Gratifying Transitions

Søren Harnow Klausen is professor of philosophy at the University of Southern Denmark.

• Chapter 1: Introduction1.1 The role of wellbeing in responding to climate change 1.2 Wellbeing and change1.3 Wellbeing, motivation and action1.4 Views on the relationship between climate change, climate action and wellbeing1.4 Why not gamble on green growth?1.5 Why not just politics?1.6 Wellbeing for whom?1.7 An interdisciplinary, philosophy-driven approachChapter 2: Life in the Future2.1 The ubiquity of change2.2 Change for better or worse?2.3 Going through changes2.4 Quantity and quality of change2.5 Living with climate change2.6 Living with mitigationChapter 3: A Theory of Wellbeing for Green Transition3.1 A plethora of theories and a provisional assessment3.2 Problems with subjective wellbeing? Immeasurability, growth ideology and adaptation3.3 Virtues of subjective wellbeing3.4 Growth ideology and individualism?3.5 Why not a needs approach?3.6 Genuinely basic needs?3.7 Adaptation for good and for bad3.8 Richer and poorer lives3.9 Getting the most out of it: Cultivation as the key?3.10 Putting it together: A theory of wellbeing for green transitionChapter 4: Living with Change4.1 Remaining, losing and becoming yourself4.2 The shape, meaning and management of life4.3 Temporal styles and agents of change4.4 Keeping the good things alive – variation as the key to wellbeing?4.4 Values and impacts of personal changeChapter 5: Shaping behavior: Self-control, cultivation and emulation5.1 The bad news: How not to change behavior5.2 The (somewhat) better news: How we might change behavior5.3 Limits of behavioral design5.4 Bildung to the rescue?5.5 Getting it right: Bildung and the situationist challenge5.6 Bildung and behavior change as social process5.7 Return of the environmental humanities?Chapter 6: Acceptable Transitions6.1 Only soft interventions?6.2 Goodbye to liberalism?6.3 Harm and sustainability6.4 Learning from the pandemic6.5 Realism, but not too much: Balancing feasibility concerns and the role of hope6.6 Moral aesthetics6.7 Unjustified interventions?Chapter 7: Changemaking: Gratifying transitions and strategies for green transitionCoda: Living with change in an uncertain worldReferences About the Author