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 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.

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.

Dining in Utopia: A Taste of the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast under Socialism

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 48-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Neuburger
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
Black Sea Coast ◽  
Food And Drink ◽  
National Cuisine ◽  
Sea Coast

This article explores the ways in which the Bulgarian socialist regime integrated a newly elaborated culture of food and drink into its promises for the “good life” and a utopian future. With a focus on Black Sea coast tourism, it argues that the development of more refined food and drink offerings and public dining venues played a dual role of shaping and serving a modern socialist citizenry. With tourism as a major engine of the Bulgarian economy, catering to Bulgarian, Bloc, and Western tourists meant that creating a gastronomic utopia by the sea was part and parcel of “building” and showcasing socialism. This was intimately tied to bolstering state legitimacy through the provision of leisure and abundance, but also to a newly minted Bulgarian national cuisine. By the late 1970s and 1980s, however, the Black Sea tourist phenomenon both exhibited and exacerbated the problem of growing shortages and hence the deep crisis of the system, which collapsed in 1989.

scholarly journals Mathematical Meditations: Revisiting Moral Practice in the Sciences of the Classical Age

2012 ◽  
Vol 67 (01) ◽  
pp. 133-149
Author(s):  
Stéphane Van Damme
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Moral Issue ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Age

To what extent did scholars use science to pursue the good life in the seventeenth century? How to articulate the Scientific Revolution with ethical questions? These are the questions at the core of the investigation led by the historian of science Matthew Jones in his bookThe Good Life in the Scientific Revolution. At first glance, his project is simply an extension of research on the social history of truth that has encouraged historians for two decades to decipher the moral norms that gave credit to the use and production of scientific knowledge. Civility, politeness, honor led to specific research that highlighted the cultural and social context surrounding the practices of scientific innovation in the Classical Age. This book deepens these questions by asking how mathematical practices were considered moral reflections. This article will discuss the contribution of this book by first examining the three attempts at experimenting mathematical morals led by Descartes, Pascal and Leibniz. The article then shows how Matthew Jones successfully draws on the work of Pierre Hadot by considering mathematical exercises as spiritual exercises. In a third broader step, the article examines how the book exemplifies a return of the moral issue in Anglophone history of science in the last twenty years while the French classical epistemology has avoided this kind of questioning. The article argues that these approaches open up avenues of research for historians to better understand the relationship between science and passion, science and spirituality, and more largely science and religion in the early modern period.

Friendship

2020 ◽  
pp. 249-283
Author(s):  
Phillip Mitsis
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Philosophical Discourse ◽  
Original Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Conception Of The Good ◽  
Individual Self

The surviving evidence for Epicurus’s view of friendship has given rise to divergent scholarly interpretations. For some, Epicurus recommends narrowly self-regarding relations with friends, while for others, he seems to recognize the commonly held opinion that reliable and rewarding friendships require us to treat our friends not solely as instruments to our own pleasure. Both of these views have been bolstered by larger considerations from within the wider theory, practice, and history of Epicureanism. Thus, some have made inferences from what they take to be Epicurean social practices, while others have tried to view friendship within the larger context of Epicurean social theory. Still others have posited various kinds of developmental accounts that see Epicurus’s original theory changing as later Epicureans confronted new practical and theoretical questions raised by their conception of the good life. A further question is raised by later Epicurean evidence about divine friendships, which are not based on mutual need. To what extent can humans, enmeshed in the practical demands of human friendship, hope to realize Epicurus’s injunctions to live a life worthy of the gods, and hence, perhaps, form friendships untainted by mutual need? Again the evidence seems muted, but Epicurus’s concerns about the nature of ataraxia, autonomy, and our invulnerability to chance puts questions about the relations among philosophical philoi at the very center of what we might call his high philosophical discourse about the nature of the individual self and the external requirements of hedonistic happiness.

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