The account of well-being most often used by economists and utilitarian moral philosophers is the desire account. Well-being is thought of in terms of the satisfaction of desires (or preferences). Desire-satisfaction has become the most commonly held interpretation of the concepts of ‘utility’ and ‘welfare’, though some do think of these ideas in terms of ‘happiness’ or ‘choice’. Others, notably Amartya Sen, have argued against this view of the quality of life. Sen has advocated an alternative view which gives particular importance to freedom or ‘capability’. This paper argues against both these views and advocates a variation of an account of the quality of life that is due to James Griffin. Griffin’s is a view of the good life that involved listing certain values- prudential values- that make a distinctively human life go better. The author’s suggestion is that Griffin’s views do better than the more plausible versions of the desire account because those versions make excessive demands on human knowledge and on the extent of human fellow-feeling.
