Living a Well-Rounded Life

FAIN: FT-291623-23

Amy Elizabeth Berg
Oberlin College (Oberlin, OH 44074-1057)

Research and writing one chapter of a philosophical book on the ethics of a well-rounded life.

Recent discussions of well-being within analytic philosophy can sometimes come unglued from what real people’s lives are actually like. My monograph, “Well-Rounded: A Theory of the Good Life,” fills this gap: I show that we have not paid enough attention to the value of being well-rounded. I explore what makes it good to be well-rounded, and I show that taking well-roundedness seriously has profound consequences for other areas of normative inquiry. Understanding the full value of well-rounded lives changes how we theorize about well-being more generally, how we evaluate success and failure, and how we consider which goods a just society should distribute fairly. To make this case, I draw on research from political theory, cultural theory, psychology, and economics as well as philosophy; the resulting monograph will be of interest to philosophers, other humanists, and lay readers interested in the personal or academic study of well-being and meaning in life.