The Quality of Life: Aristotle Revised presents a philosophical theory about the constituents of human well-being. The principal idea is that what Aristotle calls "external goods" - wealth, reputation, power - have at most an indirect bearing on the quality of our lives. Starting withAristotle's thoughts about this topic, Kraut increasingly modifies (and occasionally rejects) that stance. He argues that the way in which we experience the world is what well-being consists in. A and fraught debates, which have found expression in recent decades in the concepts of fractured"territorial states" and a disjointed "imperial constitution". Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire challenges these interpretations through a wide-ranging case study of Upper Germany - the southern regions of modern-day Germany plus Alsace, Switzerland, and western Austria-between1346 and 1521. By examining the interactions of princes, prelates, nobles, and townsco mparatively, Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire demonstrates that a range of actors and authorities shared the same toolkit of technologies, rituals, judicial systems, and concepts andconfigurations of government. Crucially, Upper German elites all participated in leagues, alliances, and other treaty-based associations. As frameworks for collective activity, associations were a vital means of enab | The Quality of Life by Richard Kraut, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters