G-SCTS001

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

- The Good Life
WHAT DOES IT
MEAN TO LIVE THE
GOOD LIFE?
 The Moral Life
The Life of Pleasure
FIVE
PHILOSOPHIES The Fulfilled Life
OF GOOD LIFE
The Meaningful Life
The Finished Life
 THE MORAL LIFE
• One basic way we use the word “good” is to express
moral approval. So when we say someone is living well or
that they have lived a good life, we may simply mean that
they are a good person, someone who is courageous,
honest, trustworthy, kind, selfless, generous, helpful, loyal,
principled, and so on.

• People with moral life possess and practice many of the

most important virtues. They don’t spend all their time
merely pursuing their own pleasure; they devote a certain
amount of time to activities that benefit others
 THE MORAL LIFE
• Many religions also conceive of the good life in moral terms as
a life lived according to God’s laws. A person who lives this
way—obeying the commandments and performing the proper
rituals—is pious. And in most religions, such piety will be
rewarded. Obviously, many people do not receive their reward
in this life.

• Christian martyrs went singing to their deaths confident that

they would soon be in heaven. Hindus expect that the law of
karma will ensure that their good deeds and intentions will be
rewarded, while evil actions and desires will be punished,
either in this life or in future lives.
 THE MORAL LIFE
• For Socrates, to understand what is meant by the ‘good life’
we need to understand what is meant by the ‘examined life’
because one follows from the other.

• The philosophically reflective ‘self examination’ is best

understood as an assessment of one’s basic beliefs and
assumptions that should yield a positive rather than a negative
effect on the quality of the self-examiner’s life.

• The purpose of self-examination is self-understanding and

thus a rebalancing of our selves and a shifting in a positive way
to a ‘superior’ or ‘good life’.
 THE MORAL LIFE
• In Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, Socrates takes this position to an
extreme. He argues that it is much better to suffer wrong than
to do it; that a good man who has his eyes gouged out and is
tortured to death is more fortunate than a corrupt person who
has used wealth and power dishonorably.

• In his masterpiece, the Republic, Plato develops this

argument in greater detail. The morally good person, he
claims, enjoys a sort of inner harmony, whereas the wicked
person, no matter how rich and powerful he may be or how
many pleasure he enjoys, is disharmonious, fundamentally at
odds with himself and the world.
 THE LIFE OF PLEASURE

• The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus was one of the first to declare,
bluntly, that what makes life worth living is that we can experience pleasure.
• The view that pleasure is the good, or that pleasure is what makes life worth
living, is known as hedonism.
• What is key to this hedonistic conception of the good life is that it
emphasizes subjective experiences. On this view, to describe a person as
“happy” means that they “feel good,” and a happy life is one that contains
many “feel good” experiences.
 THE FULFILLED LIFE
• If Socrates emphasizes virtue and Epicurus emphasizes
pleasure, another great Greek thinker, Aristotle, views the
good life in a more comprehensive way. According to
Aristotle, we all want to be happy.

• For Aristotle, the good life is a happy life. He agrees with

Socrates that to live the good life one must be a morally
good person. And he agrees with Epicurus that a happy life
will involve many and varied pleasurable experiences.
 THE FULFILLED LIFE
• Aristotle’s idea of what it means to live well
is objectivist rather than subjectivist. It isn’t just a matter
of how a person feels inside.

• Aristotle argues that what separates human beings from

the other animals is the human reason. So the good life is
one in which a person cultivates and exercises their
rational faculties by, for instance, engaging in scientific
inquiry, philosophical discussion, artistic creation, or
legislation.
 THE MEANINGFUL LIFE

• A meaningful life is associated with

positive functioning: life satisfaction,
enjoyment of work, happiness,
general positive affect, hope and in
general a higher level of well-being.
IS MEANINGFUL LIFE THE SAME WITH

FULFILLED LIFE?
• No, they are not. Some people live very meaningful lives without
fulfilling their own wishes or potential. Meaningfulness is a
subjective thing because each of us has a unique filter through
which we process the world around us. The meaning we make
may follow patterns, but they are uniquely skewed.
 THE FINISHED LIFE

• The Greeks had a saying: Call no man happy

until he’s dead. There is wisdom in this.

• For sometimes a person can appear to live a fine

life, and be able to check all the boxes—virtue,
prosperity, friendship, respect, meaning, etc.—yet
eventually be revealed as something other than
what we thought they were.
 THE FINISHED LIFE
• Example: Jimmy Saville, the British TV personality
who was much admired in his lifetime but who, after
he died, was exposed as a serial sexual predator.

• Cases like this bring out the great advantage of an

objectivist rather than a subjectivist notion of what it
means to live well. Jimmy Saville may have enjoyed
his life. But surely, we would not want to say that he
lived the good life.
RERERENCE:

• Westacott, Emrys. "What Does It Mean to Live the Good

Life?" ThoughtCo, Aug. 25, 2020, thoughtco.com/what-is-
the-good-life-4038226.
END OF
PRESENTATION