The Worst Things in Life

What is it about?

One important test of adequacy for a theory of welfare is completeness. To be complete a theory must cover ill-being as well as well-being. Call this the ill-being test for a theory. My aim in this paper is to determine how well equipped the leading theories of welfare are to pass this test. I reach three modest conclusions: (1) passing the test is not straightforward for any theory; (2) on the whole, subjective theories do better than objective ones; (3) within the subjective category experiential theories do better than desire theories.

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