Hedonism and the Shape of a Life
Many philosophers have claimed that the value of a life for the person who lives it is not simply a matter of total amounts of good and evil in that life; the pattern in which those goods are distributed within the life also matters. This objection, if it were sound, would refute any axiological theory that contained a purely additive principle for the evaluation of lives. The forms of hedonism discussed in the book are all understood to contain such additive principles. Attempts to explain why the forms of attitudinal hedonism defended here are not refuted by the ‘shape of a life’ objection.
Keywords: aggregative principles, attitudinal hedonism, patterns of distribution, the shape of a life, Velleman
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