HAPPINESS AND THE GOOD LIFE

David Louzecky

doi:10.1017/s1477175621000300

HAPPINESS AND THE GOOD LIFE

Think ◽

10.1017/s1477175621000300 ◽

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.

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The Good Life and the Good Lives of Others

Social Philosophy and Policy ◽

10.1017/s0265052500001448 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 133-148 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

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).

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The Laziness Myth

10.7591/cornell/9781501752506.001.0001 ◽

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.

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Good Lives: Prolegomena

Social Philosophy and Policy ◽

10.1017/s0265052500001382 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 15-37 ◽

Cited By ~ 43

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.

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Good Lives

10.1093/oso/9780198865384.001.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Samuel Clark

Keyword(s):

Good Life ◽

Human Life ◽

The Self ◽

The Good Life ◽

Human Beings ◽

Transformative Experience ◽

Wide Range ◽

Self Knowledge ◽

Self Discovery ◽

Good Lives

Reasoning with autobiography is a way to self-knowledge. We can learn about ourselves, as human beings and as individuals, by reading, thinking through, and arguing about this distinctive kind of text. Reasoning with Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son is a way of learning about the nature of the good life and the roles that pleasure and self-expression can play in it. Reasoning with Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs is a way of learning about transformative experience, self-alienation, and therefore the nature of the self. Good Lives develops and defends this claim, by answering a series of questions. What is an autobiography? How can we learn about ourselves from reading one? On what subjects does autobiography teach? What should we learn about them? In particular, given that autobiographies are narratives, should we learn something about the importance of narrative in human life? Could our storytelling about our own lives make sense of them as wholes, unify them over time, or make them good for us? Could storytelling make the self? The overall aim of the book is a critique of narrative and a defence of a self-realization account of the self and its good. As it pursues that, the book investigates the wide range of extant accounts of the self and of the good life, and defends pluralist realism about self-knowledge by reading and reasoning with autobiographies of self-discovery, martial life, and solitude. It concludes: autobiography can be reasoning in pursuit of self-knowledge; each of us is an unchosen, initially opaque, seedlike self; our good is the development and expression of our latent capacities, which is our individual self-realization; self-narration plays much less role in our lives than some thinkers have supposed, and the development and expression of potential much more.

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On (Not) Living the Good Life: Reflections on Oppression, Virtue, and Flourishing

Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume ◽

10.1080/00455091.2002.10717581 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 28 ◽

pp. 2-32

Author(s):

Lisa Tessman

Keyword(s):

Good Life ◽

White Supremacy ◽

Moral Virtue ◽

Male Dominance ◽

The Good Life ◽

Unexpected Effect ◽

Class Divisions ◽

Good Lives

In this article I attempt to untangle the purported connection between moral virtue and flourishing in the context of examining what looks like an unexpected effect of oppression: If moral virtue is necessary for flourishing—as Aristotle assumes that it is when he describes eudaimonia as an “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue” — then members of structurally privileged groups can only flourish if they are morally good. However, it is hard to conceive of the privileged as morally good, since their privileges result from unjust social positionings. Thus it appears that they are prevented from leading good lives. This is an odd claim to add to a theory of oppression, which one would expect to explain how the victims of oppression — rather than its beneficiaries — are denied a shot at the good life.While the privileged may enjoy especially ample opportunities to develop certain virtues, I will be thinking here about vices associated with practices of domination, including active or passive acceptance of the benefits that come from occupying positionings that depend upon systems of male dominance, white supremacy, class divisions under capitalism, norms of heterosexuality, and so on.

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