Wellbeing, happiness and flourishing

This chapter introduces design for wellbeing by looking at its evolution through its eudaimonic and hedonic roots. Bentham, a philosopher whose work is situated at the turn of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century utilitarianism, in which contemporary views on hedonism are rooted, theorised that hedonic wellbeing is found in the quantity of pleasure experiences, as evidenced by his earlier statement. As one of the founders of positive psychology, he introduced the concept of &s;authentic happiness&s; in 2003. In 2011, Seligman developed his theory of &s;authentic happiness&s; further to a theory of wellbeing. In literature, &s;happiness&s; is often used as a synonym for the term &s;wellbeing&s;, however in most literature on the historic evolution of hedonic wellbeing &s;happiness&s; is defined as a synonym of &s;pleasure&s;. In academic literature there is currently no consensus on an actual unambiguous definition of ‘wellbeing’, but there is discussion on the meanings of various terms and their interrelationship.