Introduction to Well-Being

Welfare Happiness Flourishing Eudaimonia The Good Life

Health Companionship Achievement Meaning Virtue

And now, O son of Axiochus, let me put a question to you: Do not all men desire happiness? And yet, perhaps, this is one of those ridiculous questions which I am afraid to ask, and which ought not to be asked by a sensible man: for what human being is there who does not desire happiness? …[And] since we all of us desire happiness, how can we be happy? That is the next question. Plato, Euthydemus

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good… If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake…, and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else… this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is… Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

Something is intrinsically good for someone when it makes that person better off, independently of its effects. Something is instrumentally good for someone when it has intrinsically good effects.

Something is prima facie good for someone when it is intrinsically good or has some intrinsically good effects. Something is all-things-considered good for someone when the sum of its intrinsic value and all of its effects is positive.