ABSTRACT

It is generally assumed that in all of this Aristotle is talking about what we call “well-being.” Other expressions now used to express the same concept are “welfare” and “prudential value.” It is a concept that we employ when we talk about what is in someone’s interest, or what benefits him, or what is to his advantage, or what is good for him. Someone’s well-being or welfare, we assume, is non-instrumentally beneficial or advantageous. If someone acquires what is beneficial only when used as a means to something else, that acquisition does not by itself increase his well-being. How much well-being he has (more colloquially: how well off he is) is a matter of how he is faring with respect to what is non-instrumentally good for him. Well-being is not one benefit among others, but an overall measure of how someone is faring with respect to what is non-instrumentally good for him.