engleski

Well-Being and Capability Approach

The problem of well-being is one of the oldest philosophical problems that aims to describe what is non-instrumentally or ultimately good for a person. Since Parfit’s Reasons and Persons, philosophical discussion distinguishes three philosophical approaches to defining well‐being: hedonism, desire‐based theories and objective list theories. According to the first one, well‐being consists in pleasure. The second account claims that well‐being consists in the satisfaction of desires or preferences that can be either real or idealized. Finally, the third position says that well‐being consists in the achievement of certain objectively good thong or things, no matter whether we regard them as good or not. I aim to show that such standard taxonomy neglects important aspects of well-being and as such cannot give full account of the nature of well-being. First, it makes harsh distinction between objective and subjective accounts of well-being and does not provide useful normative framework for scientific researches. Second, it neglects relationship between personal well-being and society and the ways in which notion of well-being can be understood as depending on political institutions related to the distribution of goods necessary for achievement of personal well- being and the relations among citizens. Therefore, I propose an account of well-being based on capability approach that can solve the problem of empirical applicability and be useful for policy making.

well-being, capability approach, hybrid theory, desire

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