Slides: Self-Fulfillment Eudaimonism and Christian Theism

Rutgers Analytic Theology Seminar

Christopher L. Holland

christopher.holland@slu.edu

Saint Louis University

June 23, 2026

Welfare Eudaimonisms

 

Objective/Subject Transcendent

 

Kind-Based Capacity Fulfillment	and/or	Kind-Based Goal Fulfillment
Individual Capacity Fulfillment	and/or	Individual Goal Fulfillment

 

Subjective/Subject Dependent

To him that overcometh will I give … a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.
 
— Revelation 2:17

 

The true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the being, the meaning of the person who bears it. It is the man’s own symbol—his soul’s picture, in a word—the sign which belongs to him and to no one else.
 
— George MacDonald

My goal this morning is to propose a project, the integration of self-fulfillment eudaimonism and Christian theism. Self-fulfillment eudaimonism, as I used the term, is a form of welfare eudaimonism, which, in turn, is a theory—or family of theories—about well-being (or self-interest)—that is, a theory about what is basically (or finally) good for someone. Welfare eudaimonism is an ingredient in eudaimonic moral theories, but a utilitarian could just as easily adopt the theory and use it in their definition of utility.

In its general form, welfare eudaimonism identifies well-being with the fulfillment of one’s nature. Beyond this, most eudaimonists are objectivists about well-being. That is, they understand “fulfilling one’s nature” in terms of species-level norms—to fare well is to flourish as a member of one’s kind. While many Christian philosophers find objective (or kind-based) eudaimonism appealing, the theory leads to the following unhappy result: all else being equal, atypical members of a species fare worse than typical members. For eudaimonists who want to avoid this problem, there is an alternative: subjective (or subject-dependent eudaimonism). In this presentation, I identify a class of subjective eudaimonisms, which I call self-fulfillment eudaimonisms, and suggest that they integrate well with Christian theism.

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Roadmap

• Kind nature fulfillment
• The problem of atypical flourishing
• Self-fulfillment Eudaimonism
• Self-fulfillment and the image of God

I’ll proceed in four steps.

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First, I will give an example of kind-based eudaimonism.

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Second, I will motivate the move to subject-dependent eudaimonism with a thought experiment that illustrates the problem posed to kind-based eudaimonism by atypical members of the species.

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Third, I will describe a subset of self-dependent eudaimonisms, which I call self-fulfillment eudaimonisms, and suggest that they solve the parity problem.

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Finally, I will gesture toward two integrations with Christian theism.

Flourishing as the Kind of Thing You Are

Objective/Kind-Based Eudaimonism

read slide

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Example: Developmentalism

Plants, animals, and human beings … [flourish] by developing properly and fully, that is, by growing, maturing, making full use of the potentialities, capacities, and faculties that (under favorable conditions) they naturally have at an early stage of their existence. Anything that impedes that development or the exercise of those mature faculties—disease, the sapping of vigor and strength, injuries, the loss of organs—is bad for them.¹

Richard Kraut’s Aristotelian account of well-being in What Is Good and Why is a good example of a traditional kind-based eudaimonism.

He calls his account developmentalism and gives the following characterization of well-being:

READ QUOTE

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1. Kraut, What Is Good and Why, 131.

Objective/Kind-based Well-being

If \(S\) is flourishing, there is always some kind to which \(S\) belongs, and \(S\) is flourishing as a member of that kind. … [W]hat is good for human beings is to flourish as human beings (just as what is good for the member of some other biological species is to flourish as a member of that species).¹

He also emphasizes the role of kinds for his theory.

READ QUOTE

1. Kraut, What Is Good and Why, 131–2n1.

Betazoid Objection

Betazoids, an alien species from the series Star Trek, are identical to humans in all but one respect—betazoids are telepathic.¹

1. Hannah is a human, and Bridget is a betazoid.
2. Neither is telepathic.
3. If Bridget were human, then Bridget’s well-being = Hannah’s well-being.
4. Bridget’s lack of telepathy brings her no disappointment, nor would it disappoint a fully-informed version of herself.

Assume Developmentalism

Then Bridget’s well-being ≠ Hannah’s well-being

My intuition

If 1–4 are true, then Bridget’s well-being = Hannah’s well-being

Unfortunately, kind-based theories run into trouble when assessing the well-being of atypical members of a species. To see why, let’s consider a thought experiment by Alexander Pruss and Hilary Yancey.

Betazoids, an alien species from the series Star Trek, are identical to humans in all but one respect—betazoids are telepathic.

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Hannah is a human, and Bridget is a betazoid,

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but neither is telepathic.

Both are Federation engineers leading remarkably similar and fulfilling lives. So similar that the following counterfactual is satisfied:

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if Bridget were human, then Bridget’s well-being would be equivalent to Hannah’s well-being.

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Finally, let’s add that Bridget’s lack of telepathy brings about no disappointment, nor would it disappoint a fully-informed version of herself.

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When we extend Kraut’s developmentalism to cover betazoids, we run into a problem. Given Bridget’s impairment, the theory clearly entails that Hannah is faring better than Bridget; after all, Bridget is a member of the betazoid species but lacks a characteristic betazoid capacity (telepathy).

ADVANCE X2

Intuitions may vary, but this appears to be the wrong conclusion. As Pruss and Yancey point out, “all the goods that Hannah has—with the possible exception of the minor good overall health—Bridget has as well. … [H]er impairment, it turns out, has little to no effect on Bridget’s well-being”

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1. A modified version of the Betazoid thought experiment by Pruss and Yancey, “Privation in the Problem of Evil”.

Resonance Constraint

A necessary condition stating that for something to be basically good for a person, it must have a connection to that person’s proattitudes or positive affect.

What is intrinsically valuable for a person must have a connection with what he would find in some degree compelling or attractive, at least if he were rational and aware. It would be an intolerably alienated conception of someone’s good to imagine that it might fail in any such way to engage him.
 
— Peter Railton¹

One reason for thinking Bridget’s impairment has no effect on her well-being is that, for Bridget, the exercise and development of telepathy fail to meet an important constraint on well-being: the resonance constraint. Roughly speaking, the resonance constraint is a necessary condition stating that for something to be basically good for a person, it must have a connection to that person’s proattitudes or positive affect.

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Here is Railton’s famous or infamous statement of the constraint, which we can come back to in the Q&A but I’m going to skip for the sake of time.

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1. “Facts and Values,” 9; see also, Rosati, “Internalism and the Good for a Person”; Dorsey, “Why Should Welfare ‘Fit’?”; Fanciullo, “Alienation, Engagement, and Welfare”; Kelley, “The New Internalism about Prudential Value”; Fortier, “Felt-Quality Hedonism, Alienation, and the Spirit of Resonance”.

Hybrid Response

Just add the resonance constraint.

Something is basically good for you if and only, and because:

1. It fulfills your kind nature.
2. You (or fully informed you) intrinsically desire it.

E.g., William Lauinger’s Desire Perfectionism¹

Well-being theorists who sympathize with kind-based eudaimonisms like Kraut’s but also accept this resonance constraint have developed hybrid views of well-being, views that essentially add the anti-alienation constraint to an otherwise eudaimonic theory of well-being.

Hybridizing solves the problem as follows. Given that Bridget has no desire to be telepathic, her impairment makes no difference to her well-being. However, he has also moved outside of the kind-based eudaimonic framework.

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William Lauinger’s Desire Perfectionism is a good example of this. Lauginer’s theory combines traditional kind-based eudaimonism with a desire-satisfaction theory of well-being, such that something is basically good for you if and only, and because: (1) it fulfills your kind nature and (2) You intrinsically desire it.

There’s more to say here. Kraut occasionally uses the standard of enjoying and developing one’s capacities. If enjoyment is distinct for nature fulfillment his view is also a hybrid.

Moreover, if resonance is understood in terms of fitting with some deeper nature—specifically, the self. Then there maybe a way of spelling out these views in which they they hybridize two kinds of eudaimonism—objective and subjective eudaimonism—rather than distinct theory types: eudaimonism and desire satisfaction; eudaimonism and hedonism.

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1. See “Defending a Hybrid of Objective List and Desire Theories of Well-Being,” 245. Kraut may fall into this camp too, depending on how one interprets his endorsement constraint; see What Is Good and Why, 190.

Flourishing as the You You Are

Subjective Eudaimonism and Self-fulfillment

This move us to the doorstep of the theories I’m interested in: self-fulfillment eudaimonisms.

PAUSE FOR AUDIENCE TO READ SLIDE

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Haybron on Subject Dependence

The constituents of an agent’s well-being are ultimately determined wholly by the particulars of the individual’s make-up qua individual (vs. qua group or class member).

What’s good for you must depend entirely on the particularities of what you are like, however idiosyncratic or atypical: it must depend wholly on what your wants, likes, values, hedonic or emotional propensities, or physical makeup are like.¹

Let’s begin with the notion of subject dependence. Here I look to Haybron.

From Pursuit of Unhappiness

READ QUOTE

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In his forthcoming Lives We Should Want.

READ QUOTE

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1. The Pursuit of Unhappiness, 156–57; The Lives We Should Want, ch. 3, sec. 4.4.

Welfare Eudaimonisms

 

Objective/Subject Transcendent

Kind-Based Capacity Fulfillment	and/or	Kind-Based Goal Fulfillment
Individual Capacity Fulfillment	and/or	Individual Goal Fulfillment

Subjective/Subject Dependent

Self-fulfillment theories, … , take nature-fulfillment to focus on the fulfillment of those features of us that define the self: who one is.

His first statement of subject dependence, which employed the term individual, might be thought of the more generic—representing everything below the line.

The second gives us a subclass among the class below the line: self-fulfillment eudaimonism.

Here’s a more direct statement:

READ QUOTE

So, this leaves room to think that there individual natures, but the self is some important or deeper of ones individual nature.

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Haybron’s Millian Eudaimonism

 

Self-Fulfillment Eudaimonisms

Theories that take nature-fulfillment to focus on the fulfillment of those features of us that define the self: who one is.¹

 

Self-Fulfillment Qua Millian Eudaimonism

Authentic happiness: psychic flourishing

Authentic value-fulfillment: agential flourishing

Here on the screen we have a brief description what Haybron calls Millian Eudaimonism.

Haybron named the view after J. S. Mill, because he thinks that it echos Mill’s views on individuality and self-expression in On Liberty.

Haybron does not hold the view. He thinks that a satisfactory theory of well-being must add a hedonic element that is not reducible to the nature fulfillment framework.

On my chart Haybron’s view occupies the opposite quadrant from Krauts.

In hopes of illuminating the difference between the capacity and goal fulfillment sub-ideals at play here, I offer the following description of goals from Haybron.

We can understand goals quite broadly, as something we may not always recognize in prospect but may rather discover only in retrospect: one way to have something as a goal is to be prone to meet it with joy, even if it never occurred to you to want it. Put another way, if you wanted to instill cer:w tain goals, such as companionship, into an organism, you might give it desires for those things; but you could also give it the propensity to be made happy by them, or unhappy by their absence. In fact, given that desires are often formed in ignorance of what their fulfillment would be like, the organism’s evaluative response tendencies—what makes it happy or unhappy, brings it pleasure or pain—might be the most reliable metric of what its most important goals are. People get all manner of weird ideas about what’s worth pursuing, but the things that make them happy tend to be less subject to whimsy.

Millian eudaimonism applies this goal-fulfillment ideal at the individual level. This means that one flourishes only by succeeding in the goals that flow from one’s self.

1. Haybron, The Lives We Should Want, ch. 3, sec. 3.2.

Hannah and Bridget Again

Betazoids, an alien species from the series Star Trek, are identical to humans in all but one respect—betazoids are telepathic.

1. Hannah is a human, and Bridget is a betazoid.
2. Neither is telepathic.
3. If Bridget were human, then Bridget’s well-being = Hannah’s well-being.
4. Bridget’s lack of telepathy brings her no disappointment, nor would it disappoint a fully-informed version of herself.

Let’s now return to Bridget the betazoid. A Millian eudaimonist is able to make sense of the well-being parity between Bridget and Hannah. We intuitively assign the same level of well-being to Bridget and Hannah because of the similarity of their natures as individuals or selves. Moreover, we can imagine that similarities in their personalities lead to similar avenues for self-fulfillment, avenues indifferent to Bridget’s impairment qua betazoid.

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Kauppinen

The Telic Interpretation of Flourishing and Unflourishing

Flourishing consists in successfully realizing the formal aims implicit in the functioning of our fundamental capacities to a sufficient degree. Unflourishing in some respect consists in frustrating a formal aim, or realizing it to an insufficient degree.

The Subjective Nature Thesis

Our fundamental capacities in the sense relevant for well-being are those whose functioning defines who we are. In the adult human case, they include at least the practical and theoretical rationality and the capacity for valenced experience.¹

To round off my discussion of the various types of eudaimonism, I would like to look briefly at an edge case: Antti Kauppinen’s Telic Perfectionism. Kauppinen’s theory relies on an interpretation of nature fulfillment that combines the capacity-fulfillment and goal-fulfillment ideals that may not be entirely consistent with what I’ve outlined on the board. First, his interpretation of flourishing.

READ QUOTE

Perhaps this is a capacity-based goal-fulfillment view.

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More interesting is his subjective nature thesis.

READ QUOTE

Here some additional care is needed. In a footnote to the second quotation, Kauppinen tells us: “There may be other capacities that fundamentally define us as the kind of subjects we are, for example, there is a good case to be made for our capacity to relate to other subjects as subjects and not just as worldly objects” (222n6). Using the subject-dependent criterion given earlier, Kauppinen’s account will be a version of self-fulfillment eudaimonism if and only if the capacities involved are specified and assessed at an individual level and not the kind level. The point may be put as follows: there is a difference between flourishing as a self and flourishing as yourself. Self-fulfillment eudaimonism assesses one’s well-being with the latter standard. Self-fulfillment eudaimonism defines basic or final prudental goodness in terms of flourishing as the you you are.

1. Kauppinen, “Telic Perfectionism and the Badness of Pain,” 219, 222.

Self-Fulfillment Eudaimonism and the Image of God

On Christian doctrine, human beings are created by God with a nature, which is or includes an image of God.
 
— Eleonore Stump, Image of God, p. 121.

Having established what I hope is a sufficient picture of self-fulfillment eudaimonism, I move on to my suggestion for integrating it with Christian theism. Consider the following quote from Eleonore Stump: “On Christian doctrine, human beings are created by God with a nature, which is or includes an image of God.” If we add eudaimonism to this, then imaging God will be an important part or perhaps the whole of a person’s flourishing.

Disclaimer, when I wrote my abstract I fully intended to motivate the integration of a self-fulfillment theory utilizing the goal-fulfillment ideal with Christian theism, with an appeal to Stump work on the desires of the heart. Unfortunately, time constrains (along with the need to develop these ideas further) have me targeting an alternative integration inspired by Robert Garcia’s work on the uniqueness of persons in C.S. Lewis.

Mere Resonator Theory

Each person has an essential capacity to image God in a specific way and no other creature has the capacity to image God in that way.¹

Reflecting on the works of C. S. Lewis, Robert Garcia has identified what he calls Lewis’s Mere Resonator Theory.

READ SLIDE

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1. Garcia, “How Special Might You Be? C. S. Lewis on the Uniqueness of Persons”.

From Problem of Pain

Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to [God]; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you. The mould in which a key is made would be a strange thing, if you had never seen a key: and the key itself a strange thing if you had never seen a lock. Your soul has a curious shape because it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the divine substance, or a key to unlock one of the doors in the house with many mansions. For it is not humanity in the abstract that is to be saved, but you—you, the individual reader, John Stubbs or Janet Smith. … Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.¹

In support of this reading, Garcia cites passages like the following from Lewis’s Problem of Pain:

READ SLIDE

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1. Lewis, Problem of Pain, 96–97.

From “Membership”

The very word membership is of Christian origin, but has been taken over by the world and emptied of all meaning. In any book on logic you may see the expression “members of a class.” It must be most emphatically stated that the items or particulars included in a homogeneous class are almost the reverse of what St. Paul meant by members. By members … he meant what we should call organs, things essentially different from, and complementary to, one another: things differing not only in structure and function but also in dignity. … They are not interchangeable. Each person is almost a species in himself. … Its unity is a unity of unlikes, almost of incommensurables.¹

In support of this reading, Garcia cites passages like the following from Lewis’s Problem of Pain:

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Throughout the address, Lewis applies his thinking not only to the Church (qua body of Christ) but to human personality generally.

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1. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses, 163–65.

VIP

Garcia is interested in Lewis’s work to help support the following claim.

VIP

Each person is supremely and irreplaceably valuable (where each person’s value is unique and each person’s uniqueness is valuable).

Garcia is interested in Lewis’s work to help support the following claim.

READ SLIDE

Mere Resonator Theory

Each person has an essential capacity to image God in a specific way and no other creature has the capacity to image God in that way.

While his goal is to ground irreplaceably supreme value in the image of God, my purpose is different. I would like to propose that Lewis’s Mere Resonator Theory provides the foundation needed for integrating self-fulfillment eudaimonism with Christian theism. Specifically, it provides a meaningful way to identify not only our nature as humans with the image of God but also each person’s nature with a unique image of God. While we may find some overlap between natures, each person will flourish just as much by fulfilling the their own nature, including the peculiarities of their nature. In doing so, there will be some common elements among members of a kind—but the basic benefit will lie in the fulfillment of one’s indiviual nature—that is, of one’s self.

Returning to Haybron’s definition of self-fulfillment eudaimonism, what is good for you will “depend entirely on the particularities of what you are like, however idiosyncratic or atypical.” Or as I prefer to put it self-fulfillment is a matter of flourishing as the you you are.

George MacDonald, “The New Name”

Not only … has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God. He is to God a peculiar being, made after his own fashion, and that of no one else; for when he is perfected he shall receive the new name which no one else can understand. Hence he can worship God as no man else can worship him—understand God as no man else can understand him. This or that man may understand God more, may understand God better than he, but no other man can understand God as he understands him.

George MacDonald, “The New Name”

As the fir-tree lifts up itself with a far different need from the need of the palm-tree, so does each man stand before God, and lift up a different humanity to the common Father. And for each God has a different response. With every man he has a secret—the secret of the new name. In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter. … From this it follows that there is a chamber … in God himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar man—out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his brethren. This is that for which he was made—to reveal the secret things of the Father.¹

1. Macdonald, Unspoken Sermons, 110–12.

Sources

Dorsey, Dale. “Why Should Welfare ‘Fit’?” The Philosophical Quarterly 67, no. 269 (2017): 685–24. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqw087.

Fanciullo, James. “Alienation, Engagement, and Welfare.” The Philosophical Quarterly 75, no. 1 (2025): 40–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/pq/pqad115.

Fortier, Nikki. “Felt-Quality Hedonism, Alienation, and the Spirit of Resonance.” Utilitas 37 (July 2025): 253–74. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0953820825100095.

Garcia, Robert K. “How Special Might You Be? C. S. Lewis on the Uniqueness of Persons.” Paper presented at C. S. Lewis, Philosophy, and Cultural Engagement. Biennial Meeting of the Baptist Association of Philosophy Teachers, April 26, 2025.

Haybron, Daniel M. The Lives We Should Want. May 9, 2023, manuscript. Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Haybron, Daniel M. The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being. Oxford University Press, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199545988.001.0001.

Kauppinen, Antti. “Telic Perfectionism and the Badness of Pain.” In Ill-Being: Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Mauro Rossi and Christine Tappolet. Oxford University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191955853.003.0012.

Kelley, Anthony. “The New Internalism about Prudential Value.” Philosophical Studies 182, no. 3 (2025): 801–15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02231-6.

Kraut, Richard. What Is Good and Why: The Ethics of Well-Being. Harvard University Press, 2007.

Lauinger, William A. “Defending a Hybrid of Objective List and Desire Theories of Well-Being.” In Measuring Well-Being: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from the Social Sciences and the Humanities, edited by Matthew T. Lee, Laura D. Kubzansky, and Tyler J. VanderWeele. Oxford University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197512531.003.0009.

Lewis, C. S. Problem of Pain. 1940; HarperCollins e-books, 2009.

Lewis, C. S. The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. 1949; HarperCollins, 2009. Kindle.

Macdonald, George. Unspoken Sermons. First Series. Alexander Strahan, 1867.

Pruss, Alexander R., and Hilary Yancey. “Privation in the Problem of Evil: Impairment, Health, Well-Being, and a Case of Humans and Betazoids.” In Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, vol. 9, edited by Lara Buchak, Dean W. Zimmerman, and Philip Swenson. Oxford University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198845492.003.0001.

Railton, Peter. “Facts and Values.” Philosophical Topics 14, no. 2 (1986): 5–31. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43153978.

Rosati, Connie S. “Internalism and the Good for a Person.” Ethics 106, no. 2 (1996): 297–326. https://doi.org/10.1086/233619.

Stump, Eleonore. The Image of God: The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Mourning. Oxford University Press, 2022.