Good Lives: Prolegomena

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence C. Becker
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Philosophical Essay ◽  
Self Actualization ◽  
History Of ◽  
Good Lives ◽  
As If

A philosophical essay under this title faces severe rhetorical challenges. New accounts of the good life regularly and rapidly turn out to be variations of old ones, subject to a predictable range of decisive objections. Attempts to meet those objections with improved accounts regularly and rapidly lead to a familiar impasse — that while a life of contemplation, or epicurean contentment, or stoic indifference, or religious ecstasy, or creative rebellion, or self-actualization, or many another thing might count as a good life, none of them can plausibly be identified with the good life, or the best life. Given the long history of that impasse, it seems futile to offer yet another candidate for the genus “good life” as if that candidate might be new, or philosophically defensible. And given the weariness, irony, and self-deprecation expected of a philosopher in such an impasse, it is difficult for any substantive proposal on this topic to avoid seeming pretentious.

HAPPINESS AND THE GOOD LIFE

Think ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (60) ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
David Louzecky
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Good Lives

The question I raise is whether happiness constitutes a good life. I argue that it does not and contend that the good life is based on three essentials: worthwhile activities, worthwhile character, and worthwhile relationships. I provide examples of possibly happy lives that are not good and good lives that are not happy.

The Autonomy-Based Liberalism of Joseph Raz

1989 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. J. Norman
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Liberal Theory ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Political Morality ◽  
Philosophical Aspect ◽  
History Of ◽  
Joseph Raz ◽  
The One ◽  
Conception Of The Good

Ask a practising liberal to define her political creed, and more likely than not she will begin by describing the wonderful life of the free person. That is, in the parlance of modern political philosophers, she will begin with a conception of the good. The good life is the free life, and the good society is the one where people are as free as possible. By contrast, recent liberal philosophers have for the most part grounded their theories in principles of right or rights. Indeed, some have argued that what is unique about liberalism as a political doctrine is that it is not committed to the advancement of any particular conception of the good, let alone to that of the free person. In his celebrated recent book, The Morality of Freedom, Joseph Raz sides with the practitioner and confronts the pedlars of right-based or deontological liberalism head-on. Believing the history of liberal theory to be against them, he labels his opponents ‘revisionists’. The Morality of Freedom has already been hailed as the most significant new statement of liberal principles since Mill’s On Liberty. And while this may be a bit over-enthusiastic, Raz would welcome at least one philosophical aspect of the comparison with Mill. Both are teleologists who ground their theories of political morality on considerations of the value of the free or autonomous life. I shall dub such theories ‘autonomarian’. And I shall examine Raz’s autonomarian reaction in detail here, for it may well be the most important such theory in the post-Rawlsian era.

Positive Psychology: Past, Present, and Future

2009 ◽  
pp. 6-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ed Diener
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Functioning ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

This chapter briefly reviews the history of positive psychology, and the endeavor by scientists to answer the classic question posed by philosophers: What is the good life? One piece of evidence for the growth of positive psychology is the proliferation of measures to assess concepts such as happiness, well-being, and virtue. The chapter briefly reviews the importance of C. R. Snyder to the field of positive psychology. Several critiques of positive psychology are discussed. One valid critique is that there is too much emphasis within positive psychology on the individual, and too little focus on positive societies, institutions, and situations. We can profit from considering the various critiques because they will help us to improve the field. Positive psychology has important strengths, such as the number of young scholars and practitioners who are entering the field. The Handbook of Positive Psychology is an outstanding resource for all those who are working in this discipline, and also for others outside of the area, to gain broad knowledge of the important developments that are occurring in our understanding of positive human functioning.

“Despite the contradictions”

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-194
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Racial Inequalities ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Narrative

This chapter offers closing thoughts that reiterate and summarizes the main points of the book. The chapter explores the ways people make a careful survey of their situation and work out a method to yield growth despite life's contradictions and pressures. If their lives look at times like wind-torn shrubs, that does not mean that they are poorly adapted or lethargic. Instead, it offers evidence of the hard work it takes to thrive in a world where the good life is hard to find. It shows that a dominant myth blaming inequality on laziness has guided, upheld, and justified racial inequalities in South Africa and the world since the earliest mercantile and colonial encounters between Europeans and Africans, and this narrative was never eradicated, despite antislavery, civil rights, and anti-apartheid movements that achieved important legal and structural changes. The struggle to change this social narrative is an unglorified resistance with no clear ending point, but it is essential to the pursuit of the good life. It also shows evidence that in order to generate employment while aiming for the higher goal of seeking good, South Africa must address the history of antiblack disrespect that perpetuates dysfunctional employment structures. The people described in this book refuse to conform to narratives of inevitable happy endings or easy hope, but neither do their stories end only in despair.

Using Virtue to Think About Science and Technology

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Stapleford ◽  
Emanuele Ratti
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
High Technology ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
Philosophy And Religion ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Scholars have recently turned to a surprising source for analyzing contemporary science and technology: concepts of virtue drawn from ancient philosophy and religion. This chapter provides a brief history of the relationship between virtue, science, and technology before turning to the contents of this edited volume. Science, Technology, and Virtue offers a range of perspectives illustrating how scholars across multiple disciplines have found virtue valuable for helping us to understand, construct, and use the fruits of modern science and technology. In doing so, the authors show how intellectual and moral character—as embodied dispositions for action—continue to be central for pursuing the good life, even in an age of high technology and science.

The pleasures of food and the good life

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-496
Author(s):  
Cameron H. J. Jorgenson
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Formation ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Two Truths ◽  
Desert Fathers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Food And Drink ◽  
Good Food

Contrary to the claims of some critics, the Christian tradition is not opposed to bodily pleasure. In fact, approached rightly, the pleasures of good food and drink can be occasions of divine encounter. Despite outlying examples of extreme asceticism, Christianity holds two truths in tension: pleasure is rooted in the goodness of God and God’s creative work, and yet, due to human “disordered loves,” pleasure can be powerfully corrosive to virtue. This article explores the tension by sketching the history of caution toward the pleasures of the palate by way of select philosophers and theologians (Pythagoras and Plato, the Desert Fathers and Mothers, Thomas Aquinas, and contemporary figures such as C. S. Lewis and Norman Wirzba). Drawing on the theology of the icon and Aquinas’s distinction between joy and delight, this article also offers a constructive case that affirms the goodness of pleasure and its positive role in spiritual formation such that even humble onions and coffee mugs can serve as implements of worship.

The Good Life and the Good Lives of Others

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Annas
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Good Lives ◽  
The Way

It is well-known that in recent years, alongside the familiar forms of modern ethical theory, such as consequentialism, deontology, and rights theory, there has been a resurgence of interest in what goes by the name of “virtue ethics” — forms of ethical theory which give a prominent status to the virtues, and to the idea that an agent has a “final end” which the virtues enable her to achieve. With this has come an increase of theoretical (as opposed to antiquarian) interest in ancient ethical theories, particularly Aristotle's, an interest which has made a marked difference in the way ethics is pursued in the Anglo-Saxon and European intellectual worlds.In this essay, I shall not be discussing modern virtue ethics, which is notably protean in form and difficult to pin down. I shall be focusing on ancient eudaimonistic ethical theories, for in their case we can achieve a clearer discussion of the problem I wish to discuss (a problem which arises also for modern versions of virtue ethics which hark back to the ancient theories in their form).

The Laziness Myth

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
South African ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
Good Work ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The People ◽  
Good Lives

When people cannot find good work, can they still find good lives? By investigating this question in the context of South Africa, where only 43 percent of adults are employed, this book invites readers to examine their own assumptions about how work and the good life do or do not coincide. The book challenges the widespread premise that hard-work determines success by tracing the titular “laziness myth,” a persistent narrative that disguises the systems and structures that produce inequalities while blaming unemployment and other social ills on the so-called laziness of particular class, racial, and ethnic groups. The book offers evidence of the laziness myth's harsh consequences, as well as insights into how to challenge it with other South African narratives of a good life. In contexts as diverse as rapping in a library, manufacturing leather shoes, weed-whacking neighbors' yards, negotiating marriage plans, and sharing water taps, the people described in the book will stimulate discussion on creative possibilities for seeking the good life in and out of employment, in South Africa and elsewhere.

scholarly journals Classic and Romantic Trends in Plato

1917 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-236
Author(s):  
J. Loewenberg
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
One And Many ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
As If

The problem of the One and the Many is a problem essentially Platonic. Characteristically Platonic is the saying of Socrates in the Phaedrus: “If I find any man who is able to see a ‘One and Many’ in nature, him I follow, and ‘walk in his footsteps as if he were a god.’” The problem of the One and the Many may indeed be said to be the point around which Plato's deepest concerns center. It occurs in most of his dialogues. It appears in different formulations, and it receives a variety of emphasis. It is certainly at the root of his morals. “Not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued,” is Plato's fundamental teaching. And the good life is a life of law, order, justice. The diverse elements of the soul must be set in order; they must submit to one organizing principle; they must become a well-ordered unity.

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