Concept
Well-being
Overview
Well-being is what is non-instrumentally good for a person. Also called welfare and quality of life, it is a measure of how well life is going for someone. In the broadest sense, it covers the balance of all positive and negative aspects of a person's life. More narrowly, it refers only to positive degrees and contrasts with ill-being, which denotes negative ones. In this sense, well-being is what egoists typically seek for themselves and altruists aim to enhance in others, serving as a central goal of many individual and societal endeavors.
Researchers discuss different types of well-being by how they are measured, who they belong to, and which domain of life they affect. Subjective well-being refers to how a person feels about and evaluates their life. Objective well-being encompasses factors that can be assessed from an external perspective, such as health, income, and security. Individual well-being concerns the quality of life of a particular person, whereas community well-being measures how well a group of people functions and thrives. Forms of well-being belonging to specific domains of life include physical, psychological, emotional, social, and economic well-being.
Theories of well-being aim to identify its essential features. Hedonism argues that well-being ultimately depends on the balance of pleasure over pain. Desire theories hold that the satisfaction of desires is the source of well-being. Objective list theories assert that a combination of diverse elements is responsible for well-being. Often-discussed contributing factors include feelings, emotions, life satisfaction, achievement, finding a sense of meaning, interpersonal relationships, and health.
Well-being is relevant to many fields of inquiry. Positive psychology studies the factors and conditions of optimal human functioning. Philosophy examines the nature and theoretical foundations of well-being and its role as a goal of human conduct. Other related disciplines include economics, sociology, anthropology, medicine, education, politics, and religion. Although the philosophical study of well-being dates back millennia, research in the empirical sciences has intensified only since the second half of the 20th century.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
The general object of the Law is twofold: the well-being of the soul, and the well-being of the body. The well-being of the soul is promoted by correct opinions communicated to the people according to their capacity. Some of these opinions are therefore imparted in a plain form, others allegorically; because certain opinions are in their plain form too strong for the capacity of the common people. The well-being of…
Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed
Names Well-being several times; opens on Well-being.
(46) But men, if they be in their own power, and do bear and sustain themselves, and be not carried away with a whirlwind or tempest of ambition, ought in the pursuit of their own fortune to set before their eyes not only that general map of the world, “That all things are vanity and vexation of spirit,” but many other more particular cards and directions: chiefly that, that being without well-being is a curse, and…
Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning
States what Well-being is; opens on Well-being.
We have now recognised the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate. First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly…
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
The author is tied to Well-being in the knowledge graph; names Well-being twice.
Philosophers who discussed Well-being
Related ideas
- Ātman (Hinduism)
- Empiricism
- Emotion
- Cognition
- Hellenistic philosophy
- Fear
- Artificial intelligence
- Afterlife
- G. E. Moore
- Outline of ancient India
- Pity
- Thomas Carlyle
- Hedonism
- Hinduism
- Philosophy
- Creativity
- Psychoanalytic theory
- Animal ethics
- Vedas
- Public policy
- John Stuart Mill
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Judgement
- Justice
Opposing perspectives
- Individualism
- Pleasure
- Instrumental and intrinsic value
- Happiness
- Aesthetics
- Value theory
- Intrinsic value (ethics)
- Morality
- Economic ethics
Place in the tradition
Part of Absurdism.