ABSTRACT
Our bodies know what well-being is. We recognise well-being in many different forms and nuances when it is present, and recognise its absence in suffering. When asked the question ‘how are you?’, if we take a moment, as human beings, we can sense very concretely our state of well-being or otherwise, even if we are not able to find the best words to say all of it. This experiential sense of well-being can be articulated in many different ways, as indicated by many chapters in this volume. The task of a previous chapter (Todres & Galvin, Chapter 8) introduced a theory of well-being as ‘Dwelling-mobility’, and attempted to capture the range of well-being experiences within a coherent existential whole. We asked the question: what is it about the essence of well-being that makes all kinds of well-being possible? Guided by Mugerauer (2008) and drawing on Heidegger’s later work on homecoming (for example, Heidegger, 1959/1966, 1969/1973, 1971/1993, 1971, 1977) we articulated the deepest experience of well-being as a unity of dwelling and mobility. In this earlier philosophically focused chapter we indicated how our well-being theory was inspired by a particular interpretation of Heidegger (Mugerauer, 2008), an interpretation that considers the trajectory of Heidegger’s work as a whole including both the continuities and discontinuities of his earlier and later works. This interpretation was central to our more applied concerns about the phenomenon of well-being. Here we also followed Heidegger in the Zollikon Seminars (Heidegger et al., 2000) in which an ontological level of analysis is seen to have important potentially practical ontic insights for our everyday lives. It is in this spirit that we have attempted to translate these ideas into its consequences for understanding human well-being and the practical implications this may have for caring science.
