Zeit und gutes Leben

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-513
Author(s):  
Holmer Steinfath

Time is a neglected subject in recent, especially analytically minded reflections on the good life. The article highlights the fundamental role of time and temporality for an adequate understanding of the good life. Time functions both as an external factor with which we have to reckon in our practical deliberations and as an internal structure of living our lives. It is argued that striving for a good life also means striving for being in harmony with the time of one's life. The exploration of this idea allows to link analytical with phenomenological approaches to time and good life.

Author(s):  
Christie Hartley

This chapter critically engages with the “sex work” approach to prostitution and argues that treating “sex work” like any other form of work is neither possible nor compatible with valuing the freedom and equality of women as citizens. Liberals often claim, erroneously, that liberalism’s commitment to a kind of neutrality among competing conceptions of the good life and its commitment to antipaternalism requires either decriminalization or legalization of prostitution. While arguments that rest on a particular conception of the “good” of sex or of the role of sex in a broader conception of the good are illegitimate grounds for state policy, it is argued that there are, nonetheless, good public reason arguments against decriminalization or legalization of prostitution. A defense of the Nordic model is offered.


Author(s):  
Zoë Glatt ◽  
Sarah Banet-Weiser ◽  
Sophie Bishop ◽  
Francesca Sobande ◽  
Elizabeth Wissinger ◽  
...  

Social media platforms are widely lauded as bastions for entrepreneurial self-actualisation and creative autonomy, offering an answer to historically exclusive and hierarchical creative industries as routes to employability and success. Social media influencers are envied by audiences as having achieved ‘the good life’, one in which they are able to ‘do what they love’ for a living (Duffy 2017). Despite this ostensive accessibility and relatability, today’s high-profile influencer culture continues to be shaped by ‘preexisting gendered and racial scripts and their attendant grammars of exclusion’ as Sarah Banet-Weiser (2012) argued in the early days of socially mediated entrepreneurship (p. 89; see also Bishop, 2017). In Western contexts only a narrow subset of white, cis-gender, and heterosexual YouTubers, Instagrammers, TikTokers, and Twitch streamers tend to achieve visibility as social media star-creators, and celebratory discourses of diversity and fairness mask problematic structures that exclude marginalized identities from opportunities to attain success. A key aim of this panel is thus to draw attention to marginalized creator communities and subjectivities, including women, non-white, and queer creators, all of whom face higher barriers to entry and success. More broadly, by taking seriously both the practices and discourses of social media influencers, the panellists aim to challenge popular denigrations of influencers as vapid, frivolous, or eager to freeload. We locate such critiques in longstanding dismissals of feminized cultural production (Levine, 2013) and argue, instead, that we need to take seriously the role of influencers in various social, economic, and political configurations.


2019 ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Mary Louise Gill

The fourfold division in Plato’s Philebus develops machinery to decide the contest between pleasure and reason for second place after the mixture in the debate about the good life. The machinery consists of the limit, the unlimited, the mixture of limit and unlimited, and cause of the mixture. Plato’s Socrates collects instances of the unlimited and mixture to determine their unified nature and marks off the cause from the other three kinds and argues for its priority. We gain understanding of the limit by considering its operation in relation to the other three kinds. The limit is responsible for external and internal boundaries in an unlimited, bringing definiteness either by marking something off from things outside it or by providing internal structure. Chapter 5 argues that one key function of the limit is omitted in the fourfold division: guaranteeing the goodness of a mixture.


Author(s):  
Duncan Pritchard

‘Scepticism as a way of life’ considers the case for a moderate scepticism, by looking at the work of the philosopher Aristotle (384–322 bce). This idea concerns the role of the virtues, and the intellectual virtues in particular, in the ‘good life’ of human flourishing; what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia. Understanding the role that the intellectual virtues play in the good life enables us to see how embracing a moderate scepticism could be necessary for living such a life. It also helps us to resolve a possible tension between adopting a healthy moderately sceptical attitude while at the same time living a life of genuine conviction.


2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Quayesi-Amakye
Keyword(s):  

AbstractThis essay discusses how prosperity is understood and articulated in Ghanaian Pentecostal prophetic circles. It seeks to show that in the peripheral prophetism of Pentecostalism, prosperity is perceived as the good life Christ offers those who believe in him. The good life is a religious and social quest of Ghanaians. The bad life is a privation of goodness in this life. Coping with the bad life has necessitated the patronage of Ghanaian prophetic services where rituals of transformation are employed to negotiate evil and suffering in the life of the faithful. Critical in the discussion is the role of the 'Other' who creates conditions of impoverishment for people and who justifies the necessity of prophetic negotiation. The paper also analyses the content of the bad life and finally attempts to show that Christ's parables in Luke 16 propose a guiding paradigm for conceiving prosperity as a tool for harmonious interhuman relations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (5) ◽  
pp. 866-876 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chun-Chu Chen ◽  
Sukjoon Yoon

This research examined the relationships among tourism, well-being, and novelty-seeking as a personality trait based on the top–down and bottom–up theories of well-being. A structural model that includes a direct effect of novelty-seeking on life satisfaction (top–down influence) and an indirect effect through tourism experiences (bottom–up influence) were proposed and tested using a sample of 556 American residents. Results showed that novelty-seekers were well aware of travel benefits and traveled more frequently. It was also found that the top–down influence of novelty-seeking on life satisfaction was significantly greater than the bottom–up influence. These findings highlight the crucial role of personality as a predictor of well-being as well as the importance of applying positive psychology principles to further enhance the potential contribution of tourism experiences to tourists’ well-being.


Author(s):  
Daniel M. Haybron

This chapter examines the role of authenticity in well-being, focusing on issues raised by biotechnologies like gene editing. It is argued that there are good reasons to view authenticity as an aspect of well-being, and the chapter discusses some implications of this view for gene-editing technologies. Also briefly surveyed is the philosophical literature on well-being. The chief goal is to make the case that authenticity merits serious consideration as an aspect of well-being. Even if one concludes that it has no role in the best theory of well-being, the notion of authenticity is deeply embedded in ordinary thinking about the good life and merits attention from policymakers and others if only for that reason.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-533
Author(s):  
Trine Flockhart

AbstractAs part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay focuses on the role of institutions as agents of peaceful change from a perspective that emphasizes the importance of a wide spectrum of human emotions to better understand the less quantifiable but nevertheless important conditions for being able to sustain initiatives for peaceful change. It aims to throw light on the often overlooked psychological and emotional hurdles standing in the way of agents’ ability to undertake and sustain action designed to lead to peaceful change. To do so, the essay returns to the pioneering work of Ernst Haas and his important concept of “spillover.” The essay shows that the neofunctional understanding of spillover was a theoretically important innovation, but that it was missing three essential elements: an understanding of the need for positive emotions and ontological security; an understanding of the link between values and identity; and a realization of the importance of a shared vision for the “good life.” To illustrate the problems with Haas's version of spillover, but also to highlight the significant potential of the theory, the essay turns to the crisis of the liberal international order as an example of a forum where the agency to undertake peaceful change seems to be faltering. The essay concludes that the ability of the liberal order to effect peaceful change is currently hampered because the order is characterized by negative emotions, contested values, and a vision of the good life that is seen as mainly a benefit for the cosmopolitan elite.


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