Utilitas

Table of Contents - 1997 - Volume 9, Issue 02  

Research Article

Well-being and Despair: Dante's Ugolino1

Mozaffar Qizilabasha1

a1 University of Southampton

Abstract

This paper considers three sorts of account of the quality of life. These are (1) capability views, due to Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, (2) desire accounts and (3) the prudential value list theory of James Griffin. Each approach is evaluated in the context of a tale of cannibalism and moral decay: the story of Count Ugolino in Dante's The Divine Comedy. It is argued that the example causes difficulties for Sen's version of the capability approach, as well as for desire accounts. Nussbaum's version of the capability approach deals withthe example better than Sen's. However, it fails adequately to accommodate pluralism. I suggest that James Griffin's account of well-being deals well with this example and accommodates pluralism. I suggest that, of the views considered, Griffin's is the best account of the quality of life.

Footnotes

1 Most of all my debt is to James Griffin for helping me see his position clearly, and for giving me access to unpublished material to that end. Others who helped me on previous versions of the paper include Zygmunt Barański, Olivia Cohen, Roger Crisp, Alan Hamlin, Brad Hooker, Chiara Steindler and John Took. Any faults are mine.