The Recipe Test / 3 Dimensions of a Life Worth Living

The Question of the Good Life can be too much to tackle all at once.

To break it down, we can think of the Good Life as having three dimensions: first, the affective or emotional: how life feels; second, the circumstantial: how life goes; and third, the agential: how we live.

Lecturer at Yale College and Life Worth Living Director, Matt Croasmun explains three dimensions of a good life in this this chapter-by-chapter video curriculum series based on his bestselling book (with Ryan McAnnally-Linz and Miroslav Volf), Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most.

Transcript

The Question of the Good Life can be too much to tackle all at once.

To break it down, we can think of the Good Life as having three dimensions: first, the affective or emotional: how life feels; second, the circumstantial: how life goes; and third, the agential: how we live.

Most things we consider worth wanting weave together components of all three dimensions.

Take friendship for example: A friendship takes effort. You have to be a friend in order to be in a friendship. You have to exercise your agency and act for the sake of the good of your friend.

But you can’t be in a friendship with someone just because you decide to be. They have some say in the matter as well. So, in important ways, a friendship is a circumstance in your life.

And, of course, if you and your friend put in the effort to be friends—but you don’t feel anything. If you’re gritting your teeth to make it happen, but it doesn’t feel good in any way. Then we’d all agree something is missing. Maybe you’re in a dutiful partnership, but probably not a friendship.

A friendship has all three dimensions to it: agential, circumstantial, and affective. And this is true of many things we take to be worth wanting in life.

But, even if this is the case, you might think it’s important to prioritize one dimension over another. After all, some might say: What could matter more than feeling happy? Someone else might ask: What could matter more than a world of justice? The moralists among us may ask: What could be more important than being a good person? Or doing the right thing? (We might further ask: Are those different—being a good person and doing the right thing?)

In any case, there’s work to be done—to define what is important to us in each dimension and also to figure out how the three relate to each other.

What about you: Which is most important to you? Which aren’t as central? How do you see these three dimensions fitting together in your vision of a good life?