Welfare, Meaning, and Worth

Aaron Smuts is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rhode Island College, USA. He is the author of Philosophy of Film: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, forthcoming).

• 1. Introduction2. Five Test for Lives Worth Living 3. An Objective List Theory of Worth4. A Mental Statist Account of Welfare5. The Good Cause Account of Meaning6. Against Welfarism about Morality7. The Value of Painful Art8. Is Life Worth Living?

"Smuts has written here a valuable addition to the literatures on welfare, meaning, and worth. His thoroughgoing objectivism about all three matters is distinctive. And there are still not many published accounts of objective goods, fewer accounts of objective bads, and fewer still that develop both of these together in a theory of worth. The book is short, well-structured, clear, and vigorous. To good effect, it makes and draws on a wide range of historical, literary, and filmic connections." – Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews"This volume is a welcome and innovative addition to the existing analytic literature on the notion of the life worth living (or the good life) and related issues." – Ethics"We want our lives not merely to be good for ourselves, but to be good, period. In short, we want our lives to be of great worth. But what is it for a life to be of great worth? Smuts’s book answers this question by providing an interesting objective theory of worth, one that entails that worth is a function of welfare and meaning. Anyone interested in the concepts of worth, welfare, and meaning would profit from reading Smuts’s well written book." – William Lauinger, Chestnut Hill College