Defending a Hybrid of Objective List and Desire Theories of Well-Being

This chapter extends previous work by the author on a view of human well-being that is a hybrid of objective list theories and desire theories. Though some of the chapter’s content traverses old ground, much is new—not in terms of ultimate conclusions, but rather in terms of routes toward these ultimate conclusions and certain implications of these ultimate conclusions (e.g., implications concerning the measurement of well-being). There are two different visions of what human beings are that the author privileges and attempts to synthesize: first, a broadly Aristotelian vision that pushes us toward an objective list theory and, second, a vision of humans as unique individuals with different sets of intrinsic desires, where this desire-focused vision is itself informed by Jacques Lacan and his view that each human self is constituted by a particular and dynamic chains-of-signifiers-plus-desire-flow structure.