The Four Qualities of Life

The terms 'quality-of-life', 'well-being' and 'happiness' denote different meanings; sometimes they are used as an umbrella term for all of value, and at other times to denote special merits. This paper is about the specific meanings of the terms. It proposes a classification based on two bi-partitions; between life 'chances' and life 'results', and between 'outer' and 'inner' qualities. Together these dichotomies imply four qualities of life: 1) livability of the environment, 2) life-ability of the individual, 3) external utility of life and 4) inner appreciation of life.This fourfold matrix is applied in three ways: firstly to place related notions and alternative classifications, secondly to explore substantive meanings in various measures for quality of life and thirdly to find out whether quality-of-life can be measured comprehensively. This last question is answered in the negative. Current sum-scores make little sense. The most inclusive measure is still how long and happily people live.     

Diminishing Returns to Income, Companionship – and Happiness

From philosophical and intuitive sources, I find three goods that should serve as ultimate ends in assessing a high quality of life: subjective well-being, human development, and justice. With acknowledged plural ends (we use them whether we acknowledge them or not), each takes its value from its scarcity relative to the other two – a version of diminishing marginal utility. Contrary to economists' belief that income (together with leisure) is the source of all utility, evidence shows that companionship, which does not pass through the market, has higher utility and contributes more to well-being than does income. But if money income has diminishing marginal utility, so does this competing good, companionship. With arguments drawn from the meaning of happiness, I show that happiness, too, may have diminishing marginal utility and that often it must rely for its hedonic and social value on such other goods as human development and justice.     

Does thinking about the meaning of life make you happy in a religious and globalised world? A 75-nation study

This paper reports on a multilevel study of 75 nations, which tests two hypotheses that arose from considering Tolstoy's experience of thinking about the meaning and purpose of life. The globalisation-as-exacerbator hypothesis predicts that as globalisation increases, the relationship between thinking about the meaning and purpose of life and life satisfaction becomes more negative. The religiosity-as-buffer hypothesis predicts that as religiosity increases, the relationship between thinking about the meaning and purpose of life and life satisfaction becomes more positive. The results presented here support both hypotheses. We also found that it is religious attendance (not religious belief) that functions as a buffer in the relationship between thinking about the meaning and purpose of life and life satisfaction.     

What do we Want from a Theory of Happiness?

I defend a methodology for theorizing about happiness. I reject three methods: conceptual analysis; scientific naturalism; and the “pure normative adequacy” approach, where the best conception of happiness is the one that best fills a role in moral theory. The concept of happiness is a folk notion employed by laypersons who have various practical interests in the matter, and theories of happiness should respect this fact. I identify four such interests in broad terms and then argue for a set of desiderata that theories of happiness ought to satisfy. The theory of happiness falls within the province of ethics. It should, however, be viewed as autonomous and not merely secondary to moral theory.