Is There a Single Concept of Well-Being?
Is There a Single Concept of Well-Being?
Judgements of well-being across different circumstances and spheres of life exhibit a staggering diversity in the standards against which well-being is evaluated. This chapter considers three ways of interpreting this diversity: first, denying the legitimacy of this diversity by circumscribing the concept of well-being within a narrow domain of the most general evaluation (Circumscription); second, treating well-being as semantically invariant but differentially realisable (Differential Realisation); and third, allowing that the very meaning of well-being expressions varies with circumstances (Contextualism). A version of Contextualism is more defensible than Circusmcription and Differential Realisation and serves as a partial explanation of the diversity of well-being judgements.
Keywords: contextualism, well-being, differential realisation, circumscription, concept of well-being
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