Meeting September 7th

This week at PHaR, we read and discussed this paper:

Kauppinen first argues that a ‘good life’ is defined by more than the aggregated valence of the experiences within it. He suggests that the meaningfulness of one’s life is more important than the total balance of pleasure and pain. We felt that this was an important point, particularly for the study of health and illness. We also thought that it was important not to erase or overlook the significance of that pleasure/pain balance, however, in one’s renewed focus upon meaning. Meaningfulness may be important, but it may not always override pleasure/pain in judging whether a life is preferable, or good.

Throughout the paper there are a couple of recurring tensions. One of those tensions is between the subjective and objective appraisal of the good life. Kauppinen states that he wants to prioritise subjective appraisal when making comparisons between lives. That is, he wants us to ask, given a choice, ‘Which is the life that you would rather have lived?’ It seemed at times that the argument struggled to stick to this principle. For example, in suggesting that the Noble Failure narrative is preferable to the Sheer Luck narrative, either Kauppinen overestimates the importance of ‘moral good’ to some people, or underestimates the extent to which avoidance of suffering might motivate many people. Either way, it seemed that Kauppinen offered a judgement based on an answer to a different question: ‘Which is the life that you would rather been seen to have lived?’ Later in the paper, it becomes clear that actually Kauppinnen is drawn here to idea that the judgement about the goodness of a life should be made at least partly upon objective grounds (objective in the sense of ‘external and third party’).

The paper resonates with the moral luck literature, and Kauppinen draws upon Wolf’s work to situate his argument:

‘to Wolf’s slogan ‘subjective attraction meets objective attractive-ness’, I add my own, ‘challenging efforts lead to lasting successes’. Or simply: life is the more meaningful the more Meaningful Projects Cohere.’

In the group discussion, we felt persuaded by this global claim, and the paper makes a very useful contribution to thinking about wellbeing, at this level. Despite the link to Wolf, however, there is a tendency to over-emphasise the degree of agency which people have over their lives, or perhaps to over-individualise the narratives used as examples. One of the group members spoke about the problematic consequences of this view, when considering the life of a client who had been dealt no opportunities to construct a ‘good’ life in these terms.  The argument needs further development if it is to permit structural disadvantages and limited capabilities to be incorporated, and for a health/illness model, this is important. This over-optimism is also reflected in the assumption that important consequences arise from one person’s goal-setting activities:

‘We undertake projects when we perceive a negative change or feature in our environment or ourselves, or perhaps an opportunity. There is injustice, ignorance, unhappiness, physiological or psychological disturbance, or maybe unexplored possibilities for improvement. So we set ourselves a goal to reach.’

It struck me that the the use of the collective noun was unintentionally pertinent here. I think it is meant to be ‘we’ as a writerly engagement tool; as in ‘people like us.’ But in fact, these are social and relational phenomena: we really do perceive and do these things, together; not just me, or you. My life is not my own; others can make claims to events, themes, causes and consequences.

The second recurring tension within the paper is the gap between the events in our lives (their plot) and the narrative which we produce in order to give meaning to those (the story). Kauppinnen expressly states that he is interested in plot rather than story, but as the paper unfolded we felt that the examples quoted all begged questions about story: for example, what had been left out of the story, who else had contributed to it, what context had afforded these interpretations, and for whom was the story told? There is a philosophical question here, but a thorough answer needs more engagement with the psychological literature (at least Polkinghorne or Gergen on narrative, but also more recent work on remembering-imagining). There is one ‘plot’ to my life, but it simply cannot be told; the details are overwhelming, and unrecorded. An objective appraisal of this plot is impossible. However, there are multiple stories I can tell, which draw on that plot, but they are not all suitable for the same audiences, and they don’t all produce the same meanings.

I think this is actually a very helpful point to make in terms of thinking about what a good life might mean, especially when the ‘plot’ ingredients which one has been dealt do not look very attractive. Coherence and meaning can be drawn from many ingredients. It’s possible that Kauppinen underestimates this here (maybe an example from Epston & White would have been a good counterpoint?), and that he overestimates the problems caused by plurality and repetition. The example about the professor who becomes a nurse, thus somehow undermining the ‘coherence’ and ‘goodness’ of her life project/plot, didn’t ring at all true to us, in the discussion group.

Of course, the fact that we can make meaning from limited, varied or repetitive ingredients, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t address structural disadvantage: an important contribution made my Kauppinen here is that ‘meaningfulness’ (or the ‘goodness’ of a life) is relative, and must be considered in comparison to other lives. I think I’d want to underscore that with a reminder that pleasure/pain haven’t disappeared from that formulation either. In more recent work, it looks like Kauppinen wants to do the same. There is social and political agency to improve those ingredients, even when there may be limited opportunities to enact personal or relational agency.