Well-being and self-interest: Personal identity, Parfit, and conflicting attitudes to time in liberal theory and social policy

Orthodox liberal accounts of well-being recommend temporal neutrality when pursuing individual self-interest. For Derek Parfit these accounts are inadequate as having a bias attitude to time consistently reflects the human condition and a reductionist view of personal identity. However, his position conflicts with contemporary understandings of well-being, as these are frequently based on non-reductionist views of personal identity which are opposed to Parfit’s reductionism. The alternative proposal here is to resist committing to an either/or proposition concerning personal identity and our attitudes to time, to make better sense of well-being promotion in liberal theory and social practice.