Well-Being

The thesis of this book is expressed by its title and subtitle: well-being consists in “happiness in a worthwhile life.” Badhwar means by this, not that it has two separate components—happiness on the one hand, what is worthwhile on the other—but that it is a single integrated whole. That is, for a life to be prudentially valuable (good for the individual whose life it is) is for it to contain a certain psychological state (happiness, a sense of fulfillment, positive feelings) directed at what has objective worth. Happiness and worth come in degrees, so I take her to mean that the greater the feeling of happiness one has, the better off one is—provided that one finds one's happiness in what is worthwhile. Similarly, the greater the worthwhileness of the things one has in one's life, the better off one is—provided one is also made happy by those valuable things.Badhwar describes herself as a neo-Aristotelian, meaning by this both that the moral virtues play an important constitutive role in a good life and that these qualities should be construed, as Aristotle does, as a certain way of integrating reason and emotion. But she also distances herself from Aristotle by rejecting his doctrine that having one ethical virtue requires having all the others. For Badhwar, most people have some of the virtues to some extent, other virtues to a different extent, and perhaps some not at all.What is it for something to have worth, or to be worthwhile? Which things are worthwhile, and how can we tell? Badhwar uses the term “perfectionist value” when she speaks of these matters, but she takes her readers already to be sufficiently familiar with what this is, and so she does not elaborate. Judging from the examples she uses, it is clear that she takes artistic and intellectual excellence (a good novelist, originality in a mathematician) to be clear cases of worthwhileness. And of course she also assumes that being a good person also has “perfectionist value”—the question she seeks to answer is whether it also has prudential value. But she leaves it unclear whether we have something worthwhile whenever we are good at or excel at something. If someone is an excellent poker player, for example, and derives a sense of fulfillment from this game, does this count as a case of “happiness in a worthwhile life”? If someone is a rather mediocre tennis player (when compared with amateurs of roughly the same age), does his activity lack worthwhileness—with the result that the happiness it gives him fails to count toward his well-being?Presumably Badhwar would have to say that if two good novelists derive an equal sense of fulfillment from their activities as writers, but the novels of the first are greater artistic accomplishments than those of the second, then the first has a greater degree of well-being. But, to take a different case, what if the somewhat better of two novelists has far less happiness than the other—would he or she on balance be worse off? Presumably yes: the small superiority of the artistic excellence of the first is outweighed by the greater difference in the happiness of the second. Badhwar, as I read her, has no reason to reject this point. But then it is odd that she does not allow feelings of happiness and fulfillment to be an independent constituent of well-being—that is, a constituent regardless of whether these feelings are directed at worthwhile objects. If one can be better off by trading a bit of excellence for a sufficiently large increase in happiness, why is there no well-being at all among those who are made very happy by what is worthless?To pursue these questions a bit further: what should we say about the ordinary kinds of activities by means of which most people earn a living? Consider, for example, a plumber, and suppose she is a happy person, someone who finds some degree of fulfillment in her job. Her work as a plumber will, on Badhwar's theory, give her at least some degree of well-being—but only if plumbing is a worthwhile activity. Is it? Of course, it is not in itself worthwhile to fix a leaky pipe or install a kitchen sink—what if the house in which these repairs are made sits unoccupied and unused? In that case, our plumber was wasting her time, according to Badhwar's theory. She can take the plumber's activities to be prudentially valuable only if they lead to something worthwhile. If the house in which she has made repairs is subsequently used entirely for worthless purposes, then however happy she was as she performed her job, this part of her life was totally lacking in prudential value.This consequence of Badhwar's theory is difficult to accept. It flows from her conviction that a person's state of mind, however happy, however rich in experiential quality, is totally devoid of prudential value unless something external to the experience, at which it is directed, is worthwhile. The difficulty would have been avoided had she proposed that well-being is a composite of several kinds of goods, each of which retains its prudential value independently of the others. Such a theory would allow her to say that happiness is by itself a component of well-being, and that therefore the plumber in our example attains at least some degree of well-being through her work, regardless of the use others make of it.Another key feature of Badhwar's book, which I have not mentioned yet, is the route she takes to reach the conclusion that the moral virtues are constituents of well-being. A certain conception of autonomy and of what she calls “reality orientation” is essential to her argument for this thesis. In her words,(i) Well-being . . . consists of happiness in a worthwhile life. (ii) Someone who leads such a life must be characteristically autonomous and reality-oriented, that is, disposed to think for herself and seek truth or understanding about important aspects of her own life and human life in general, and disposed to act on her understanding when circumstances permit. (iii) To the extent that someone with these traits succeeds in achieving understanding and acting on it when circumstances permit, she is realistic. (iv) To the extent that she is realistic, she is virtuous. (v) Hence well-being . . . requires virtue. (23)In saying this, Badhwar is not proposing that we radically alter commonsense ideas about which qualities are moral virtues. They are such things as justice, honesty, kindness, courage, and so on. But one striking feature of her attempt to show that these qualities are constitutive of well-being is that the distinctive features of each virtue—what honesty is, for example, making it different from courage—play no role in explaining why they are prudentially valuable. They are all of them partially constitutive of well-being for precisely the same reason: it is good for someone to be honest because such a person is autonomous and realistic; good to be just because such a person is autonomous and realistic; and so on. But surely something important goes missing when one accounts for the prudential value of each virtue in the same way. If something good is added to one's life by being kind to other people, it is different from the good added by being respectful, or honest, or patient. Badhwar does not deny this point, but she fails to recognize it.Is she correct in her claim that well-being is available only to those who are characteristically “reality-oriented” in her sense? I take her to mean that seeking “truth or understanding about important aspects of [one's] own life and human life in general” is not merely an advisable strategy for achieving one's goals; it is also an inherent aspect of a worthwhile life. But is this latter, stronger claim plausible? Imagine someone who is rather unrealistic about practical matters: he often makes plans based on wishful thinking, puts too little effort into getting the facts straight before carrying out his plans, and so on. It is almost a certainty that eventually he will pay a high price for having these habits. But it is not conceptually impossible for a rather unrealistic person to be lucky, not just once, but throughout his life. He could have worthy goals and be happy because he always achieves them. No doubt, there would still be something worthwhile missing from his life: being a thoughtless, unreflective person, he has no insight into what makes for a good life. We might say, with some plausibility, that he would be even better off were he a realistic, thoughtful individual. But for Badhwar, being “reality-oriented” is not just one component of well-being; she thinks that without it there is no well-being, just as there is no well-being for those whose happiness derives from what has no worth.Badhwar's theory depends heavily on her reaction to Robert Nozick's (1974, 42–45) famous thought experiment involving an “experience machine.” You are given the opportunity to spend the rest of your life attached to a machine that stimulates your brain, giving you any experience you like. You will be under the illusion, when inside the machine, that you are experiencing and acting upon the real world. But in fact your world will collapse to the size of the laboratory of the scientist who, following your instructions, is creating the illusions you experience. Badhwar refers to the experience machine frequently, and, like many others, including Nozick himself, she takes it to show that our lives would be impoverished if we were not actually in touch with the real world.A less radical reaction to the experience machine than Badhwar's would hold that the illusoriness of an experience does not necessarily rob it of all prudential value. According to this view, it could be better to enter the experience machine over limited periods of time than never to make use of it. Nozick (1989, 108) himself accepts this point. In fact, one should go farther: someone whose life in the real world is entirely miserable and is likely to remain so would be better off if he spent the rest of his life in the experience machine. Inside it, he would have many varieties of pleasant experiences, and only as much hardship and woe as would on balance increase his happiness. Outside the machine, his existence would be hellish. For Badhwar, however, a third alternative would be just as good as entering the machine: suicide. She thinks that life inside the machine has no prudential value. So one might as well be dead.Badhwar's theory contains many other riches—and not only the provocative ideas I have been discussing. Her work deserves the attention of all students of value theory

Doctrine · Epistemology · Eudaimonia · Feeling · Happiness · Meaning (existential) · Meaning of life · Theology · Virtue · Philosophy · Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction · Psychology · Social Psychology

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