Desire theories of well-being claim that how well our life goes for us is solely determined by the fulfilment and frustration of our desires. Several writers have argued that these theories are incorrect because they fail to capture the harms of self-sacrifice and severe depression. In this paper, I argue that desire theories of well-being can account for the harm of both phenomena by rejecting proportionalism about desire and motivation. This is the view that desires always motivate proportionally to their strength. If we reject this view, then we can explain the harm of many cases of self-sacrifice as arising when we act upon our weaker desires and thereby frustrate our stronger desires. Moreover, the harm of many cases of severe depression can be explained by its suppression of the motivational force of desires. This inevitably frustrates desires that we are left unmotivated to fulfil. I argue that this approach captures the experiential quality of self-sacrifice and severe depression better than rival views that seek to problematise these phenomena for desire theories of well-being. Moreover, these theories have sufficient conceptual resources to account for residual cases of self-sacrifice and severe depression that are less well explained by this approach.

幸福的欲望理论声称，我们的生活有多好完全取决于我们欲望的实现和挫败。一些作家认为这些理论是不正确的，因为它们没有捕捉到自我牺牲和严重抑郁的危害。在本文中，我认为幸福的欲望理论可以通过拒绝关于欲望和动机的比例主义来解释这两种现象的危害。这就是欲望总是与其力量成正比地激励的观点。如果我们拒绝这种观点，那么我们就可以解释许多自我牺牲案例的危害，因为我们按照我们较弱的欲望行事，从而挫败了我们更强烈的欲望。而且，很多重度抑郁症的危害可以用它抑制欲望的动力来解释。这不可避免地会挫败我们没有动力去实现的愿望。我认为，这种方法比试图将这些现象问题化为幸福的欲望理论的竞争对手的观点更能捕捉到自我牺牲和严重抑郁的体验品质。此外，这些理论有足够的概念资源来解释这种方法无法很好解释的自我牺牲和严重抑郁症的残余病例。