Alienation, Engagement, and Welfare

The alienation constraint on theories of well-being has been influentially expressed thus: 'what is intrinsically valuable for a person must have a connection with what he would find in some degree compelling or attractive horizontal ellipsis . It would be an intolerably alienated conception of someone's good to imagine that it might fail in any such way to engage him'. Many agree this claim expresses something true, but there is little consensus on how exactly the constraint is to be understood. Here, I clarify the sense in which the quote offers a basic constraint on theories of well-being-a constraint that should be adopted by (e.g.) hedonists, desire satisfactionists, and objective list theorists alike. This constraint focuses on affective engagement, or positive affective stances in connection with a proposed good. I show that the constraint explains a near-universal intuition, and rules out a number of well-known theories of well-being.

Automated summary

The passage discusses the alienation constraint on theories of well-being and its significance in well-being theories. It emphasizes the connection between affective engagement and positive affective stances with the proposed good, and highlights the application of this constraint.