ABSTRACT
While ancient oriental cultural practices such as Buddhism, meditation and Yoga have long been widely recognised as significant and enduring purveyors of well-being over history, it wasn’t until the 4th century bc that Greek philosophers like Epicurus and Aristotle turned their attention to the ‘good life’, a topic which marks out the modern Western attitude to well-being which continues to the present day (see Francesconi, Chapter 29, and Jørgensen, Chapter 24, this volume).
