Happiness and meaning: Two aspects of the good life

Social Philosophy and Policy

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 207-224

  Wolf, Susan ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0141585028     PISSN: 02650525     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0265052500001734     Document Type: Article

References (15)

1. The view described and defended here shows the influence of and my sympathy with the views of Aristotle and John Stuart Mill throughout. I cannot individuate my debts to them; they are pervasive.
2. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).
3. This point is made by David Wiggins in his brilliant but difficult essay "Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life," Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 62 (1976).
4. Woody Allen appears to have a different view. His list of the things that make life worth living at the end of Manhattan includes, for example "the crabs at Sam Woo's," which would seem to be on the level of chocolates. On the other hand, the crabs' appearance on the list may be taken to show that he regards the dish as an accomplishment meriting aesthetic appreciation, where such appreciation is a worthy activity in itself; in this respect, the crabs might be akin to other items on his list such as the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, Louis Armstrong's recording of "Potatohead Blues," and "those apples and pears of Cézanne." Strictly speaking, the appreciation of great chocolate might also qualify as such an activity.
5. See Wiggins, "Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life," p. 342.
6. This remark was made famous by John Stuart Mill, who quoted it in his essay on Bentham. See J. M. Robson, ed., Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 10 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), p. 113.
7. See Leo Tolstoy, "My Confession," in E. D. Klemke, ed., The Meaning of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
8. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Vintage Books, 1955).
9. Thomas Nagel, "The Absurd," in Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
10. I discuss this in my "Meaningful Lives in a Meaningless World," unpublished manuscript.
11. Richard Taylor, Good and Evil (New York: Macmillan, 1970).
12. See Joel Feinberg, Freedom and Fulfillment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), ch. 13.
13. Robert Nozick makes a similar suggestion in The Examined Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989). In addition to wanting happiness, Nozick writes, "[w]e also want this emotion of happiness to be fitting" (p. 112).
14. I explore this in "Meaningful Lives in a Meaningless World."
15. The relevant scale of worth, however, will itself be a matter of contention. As my examples have probably made clear, there is no reason to identify the relevant kind of worth here with moral worth.