ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 explores the third structural feature of human life: living in relations. We examine three features of human relationships: doing-for (e.g. building a house), being – with (others) and being-in (a community or a set of social relations). In the first case, we show how this aspect of well-being consists in connecting directly to what is valuable, namely other persons. Therefore, for instance, the point of work must be directly connected to other people rather than performance targets or the production of material goods per se. We apply this idea to challenge and critique instrumentalised conceptions of relationships. In the second case, we demonstrate how a non-instrumentalised human relationship requires that the other person becomes part of one’s life and how this is an irreducible aspect of well-being. When other people are part of one’s life, it is as if one imports their value into one’s life through appropriate connections. We apply this analysis to personal and impersonal relations and investigate its importance for happiness studies. For the third feature, we analyse what it means to be part of a community insofar as this is a constitutive feature of well-being.
