Growth and the Good Life
This chapter presents a new framework to integrate two dominant models of the good life: hedonia and eudaimonia. Hedonia emphasizes the primacy of pleasure (e.g., satisfaction and happiness), whereas eudaimonia emphasizes the primacy of meaning (e.g., well-being, meaningfulness, moral virtue, wisdom, growth, and self-actualizing). The two function on different levels of context. Three facets of value facilitate their integration. Value orientation refers to one’s values, motives, and needs. Value fulfillment is the successful enactment of value orientation, typically experienced as hedonic satisfaction or eudaimonic meaningfulness. Value perspectivity (a newly theorized feature of value and a key quality of wisdom) is the degree of complexity and coherence by which value orientations and fulfillments are interpreted. The transformative self emphasizes eudaimonic growth, which emphasizes humane and organismic value orientations. The three facets of value reconfigure into four superordinate categories of goods in life: happiness, love, wisdom, and growth.