Abstract
Regarding human well-being Kant is explicit in his rejection of it as a source of moral obligations or moral goodness. Well-being, Kant writes, is a reference to sensible agreeableness and gratification that is empirically contingent states and preferences that cannot in itself merit any moral worth or obligations. The will as good in itself is not only considered the only unlimited good but also the condition of any other good, even of well-being. Well-being as comfort, pleasure, welfare, happiness or other considerations of our sensible needs and preferences is what I will call a narrow use of the term well-being, and in this essay I am still holding the Kantian conclusion that any kind of well-being in this regard cannot constitute moral value, obligate us to action or determine our will. On the other hand there is what I will call a wide use of the term where well-being is to be understood as "wellness of what constitutes our very being", using the term well-being in its most wide and literal sense. This wide use of the term is inspired from Amartya Sen's Capabilities Approach, and while Kant himself did not use well-being in this way I will argue that this concept fits perfectly with his moral doctrine, helping us to understand Kant better and to place his moral theory closer to other theories that has well-being and human flourishing at its core. In this essay I will approach Kant's moral philosophy by assessing it from a perspective of what, on his account, is constitutive of the human condition and subsequently how we are to evalute the success, quality, or "well-ness" of a human being in virtue of how individuals live up to this standard.