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Reflective Well-being and the Philosophical Tradition

Reflective Well-being and the Philosophical Tradition. Daniel Whistler Department of Philosophy. Flourishing in Philosophy. Central to a whole tradition of ethical thinking is the ancient Greek concept of ‘ eudaimonia ’ (happiness, fulfilment, success, flourishing, well-being)

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Reflective Well-being and the Philosophical Tradition

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  1. Reflective Well-being and the Philosophical Tradition Daniel Whistler Department of Philosophy

  2. Flourishing in Philosophy • Central to a whole tradition of ethical thinking is the ancient Greek concept of ‘eudaimonia’ (happiness, fulfilment, success, flourishing, well-being) • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: “living well and doing well” (1098b) Four properties are worth noting: • Long term • Messy • “The unexamined life is not worth living.” • But compatible with affliction?

  3. Assertion 1 Historicising well-being is inevitable, but a trap.

  4. Bernard Williams on Reflection • Reflection = a “general attempt to make the best sense of our life, and so of our intellectual activities, in the situation in which we find ourselves.” • Reflection takes account of “the contingencies that have nourished particular cultures, particular forms of living and particular natural languages.” (Gaita), i.e. society, history, politics and the body. • Post-analytic moral philosophy: Williams, Nussbaum, Gaita, Hamilton, Cottingham

  5. Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge • “Françoise brings him the news, ‘Mademoiselle Albertine has gone’... The news of her departure brings a reaction so powerful, an anguish so overwhelming, that... Marcel knows, and knows with certainty, without the least room for doubt, that he loves Albertine.” (p. 261) • “Proust tells us that the sort of knowledge of the heart we need in this case cannot be given us by the science of psychology, or, indeed, by any sort of scientific use of intellect. Knowledge of the heart must come from the heart – from and in its pains and longings, its emotional responses.” (pp. 261-2) • But still too solitary: “Knowledge of love is not a state or function of the solitary person at all, but a complex way of being, feeling and interacting with another person.” (p. 274)

  6. Assertion 2 Reflection must embrace the mess!

  7. Spinoza, On the Emendation of the Intellect “After experience had taught me that all things which regularly occur in ordinary life are empty and futile... I resolved at last to try to find out whether there was anything which would be the true good, capable of communicating itself... Whether there was something which, once found and acquired, would continuously give me the greatest joy to eternity.” (§1) The Many Facets of Emendation • Emendation of Propositional Content • Emendation of Epistemic Virtues • Emendation of Epistemic Pieties

  8. Assertion 3 Reflective well-being is not about what you say (for the most part), but how you say it. But how do you measure this???

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