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Realizing What Matters, Benjamin M. Yelle

Benjamin M Yelle

Two thoughts dominate much of the literature on well-being: “What is good for an individual depends upon what that individual is like” and “In some cases an individual is worse off because she is deprived of some putatively essential or basic good even if she cannot be brought to appreciate this fact.” This work is an attempt to capture both of these intuitions to a greater extent than prior theories of well-being. Many well-being theorists call the first thought “the subjective intuition” and consider the latter to concern our intuitions about “deprivation.” While many theories of well- being are able …