| dc.description.abstract | This doctoral dissertation is to address the question of the ground of well-being, that is the question of what makes a life good for the person who lives it (hereafter, W). Contemporary western philosophy has put forward various philosophical well-being theories to answer W, yet none of them so far successfully offers a convincing answer to it, despite the question has been discussed over decades. Not only that, the existing philosophical well-being theories are stuck in a stalemate of endless debate and are rejected by many scholars because of their inability in resolving the theoretical and practical issues of well-being. This dissertation tends to show that the problems of philosophical well-being theories are not caused by their theoretical flaws, instead, the source of their problems lies in the two hidden and deep-rooted presuppositions shared by all philosophical well-being theories.
These two presuppositions, namely assuming the elements of well-being as the ground of well-being, and assuming the elements of well-being as the noninstrumental values, have directed the western philosophy of well-being to focus too much energy on noninstrumental values. Since noninstrumental values by their nature are unable to function as the ground of well-being, as a result, philosophical well-being theories fail to provide promising explanations and guidance to address ordinary as well as scientific well-being issues. It is thus concluded that the existing traditional philosophical well-being theories should be rejected and replaced by alternative theories which do not explore W via the noninstrumental values approach.
After examining the latest three alternative theories of well-being, this dissertation argues that Alexandrova′s Middle Theory should be rejected, while Tiberius′ Value Fulfillment Theory and Bishop′s Network Theory should remain and further developed. Although these two accepted alternative theories are superior to the aforementioned traditional well-being theories, neither of them proposes a systematic account of the nature of value, nor do they develop an account of well-being dynamics in their theories as well, and these two components are considered crucial for providing a comprehensive answer to W.
To fill in the gap, this dissertation proposes a new alternative philosophical well-being theory, namely Continuity and Accumulation Well-Being Theory (hereafter, CAT) which aims at providing a new approach to investigating W. CAT has not only developed a systematic account of the nature of value, it has also formulated the forms of value from which the ground and the dynamic of well-being could be further inferred and developed. According to CAT, values are defined as resources that contribute to personal well-being; and W is answered in this way: a person’s life is good for the person who lives it if and only if the person is continuously realizing and accumulating those well-being values, of which the value forms are cumulative over time and spatially extensive to other values. | en_US |