The Journal of Positive Psychology

Vol. 4, No. 4, July 2009, 260–272

What makes a good life? A cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective

Anna Wierzbicka*
Australian National University, Australia
(Received 7 February 2008; final version received 8 December 2008)

The question of ‘what makes a good life’ is loaded with cultural assumptions. It sounds simple and natural
in English but is not translatable into most other languages. This paper argues that to connect this question
with universal human concerns we need to examine the question itself, and it offers a methodology for doing so.
This methodology (NSM; from natural semantic metalanguage), developed and perfected within linguistics,
relies on a set of universal human concepts, discovered through empirical cross-linguistic research. It offers
a simple, universal mini-language which allows the researchers to think and talk about psychological and
philosophical issues in a new conceptual space. This paper shows that this methodology can help to free ‘positive
psychology’ from Anglocentric biases and assumptions and to look at questions such as ‘what makes a good life?’
from a universal, language- and culture-independent perspective.
Keywords: universal human concepts; Anglocentrism; metalanguage; Puritan ethics; applied ethics; intercultural
understanding; cross-cultural education

‘. . . we take it as basic that the human agent exists in a
space of questions’
(Taylor, 1989 p. 29).
‘A good life’: A culture-specific idea or a universal
human concern?
Before we can consider possible answers to the
question ‘what makes a good life?,’ it makes sense to
reflect on the meaning of the question itself. As I will
try to show in this paper, the question is loaded with
cultural assumptions, and in a sense can only be
answered from within the cultural world which has
given rise to it. At the same time, the intention of this
Special Issue is no doubt to connect with universal
human concerns.
As I will try to show, to do this we need to examine
the cultural assumptions embedded in the question as
phrased, and to try to see what universal human
concerns it relates to. Once these cultural assumptions
have been laid bare we can both seek to answer the
question on its own terms, and to try to explore
possible answers to the more general human questions
of which the question as phrased is one culture-specific
embodiment. We can also examine the implications
that different ways of phrasing the central question
may have for education and applied ethics in a global
and cross-cultural perspective (see Conclusion).
The question ‘what makes a good life?’ sounds
natural and simple in English, but it is impossible to
translate into most other languages, without significant
changes in meaning. In French, a literal equivalent of
the English version (‘qu’est-ce qui fait une bonne vie?’
or ‘qu’est-ce qui rends une vie bonne?’) does not make
sense and French speakers asked for an acceptable
near-equivalent are at a loss as to what to suggest.
Similarly, in Russian it would not make sense to ask
‘čto delaet xorošuju žizn’?’ In languages further afield,
for example, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, or Japanese,
the literal translation of the English question makes
no sense whatsoever. (Incidentally, ‘making sense’ is as
untranslatable and as bound to the English thought-
world as ‘making a good life’; Wierzbicka, In press.)
The question of ‘how to live well?’ is not similarly
culture-specific, and in fact evidence suggests that the
phrase ‘to live well’ can be translated into most, if not
all, languages: not only do all languages have words
for the concepts ‘live’ and ‘well’ (or ‘good’), but it
would seem that in all languages the two can be put
together, as in ‘living well,’ though of course what
constitutes ‘living well’ differs across cultures and
individuals (see section 5). This is not the case,
however, with the notion of ‘a good life,’ let alone
that of ‘making a good life.’ One can easily say in
Korean, Mandarin or Japanese the exact equivalent
of the following: ‘I don’t want to live long, I want

*Email: anna.wierzbicka@anu.edu.au

ISSN 1743–9760 print/ISSN 1743–9779 online

ß 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17439760902933666
http://www.informaworld.com
 The Journal of Positive Psychology
to live well,’ but not of ‘I want to have a good life,’ or
‘I want to make (build) a good life for myself and my
family.’
Even in English, the phrase to have a good life (with
an indefinite article) is relatively recent, and it has
largely supplanted the earlier one to live well (usually
used in, roughly speaking, a moral sense). Some earlier
examples (from Stevenson’s book of quotations, 1958):
For they have lived long enough that have lived well
enough (Thomas Wilson, 1560).
Oh, let me live well, though I live but one day
(Unknown, ‘The old woman’s wishes,’ 1661).
Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou livest, Live
well; how long or short permit the heaven (Milton,
‘Paradise Lost,’ 1667).
The measure of a happy life is not from the fewer
or more suns we behold, the fewer or more breaths
we draw, or meals we repeat, but from the having once
lived well, acted our part handsomely, and made our
exit cheerfully (Lord Shaftesbury, ‘Characteristics,’
1732).
Wish not so much to live long as to live well (Benjamin
Franklin, ‘Poor Richard,’ 1738).
To him that lives well every form of life is good
(Samuel Johnson, ‘Rasselas,’ 1739).
The nominalized versions of ‘living well’ (good life,
a good life) are also well-attested in older English, not
in exactly the same meaning but also in a moral sense,
as the following examples from the Oxford English
Dictionary illustrate:
In . . . good doctrine, and good life . . . exemplarie to
his [a minister’s] people in publike and priuate
(T. Taylor, 1612).
Only thy good life can assure thy conscience and the
world, that thou art justified (John Donne, 1620).
Those holy incitements to vertue and good life, which
God’s spirit ministers to us externally, or internally
(Jeremy Taylor, 1649).
Praying with his heart and with the acceptabilities
of a good life (Jeremy Taylor, 1660).
A good life is a clergyman’s best syllogism, and
the quaintest oratory; and till they outlive’m they
will never get the better of the fanaticks (A. Marvell,
1676).
In all these examples, good life means, roughly
speaking, virtuous life. But in the last century or two,
the concern with ‘living well’ largely gave way in the
English-speaking world to the idea of ‘having a good
life,’ or, more actively, ‘building’ or ‘making’ a good
life, as in the following examples (from the Cobuild
corpus):
I realized that I was going to have to make a good life
for myself whether I married or not. I know I’d have
to concentrate on my career and on achieving financial
stability.
261
They play Alice and Michael, a passionate couple who
have worked hard to build a good life for their family.
The verb make in the question ‘what makes a good
life?’ also implies, at least indirectly, an active attitude
and evokes the image of someone who wants to
‘build’ a good life and to assume responsibility for
the outcome. This is very much in keeping with the
assumptions of ‘positive psychology,’ but culturally
and conceptually rather alien outside the Anglophone
world.
In his recent book The choice of Hercules: pleasure,
duty and the good life in the 21st century the bestselling
British philosopher A.C. Grayling (2007) comments
on the question ‘what is a good life?’ as follows: ‘in one
sense, the answer is obvious enough. It is the well-lived
life, the meaningful life, the fulfilled life’ (p. 23).
This answer, which Grayling calls ‘uncontroversial,’ is
clearly conditioned, to some extent, by the thought-
world of the English language. From the point of view
of other languages and cultures, it is by no means
obvious that ‘a good life’ is ‘the fulfilled life,’ if only
because they don’t have the concept of ‘fulfillment,’
which is a modern Anglo cultural invention1. Thus,
Grayling’s treatment of ‘a good life’ is in fact a good
illustration of the tendency widespread among
Anglophone philosophers and psychologists to take
the values embedded in modern English for granted,
and to assume that they either are, or ought to be,
universal and uncontroversial (Cf. Wierzbicka, 2006a).
In this paper, I will examine the most common uses
of the expression a good life, and also the good life,
in contemporary English, and I will try to articulate
the ‘cultural scripts’ associated with them, and also
with the question which defines the present Special
Issue. First, however, I need to introduce the method-
ology which allows me to examine the cultural under-
pinning of ideas like ‘what makes a good life?’ from
a universal, language- and culture-independent per-
spective, and to compare this modern culture-specific
idea with concerns for ‘living well’ that we find in
other cultures and in earlier times. To compare ideas
across languages, cultures and times we need a tertium
comparationis or common measure. As colleagues and
I have tried to show in many earlier publications, such
a common measure is available in the methodology
know as ‘NSM’ (from ‘natural semantic metalanguage’;
www.une.edu.au/bcss/linguistics/nsm/), developed by
the author and her colleague Cliff Goddard over more
than two decades. A brief outline of this methodology
follows.
The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM)
NSM is a technique for the investigation of meanings
and ideas which is based on, and interpretable though,
natural language: any natural language. The central
262
Table 1. Semantic primes (in capitals), grouped into categories.
I, YOU, SOMEONE, SOMETHING/THING, PEOPLE, BODY
KIND, PART
THIS, THE SAME, OTHER/ELSE
ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL, MUCH/MANY
GOOD, BAD
BIG, SMALL
THINK, KNOW, WANT, FEEL, SEE, HEAR
SAY, WORDS, TRUE
DO, HAPPEN, MOVE, TOUCH
BE (SOMEWHERE), THERE IS, HAVE, BE
(SOMEONE/SOMETHING)
LIVE, DIE
WHEN/TIME, NOW, BEFORE, AFTER, A LONG TIME, A SHORT
TIME, FOR SOME TIME, MOMENT
WHERE/PLACE, HERE, ABOVE, BELOW, FAR, NEAR, SIDE,
INSIDE
NOT, MAYBE, CAN, BECAUSE, IF
VERY, MORE
LIKE
Notes: Primes exist as the meanings of lexical units (not at the level of lexemes). Exponents of primes may be words, bound
morphemes, or phrasemes. They can be formally complex. They can have combinatorial variants (allolexes). Each prime has
well-specified syntactic (combinatorial) properties.
idea of this theory, supported by extensive empirical
investigations by a number of researchers, is that
despite their enormous diversity, all natural languages
share a common core: a small vocabulary of 65 or so
‘conceptual primes’ and a ‘universal grammar’ (the
combinatory properties of the primes). The set of
universal conceptual primes identifiable as distinct
word-meanings in all languages includes elements
such as SOMEONE, SOMETHING, PEOPLE, GOOD, BAD,
KNOW, THINK, WANT, FEEL, and so on. The full set of
these primes is given in Table 1 (Cf. Goddard, 1998;
Goddard & Wierzbicka, 1994, 2002; Wierzbicka,
1996).
The inventory of semantic primes given in Table 1
above uses English exponents, but equivalent lists have
been drawn up for many languages. Because semantic
primes and their grammar are shared across languages,
it is possible to construct equivalent NSMs in any
language: a Chinese NSM, a Malay NSM, a Spanish NSM,
a Japanese NSM, and so on (see especially the chapters
in Goddard, 2008; Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2002;
Peeters, 2006). The use of NSM as a system of
conceptual analysis depends on being able to break
down complex language-specific meanings and ideas
into extended explanatory paraphrases, known as
explications.
The NSM approach to semantic and cultural analysis
has been employed in hundreds of studies across many
languages and cultures. A large bibliography is avail-
able at the NSM Homepage: www.une.edu.au/lcl/nsm/
index.php. Unlike complex English-specific terms like
‘fulfillment,’ ‘enjoyment,’ ‘motivation,’ ‘sensation,’
‘self-interest,’ ‘achievement,’ ‘well-being,’ or ‘quality
of life,’ the mini-language of universal conceptual
A. Wierzbicka
substantives
relational substantives
determiners
quantifiers
evaluators
descriptors
mental predicates
speech
action, events, movement, contact
location, existence, possession, specification
life and death
time
space
logical concepts
intensifier, augmentor
similarity
primes can be used for discussing ways of thinking,
feeling, acting and living without cultural or linguistic
biases, without theoretical preconceptions, and in a
unified framework (cf. Wierzbicka, 2006a)2.
‘A Good Life’
The expression a good life can be used in many
different ways, if not in many different senses. In
reflecting on these different ways, I will take as my
starting point a selection of sentences, and passages,
from the Cobuild corpus of contemporary English.
Here is one:
A poison killer is being hunted after ten stray cats died
in agony at a Scottish pet refuge (. . .) Co-ordinator
Christine Bruce said: ‘Someone had put down rat
poison near the shed (. . .) It is all terribly distressing.
The cats had such a good life there. They were lovely
animals and this is such a dreadful thing to have
happened to them.’
What does it mean for cats to ‘have a good life’
in a place? Presumably, the speaker is referring here
to several different things which are seen as integrated
together. To begin with, the cats lived in that particular
place for some time, and while they were living there
they could do many things as they wanted, and many
good things were happening to them at the same time.
Furthermore, nobody was doing anything bad to them,
and on the whole, no bad things were happening
to them, or at least not very bad and not often. As a
consequence, the cats were probably ‘feeling something
good’ most of the time, and were not often ‘feeling
something bad,’ at least not ‘very bad.’ One can also
surmise that the cats were leading a harmless, as well as
 The Journal of Positive Psychology
enjoyable, existence: they were not doing anything bad
to anyone and nothing bad was happening because
of them in the place where they lived.
The same appears to apply to the following (ironic)
example:
Stags have a good life, or so the huntin,’ shootin’ and
fishin’ fraternity tell us. Until they get shot, of course.
Stags ‘have a good life’ because they can move around
as they please, they have good things to eat, they can
‘feel some good things’ most of the time, and nothing
very bad happens to them (until they get shot, that is).
There is of course an element of anthropomor-
phism here: animals can only ‘have a good life’ by
analogy to people. One would normally not say of
spiders or bats that they ‘have a good life in the shed,’
or of wolves, that they ‘have a good life in this forest.’
By attributing ‘a good life’ to cats or stags, the speaker
seems to imply that they are nice and innocent
creatures which contribute to the richness and beauty
of life on earth, and which don’t harm anyone.
Leaving aside animals, what does it mean then
for people to ‘have a good life’? Can one ‘live well’ and
not ‘have a good life’? These questions are important
not only from the point of view of cross-cultural
understanding but also from a historical point of view:
if there is a difference in meaning between living well
and having a good life, the historical shift from the
former to the latter way of thinking and speaking can
throw a great deal of light on the changes in social
psychology and cultural expectations reflected in older
and present-day English.
As the material in Cobuild shows, the aspects of life
emphasized by the phrase a good life in present-day
English can be quite different: the focus can be,
roughly speaking, on good fortune, possessions,
pleasures, absence of pain, on doing what one wants
or indeed on doing good things; but it can also be on
the totality of one’s life, including both ‘doing good
things’ and ‘having good things happen to you.’ Often,
having a good life is understood primarily in terms of
material prosperity, as in the following examples:
We do work hard. I mean we try to, even in Kenya we
had the same problem in Kenya. If we worked hard we
made money we were running good cars and people
who didn’t work hard—the natives—didn’t like it.
Because they thought: The Asians are here they are
having a very good life. But they little did they realize
that how many hours we put in, how united our families
were there and how much work we did economically,
what we did and what our achievements were.
In most cases the emphasis appears to be on the
pleasurable and enjoyable aspects of one’s life, as in the
following examples from the Cobuild Corpus:
Don’t get me wrong. I have loved living in Spain and
enjoyed the sunshine. I’ve had a good life on the
Costas.
263
. . . what’s been the most difficult thing do you think
about having a child with disability?
(. . .) well I suppose really that you’ve not got a normal
life (. . .) I mean the other two I mean they had a they
had a really a good life when they was [sic] little and we
always went on holidays and everything. But then
when MX came . . .
There was [sic] other activities like sport for example
where I really enjoyed myself playing for the team,
the folk group also was very nice. We went away,
we used to perform within different parties. I mean
I had a very good life.
That’s how Hollywood is, he shrugs (. . .) they don’t
know you any more if you have a real bad, bad thing in
your hands. But if (. . .) you’ve done something
interesting and good that might make a lot of
money, boy, you have a good life in Hollywood.
The Cobuild material suggests strongly that many
people’s idea of ‘a good life’ combines ‘a good fortune’
and ‘good feelings’ with being able to do what one
wants, as the following example highlights:
If Terry was desperate for one [a child] I would
have one tomorrow, but he’s not too sure. We have
such a good life, you see, and we do exactly what
we want.
‘A good life’ is also associated with doing largely what
one wants in the following example:
I’ve been spoiled a little bit in the past. You did a
couple of hours’ training, then the rest of the day was
yours. It was a good life.
It is probably this emphasis on ‘doing what one wants’
(and feeling something good because of this) that
explains the frequent co-occurrence of good life with
the verb enjoy. For example:
I’ve had a really good life, enjoyed what I’ve been
doing, and become a multi-millionaire.
The pleasures of ‘a good life’ tend to be linked in
particular with the ‘passive’ verb have, which some-
times seems to suggest an emphasis on pleasure more
than anything else. However, this is not always the
case, and in fact, have in combination with a good life
can imply a search for meaning in one’s life rather than
pleasure, as in the following two examples:
She had a good life with friends, church, a straight-A
student, a job as a physical therapist; now it all seems
wasted.
I had to stand up for what I am and try to help people
understand homosexuality and HIV, and if I can do
that for what time I have left in my life then I think I’ll
have had a pretty good life. That’s what motivates me.
Helping people understand. Education.
In the last example, ‘having had a good life’ is linked
explicitly with being able to do something good for
other people, which is what one wants to do.
The use of ‘active’ verbs like lead or live appears
to favour an interpretation of ‘a good life’ as referring
264
to what one does rather than to what happens to one.
For example:
Katherine was intolerant of his attitude and thought he
could lead a good life even with a chronic illness like
MS, believing that ‘Disabilities become handicaps if
you let them take over.’
You know, they say it pays to live a good life.
The phrase a good life can also be free of any
hedonistic implications when it is used without any
verbs, as in the following example:
He remarked that rather than great theories, he was
interested in the ‘small questions’: What is a good life?
How do we know what’s good and what’s bad? How
do people really live and feel and think in their
everyday lives?
Comparing different examples with the phrase
a good life in Cobuild one might be tempted to classify
them into several different senses, or at least into two
groups: those focussed primarily on pleasures and
those focussed on ‘doing good things.’ However, there
are many examples in the corpus which encompass
both these aspects and which don’t differentiate
between them. Consider for example the following
extract:
Michelle never even considered abortion. ‘I don’t
believe in it,’ she insisted. Tony, who was 15, recalled:
‘I knew I’d stay with Michelle so I went out straight
away and got a job at a timber yard. I was determined
to provide for my family and vowed we’d have a good
life together.’ Michelle gave birth to Tony and Ryan by
Caesarean section on April 3, 1995, a month before her
14th birthday.
When Tony vows that he and Michelle would have
a good life together he is neither promising Michelle
a pleasurable life, nor undertaking to live a virtuous
life. Rather, he is affirming a global vision of their
future life together, encompassing the things that he is
going to do, things that he is going to make happen,
and long-term good feelings arising from those doings
and happenings.
Grayling (2007, p. 4) assures his readers that ‘the
valuable life’ (characterized as ‘the life truly worth
living for the one living it’) and ‘the pleasurable life’
(defined partly in terms of ‘laughter’ and ‘achieve-
ment’) ‘are one and the same.’ He repeatedly raises the
question of ‘what features of lives make them good
lives?’ (Grayling, 2007, p. 6) and he concludes that ‘the
life best worth living’ (p. 172) must combine ‘well-being
and well-doing’ (p. 172).
In making these assertions, Grayling is very much
in tune with the folk philosophy embedded in contem-
porary English: the phrase a good life, especially in the
frame to have a good life, includes indeed several
elements combining, roughly speaking, ‘well-doing’
and ‘well-being.’ Grayling’s views reflect a perspective
which is more culture-specific (and characteristic of his
A. Wierzbicka
own time and place) than he seems to realize. This
perspective can be articulated in the form of the
following NSM explication3:
[A] to have a good life (e.g. she had a good life)
people live for some time
during this time they can do many things
at the same time many things can happen to them
they can feel many things because of all this
when people think about it they can think like this:
‘I want to live like this:
if I want to do something I can do it
if I don’t want to do something, I can not do it
I will do many good things, I will not do many bad
things
many good things will happen to me, not many
bad things will happen to me
I will feel many good things, I will not feel many
bad things’
if someone does many things for a long time because
they think like this, they can live like this
she lived like this
it is good if someone can live like this
If this is right, then ‘having a good life’ is a matter of
attitude as well as outcomes, both in the area of ‘well
doing’ and ‘well-being’ (although an element of luck is
not ruled out: ‘it can be like this’ rather than ‘it is like
this’). The speaker’s approbation appears to envelop
both these elements: the attitude and the outcomes
(while perhaps giving a grateful nod to the luck as
well). As I will discuss more fully in section 5, if is this
identification of ‘the valuable life’ with ‘the pleasurable
life’ (as Grayling puts it) which makes the folk
philosophy embedded in modern English distinct and
unusual in a comparative perspective.
From ‘living well’ to ‘having a good life’
As mentioned earlier, evidence suggests that, on the
one hand, the concepts ‘live’ and ‘well’ can be
combined in all languages, and on the other, that the
complex concept of ‘living well’ can be differently
interpreted by different individuals and groups. As we
have seen, the phrase to live well is well attested
in earlier English literature. But to fully understand the
cultural ideal which was linked with that phrase in
sixteenth- and seventeenth- century England we would
need to go beyond the meaning of the combination
of the words live and well as such and to undertake
cultural and historical reconstruction based on a range
of sources and types of evidence.
A fuller discussion of this problem goes beyond the
scope of this paper. All that I can do here is to note
two sources with which this model was linked at that
time, and to formulate, in NSM, my own hypothesis
 The Journal of Positive Psychology
as a starting point for further investigations. These two
sources are Greco-Roman philosophy and Christian
literature. Examples from Christian writers, for exam-
ple John Donne, were included in section 2. Here I will
adduce two examples from Cicero and Seneca (from
Stevenson, 1958):
Breve tempus aetatis satis longum est ad bene honest-
eque vivendum [A short space of life is long enough for
living well and honourably] (Cicero, De Senectute).
Non enim vivere bonum est, sed bene vivere [For it is
not to live, but to live well, which is a good thing]
(Seneca, Epistulae ad Lucilium).
A Latin example from St Jerome (also from Stevenson,
1958) points to a possible historical link between these
two sources of the model of ‘living well’ that we find
in older English literature:
Non magnum est Hierosolymis fuisse, sed bene vixisse
magnum est [It is not a great thing to have been to
Jerusalem, but to have lived well is a great thing]
(St Jerome, quoted in Erasmus, De Colloquiorum
Utilitate
Since ‘living’ can be seen, from the point of view of the
person who lives, as an on-going, open-ended process,
and ‘good’ (‘well’) is universally opposed to ‘bad,’ the
combination of the two can be easily linked with the
model outlined below: not a universal model by any
means but still one transcending Anglo culture and not
dependent on the English language.
‘Living well’
people live for some time
during this time, they can do good things, they can do
bad things
it is good if someone thinks like this during this time:
‘I want to do good things, I don’t want to do bad
things’
it is good if this someone does many things because of
this
it is good if this someone doesn’t do some other things
because of this’
According to the model outlined here, those who ‘live
well’ are not simply people who ‘do good things’ and
‘don’t do bad things’ (presumably, all people do both),
but rather people who maintain during their life the
attitude ‘I want to do good things, I don’t want to do
bad things,’ and in whose life this attitude has long-
term consequences for what they do and don’t do.
As we have seen, the model implied by the modern
English phrase to have a good life is significantly
different, as it opens a space, so to speak, for a broader
spectrum of components: actions and choices, yes, but
also what happens to us, and how we feel because
of this. If a person ‘has a good life’ then, largely,
everything is going well for them. They do good things,
but in addition good things happen to them, resulting
in good feelings, and the good fortune and good
265
feelings are due at least in part to their own actions and
attitudes.
As the language-specific English phrase to make
things happen testifies, it is widely accepted in modern
Anglo culture that people can not only ‘do things’ but
also ‘make things happen.’ Accordingly, it is assumed
that they can be responsible, to some extent, not only
for what they do (or fail to do), but also, for what
happens to them, and thus for the kind of life they
create for themselves. The model of life linking,
roughly speaking, morality with ‘good outcomes’
(such as happiness and success) is rather unusual
from a broader historical and cross-cultural
perspective.
Arguably, the emergence and rise of this model was
due, in part at least, to the rise of Protestantism
in Europe and, more specifically, to the role of
Puritanism in English-speaking societies in England,
America and beyond. As discussed in Max Weber’s
(1968) classic work, The Protestant ethic and the spirit
of Capitalism, Calvin’s idea that worldly success
(including wealth) was a sign of grace and salvation
had a decisive impact on the thinking of the English
Puritans. When the Pilgrim Fathers and other Puritan
settlers left England to build a New World in America,
they took this doctrine with them and made it the
foundation of their outlook on life.
As Weber and others also pointed out, the logic
of Puritan ethics leads to secularization, a fact ‘which
John Wesley noted when he said that piety produces
riches, and riches a decline of religion’ (Bendix, 1977,
p. 193). The identification of a godly life with a
successful life, popularized by Benjamin Franklin,
among others, became one of the distinctive features
of Anglo culture, and found many reflections in the
English language (e.g. Wierzbicka, 1992, chapter 2).
The idea that living ethically goes together with a
successful and happy life, reflected in the modern
English concept of ‘a good life,’ appears to be one
of these reflections.
The emergence of the ideal of ‘having a good life’
seems also to be closely related to the rise of the ‘ethic
of ordinary life.’ According to Charles Taylor’s (1989)
Sources of the self, ‘with the Reformation, we find a
modern, Christian-inspired sense that ordinary life was
(. . .) the very centre of the good life.’ As Taylor (1989)
emphasizes, ‘the affirmation of ordinary life has
shaped the modern identity,’ and one might add,
has left its mark on the modern English language.
Given the immense influence that John Locke had
on modern English ways of thinking and speaking
(cf. Wierzbicka, 2006a), it is particularly interesting to
note that discussing the rise of the ‘ethic of ordinary
life,’ Taylor attributes to Locke a very important role
in this respect. Locke, who was ‘deeply influenced by
the Puritan affirmation of ordinary life’ (Taylor, 1989,
p. 234), was also, according to Taylor, ‘a crucial
266 A. Wierzbicka
hinge figure in the evolution of the ethic of an ordinary
life from its original theological formulation to the
modern, ‘bourgeois’ naturalist one, which has both
facilitated and been entrenched by the rise of
capitalism’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 238). Locke, as Taylor
discusses, linked virtue with pleasure and emphasized
outcomes more than purposes. As Taylor puts it
(paraphrasing Locke), ‘God wants us to be productive,
and this means that we should give ourselves energet-
ically and intelligently to some useful task (. . .) The
fact that God calls us to our particular line of work
gives this a higher significance for us, but this entails
a duty on our part to work hard at it and also as
effectively as possible’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 238). Thus,
in Locke’s ideal of a ‘reasonable Christianity’ (Locke,
1695) achievements, pleasures, and virtues could all
come together, as they do in the secular modern Anglo
ideal of ‘having a good life.’
The sixteenth-century English poet Robert
Southwell opened his treatise Two letters and short
rules of a good life with a sentence linking ‘good life’
with the purpose of life: ‘The first foundation of a good
life is often and seriously to consider for what end
and purpose I was created’ (1973, p. 23). Such a way
of understanding what ‘living well’ and ‘good life’
involved appears to have been typical of the sixteenth-
and seventeenth-century English usage. Linguistic
evidence (as well as other types of evidence) shows
that in modern times this has changed4.
‘The Good Life’
The material from Cobuild suggests that the expression
the good life is used in mainstream English in two
ways, both of them usually somewhat ironic, one of
them much more common than the other. I will start
from the more common use, which I will label as the
good life1.
Beaujolais may wither on the anti-nuclear vine. If anti-
nuclear activists have their way, the 1995 vintage will
be a bitter harvest for France’s Beaujolais wine-
makers. Beaujolais Nouveau, the fruity young wine
that has become a symbol of the good life in France,
has become the top target of a boycott by foes of Paris
resumption of nuclear testing in the South, industry
officials say.
Clearly, the good life of which Beaujolais Nouveau
has become a symbol in France is not the good life
which John Donne had in mind when he said: ‘only thy
good life can assure thy conscience and the world that
thou are justified.’ Donne and his contemporaries
were concerned about the question of how to live well
(virtuously). Those contemporary English speakers
who aspire to ‘the good life’ which can be symbolized
by good wine and good food are clearly focussed on,
roughly speaking, pleasures rather than virtues, and
not even on the combination of the two, which is
consistent with ‘having a good life,’ but specifically
on pleasures, prototypically at least, bodily pleasures
(of the kind that may require a good deal of money).
I say ‘English speakers’ rather than ‘French speak-
ers’ because the expression the good life, in the relevant
sense, is an English expression, not a French one, even
though the ideal expressed in it may be associated by
some speakers of English with French culture, as the
following example from Cobuild illustrates:
The largest and most southern Channel Island is
just 14 miles from the Normandy coast of France
and is a combination of familiar Britain and Gallic
good life.
The English word bon-vivant, an early (from the
seventeenth century) borrowing from French (lit. ‘a
good-living [one]’) also testifies to the English stereo-
type of the French as connoisseurs and lovers of good
food and good wine. The English expression the good
life does not seem to focus to the same extent on
eating and drinking, but it too appears to evoke (in the
relevant use) a reference to bodily enjoyment of
various activities, as the following example illustrates:
Our trip is very flexible and relaxed, with ample
opportunity to travel at your own pace, stopping
to explore tiny villages, old farms, deep gorges and
hidden canyons. Short rambles mixed with plenty of
fresh air bolster the good life and provide us with the
perfect ` aperitif’ for sampling the local cuisine.
A likely link between the good life and bodily pleasures
is highlighted by the metaphor of ‘tasting the good
life,’ as in the following example:
Alec, played by Roy Barraclough, is to abandon the
Rover’s Return and Coronation Street to realise his
lifelong dream of tasting the good life aboard a luxury
liner.
The word luxury in the last example is also telling:
when the phrase the good life refers to bodily pleasures
it appears to refer to ‘very good things’ and ‘very good
feelings’ (rather than simply ‘good’), and also, to things
that many other people can’t have. Consider also the
following example:
Carlos ‘The Jackal’ Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (. . .)
Terrorism expert Professor Paul Wilkinson said of
Carlos: ‘He is extremely dangerous, cruel and vain—
but by no means as clever as he thought he was.
Carlos’s vanity once stretched to signing autographs
for hostages whose lives he had earlier threatened to
snuff out in an instant. But his love of the good life—
particularly women and whisky—masked him from
the reality that he had become obsolete and an
embarrassment in the Nineties. The master of disguise,
who French police claim has been responsible for at
least 83 deaths, ran out of places to hide.’
The point of view reflected in such uses of the good life
appears to be that of the experiencer. In this case, it is
Carlos ‘The Jackal’ who sees ‘women and whisky’
(presumably, in large quantities) as ‘good things’ that
 The Journal of Positive Psychology
he can cause himself to have, along with concomitant
‘good feelings.’ There is also an implied emphasis on
having what one wants.
The speaker identifies with the experiencer’s point
of view only ironically. Phrases like ‘his dream of (. . .)
the good life,’ ‘his love of the good life,’ ‘his taste of the
good life,’ ‘to enjoy the good life,’ or ‘(consumers’)
thirst for the good life’ illustrate this tendency to
present ‘good life’ in the light of aspirations to things
whose value many people (though not necessarily the
speaker) take for granted. Many examples with the
good life appear to imply that what people want is
predictable, and that the ‘good things’ in question are
those that everyone (as it is assumed) would want,
especially lots of money, as in the following two
extracts:
They make buckets of dough. They lunch in Quags
with Michael Winner. They ski at Klosters with Fergie.
They dance at Annabel’s with Andrew Neil. The good
life! But something gnaws at the soul. They are
discontented.
He [Mike Tyson] is a role model for millions of young
people and his actions are capable of affecting their
behaviour. He made a fortune from their adoration
and in return should have set them an example of
decency. Instead, he showed how the rich and powerful
can abuse their position. In three years he will be out
of jail and back to the good life. What sort of example
is that for youngsters?
Perhaps one reason why the expression the good life
is often used ironically is that it implies a certain naı̈ve
(as the speaker sees it) assumption on the part of the
experiencers or seekers of the ‘good life’ that the kind
of life referred to is indeed ‘good,’ not just pleasurable
or desirable but simply ‘good,’ or at least, good for the
people who have it. Consider also the following
example:
Sunday nights are just not football nights.
Wednesdays, yes. Tuesdays, maybe. But Sundays?
Murray, Stewart Milne and Co have obviously become
so accustomed to the good life of chauffeur-driven cars
and private jets they no longer have any need to
consult the train timetables. Otherwise, they would
know fine well that the arrangements for next season’s
matches are NOT ideal for the average fan.
The speaker’s (or writer’s) tone appears to be ironic,
but from the perspective of the people referred to the
life of chauffeur-driven cars and private jets presum-
ably is indeed ‘good,’ as well as being what they want
and what (they assume) other people would want too.
It is not always clear, however, whether the expression
the good life is used in a given sentence ironically or
not. For example:
It is impossible to argue with Horton on that score.
Life may be supposed to start at 40 but for many
golfers the good life starts at 50. Horton, 56, has just
become the first player to break through the £500,000
barrier on the European Senior Tour—more than
267
twice as much as he earned during 36 years on the
regular tour.
It is hard to tell whether the speaker identifies with
the ideal of ‘the good life’ apparently shared by many
golfers or wishes to distance himself from it; and
perhaps the speaker himself is in two minds about it.
In the following example (a personal ad), which
characteristically combines the expression the good
life with the verb enjoy, the use of the phrase is
apparently not ironic:
KENT LESBIAN, 23, seeks friendship, possible
relationship, for fun times. Enjoys the good life, will
travel, genuine.
Evidently, the notion of ‘the good life’ envisaged here
does not refer to ‘doing good things’ (and ‘not doing
bad things’), but rather, to doing things which result
in feeling something good. In many contexts, the
phrase the good life appears to imply self-indulgence,
hedonism, and materialistic and consumerist values,
as in the following example:
In the fall of 1973, the Dylans and their five children
moved from New York State to Malibu, west of Los
Angeles. Some of his [Bob Dylan’s] followers felt that
the move to California marked the end of his
creativity. The good life he had criticized so sharply
seemed to have captured him after all.
Another clear difference between the good life and
a good life is that the former refers to how ‘people’
(in the plural) can live, whereas a good life refers to an
individual life: how ‘someone’ can live. It is natural,
for example, to use the good life in relation to human
groups, and even nations, as in the following example:
. . . with the stringent economic requirements for a
single currency laid down at Maastricht, Germans
are beginning to realise with alarm that the good life
could soon be over. ‘The days of milk and honey are
numbered,’ said one former government adviser.
The reference to ‘milk and honey’ appears to imply
a faint irony and even disapproval of the expectations
of the Germans, and suggests that in the past, they
expected ‘very good things’ to happen to them without
too much effort on their part, or as the context
specifies, with ‘high productivity and little industrial
action.’ Let us consider in turn the following example:
Fifteen Good life Shops are sprinkled throughout the
complex, offering shoppers the best in art, jewelry,
children’s clothes, toys, and kitchenware. Among the
top-name shops are Pappagallo’s and Montaldo’s.
What the label ‘Good Life Shops’ (presumably shor-
tened from ‘the good life’) appears to suggest is a
combination of doing, happening, having, and feeling:
it is good to buy things in these shops, because when you
do, good things happen to you and you can have many
good things and ‘feel good things’ as a result. At the
same time, the ‘Good life’ label has a globalizing effect,
268
as it focuses so much on ‘good things’ that no room
appears to be left for bad ones. Rationally thinking, one
must realize that buying things in Good Life Shops
cannot prevent bad things from happening to the
customers (after the purchases), but the globalizing
effect of the phrase good life ensures the absence of any
bad things from the immediate field of vision: not only
will ‘good things’ happen and ‘good feelings’ be felt, but
somehow the shoppers’ life as a whole will be
subsequently ‘good,’ or so the label promises. To put
it differently, the good life appears to imply a particular
way of life, open to some people and expected to be seen
as self-evidently good. This is certainly how the phrase
the good life (often with capital letters) functions in
advertising, as in the following example:
Enjoy the Good Life with a Free Weekend Break.
If you accept your Customer Care Review now we’d
like you to enjoy a taste of the ‘Good Life’ with a free
weekend break for two, with our compliments.
It is important to note that unlike a good life,
the expression the good life is often used in writing in
inverted commas, as in the following example:
Most residents who enjoy the ‘good life’ are as ignorant
to this side of the city as the millions around the world
who watched the violence erupt on TV. But while the
rich stay at home and watch events on their screens,
the poor are out in force.
This use of inverted commas shows that many speakers
of present-day English wish to distance themselves
from the ideal of ‘the good life’ (in the sense under
discussion), which they perceive as shallow, material-
istic and self-indulgent. They do not similarly seek to
distance themselves from the ideal of ‘having a good
life.’ The magazine example below, in the Oxford
English Dictionary Online (OED), highlights the
quotative, as it were, meaning of the phrase the good
life (in the relevant sense):
This movie hero’s idea of the good life is a top job [and]
a flashy car (1911, Premiere)
As the frequent use of inverted commas indicates, the
phrase the good life in the sense under consideration
refers to a certain way of thinking, no doubt with some
consequences in people’s behaviour, but focused above
all on certain aspirations. In NSM, this can be portrayed
as follows:
the good life1
some people think like this:
‘people live for some time
during this time many good things happen to some
people
these people can have many things because of this
these people often feel something very good because
of this
it is good for people if they can live like this
A. Wierzbicka
I want to live like this’
because these people think like this, they do some
things, they don’t do some other things
other people don’t think like this
Turning now to the good life2, we can illustrate it with
the following two examples from Cobuild:
The new high rollers spend just as much, but it’s on
quieter, better-quality stuff (. . .) In a survey in that
year, three-quarters of New York high earners vowed
they would never return to their pre-recession spending
habits while more than 80 said they now placed more
importance on the ‘simple joys of life,’ and were
‘looking for more meaningful values.’ Even though
they can afford the high life again, they are still
conditioned to believe it’s the good life they aspire to.
Simplicity has become a sought-after commodity,
although it can cost as much as glitz.
‘The good life’ referred to in this example is not ‘the
good life’ of materialistic and consumerist values but
rather, a way of life seen as an alternative lifestyle
and well recognized as such in an American context.
To quote from Wikipedia (the entry on ‘the good life’):
There have been many instances throughout history,
especially American history, of individuals or groups
of individuals attempting to return to a simpler state
of existence, or, as Henry David Thoreau said, ‘to
front the essential facts of life.’ Thoreau wrote his
influential memoir Walden about his personal experi-
ence with simple living. A century later, Helen and
Scott Nearing published a series of books on ‘the good
life’ detailing their alternative lifestyle.
The link between Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ and the ideal
of ‘the good life’ as an alternative lifestyle lives, to
some extent, in the historical memory embedded in the
English language, as the following example from the
OED illustrates:
The hippie philosophy also borrows heavily from
Henry David Thoreau, particularly in the West
Coast rural communes, where denizens try to live
the Waldenesque good life on the bare essentials
(Time, 1967).
The same historical memory is also reflected in the
popular British television sitcom from the 1970s called
‘The Good Life,’ about a couple attempting self-
sufficiency in their suburban backyard. Several
instances of the good life in the Cobuild corpus refer
to this series, for example:
We used to grow fruit and vegetables says Barry and
kept chickens in the garden. It was a bit like The Good
life and it was great fun. Now we have more sense—we
go to the supermarket once a month he laughs.
Lucy Rie and Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie comple-
mented a growing interest in health foods, wholemeal
bread, DIY, ecology and world peace. The Good
life, starring Felicity Kendal, symbolised this back-
to-rationing mood.
The ideal embedded in the phrase the good life2 (with
its reminiscences of Walden, the hippies, and the
 The Journal of Positive Psychology
British television series) can be portrayed in NSM
follows:
the good life2
some people think like this:
‘people live for some time
during this time many people do many things
because they want to have many things
it is not good if people live like this
I want to live in another way
I want to live well’
because these people think like this they live not like
other people live
Thus, we find in English linguistic evidence for several
different ideals, including the prevailing older ideal
of ‘living well’ (in the sense of living virtuously), the
prevailing modern ideal of ‘having a good life,’ and
two somewhat subcultural ideals of living ‘the good
life,’ treated with some irony by many English speakers
but embraced by some and recognized by most5. There
are also the ideals reflected in the expressions ‘to do
something with one’s life’ and ‘to make something out
of one’s life,’ which I will not discuss here for reasons
of space.
Conclusion: Implications for education
and applied ethics
One conclusion from the preceding discussion is that
from a universal, culture-independent perspective it
would be more feasible to ask: ‘how can one live well?’
than ‘what makes a good life?’, given that in many
languages it would be difficult to find a way of asking
the latter question at all. In particular, it would be
more feasible to raise the former rather than the latter
question in schools and colleges in multi-ethnic
countries such as Britain, United States, Canada or
Australia, as it can be more intelligible to students
of Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic or many
other backgrounds, without being any less intelligible
to those of Anglo background.
However, from the point of view of those of Anglo
cultural background, the question ‘how to live well?’
may sound moralistic and less natural and less relevant
to them than ‘how can I have a good life?’ Furthermore,
while the question ‘how to live well?’ appears to be
translatable into a wide range of languages it is also
not as simple and culture-independent as it seems.
For many people, from many cultural backgrounds,
the question ‘how to live well?’ may not be the one
which they want to be asking themselves, or not the
main one. Although it is not quite as loaded with
cultural assumptions as ‘what makes a good life?’ this
question, too, is based on an assumption: namely,
that what one wants is to live well. I would suggest
that the most neutral initial question for intercultural
269
as understanding and education may be the following one:
‘how do I want to live?’ It is also the question that has
perhaps the greatest chance of attracting the students’
interest: it is personal, it is compatible with a wide range
of philosophical and cultural assumptions, and it is
obviously relevant to their own lives.
In his book The reasons of love the philosopher
Harry Frankfurt (2004, p. 5) writes:
The topics to which this book is devoted have to do
with the ordinary conduct of life. They pertain (. . .)
to a question that is both ultimate and preliminary:
how should a person live? Needless to say, this is not
a question of only theoretical or abstract interest,
it concerns us concretely, and in a very personal way.
Our response to it bears directly and pervasively upon
how we conduct ourselves—or, at least, upon how we
propose to do so.
In fact, however, the question ‘how should a person
live?’ can be interpreted as one of only theoretical or
abstract interest, since it is about an abstract, hypo-
thetical person. On the other hand, the question ‘how
[do] we propose to conduct ourselves?’ cannot be so
interpreted, and it does indeed concern us in a very
personal way. This is because ‘propose’ implies here
‘want’: the core meaning of ‘how do I propose to live?’
is ‘how do I want to live?’
Frankfurt argues that ‘the most basic and essential
question for a person to raise concerning the conduct
of his life cannot be the normative question of how he
should live’ (2004, p. 26). A more basic question, in his
view, is ‘the factual question of what he actually does
care about.’ This shift of emphasis from an abstract
and impersonal question to a concrete and personal
one chimes with the focus on the personal question
‘how do I want to live?’ proposed here. It should be
pointed out, however, that the concept ‘care for’ is
even more language- and culture-specific than ‘should’:
it does not translate into other languages. It is ‘want’
which is both fundamental and cross-translatable – not
‘propose,’ not ‘care for,’ and not ‘desire,’ but ‘want’ (cf.
Goddard & Wierzbicka, In press).
I do not claim that the question ‘how do I want to
live?’ will sound equally congenial and ‘natural’ in all
cultural settings, far from it. It is well known that in
some societies the ‘I want’ discourse in encouraged and
expected, whereas in others it may be discouraged and
avoided. For example, according to Anglo-American
cultural scripts it is good to be ‘assertive’ and to be
prepared to say clearly and firmly what one wants,
whereas in Japanese culture the opposite is the case
(see e.g., Wierzbicka, 1991). Nonetheless, cross-
linguistic evidence indicates that all languages have a
word for ‘want,’ as well as a word for ‘I,’ and that the
question ‘how do I want to live?’ can be expressed in
Japanese as readily as in English, whereas this is not
the case for questions formulated in terms of ‘should,’
‘propose,’ ‘care for’ or ‘desire.’
270 A. Wierzbicka
Is there a danger that in framing the first question
in terms of ‘I want’ rather than ‘good’ or ‘should’ one
might be encouraging young people to lead selfish,
amoral, and irresponsible lives? Perhaps there might
be, if one were to ask this question and to stop there:
not if this is only the beginning of an exploration
based not only on abstract discussions, but also on
an exploration of many stories. If one starts with the
question ‘how do I want to live?’ one can then try
to expand young people’s moral imagination and to
deepen their sensibility through literature, history, and
various forms of life-writing. For many young people,
the most personal and most meaningful answer may
take the form of ‘I want to live like this person (X)
lived’ rather than of some abstract discourse on the
subject ‘how can people live well?’ or ‘what is a
good life?’
Perhaps when popular writers assure their readers
that ‘a valuable life’ is the same as ‘a pleasurable life’
(as Grayling does) or that an ‘ethical life’ is also the life
dictated by ‘enlightened self-interest’ (as Peter Singer
does) they are trying to appeal to their audience in the
only way which they think may be persuasive. In the
end, however, such writers are often driven by their
own logic to the conclusion that a life which is not
pleasurable is not worth living, and that, for example,
the lives of people with severe disabilities (or even those
of children with Down syndrome) may not be worth
living and indeed may need to be brought to an end
(Cf. Dworkin, 1995; Singer, 1995)6.
There are no compelling reasons to assume that the
only way to frame the inquiry which could appeal to
a wide audience, especially a young audience, is in
terms of pleasure and self-interest. It may be true that
such an approach would indeed appeal to many
people, and that their answer to ‘how do I want to
live?’ would be framed in just such terms. Other people,
however, may choose other answers. The question
‘how do I want to live?’ does not predetermine the
kinds of answers that may be offered and for many
young people it can be appealing, regardless of what
their personal answer to it might be.
Arguably, then, it makes more sense to start the
education in ethics with the more neutral and yet
personal, and universally translatable, question ‘how
do I want to live?’ In addition to stories, one could then
introduce the students to a range of options which have
been proposed, or assumed, in different philosophical,
cultural, and religious traditions, including (among
many others) the following ones:
(1) I want to live well.
(2) I want to live as my religion tells me a person
should live.
(3) I want to have a good life.
(4) I want to have ‘the good life1’
(5) I want to live ‘the good life2’
The exact meaning, and the full implications, of the
different options could then be explained through the
conceptual vocabulary shared by people of all back-
grounds (along the lines shown in this paper) 7. Thus,
the question ‘how do I want to live?’ is compatible with
a very wide range of responses, as well as a wide range
of cultural assumptions and expectations. Different
cultural and religious traditions suggest, either expli-
citly or implicitly, their own answers to the base-line
question ‘how do I want to live?’ For example, in the
Judaeo-Christian tradition the answer might be ‘I want
to live with God.’ This answer, too, makes certain
culture-specific assumptions, above all, that God
exists, and that it is possible for people ‘to live with
God.’ These assumptions, too, can be explicated in
universal human concepts and thus made intelligible
to anyone anywhere, regardless of their linguistic and
cultural background or religious belief (Wierzbicka,
2001). The same applies, of course, to the possible
Islamic answer: ‘I want to do the will of Allah.’ There
are many possible answers to the question ‘how do
I want to live?’ and if a range of such answers is
explored, students can decide for themselves what
conclusions they want to draw from them and how
they want to live themselves. The same applies of
course to everyone else. Whatever one’s ultimate
conclusion, it is surely good for everyone to strive
from the outset for conceptual clarity. This includes
exploring one’s own hitherto unexamined assumptions,
also those which are embedded in one’s native
language8.
The base-line question ‘how do I want to live?’ is
not only one that is universally translatable, but also
one that is universally applicable and universally
answerable. In particular, it can be put before school-
children and adolescents in all countries, regardless
of their native language, the kind of society they
live in, and their own existential conditions. It is a
question which confronts us all.
I realize, of course, that the question of ethical
education across languages, cultures and ethnicities is
fraught with difficulties and I suggested the question
‘how do I want to live?’ as the first one to put before
students tentatively, to encourage reflection and
debate. My main point is that this question is trans-
latable across cultures, and that, consequently, studies
based on it would be more easily replicated and
compared than those based on questions which can
only be formulated in English.
Familiarity with the discoveries concerning univer-
sal human concepts can free discussions of human
psychology from Anglocentric biases and assumptions,
and this applies to positive psychology and ethics as
much as it does to the psychology of emotions
(Wierzbicka, 2009) and to the study of values (see
e.g., Bromhead, 2009; Gladkova, 2008; Goddard,
1997, 2001, In press; Hasada, 2008; Travis, 2006;
 The Journal of Positive Psychology
Wierzbicka, 1997, 2006a, 2006b; Wong, 2004; Ye,
2004; Yoon, 2004).
As Charles Taylor (1989) says, the human agent
exists in a space of questions. Some of these questions
are shaped by the agent’s language and culture and
cannot be transferred into other languages without
modifications and distortions. Other questions, how-
ever, stem from the human condition and from
universal human concerns and can be expressed in
any language whatsoever. It seems clear that it should
be useful to know what questions concerning human
psychology can be asked from a standpoint available
to speakers of all languages, without conceptual
dependence on modern English.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Helen Bromhead, Cliff Goddard and
Jock Wong for discussions and suggestions which have
helped me to significantly improve this paper. For detailed
information on languages other than English, I am grateful
to Felix Ameka (Ewe), Yuko Asano (Japanese), Bob
Bugenhagen (Mbula), Marie-Odile Junker (Cree), David
Nash (Warlpiri), Verna Rieschild (Arabic), Zhengdao Ye
(Mandarin) and Kyung-Joo Yoon (Korean).
Notes
1. For a semantic analysis of the modern Anglo concept
of ‘fulfillment’ see Wierzbicka, 2006b. On the rise of the
ideal of ‘self-fulfillment’ in Anglo culture see, Porpora,
2001.
2. Some scholars, well aware of the pitfalls of imposing the
categories of their own language on other societies and
cultures, present their analysis of those other societies
and cultures in indigenous terms. For example, in a
book with the subtitle The Javanese idea of the good life
the author (Magnis-Suseno, 1997) relies in his analysis
on Javanese terms such as rukun, sangkan-paran, and
wayang (as in the titles of the chapters: ‘Rukun and
Interior Attitude,’ ‘Sangkan-Paran as Life-Praxis,’ or
‘Wayang ethics’). This approach can be very helpful
in overcoming ethnocentrism but by itself it doesn’t
help to make the indigenous categories intelligible to
outsiders. The use of the NSM technique allows us to
avoid both pitfalls, ethnocentrism and obscurity.
3. For an NSM explication on the noun life as such see
Alexander, 2006.
4. See, e.g., the discussion of the decline of the discourse
of ‘moral purpose’ in modern America in Porpora, 2001,
chapter 5.
5. The phrase the good life is sometimes used in a non-
ironic way in philosophical and academic writing. For
example, in a book entitled Pleasure and the Good Life
the author writes: ‘In this book, I defend one of the
oldest, simplest and most intuitively plausible views on
this question. I claim that the Good Life is the pleasant
life.’ (Feldman, 2004, p. 7)
6. In this acclaimed Life’s dominion, Dworkin (1995,
p. 205) writes: ‘We have an abstract ambition to lead a
good life, and we worry, some of us all our lives, about
what that is.’ For Dworkin, the notion of ‘a good life’
is closely linked to that of ‘a successful life,’ and this
271
has consequences, for example, for how people with
dementia should, in his view, be treated, and whether
or not they should be ‘given medical care for life-
threatening illnesses’ at a time when they ‘have lost the
capacity to think about how to make their life more
successful on the whole’ (Dworkin, 1995, pp. 229–230).
The abstract question ‘what makes a life worth living?’
(addressed, e.g., by Grayling) can be dangerous because
it invites those who ‘have a good life’ themselves to think
that some other people’s lives are not worth living, and
that consequently some of those other people should be
‘allowed to die.’ The demonstrations staged on various
occasions by disabled people against Peter Singer’s
public appearances and honours are symptomatic in
this regard. No such dangers are linked with the
question ‘how do I want to live?’
7. Singer’s (1995) title question ‘How are we to live?’
cannot be taken as a base-line one for several reasons,
including untranslatability and vagueness. First, it is not
clear who ‘we’ are: people in general? people here?
people like me? Second, it is not clear what the English-
specific modal ‘are . . . to’ (in ‘how are we to live?’) is
supposed to mean in this context. A question like ‘what
am I to do?’ implies that I want to know two things:
what it will be good for me to do and what someone
in authority wants me to do (this ‘someone in authority’
could be myself, or it could be someone else). The
question ‘how are we to live?’ plays on these uncertain-
ties and ambiguities. As for Singer’s second key question
‘What is in my own interest?’ (implied in the subtitle of
his 1995 book) it cannot be a base-line question either,
because it assumes a prior question: ‘how do I want to
live?’ and a prior answer: ‘I want to live like this: I want
to do what is good for me.’
8. Apart from primary and secondary education, there
is also of course the question of applied ethics as it is
taught in tertiary institutions. As Singer (1986, p. 4)
noted 20 years ago, ‘Applied ethics has become part of
the teaching of most philosophy departments in English-
speaking universities.’ But what kind of applied ethics is
it? What are its standards of conceptual clarity and
cross-linguistic awareness? Singer cites as an example of
‘the kind of rigorous argument that is so important to
the subject’ Derek Parfit’s (1986) essay ‘Overpopulation
and the quality of life.’ But the concept ‘quality of life’
begs all sorts of questions and conceals all sorts of
assumptions which have not been examined. As for the
‘rigour’ of Parfit’s arguments, it can be illustrated
with what he calls ‘The Average Principle,’ which
reads: ‘If other things are equal, it is better if people’s
lives go, on average, better’ (Parfit, 1986, p. 146). What
exactly does it mean for people’s lives to ‘go better’? The
idiom ‘to go well’ is partly shared by English with
French and German (ça va bien, es geht mir gut), but
even in these languages it would be difficult to say that
some people’s lives ‘vont bien’ or ‘gehen gut.’ This is
a clear example of a very loose and language-specific
way of speaking pressed into service as a substitute for
clear thought and rigorous applied ethics.
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