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  • Chapter 8 - Well-Being

  • David DeGrazia, George Washington University, Washington DC, Joseph Millum, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda
  • Book:
    A Theory of Bioethics
    Published online:
    17 August 2021
    Print publication:
    26 August 2021, pp 214-247
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  • Summary

    This chapter explores the nature of individual well-being. Our preferred approach is a type of subjective theory according to which both enjoyment (positively experienced mental states) and the satisfaction of narrative-relevant desires (desires whose satisfaction makes a difference to one’s life story) are prudentially good for an individual. Suffering and the frustration of narrative-relevant desires are prudentially bad. Contact with reality plays an amplifying role. Enjoyment is better for someone when they are taking pleasure in something real. Likewise, the fulfillment of desires is prudentially better when those desires are informed and rational. Enjoyment and desire-satisfaction are unified in a single coherent account of well-being in that both reflect the lived, self-caring perspective of a conscious subject. The chapter’s final three sections address (1) the relationship between disability and well-being, (2) decision-making for impaired newborns, and (3) decision-making for patients in irreversibly unconscious states.