaimonism). Hence, Aristotles term
eudaimonia, which he equates with living or faring well, is like our word well-being,
in three respects. First, both incorporate an evaluative notion that of wellness.
Second, eudaimonia, as with well-being, consists in something, and it can be pursued
only if one identifies what it consists in. Third, what it consist in must be something
that is not merely instrumentally good.
It is common to use the words good and bad elliptically to say, for example,
that health is good and disease bad, when what we mean is that health is good for
someone and disease bad for someone, namely the individual who is healthy or ill.
Of course, any instance of health is always the health of someone, but to say that
health is good for someone goes beyond saying that it is the health of someone.
Tospeak of health as good for the healthy person is equivalent to calling it beneficial
for or advantageous to him, or in his interest (see good and good for).
Some philosophers, nonetheless, insist upon the importance of a nonelliptical use
of good. Perhaps the clearest example is provided by G. E. Moore (18731958; see
moore, g. e.). He holds in Principia Ethica (1903) that goodness is the fundamental
property to which all practical reasoning must attend, but he is not talking about the
property of being advantageous to or good for anyone. Rather, he is proposing that
there is such a thing as impersonal or absolute goodness goodness period, or
simpliciter, or sans phrase.
Moore believes, for example, that beauty is absolutely good. To prove this, he asks
us to imagine two worlds, both devoid of people: one entirely beautiful, the other
wholly ugly. Is not the first world better than the second, he asks, even though there
is no one for whom it is better? It clearly is, he replies, and that is because it contains
something that is, quite simply, good: beauty. He accepts the common assumption
that the value of a beautiful world would be immeasurably increased were it occupied by people who enjoy the contemplation of its beauty. That, he holds, is because
of the absolute value of such pleasures. For Moore, both beauty and the enjoyment
of beauty are good (period). Their being good does not consist in their being good
for anyone.
In fact, he believes that it is misleading to speak of anything as good for someone,
or my good, or your good. Rather than say that the pleasure I take in contemplating
beautiful things is good for me, or that my good consists in such enjoyment, we
should say instead: Such a pleasure is absolutely good, and I am the one whose
pleasure it is. It is not in relation to me that aesthetic pleasure is good. It is simply a
good thing, and I should seek that kind of pleasure because my doing so increases
the amount of value in the universe. Moore is attracted to this way of thinking
because it leaves no room for rational self-interested motivation, and opens the door
to an impartial stance towards the universe. One is not to maximize what is good for
oneself, or ones family, or ones own group, however large that policy, he holds,
rests on a confusion. Clear thinking shows that what is to be maximized is the
amount of good that exists in the universe.
These points about Moore are relevant to the topic of well-being, because many
contemporary philosophers use well-being to designate a condition that is good

for the well-off individual. So used, to be concerned about someones well-being is

to care about whether his or her life contains things that are good for that individual.
It is to ask whether the person living that life is benefiting from living it. Moore,
then, has no theory of well-being in this sense rather, he is opposed to the idea that
well-being of this sort is worth caring about. For the same reason, if we take Aristotle
and other thinkers of Greek and Roman antiquity to be offering, in their reflections
on eudaimonia, theories about well-being, and we equate well-being, as many
philosophers do, with what is good for an individual, then we must be prepared to
take those ancient philosophers to be theorizing not about what Moore calls
absolutegoodness but about what is noninstrumentally advantageous or beneficial.
Alternatively, if we use the word well-being in the way that even Moore is talking
about it, no less than are philosophers who propose theories about what constitutes
an individuals advantage, then we risk confusion: some theories of well-being will
be about what is good (period), and others about what is good for someone. To
avoid misunderstanding, it is best to abide by common philosophical usage and to
treat theories of well-being as theories about what is noninstrumentally good for
someone. So used, we are making a substantive and contestable claim if we say that
well-being ones own or that of others should be among ones ultimate goals.
The concept of well-being, as we have seen, is best understood as the concept of
what is good for an individual, but in common usage good for and bad for have
a wider range. We can say, for example, without any sense of oddity, that it is bad for
an automobile to sit idly in the garage for many months, or that it is good for it to be
driven occasionally. However, it would be peculiar to talk about the well-being of a
car. Well-being is something that belongs above all to human beings and other
animals, rather than to plants and artifacts (see animals, moral status of).
Furthermore, a concern for the well-being of a person or a cat or a dog is a concern
for the whole life of that individual, or a significant stretch of it. Someone who felt
an urge to give you a momentary benefit would not be said to care about your
well-being. So, when we talk about well-being, we assume that lives have a temporal
duration and shape, and a concern for well-being must take into account what is
good for a person over that longer period of time. A similar point is made by Aristotle
when he remarks that no one can be eudaimon (the adjectival form of the noun
eudaimonia) for a day or any other brief period just as springtime is not simply the
appearance of a single swallow.
The term subjective well-being has recently been used by experimental
psychologists to designate a certain state of mind that they believe to be open to
scientific investigation. Subjects are asked how they feel either about the present
moment, or about their lives as a whole, or about certain dimensions of their lives.
Similar experiments can be conducted in which subjects are asked to rate the
intensity of pain on a scale between 1 and 10. Results can be aggregated and
conclusions drawn about the economic or political conditions that are correlated
with these states of mind; the effectiveness of various drugs in alleviating pain can
also be assessed. Such studies can be of great interest, insofar as we want to know
how people are feeling about their lives and how they respond to pain. However, by

their nature, these investigations are not addressed to the evaluative question that is
asked by philosophers when they discuss the topic of well-being. Philosophers who
reflect on well-being want to know what really is good for someone, not what seems
to be good. Psychologists, by contrast, are not in the business of making evaluations,
but are searching for the causes of certain states of mind a sense of well-being, or
happiness, or pleasure, or their opposites. The term subjective well-being is
therefore misleading if it suggests that empirical studies of mental states tell us what
is good for us. It may indeed be true that when one feels happy about ones life, that
is a good state to be in. However, whether it is good or not is a matter that is open to
and can be resolved only through philosophical inquiry.

Theories of Well-Being
Aristotle seeks a theory of human well-being a theory that is applicable not merely
to Greeks or to the fourth century, but to all people at all times. He holds that
virtuous activity (i.e., the exercise of such excellent qualities as wisdom, courage,
and justice) is the central ingredient of human well-being, but that it is not by itself
sufficient for eudaimonia, because human beings, no matter how virtuous, are
vulnerable to such misfortunes as enslavement or the depredations of tyrants. The
Stoic school, founded by Zeno of Citium (334262 bce) one generation after
Aristotle, departs from him in precisely that respect: it takes virtuous activity to be
the only good, and the failure to attain it as the only evil. A third conception of
well-being was endorsed by the Epicureans (another school founded soon after
Aristotles death): they took pleasure to be the sole good, and pain the sole evil.
The term hedonism is often used as a label for this doctrine (see hedonism;
pleasure). Notice that the Epicurean doctrine is even broader in scope than Aristotles. It proposes not only a conception of human well-being, but a theory about
the good of all creatures. For an animal to live well, according to the Epicureans, is
for it to live pleasantly. Even if what pleases animals does not please us, we have the
same ultimate goal that they do.
Aristotle would agree with the Epicureans to this extent: a life devoid of pleasure,
he insists, cannot be eudaimon. His picture of a well-lived life is that of a human
being who enjoys being wise, just, and courageous (and has the resources to act in
these ways). How does this differ from the Epicurean theory? Pleasure, for Aristotle,
should not by itself be our ultimate end; rather, his thesis is that our proper ultimate
end enjoyable virtuous activity has pleasure in it as one component. Pleasure is
one kind of intrinsic good but not the only kind. And he believes that some kinds of
pleasure are not good at all. But for the Epicureans, all pleasures are good, nothing
other than pleasure is noninstrumentally good, and our ultimate end is not the
pleasure of virtuous activity but pleasure alone.
Hedonism was revived in the modern era, and some authors combined it with the
principle that our supreme goal should be to produce the greatest quantity of good.
The result is utilitarianism the doctrine embraced and popularized by Jeremy
Bentham (17481832) and John Stuart Mill (180673), and refined by Henry

Sidgwick (18381900), that the supreme moral rule commands us to maximize

pleasure (see bentham, jeremy; greatest happiness principle; mill, john
stuart; sidgwick, henry; utilitarianism). Well-being, according to these
utilitarians, consists simply in pleasant consciousness. However, one is not to be
concerned solely with ones own well-being, or with the well-being of ones own
society or political community. Even a concern with human well-being would be too
narrow a focus. The best that one can do is to increase, as fully as possible, the total
amount of well-being of humans and of any other creature that is capable of
well-being. Moore too holds that our supreme goal is to maximize something, but as
we have seen, he thinks that it is not well-being (what is good for someone) that is to
be maximized, but good simpliciter.
Mills conception of well-being is subtle and complex because he rebels against
Benthams doctrine that only the quantity of pleasure matters. For Bentham,
pleasures are to be assessed solely along the following dimensions: intensity,
duration, certainty, temporal propinquity, fecundity (likelihood of producing more
pleasure), and purity (unlikelihood of producing pain). Mill protests that Bentham
is attentive merely to the quantitative aspect of pleasure, and entirely overlooks their
qualitative differences. Some pleasures are higher (he is thinking, for example, of
the pleasures of reading great poetry), others lower (the satisfaction of desires for
food, drink, and sex). To determine that one kind of pleasure is higher than another,
he says, we need only ask about the preferences of those who have experienced both.
Even if Mill is right that this is a reliable way to assess the quality of pleasures, his
attempt to improve on Bentham is problematic, and few hedonists have followed his
lead. It is difficult for a hedonist to reject the thesis that the more pleasant of two
alternatives is the one that should be chosen. That thesis is an instance of a more
abstract generalization: if G is the sole good, and one option has more G than the
other, one ought to select it. Mill may be right that sometimes you should spend an
evening reading poetry rather than drinking, even if drinking would bring you more
intense pleasures. However, the easiest way to defend that thesis is to insist that
pleasure is not all there is to well-being.
Mills doctrine may nonetheless appear to have some plausibility because the
quantitativequalitative contrast is often significant and unproblematic. One city
may have more schools than another, but that does not show that you should move
there unless they are also better schools. One novel may have more words than
another, but it may be a worse novel. Similarly, when we compare two pleasures, we
can say that although one is more intense, the other is nonetheless a better pleasure.However, this point will help Mill only if what makes one pleasure better for
someoneto experience than another is some empirically detectable hedonic feature
of the two experiences other than intensity. If the goodness or badness (for us) of a
pleasant experience were features of it that we can sense, just as we taste the flavor of
a peach, or recognize the timbre of an oboe, or recognize the intensity of pain, Mill
would be on solid ground. However, pleasures are evaluated as good by our faculty
of judgment; their goodness is not sensed in the way in which the flavor of a
strawberry is detected by the tongue. If it is not simply the way reading poetry feels,

compared with the way tasting a fruit feels, that makes the former better for us than
the latter, then Mills attempt to improve on Bentham does not succeed.
The lesson many philosophers have drawn is that hedonism is too narrow a
conception of well-being. The hedonist is stuck with the fact that some pleasures
the rush of a drug-induced high, for example are extremely intense, and yet their
intensity seems a poor guide to their choiceworthiness. Even if they could be
artificially extended over the course of a lifetime and involved no pain, the life of
someone who experienced nothing other than that single kind of intense pleasure
does not seem appealing. Reasoning along these lines, Hastings Rashdall (18581924)
proposed a nonhedonistic version of utilitarianism, which he called ideal utilitarianism (see rashdall, hastings). The good is to be maximized, according to
Rashdall, but well-being consists in many other things besides pleasure: among
them are virtue, knowledge, and various artistic, intellectual, and cultural pursuits.
Not all of them are on a par, but each is good to some degree.
One can accept Rashdalls idea that well-being is a composite of many different
sorts of things without agreeing to his utilitarianism. The result would be a theory
that bears some resemblance to those of Plato and Aristotle. In the Philebus, Plato
has Socrates argue that a life that contained nothing but knowledge and entirely
lacked pleasure would be inferior to one that includes both sorts of goods; and
similarly, a life that contained nothing but pleasure but entirely lacking in knowledge
would be far from the best we could live. The best life for human beings, then, is a
mixed life one that harmoniously integrates goods of various kinds. As we have
seen, Aristotle proposes a similar idea: the best life is one that combines virtue,
pleasure, and other sorts of goods.
Many philosophers are nonetheless dissatisfied with both hedonism and this
pluralistic alternative to it. What disturbs them is that all such theories overlook
what might be called the subjectivity of well-being: what is good for someone is what
is good from that individuals perspective. Statements about what is good for
someone, they argue, are made true by facts about that individuals preferences.
However, the theories we have been examining seem to pay no attention to those
kinds of subjective differences. They can be accused of imposing on us a conception
of what is in our interest that rests only on rough generalizations about human or
animal nature. Virtue, for example, may be a component of the good of many
people but must it be a component of everyones good? If someone turns his back
on pleasurable experiences and activities, and devotes himself to tasks that he takes
to be important but unenjoyable, on what basis is he to be criticized? David Hume
(171176) speaks for many when he says, in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Morals (1983), that: Ultimate ends can never be accounted for by reason (see
hume, david). For Hume, it is sentiment not reason that provides a grounding
for statements about what is good or bad. A theory of well-being inspired by Humes
thesis might therefore say that if someone has a favorable attitude towards some
ultimate goal, then it is good for him to achieve it, and what makes it good for him
is precisely the fact that he aims at it. Something close to this idea is endorsed by
Hobbes (15881679) when he says, in Leviathan (1651), that: Whatsoever is the

object of any mans appetite or desires, that is it which he for his part calleth good.
Hobbes is implying that there is no basis for criticizing what someone aims at. What
is good for each is what he for his part calleth good (see hobbes, thomas).
The rise of liberal political philosophy (see liberalism) has contributed to the
attractiveness of this subjective way of thinking about well-being subjective
because ones perspective determines ones good (see subjectivism, ethical).
According to the liberal, there is no good reason to interfere with an individuals
pursuit of well-being, provided he is not interfering with others, because the best
judge of an individuals interests is that individual. Why is one the best judge of ones
own interests? The subjective conception of well-being replies: because ones aims
and desires are constitutive of ones good. Admittedly, people sometimes go astray in
their choice of which means to take to the achievement of their ends. However,
society should not try to steer its members towards certain ends rather than others.
It should let individuals set their own ends, because their well-being lies in the
achievement of goals they have chosen for themselves.
Subjectivism about well-being is inevitably a form of conservatism, because it
denies that there is any basis for saying that people ought, for their own good, to
have more ambitious or more enriching goals than the ones they currently pursue.
Itsonly standard for assessing a life as good or bad for the person living it is one that
is fixed by that persons actual goals. It therefore lacks the resources for saying that
those who make the best of a bad lot might have had better lives. If, for example, an
impoverished slave achieves the little that he aims to achieve, subjectivism must say
that his well-being is as great as that of anyone else who has an equally good record
of success in achieving his aims.
The subjectivist faces other difficulties: (1) When we say that a 3-month-old child
is faring well, our judgment rests on a conception of how the faculties of a human
infant should develop, and not on an assessment of how fully that child is getting what
she wants. (2) If someone, acting out of self-hatred, injures his body or mind, we say
that he is undermining his well-being; he may achieve his aims, but his aimsare bad
for him. (3) When we are faced with important decisions about the futurewhether
to marry, or have children, or pursue one kind of career rather than another we ask
which ends to choose, and not merely which means will serve ends that we already
have. We worry that we might make a poor decision. However, if we were subjectivists, we ought to reckon that it does not matter which goals we adopt all that matters,
for well-being, would be their achievement. (4) It is a matter of common sense that
people sometimes sacrifice their own well-being, at least to some degree, for the good
of others. When they do so, they are achieving their aims after all, they have deliberately decided to make such a sacrifice. However, if they are achieving their aims,
then, according to subjectivism, they are not making a sacrifice after all.
The theory of well-being that John Rawls (19212002) proposes in A Theory of
Justice (1971) is not subjectivist, but neither is it a form of hedonism or the pluralism
proposed by Plato, Aristotle, and Rashdall (see rawls, john). His basic idea is that
someones good consists in the achievement of his rational goals or desires. Ones
rational goals may not be the ones that one actually has; rather, as Rawls defines

them, they are the aims one would have, were one to plan ones life with great care,
after ascertaining all the relevant facts. That conception of well-being might be
interpreted in a way that allows it to criticize the actual plans that many people
have: one can claim, for example, that people who seek to accumulate luxury goods
and exercise power over others are acting contrary to their interests, because were
they to deliberate more rationally, they would reject these goals in favor of the
pursuit of knowledge and artistic accomplishment. However, that would not be to
use Rawlss theory in the way he intends. As he sees it, the standard he proposes
to assess whether someones goals are rational is not difficult for most people to
achieve, and it provides no basis for saying that some goals are inherently more
worthwhile than others, or that some pleasures are (as Mill thinks) qualitatively
superior to others. To make this point, he imagines someone whose only pleasure in
life is to count blades of grass. If that plan is the one he would choose after careful
deliberation, then his way of life, Rawls admits, is good for him. Rawlss conception
of well-being provides no basis for saying that other people have better lives than
this lives that are good for them to a higher degree than the grass-counters life is
good for him.
However, Rawls is not entirely comfortable with the fact that his theory forces
him to this conclusion, for he says that if there is no way to alter the psychological
condition of the grass-counter, then his plan of life establishes what is good for him
(1999: 380). This implies that, were we able somehow to induce in the grass-counter
different goals goals that made fuller use of a human beings cognitive powers,
imagination, and emotional resources that would be good for him, because his life
would be richer, fuller, more flourishing. That new life would be better for him than
his old one, even though the old life might have been highly enjoyable and full of
success in the achievement of its (very limited) ambitions. Rawlss example of the
grass-counter is fanciful, as he acknowledges, and it is perhaps poor philosophical
methodology to rely heavily on scenarios that we have never encountered. However,
it is analogous to the real sorts of cases that we mentioned earlier: those of slaves or
people living in impoverished circumstances that force them to pursue highly
constricted goals. Just as the grass-counters peculiar psychological condition leads
him away from a full development of his cognitive and emotional resources, so
economic and political conditions impose on many human beings no less severe
limitations.
There are several goals, as we have seen, that a philosophical theory of well-being
should try to achieve. It must account for the fact that some human lives are better
(for the person living it) than others. It must acknowledge that some goals are better
to pursue (for the one pursing them) than others. It must grant that one can fail to
see that ones life could be much better than it is. It must say not only what is good
for an adult but also for a child and an animal. It must be consistent with the common
assumption that one can deliberately sacrifice ones well-being for the good of
others,and that one can even aim at doing what is bad for oneself for its own sake.
A non-subjective and pluralistic conception of well-being might be in the best position to give such an account.

See also: animals, moral status of; aristotle; bentham, jeremy;

eudaimonism; good and good for; greatest happiness principle; happiness;
hedonism; hellenistic ethics; highest good; hobbes, thomas; hume, david;
intrinsic value; liberalism; mill, john stuart; moore, g.e.;plato;
pleasure; rashdall, hastings; rawls, john; sidgwick, henry; stoicism;
subjectivism, ethical; utilitarianism

REFERENCES
Aristotle 2000. Nicomachean Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hobbes, Thomas 1994 [1651]. Leviathan. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Hume, David 1983 [1751]. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Indianapolis:
Hackett.
Moore, G. E. 1993 [1903]. Principia Ethica, rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rawls, John 1999 [1971]. A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Sidgwick, Henry 1907. The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

FURTHER READINGS
Bentham, Jeremy 1970 [1789]. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed.
J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart. London: Athlone Press.
Crisp, Roger 2008. Well-Being, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. At http://plato.stanford.
edu/entries/well-being.
Darwall, Stephen 2002. Welfare and Rational Care. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Feldman, Fred 2004. Pleasure and the Good Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Griffin, James 1986. Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Habron, Daniel M. 2008. The Pursuit of Unhappiness. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kahneman, Daniel, Ed Diener, and Norbert Schwarz (eds.) 1999. Well-Being: The Foundations
of Hedonic Psychology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Keyes, Corey L. M., and Jonathan Haidt (eds.) 2003. Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the
Life Well-Lived. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Kraut, Richard 2007. What is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Layard, Richard 2005. Happiness: Lessons from a New Science. London: Penguin.
Mill, John Stuart 1998 [1861]. Utilitarianism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Parfit, Derek 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Plato 2004. Republic. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Rashdall, Hastings 1907. The Theory of Good and Evil: A Treatise on Moral Philosophy, vols.
1 and 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Scanlon, T. M. 2000. What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sumner, L. W. 1996. Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Tiberius, Valerie 2008. The Reflective Life: Living Wisely Within Our Limits. New York: Oxford
University Press.
White, Nicholas P. 2006. A Brief History of Happiness. Oxford: Blackwell.