120-660: Well-being , or wellbeing , also known as wellness , prudential value , prosperity or quality of life , is what is intrinsically valuable relative to someone. So the well-being of a person is what is ultimately good for this person, what is in the self-interest of this person. Well-being can refer to both positive and negative well-being. In its positive sense, it is sometimes contrasted with ill-being as its opposite. The term " subjective well-being " denotes how people experience and evaluate their lives, usually measured in relation to self-reported well-being obtained through questionnaires. Well-being has been traditionally treated as
240-556: A Mr Whitehorne and daughter of mercer Thomas Grove, of Andover. His wealthy family were supporters of the Tory party . He was reportedly a child prodigy: he was found as a toddler sitting at his father's desk reading a multi-volume history of England, and he began to study Latin at the age of three. He learnt to play the violin , and at the age of seven Bentham would perform sonatas by Handel during dinner parties. He had one surviving sibling, Samuel Bentham (1757–1831), with whom he
360-453: A case-by-case basis and may lead to unreasonably harsh penalties for crimes. Within the field of healthcare, quality of life is often regarded in terms of how a certain ailment affects a patient on an individual level. This may be a debilitating weakness that is not life-threatening; life-threatening illness that is not terminal; terminal illness; the predictable, natural decline in the health of an elder; an unforeseen mental/physical decline of
480-704: A causal network account of well-being in The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-being . The causal network account holds that well-being is the product of many factors—feelings, beliefs, motivations, habits, resources, etc.—that are causally related in ways that explain increases in well-being or ill-being. More recently causal network theories of ill-being have been applied to depression and digital technology. Network approaches have also been applied to mental health more generally. Diener 's tripartite model of subjective well-being
600-443: A clear criterion could be provided why all and only the items within their selections are relevant factors. Three subdisciplines in psychology are critical for the study of psychological well-being: According to Corey Keyes' five-component model, social well-being is constituted by the following factors: There are two approaches typically taken to understand psychological well-being: According to Guttman and Levy (1982) well-being
720-427: A complete legal code for the young country. After he learned more about American law and realised that most of it was state-based, he promptly wrote to the governors of every single state with the same offer. During his lifetime, Bentham's codification efforts were completely unsuccessful. Even today, they have been completely rejected by almost every common law jurisdiction, including England. However, his writings on
840-441: A comprehensive understanding of mental well-being. Gallup's wellbeing research finds that 33% of workers globally are thriving, 55% struggling and 11% suffering. Focusing on wellbeing as a political goal involves prioritizing citizens' overall quality of life, encompassing factors like health, education, and social harmony. It emphasizes policies that enhance happiness and fulfillment for a more holistic approach to governance. Both
960-548: A given city or nation. Two widely known measures of livability are the Economist Intelligence Unit 's Where-to-be-born Index and Mercer's Quality of Living Reports . These two measures calculate the livability of countries and cities around the world, respectively, through a combination of subjective life-satisfaction surveys and objective determinants of quality of life such as divorce rates, safety, and infrastructure. Such measures relate more broadly to
1080-600: A given society. The HDI is used by the United Nations Development Programme in their Human Development Report . However, since 2010, The Human Development Report introduced an Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI). While the original HDI remains useful, it stated that "the IHDI is the actual level of human development (accounting for inequality ), while the original HDI can be viewed as an index of 'potential' human development (or
1200-463: A guide for the use of subjective well-being metrics in 2013. In the U.S., cities and communities are using a GNH metric at a grassroots level. The Social Progress Index measures the extent to which countries provide for the social and environmental needs of their citizens. Fifty-two indicators in the areas of basic human needs, foundations of wellbeing, and opportunity show the relative performance of nations. The index uses outcome measures when there
1320-407: A human motive. Mill considered Bentham's view "to have done and to be doing very serious evil." In Mill's hands, "Benthamism" became a major element in the liberal conception of state policy objectives. Bentham's critics have claimed that he undermined the foundation of a free society by rejecting natural rights . Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote "The principle of the greatest happiness of
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#17327806742231440-524: A letter to the editor of the Morning Chronicle in March 1825, he wrote: I never have seen, nor ever can see, any objection to the putting of dogs and other inferior animals to pain, in the way of medical experiment, when that experiment has a determinate object, beneficial to mankind, accompanied with a fair prospect of the accomplishment of it. But I have a decided and insuperable objection to
1560-807: A loved one; or chronic, end-stage disease processes. Researchers at the University of Toronto's Quality of Life Research Unit define quality of life as "The degree to which a person enjoys the important possibilities of his or her life" (UofT). Their Quality of Life Model is based on the categories "being", "belonging", and "becoming"; respectively who one is, how one is connected to one's environment, and whether one achieves one's personal goals, hopes, and aspirations. Experience sampling studies show substantial between-person variability in within-person associations between somatic symptoms and quality of life. Hecht and Shiel measure quality of life as "the patient's ability to enjoy normal life activities" since life quality
1680-572: A means of helping to create full employment . He was also aware of the relevance of forced saving, propensity to consume , the saving-investment relationship, and other matters that form the content of modern income and employment analysis. His monetary view was close to the fundamental concepts employed in his model of utilitarian decision making. His work is considered to be an early precursor of modern welfare economics . Bentham stated that pleasures and pains can be ranked according to their value or "dimension" such as intensity, duration, certainty of
1800-437: A national or international scale, but rather attempt to improve the quality of life for individuals or communities. One example would be sponsorship programs that provide material aid for specific individuals. Although many organizations of this type may still talk about fighting poverty, the methods are significantly different. Improving quality of life involves action not only by NGOs but also by governments . Global health has
1920-503: A particular society. The different ways that quality of life is defined by institutions, therefore, shape how these organizations work for its improvement as a whole. Organisations such as the World Bank , for example, declare a goal of "working for a world free of poverty", with poverty defined as a lack of basic human needs, such as food, water, shelter, freedom, access to education, healthcare, or employment. In other words, poverty
2040-445: A pleasure or a pain. He was concerned with maxima and minima of pleasures and pains; and they set a precedent for the future employment of the maximisation principle in the economics of the consumer, the firm and the search for an optimum in welfare economics. Bentham advocated "Pauper Management" which involved the creation of a chain of large workhouses. Karl Marx described Bentham as "a genius of bourgeois stupidity". Bentham
2160-550: A pleasure-pain-balance or desire-satisfaction besides factors that are independent of the subject's attitudes, like friendship or having virtues. Objective list theories face the problem of explaining how subject-independent factors can determine a person's well-being even if this person does not care about these factors. Another objection concerns the selection of the specific factors included. Different theorists have provided very different combinations of basic objective goods. These groupings seem to constitute arbitrary selections unless
2280-514: A precondition for the formation of expectations. As the hedonic calculus shows "expectation utilities" to be much higher than natural ones, it follows that Bentham does not favour the sacrifice of a few to the benefit of the many. Law professor Alan Dershowitz has quoted Bentham to argue that torture should sometimes be permitted. Utilitarianism was revised and expanded by Bentham's student John Stuart Mill , who sharply criticised Bentham's view of human nature, which failed to recognise conscience as
2400-488: A range of disciplines and scales, and recent work on subjective well-being (SWB) surveys and the psychology of happiness have spurred renewed interest. Perhaps the most commonly used international measure of development is the Human Development Index (HDI), which combines measures of life expectancy, education, and standard of living, in an attempt to quantify the options available to individuals within
2520-595: A result, European and North American nations do not dominate this measure. The 2012 list is instead topped by Costa Rica , Vietnam and Colombia . In 2010, Gallup researchers trying to find the world's happiest countries found Denmark to be at the top of the list. For the period 2014–2016, Norway surpasses Denmark to be at the top of the list. A 2010 study by two Princeton University professors looked at 1,000 randomly selected U.S. residents over an extended period. It concludes that their life evaluations – that is, their considered evaluations of their life against
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#17327806742232640-615: A result, standard of living should not be taken to be a measure of happiness. Also, sometimes considered related is the concept of human security , though the latter may be considered at a more basic level and for all people. Unlike per capita GDP or standard of living , both of which can be measured in financial terms, it is harder to make objective or long-term measurements of the quality of life experienced by nations or other groups of people. Researchers have begun in recent times to distinguish two aspects of personal well-being: Emotional well-being , in which respondents are asked about
2760-464: A site at Tothill Fields, near Westminster . Although this was common land, with no landowner, there were a number of parties with interests in it, including Earl Grosvenor , who owned a house on an adjacent site and objected to the idea of a prison overlooking it. Again, therefore, the scheme ground to a halt At this point, however, it became clear that a nearby site at Millbank , adjoining the Thames ,
2880-454: A small number of managers to oversee the activities of a large and unskilled workforce. Bentham began to develop this model, particularly as applicable to prisons, and outlined his ideas in a series of letters sent home to his father in England. He supplemented the supervisory principle with the idea of contract management ; that is, an administration by contract as opposed to trust, where
3000-428: A society. He calls for legislators to determine whether punishment creates an even more evil offence. Instead of suppressing the evil acts, Bentham argues that certain unnecessary laws and punishments could ultimately lead to new and more dangerous vices than those being punished to begin with, and calls upon legislators to measure the pleasures and pains associated with any legislation and to form laws in order to create
3120-525: A stated scale of one to ten – rise steadily with income. On the other hand, their reported quality of emotional daily experiences (their reported experiences of joy , affection , stress , sadness , or anger ) levels off after a certain income level (approximately $ 75,000 per year in 2010); income above $ 75,000 does not lead to more experiences of happiness nor to further relief of unhappiness or stress. Below this income level, respondents reported decreasing happiness and increasing sadness and stress, implying
3240-527: A variable ranging from none to a high degree of well-being. This usage of well-being has in later times been widened to also include a negative aspect. With the aim of understanding how different route environmental variables affect the wellbeing during walking or cycling, the term "environmental unwellbeing" has been coined. Different forms of well-being, such as mental, physical, economic, or emotional are often closely interlinked. For example, improved physical well-being (e.g., by reducing or ceasing an addiction)
3360-553: A world without sentient beings. In this sense, welfarists may agree that the cited examples are valuable in some form but disagree that they are intrinsically valuable . Some authors see welfarism as including the ethical thesis that morality fundamentally depends on well-being. On this view, welfarism is also committed to the consequentialist claim that actions, policies, or rules should be evaluated based on how their consequences affect everyone's well-being. Research on positive psychology, well-being, eudaimonia and happiness, and
3480-402: A yearly study on digital well-being across 121 countries created by Surfshark . It indexes each country according to five pillars that impact a population's digital quality of life: internet affordability, internet quality, electronic infrastructure, electronic security, and electronic government. The term quality of life is also used by politicians and economists to measure the livability of
3600-458: Is PERMA : Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and purpose, and Accomplishments. It is a mnemonic for the five elements of Martin Seligman's well-being theory: The Biomedical approach was challenged by George Engel in 1977 as it gave little importance to various factors like beliefs, upbringing , trauma, etc. and put main emphasis on biology. The biopsychosocial model replaces
3720-433: Is "...a special case of attitude". This approach serves two purposes in the study of well-being: "developing and testing a [systematic] theory for the structure of [interrelationships] among varieties of well-being, and integration of well-being theory with the ongoing cumulative theory development in the fields of attitude of related research". Many different models have been developed. Philosopher Michael Bishop developed
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3840-935: Is "...based on the idea that how each person thinks and feels about his or her life is important". Carol Ryff 's multidimensional model of psychological well-being has philosophical foundation based on Aristotle's eudaimonia. It postulates six factors which are key for well-being with smaller subsections for each minor school of thought: According to Corey Keyes , who collaborated with Carol Ryff, mental well-being has three components, namely emotional or subjective well-being (also called hedonic well-being), psychological well-being, and social well-being (together also called eudaimonic well-being). Emotional well-being concerns subjective aspects of well-being, in concreto, feeling well, whereas psychological and social well-being concerns skills, abilities, and psychological and social functioning. Keyes' model of mental well-being has received extensive empirical support across cultures. Well-being
3960-718: Is a central concept in positive psychology . Positive psychology is concerned with eudaimonia , "the good life", reflection about what holds the greatest value in life – the factors that contribute the most to a well-lived and fulfilling life. While not attempting a strict definition of the good life, positive psychologists agree that one must live a happy , engaged, and meaningful life in order to experience "the good life". Martin Seligman referred to "the good life" as "using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification". In Flourish (2011) Seligman argued that "meaningful life" can be considered as five different categories. The resulting acronym
4080-423: Is a matter of amusement to see a dog or a horse suffer, it should not be matter of like amusement to see a man suffer; seeing, as I do, how much more morality as well as intelligence, an adult quadruped of those and many other species has in him, than any biped has for some months after he has been brought into existence; nor does it appear to me how it should be, that a person to whom the production of pain, either in
4200-481: Is a theory of value based on well-being. It states that well-being is the only thing that has intrinsic value , i.e. that is good in itself and not just good as a means to something else. On this view, the value of a situation or whether one alternative is better than another only depends on the degrees of well-being of each entity affected. All other factors are relevant to value only to the extent that they have an impact on someone's well-being. The well-being in question
4320-433: Is also scientifically dependent on endogenous molecules that impact feelings of happiness such as dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin, cortisol and more "Well-being related markers" or "Well-being bio markers" play an important role in the regulation of an organism's metabolism, and when not working in proper order can lead to malfunction. Well-being is the central subject of positive psychology , which aims to discover
4440-763: Is associated with improved emotional well-being. And better economic well-being (e.g., possessing more wealth) tends to be associated with better emotional well-being even in adverse situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic . Well-being plays a central role in ethics since what a person ought to do depends, at least to some degree, on what would make someone's life get better or worse. According to welfarism , there are no other values besides well-being. The terms well-being, pleasure , and happiness are used in overlapping ways in everyday language, but their meanings tend to come apart in technical contexts like philosophy or psychology. Pleasure refers to experience that feels good and
4560-421: Is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason ? nor, Can they talk ? but, Can they suffer ? Earlier in the paragraph, Bentham makes clear that he accepted that animals could be killed for food, or in defence of human life, provided that
4680-418: Is considered as the "Father of Utilitarianism". His ambition in life was to create a "Pannomion", a complete utilitarian code of law. He not only proposed many legal and social reforms, but also expounded an underlying moral principle on which they should be based. This philosophy of utilitarianism took for its "fundamental axiom" to be the notion that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that
4800-485: Is defined as a low quality of life. Using this definition, the World Bank works towards improving quality of life through the stated goal of lowering poverty and helping people afford a better quality of life. Other organizations, however, may also work towards improved global quality of life using a slightly different definition and substantially different methods. Many NGOs do not focus at all on reducing poverty on
4920-417: Is essential to all forms of well-being. Hedonistic theories equate well-being with the balance of pleasure over pain. Desire theories hold that well-being consists in desire-satisfaction: the higher the number of satisfied desires, the higher the well-being. Objective list theories state that a person's well-being depends on a list of factors that may include both subjective and objective elements. Well-being
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5040-416: Is one of the most comprehensive models of well-being in psychology. It was synthesized by Diener in 1984, positing "three distinct but often related components of wellbeing: frequent positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and cognitive evaluations such as life satisfaction". Cognitive, affective and contextual factors contribute to subjective well-being. According to Diener and Suh, subjective well-being
5160-575: Is strongly related to wellbeing without suffering from sickness and treatment. There are multiple assessments available that measure Health-Related Quality of Life, e.g., AQoL-8D , EQ5D – Euroqol , 15D , SF-36 , SF-6D , HUI . Quality of life has been deemed an important concept in the field of international development because it allows development to be analyzed on a measure that is generally accepted as more comprehensive than standard of living. Within development theory , however, there are varying ideas concerning what constitutes desirable change for
5280-720: Is sufficient data available or the closest possible proxies. Day-Reconstruction Method was another way of measuring happiness, in which researchers asked their subjects to recall various things they did on the previous day and describe their mood during each activity. Being simple and approachable, this method required memory and the experiments have confirmed that the answers that people give are similar to those who repeatedly recalled each subject. The method eventually declined as it called for more effort and thoughtful responses, which often included interpretations and outcomes that do not occur to people who are asked to record every action in their daily lives. The Digital Quality of Life Index -
5400-505: Is suggested that the value of experiences only depends on their duration and the intensity of pleasure or pain present in them. Various counterexamples have been formulated against this view. They usually involve cases where lower aggregate pleasure are intuitively preferable, for example, that the intellectual or aesthetic pleasures are superior to sensory pleasures or that it would be unwise to enter Robert Nozick 's experience machine . These counter-examples are not necessarily conclusive, yet
5520-424: Is the measure of right and wrong . Bentham claimed to have borrowed this concept from the writings of Joseph Priestley , although the closest that Priestley in fact came to expressing it was in the form "the good and happiness of the members, that is the majority of the members of any state, is the great standard by which every thing [ sic ] relating to that state must finally be determined." Bentham
5640-452: Is the subjective state of mind. By using that mentality, citizens of a developing country appreciate more since they are content with the basic necessities of health care, education and child protection. According to ecological economist Robert Costanza : While Quality of Life (QOL) has long been an explicit or implicit policy goal, adequate definition and measurement have been elusive. Diverse "objective" and "subjective" indicators across
5760-412: Is usually not restricted to human well-being but includes animal well-being as well. Different versions of welfarism offer different interpretations of the exact relation between well-being and value. Pure welfarists offer the simplest approach by holding that only the overall well-being matters, for example, as the sum total of everyone's well-being. This position has been criticized in various ways. On
5880-424: Is usually seen as one constituent of well-being. But there may be other factors, such as health, virtue, knowledge or the fulfillment of desires. Happiness for example, often seen either as "the individual's balance of pleasant over unpleasant experience" or as the state of being satisfied with one's life as a whole, is also commonly taken to be a constituent of well-being. Theories of well-being try to determine what
6000-538: Is well-being. But they allow aspects of well-being other than its overall degree to have an impact on value, e.g. how well-being is distributed. Pure welfarists sometimes argue against this approach since it seems to stray away from the core principle of welfarism: that only well-being is intrinsically valuable. But the distribution of well-being is a relation between entities and therefore not intrinsic to any of them. Some objections based on counterexamples are directed against all forms of welfarism. They often focus on
6120-466: Is worthwhile, our day to day emotional experiences (happiness and anxiety) and our wider mental wellbeing. The ONS then introduced four questions pertaining to wellbeing in their 2011 national survey of the UK population, relating to evaluative well-being, eudemonic well-being, and positive and negative affect. They later switched to referring to the construct being measured as "personal well-being". Welfarism
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#17327806742236240-779: The Magna Carta as important, citing it to argue that the treatment of convicts in Australia was unlawful. Bentham was also a sharp critic of legal fictions . Bentham's students included his secretary and collaborator James Mill , the latter's son, John Stuart Mill , the legal philosopher John Austin and American writer and activist John Neal . He "had considerable influence on the reform of prisons, schools, poor laws, law courts, and Parliament itself." On his death in 1832, Bentham left instructions for his body to be first dissected and then to be permanently preserved as an " auto-icon " (or self-image), which would be his memorial. This
6360-444: The broken windows theory , which asserts that relatively minor problems left unattended (such as litter, graffiti , or public urination by homeless individuals) send a subliminal message that disorder, in general, is being tolerated, and as a result, more serious crimes will end up being committed (the analogy being that a broken window left broken shows an image of general dilapidation). Wilson's theories have been used to justify
6480-406: The felicific calculus , Bentham proposed a classification of 12 pains and 14 pleasures, by which we might test the " happiness factor " of any action. For Bentham, according to P. J. Kelly, the law "provides the basic framework of social interaction by delimiting spheres of personal inviolability within which individuals can form and pursue their own conceptions of well-being". It provides security,
6600-535: The moral status of any action, which he called the hedonistic or felicific calculus . Principle of utility The principle of utility, or " greatest happiness principle ", forms the cornerstone of all Bentham's thought. By "happiness", he understood a predominance of "pleasure" over "pain". He wrote in An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation : Nature has placed mankind under
6720-641: The American colonies published their Declaration of Independence in July 1776, the British government did not issue any official response but instead secretly commissioned London lawyer and pamphleteer John Lind to publish a rebuttal. His 130-page tract was distributed in the colonies and contained an essay titled "Short Review of the Declaration" written by Bentham, a friend of Lind, which attacked and mocked
6840-528: The Americans' political philosophy . In 1786 and 1787, Bentham travelled to Krichev in White Russia (modern Belarus ) to visit his brother, Samuel , who was engaged in managing various industrial and other projects for Prince Potemkin . It was Samuel (as Jeremy later repeatedly acknowledged) who conceived the basic idea of a circular building at the hub of a larger compound as a means of allowing
6960-571: The Biomedical model of wellbeing. The Biopsychosocial model of well being emphasises the modifiable components needed for an individual to have a sense of wellbeing. These are: The UK ONS defines wellbeing: as having 10 broad dimensions which have been shown to matter most to people in the UK as identified through a national debate. The dimensions are: Personal well-being is a particularly important dimension which we define as how satisfied we are with our lives, our sense that what we do in life
7080-649: The Human Development Index, the PQLI is notable for Morris's attempt to show a "less fatalistic pessimistic picture" by focusing on three areas where global quality of life was generally improving at the time, while ignoring gross national product and other possible indicators that were not improving. The Happy Planet Index , introduced in 2006, is unique among quality of life measures in that, in addition to standard determinants of well-being, it uses each country's ecological footprint as an indicator. As
7200-496: The Italian concept benessere . The well-being of a person is what is good for the person. Theories of well-being try to determine which features of a state are responsible for this state contributing to the person's well-being. Theories of well-being are often classified into hedonistic theories , desire theories, and objective list theories . Hedonistic theories and desire theories are subjective theories. According to them,
7320-579: The National Colonization Society's 'Proposal'. In 1823, he co-founded The Westminster Review with James Mill as a journal for the " Philosophical Radicals "—a group of younger disciples through whom Bentham exerted considerable influence in British public life. One was John Bowring , to whom Bentham became devoted, describing their relationship as "son and father": he appointed Bowring political editor of The Westminster Review and eventually his literary executor . Another
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#17327806742237440-540: The UK and New Zealand have begun to focus on population well-being within their political aims. The United States has taken actions designed to improve the health of citizens regarding issues with the COVID-19 pandemic and racism. Quality of life Quality of life ( QOL ) is defined by the World Health Organization as "an individual's perception of their position in life in the context of
7560-493: The agent. Desire theorists have tried to avoid this objection by holding that what matters are not actual desires but the desires the agent would have if she was fully informed. Thus, desire theories can incorporate what is plausible about subjective theories of well-being with the lack of personal bias of objective list theories. Objective list theories state that a person's well-being depends on many different basic objective goods. These goods often include subjective factors like
7680-427: The animal was not made to suffer unnecessarily. Bentham did not object to medical experiments on animals , providing that the experiments had in mind a particular goal of benefit to humanity, and had a reasonable chance of achieving that goal. He wrote that otherwise he had a "decided and insuperable objection" to causing pain to animals, in part because of the harmful effects such practices might have on human beings. In
7800-400: The caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse ? But a full-grown horse or dog,
7920-419: The country seat of his patron Lord Lansdowne , he had passed his time at falling unsuccessfully in love with all the ladies of the house, whom he courted with a clumsy jocularity, while playing chess with them or giving them lessons on the harpsichord . Hopeful to the last, at the age of eighty he wrote again to one of them, recalling to her memory the far-off days when she had "presented him, in ceremony, with
8040-525: The criterion by which we judge who ought to have rights, human infants and adults with certain forms of disability might fall short, too. In 1780, alluding to the limited degree of legal protection afforded to slaves in the French West Indies by the Code Noir , he wrote: The day has been, I am sad to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under
8160-419: The culture and value systems in which they live and in relation to their goals, expectations, standards and concerns". Standard indicators of the quality of life include wealth , employment , the environment , physical and mental health , education , recreation and leisure time , social belonging , religious beliefs , safety , security and freedom . QOL has a wide range of contexts, including
8280-487: The decriminalising of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery , capital punishment , and physical punishment , including that of children. He has also become known as an early advocate of animal rights . Though strongly in favour of the extension of individual legal rights , he opposed the idea of natural law and natural rights (both of which are considered "divine" or "God-given" in origin), calling them "nonsense upon stilts". However, he viewed
8400-502: The degree of well-being of a person depends on the subjective mental states and attitudes of this person. Objective list theories, on the other hand, allow that things can benefit a person independent of that person's subjective attitudes towards these things. For hedonistic theories , the relevant mental states are experiences of pleasure and pain. One example of such an account can be found in Jeremy Bentham 's works, where it
8520-445: The denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing, as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason a human being should be abandoned without redress to
8640-461: The director would have a pecuniary interest in lowering the average rate of mortality. The Panopticon was intended to be cheaper than the prisons of his time, as it required fewer staff; "Allow me to construct a prison on this model", Bentham requested to a Committee for the Reform of Criminal Law, "I will be the gaoler . You will see ... that the gaoler will have no salary—will cost nothing to
8760-534: The entire Democracy or Commons of the United Kingdom". Describing himself, among the names mentioned which also included Sir Francis Burdett , George Ensor , and Sir Matthew Wood , and as a "nonentity", Bentham declined the offer. On 3 August 1831 the Committee of the National Colonization Society approved the printing of its proposal to establish a free colony on the south coast of Australia, funded by
8880-416: The factors that contribute to human well-being. Martin Seligman , for example, suggests that these factors consist in having positive emotions , being engaged in an activity, having good relationships with other people, finding meaning in one's life and a sense of accomplishment in the pursuit of one's goals. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the term well-being to a 16th-century calque of
9000-485: The fields of international development , healthcare , politics and employment. Health related QOL (HRQOL) is an evaluation of QOL and its relationship with health. One approach, called the engaged theory , outlined in the journal of Applied Research in the Quality of Life , posits four domains in assessing quality of life: ecology, economics, politics and culture. In the domain of culture, for example, it includes
9120-482: The final score. Happiness is already recognized as an important concept in global public policy. The World Happiness Report indicates that some regions have in recent years been experiencing progressive inequality of happiness. The Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) is a measure developed by sociologist M. D. Morris in the 1970s, based on basic literacy, infant mortality, and life expectancy. Although not as complex as other measures, and now essentially replaced by
9240-400: The flower in the green lane" [citing Bentham's memoirs]. To the end of his life he could not hear of Bowood without tears swimming in his eyes, and he was forced to exclaim, "Take me forward, I entreat you, to the future—do not let me go back to the past." A psychobiographical study by Philip Lucas and Anne Sheeran argues that he may have had Asperger's syndrome . Bentham's daily pattern
9360-439: The following subdomains of quality of life: Under this conception, other frequently related concepts include freedom , human rights , and happiness . However, since happiness is subjective and difficult to measure, other measures are generally given priority. It has also been shown that happiness, as much as it can be measured, does not necessarily increase correspondingly with the comfort that results from increasing income. As
9480-404: The governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think.… Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation focuses on
9600-442: The greatest good for the greatest number. He argues that the concept of the individual pursuing his or her own happiness cannot be necessarily declared "right", because often these individual pursuits can lead to greater pain and less pleasure for a society as a whole. Therefore, the legislation of a society is vital to maintain the maximum pleasure and the minimum degree of pain for the greatest number of people. In his exposition of
9720-490: The greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law , and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism . He advocated individual and economic freedoms , the separation of church and state , freedom of expression , equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and (in an unpublished essay)
9840-505: The greatest number was as inimical to the idea of liberty as to the idea of rights." Bentham's "hedonistic" theory (a term from J. J. C. Smart ) is often criticised for lacking a principle of fairness embodied in a conception of justice . In Bentham and the Common Law Tradition , Gerald J. Postema states: "No moral concept suffers more at Bentham's hand than the concept of justice. There is no sustained, mature analysis of
9960-552: The idea of a panopticon. Bentham, now aged 63, was still willing to be governor. However, as it became clear that there was still no real commitment to the proposal, he abandoned hope, and instead turned his attentions to extracting financial compensation for his years of fruitless effort. His initial claim was for the enormous sum of nearly £700,000, but he eventually settled for the more modest (but still considerable) sum of £23,000. The Penitentiary House, etc. Act 1812 [ d ] ( 52 Geo. 3 . c. 44) transferred his title in
10080-409: The idea that there are things other than well-being that have intrinsic value. Putative examples include the value of beauty, virtue, or justice. Such arguments are often rejected by welfarists holding that the cited things would not be valuable if they had no relation to well-being. This is often extended to a positive argument in favor of welfarism based on the claim that nothing would be good or bad in
10200-762: The implementation of zero tolerance policies by many prominent American mayors , most notably Oscar Goodman in Las Vegas , Richard Riordan in Los Angeles , Rudolph Giuliani in New York City and Gavin Newsom in San Francisco . Such policies refuse to tolerate even minor crimes; proponents argue that this will improve the quality of life of local residents. However, critics of zero tolerance policies believe that such policies neglect investigation on
10320-440: The legislation of a society. In order to measure the extent of pain or pleasure that a certain decision will create, he lays down a set of criteria divided into the categories of intensity , duration , certainty , proximity , productiveness , purity , and extent . Using these measurements, he reviews the concept of punishment and when it should be used as far as whether a punishment will create more pleasure or more pain for
10440-537: The maximum level of HDI) that could be achieved if there was no inequality." The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey on the state of global happiness. It ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, reflecting growing global interest in using happiness and substantial well-being as an indicator of the quality of human development. Its growing purpose has allowed governments, communities and organizations to use appropriate data to record happiness in order to enable policies to provide better lives. The reports review
10560-436: The nation." As the watchmen cannot be seen, they need not be on duty at all times, effectively leaving the watching to the watched. According to Bentham's design, the prisoners would also be used as menial labour, walking on wheels to spin looms or run a water wheel . This would decrease the cost of the prison and give a possible source of income. The ultimately abortive proposal for a panopticon prison to be built in England
10680-712: The notion." Thus, some critics object, it would be acceptable to torture one person if this would produce an amount of happiness in other people outweighing the unhappiness of the tortured individual. However, as P. J. Kelly argued in Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law , Bentham had a theory of justice that prevented such consequences. Bentham's opinions about monetary economics were completely different from those of David Ricardo ; however, they had some similarities to those of Henry Thornton . He focused on monetary expansion as
10800-401: The one hand, it has been argued that some forms of well-being, like sensory pleasures, are less valuable than other forms of well-being, like intellectual pleasures. On the other hand, certain intuitions indicate that what matters is not just the sum total but also how the individual degrees of well-being are distributed. There is a tendency to prefer equal distributions where everyone has roughly
10920-401: The overarching roles of defense and diplomacy. Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham ( / ˈ b ɛ n θ ə m / ; 4 February 1747/8 O.S. [15 February 1748 N.S. ] – 6 June 1832) was an English philosopher , jurist , and social reformer regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism . Bentham defined as the "fundamental axiom " of his philosophy the principle that "it is
11040-447: The pain of life's misfortunes, including disease , divorce , and being alone , is exacerbated by poverty . Gross national happiness and other subjective measures of happiness are being used by the governments of Bhutan and the United Kingdom. The World Happiness report, issued by Columbia University is a meta-analysis of happiness globally and provides an overview of countries and grassroots activists using GNH. The OECD issued
11160-468: The panopticon was paradigmatic of several 19th-century " disciplinary " institutions. Bentham remained bitter throughout his later life about the rejection of the panopticon scheme, convinced that it had been thwarted by the King and an aristocratic elite. Philip Schofield argues that it was largely because of his sense of injustice and frustration that he developed his ideas of "sinister interest"—that is, of
11280-470: The population of a city, state, or country, not to individual quality of life. Livability has a long history and tradition in urban design , and neighborhoods design standards such as LEED-ND are often used in an attempt to influence livability. Some crimes against property (e.g., graffiti and vandalism ) and some " victimless crimes " have been referred to as "quality-of-life crimes". American sociologist James Q. Wilson encapsulated this argument as
11400-444: The potential to achieve greater political presence if governments were to incorporate aspects of human security into foreign policy . Stressing individuals' basic rights to health, food, shelter, and freedom addresses prominent inter-sectoral problems negatively impacting today's society, and may lead to greater action and resources. Integration of global health concerns into foreign policy may be hampered by approaches that are shaped by
11520-442: The principle of utility and how this view of morality ties into legislative practices. His principle of utility regards good as that which produces the greatest amount of pleasure and the minimum amount of pain and evil as that which produces the most pain without the pleasure. This concept of pleasure and pain is defined by Bentham as physical as well as spiritual. Bentham writes about this principle as it manifests itself within
11640-530: The prison built: when finished, it would be managed by himself as contractor-governor, with the assistance of Samuel. After unsuccessful attempts to interest the authorities in Ireland and revolutionary France, he started trying to persuade the prime minister, William Pitt , to revive an earlier abandoned scheme for a National Penitentiary in England, this time to be built as a panopticon. He was eventually successful in winning over Pitt and his advisors, and in 1794
11760-464: The proponent of hedonistic theories faces the challenge of explaining why common-sense misleads us in the problematic cases. Desire theories can avoid some of the problems of hedonistic theories by holding that well-being consists in desire-satisfaction: the higher the number of satisfied desires, the higher the well-being. One problem for some versions of desire theory is that not all desires are good: some desires may even have terrible consequences for
11880-437: The putting of them to pain without any such view. To my apprehension, every act by which, without prospect of preponderant good, pain is knowingly and willingly produced in any being whatsoever, is an act of cruelty; and, like other bad habits, the more the correspondent habit is indulged in, the stronger it grows, and the more frequently productive of its bad fruit. I am unable to comprehend how it should be, that to him to whom it
12000-433: The quality of their everyday emotional experiences – the frequency and intensity of their experiences of, for example, joy, stress, sadness, anger and affection – and life evaluation , in which respondents are asked to think about their life in general and evaluate it against a scale. Such and other systems and scales of measurement have been in use for some time. Research has attempted to examine
12120-415: The relationship between quality of life and productivity. There are many different methods of measuring quality of life in terms of health care, wealth, and materialistic goods. However, it is much more difficult to measure meaningful expression of one's desires. One way to do so is to evaluate the scope of how individuals have fulfilled their own ideals. Quality of life can simply mean happiness , which
12240-622: The revolutionary discourse of natural rights and of the violence that arose after the Jacobins took power (1792). Between 1808 and 1810, he held a personal friendship with Latin American revolutionary Francisco de Miranda and paid visits to Miranda's Grafton Way house in London. He also developed links with José Cecilio del Valle . In 1821, John Cartwright proposed to Bentham that they serve as "Guardians of Constitutional Reform", seven "wise men" whose reports and observations would "concern
12360-694: The sale of appropriated colonial lands, overseen by a joint-stock company, and which would be granted powers of self-government as soon as was practicable. Contrary to assumptions, Bentham had no hand in the preparation of the 'Proposal to His Majesty's Government for founding a colony on the Southern Coast of Australia, which was prepared under the auspices of Robert Gouger , Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey , and Anthony Bacon . Bentham did, however, in August 1831, draft an unpublished work entitled 'Colonization Company Proposal', which constitutes his commentary upon
12480-484: The same degree instead of unequal distributions where there is a great divide between happy and unhappy people, even if the overall well-being is the same. Another intuition concerning the distribution is that people who deserve well-being, like the morally upright, should enjoy higher degrees of well-being than the undeserving. These criticisms are addressed by another version of welfarism: impure welfarism . Impure welfarists agree with pure welfarists that all that matters
12600-696: The site to the Crown. More successful was his cooperation with Patrick Colquhoun in tackling the corruption in the Pool of London . This resulted in the Depredations on the Thames Act 1800 ( 39 & 40 Geo. 3 . c. 87) The Act created the Thames River Police , which was the first preventive police force in the country and was a precedent for Robert Peel 's reforms 30 years later. Bentham
12720-689: The state of happiness in the world today and show how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness. Developed again by the United Nations and published recently along with the HDI, this report combines both objective and subjective measures to rank countries by happiness, which is deemed as the ultimate outcome of a high quality of life. It uses surveys from Gallup , real GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on, perceived freedom to make life choices, freedom from corruption, and generosity to derive
12840-462: The subject laid the foundation for the moderately successful codification work of David Dudley Field II in the United States a generation later. Bentham is widely regarded as one of the earliest proponents of animal rights . He argued and believed that the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, should be the benchmark, or what he called the "insuperable line". If reason alone were
12960-563: The theories of Diener, Ryff, Keyes and Seligmann covers a broad range of levels and topics, including "the biological, personal, relational, institutional, cultural, and global dimensions of life". The World Happiness Report series provide annual updates on the global status of subjective well-being . A global study using data from 166 nations, provided a country ranking of psycho-social well-being. The latter study showed that subjective well-being and psycho-social well-being (i.e. eudaimonia) measures capture distinct constructs and are both needed for
13080-427: The vested interests of the powerful conspiring against a wider public interest—which underpinned many of his broader arguments for reform. On his return to England from Russia, Bentham had commissioned drawings from an architect, Willey Reveley . In 1791, he published the material he had written as a book, although he continued to refine his proposals for many years to come. He had by now decided that he wanted to see
13200-630: Was Edwin Chadwick , who wrote on hygiene, sanitation, and policing and was a major contributor to the Poor Law Amendment Act : Bentham employed Chadwick as a secretary and bequeathed him a large legacy. Bentham had several infatuations with women, and wrote on sex. He never married. An insight into his character is given in Michael St. John Packe's The Life of John Stuart Mill : During his youthful visits to Bowood House ,
13320-412: Was a rare major figure in the history of philosophy to endorse psychological egoism . He was also a determined opponent of religion, as Crimmins observes: "Between 1809 and 1823 Jeremy Bentham carried out an exhaustive examination of religion with the declared aim of extirpating religious beliefs, even the idea of religion itself, from the minds of men." Bentham also suggested a procedure for estimating
13440-504: Was available for sale, and this time things ran more smoothly. Using government money, Bentham bought the land on behalf of the Crown for £12,000 in November 1799. From his point of view, the site was far from ideal, being marshy, unhealthy, and too small. When he asked the government for more land and more money, however, the response was that he should build only a small-scale experimental prison—which he interpreted as meaning that there
13560-406: Was close. He attended Westminster School ; in 1760, at age 12, his father sent him to The Queen's College, Oxford , where he completed his bachelor's degree in 1764, receiving the title of MA in 1767. He trained as a lawyer and, though he never practised, was called to the bar in 1769. He became deeply frustrated with the complexity of English law, which he termed the "Demon of Chicane". When
13680-614: Was done, and the auto-icon is now on public display in the entrance of the Student Centre at University College London (UCL). Because of his arguments in favour of the general availability of education, he has been described as the "spiritual founder" of UCL. However, he played only a limited direct part in its foundation. Bentham was born on 4 February 1747/8 O.S. [15 February 1748 N.S. ] in Houndsditch , London , to attorney Jeremiah Bentham and Alicia Woodward, widow of
13800-491: Was in correspondence with many influential people. In the 1780s, for example, Bentham maintained a correspondence with the ageing Adam Smith , in an unsuccessful attempt to convince Smith that interest rates should be allowed to freely float. As a result of his correspondence with Mirabeau and other leaders of the French Revolution , Bentham was declared an honorary citizen of France. He was an outspoken critic of
13920-445: Was little real commitment to the concept of the panopticon as a cornerstone of penal reform Negotiations continued, but in 1801 Pitt resigned from office, and in 1803 the new Addington administration decided not to proceed with the project. Bentham was devastated: "They have murdered my best days." Nevertheless, a few years later the government revived the idea of a National Penitentiary, and in 1811 and 1812 returned specifically to
14040-457: Was one among his many proposals for legal and social reform. But Bentham spent some sixteen years of his life developing and refining his ideas for the building and hoped that the government would adopt the plan for a National Penitentiary appointing him as contractor-governor. Although the prison was never built, the concept had an important influence on later generations of thinkers. Twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that
14160-439: Was paid £2,000 for preliminary work on the project.< The intended site was one that had been authorised (under an act of 1779 ) for the earlier penitentiary, at Battersea Rise; but the new proposals ran into technical legal problems and objections from the local landowner, Earl Spencer . Other sites were considered, including one at Hanging Wood, near Woolwich , but all proved unsatisfactory. Eventually Bentham turned to
14280-432: Was the first person to be an aggressive advocate for the codification of all of the common law into a coherent set of statutes; he was actually the person who coined the verb "to codify" to refer to the process of drafting a legal code. He lobbied hard for the formation of codification commissions in both England and the United States, and went so far as to write to President James Madison in 1811 to volunteer to write
14400-533: Was to rise at 6 am, walk for 2 hours or more, and then work until 4 pm. The Faculty of Laws at University College London occupies Bentham House, next to the main UCL campus. Bentham's name was adopted by the Australian litigation funder IMF Limited to become Bentham IMF Limited on 28 November 2013, in recognition of Bentham being "among the first to support the utility of litigation funding". Bentham today
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