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Well-being and Despair: Dante's Ugolino1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Mozaffar Qizilabash
Mozaffar Qizilabash
Affiliation:
University of Southampton
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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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , July 1997 , pp. 227 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

2 Alighieri, Dante, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, trans. Singleton, Charles S., 2 vols., Princeton, 1970, Canto XXXII, 124–8, i. 347Google Scholar.

3 For Singleton's, excellent summary of what is known of the story, see his commentary, Inferno, ii. 606–12Google Scholar.

4 Inferno, Canto XXXIII, 67, i. 353.

5 I am grateful to John Took for explaining this reading to me.

6 Inferno, Canto XXXII, 133, i. 347.

7 Sen, Amartya K., ‘Capability and Well-Being’, The Quality of Life, ed. Nussbaum, Martha C. and Sen, Amartya K., Oxford, 1993Google Scholar; Inequality Reexamined, Oxford, 1993Google Scholar; et al., The Standard of Living, Cambridge, 1987Google Scholar; Commodities and Capabilities, Amsterdam, 1985Google Scholar; ‘Well-Being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984’, Journal of Philosophy, lxxxii (1985), 169–221Google Scholar.

8 ‘Capability and Well-Being’, p. 31.

9 Ibid., p. 31.

10 Ibid., p. 31.

11 Ibid., p. 33.

12 Ibid., p. 41.

13 See The Standard of Living, p. 111, where Sen seems to follow this line.

14 Inferno, Canto XXXIII, 78, i. 353.

15 See Nussbaum, Martha C., The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge, 1986Google Scholar.

16 See Nussbaum, Martha C., ‘Nature, Function and Capability: Aristotle on Political Distribution’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, suppl. vol., vi (1988), 160Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., 164.

18 Nussbaum, Martha C., ‘Aristotle on Human Natureand the Foundations of Ethics’, World, Mind and Ethics: Essays on the Philosophy of Bernard Williams, ed. Altham, J. E. J and Harrison, Ross, Cambridge, 1986Google Scholar.

19 See especially Nussbaum, Martha C., ‘Aristotelian Social Democracy’, Liberalism and the Good, ed. Doulglass, R. Bruce, Mara, Gerald M. and Richardson, Henry S., Rout-ledge, 1990Google Scholar.

20 Compare the case of Hecuba discussed by Martha Nussbaum in the epilogueto The Fragility of Goodness.

21 See his account of free will and divine justice in Alighieri, Dante, The Divine Comedy: Purgatorio, 2 vols., trans. Singleton, Charles S., Princeton, 1970, Canto XVI, 79–83, i. 173Google Scholar. For a discussion of the relationship between free will, moral action and punishment in Dante see: Barański, Zygmunt, ‘Dante's Biblical Linguistics’, Lectura Dantis, v (1989), 105–43Google Scholar.

22 Inferno, Canto XXXIII, 78, i. 353.

23 See ‘Aristotelian Social Democracy’, pp. 210–18.

24 See his discussion in ‘Capability and Well-Being’, pp. 31–2, 48.

26 See Griffin, James P., Well-Being, Oxford, 1986, particularly ch. 2Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., pp. 10–15. Brandt, Richard B., ‘Rational Desires’, Morality, Utilitarianism and Rights, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 38–56Google Scholar; Broome, John, ‘Choice and Value in Economies’, Oxford Economic Papers, xxx (1978), 313–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosati, Connie S., ‘Persons, Perspectives and Full Information Accounts of Well-Being’, Ethics, cv (1995) 296–325CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Sobel, David, ‘Full Information Accounts of Well-Being’, Ethics, civ (1994), 784–810CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Lewis, David, ‘Dispositional Theories of Value’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol., cviii (1989), 113–37Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., p. 121. Another higher-order desire account of well-being, due to Peter Railton, requires full information and fails for the same reason as informed first-order desire accounts. See Railton, Peter, ‘Moral Realism’, Philosophical Review, xcv (1986), 163–207CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Frankfurt, Harry G., ‘Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,’ Journal of Philosophy, lxviii (1971), 6Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., 10.

31 Ibid., 14.

32 Ibid., 15.

33 Inferno, Canto XXXIII, 74–5, i. 353.

34 See Griffin, James P., ‘Against the Taste Model’, Interpersonal Comparisons of Well-Being, ed. Elster, Jon and Roemer, John E., Cambridge, 1991, pp. 51–2Google Scholar, and Value Judgement, Oxford, 1996Google Scholar.

35 This view is not fully developed in his ‘Against the Taste Model’. It is more clear in his more recent writings: see Value Judgement, p. 13.

36 ‘Against the Taste Model’, p. 63.

37 Griffin takes ‘dignity’ to be a value that resides in our agency: he does not give it independent status. I suspect that it may require such status.

38 In conversation, James Griffin told me that he thinks of aspiration as a non-core shared value. Aspiration is a sine qua non for values like accomplishment. Heleaves it out of the list, however.

39 Note that not all these lives are easily comparable: I may not be able to compare my life to that of a Zulu chief, since I do not know much about such a life. On the other hand, the talented housewife, dedicated to her husband and children, may be able to compare her life to that of an unmarried career-minded contemporary: she knows the life she has given up. That is not to say that all the values involved are irreducible to one value or not distinct values, or that conflicts do not arise between them.

40 See Griffin, James P., ‘The Distinction Between Criterion and Decision Procedure: A Reply to Madison Powers’, Utilitas, vi (1994), 177–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘On the Winding Road From Good to Right’, ed. Frey, R. G. and Morris, C. W., Value, Welfare and Morality, Cambridge, 1993CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘The Human Good and the Ambitions of Consequentialism’, The Good Life and the Human Good, ed. Paul, E. F., Miller, F. D. and Paul, J., Cambridge, 1992Google Scholar.