What a Good Life Is - Research Paper Example

What a Good Life Is We may know what good food tastes like but not necessarily what the good life is. The good life is not just a life where one is doing good things. Rather it is a life that depends on so many things based on what Aristotle, the advocates of Utilitarianism, and the existentialists had to say. The good life is a life of virtue, a life filled with higher pleasures, and one filled with freedom and creative spirit. Aristotelian Ethics For Aristotle, the good life is all about living a life of moral virtues, and that since these virtues are not inherent or inborn in a person, then he has to do them in order that he can learn them (Aristotle II.1). No one is therefore born good or evil, virtuous or the opposite, because everyone becomes virtuous only by virtue of deed. In fact, for Aristotle, “By doing the acts we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust” (II.1). Thus, no one can be called just or unjust unless he proves this through his dealings with his fellowmen. This alone presupposes that what Aristotle meant by a good life is a life of moral or virtuous action towards one’s fellowman. Moreover, for Aristotle, “happiness” is doing something for the sake of doing it and never for a particular purpose. The Greek philosopher defines “happiness” as the “end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake” (Aristotle I.2). Aristotle, therefore, gives us a very strict definition of happiness, equating it with something that is desired just for itself. This therefore does not translate as money, career, friends and family because these things are not desired for themselves but for the happiness that they can give us. For Aristotle, happiness is virtue and the only way to attain it is by living the virtuous life, or the good life. The good life is therefore “the good and noble performance of [a man’s function which is based on a rational principle]” (Aristotle I.7). From this statement of Aristotle’s, not everyone can attain true happiness because the fulfillment of a good and noble purpose as a rational being cannot possibly be performed by all people. Therefore, the good life can only be had by those who live the virtuous and noble life according to rational principles. If, therefore, one is a teacher, then he must teach virtuously for that is what a good and noble life means to him, and so this life brings him happiness. For Aristotle, the good or virtuous life can only be had if one understands the meaning of virtue. According to the Nicomachean Ethics, virtue seeks “the advantageous, the noble and the pleasant while it seeks to avoid the base, the injurious and the painful,” which is somehow akin to a utilitarian definition of virtue (Aristotle II.3). Nevertheless, contrary to the principles of utilitarianism, for Aristotle, it is virtue and not pleasure that determines happiness. What is virtue? Virtue is defined as “a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle” (Aristotle II.6). Thus, “Virtue [naturally] aims at what is intermediate” (Aristotle II.6). One example is that, when it comes to appetite, the vice of lack is “insensibility” while the vice of excess is “self-indulgence.” The middle ground is known as “temperance” and this is the virtue (Aristotle II.6). Another example is when it comes to matters of truth: the virtue is “truthfulness” while the vice of excess is “boastfulness” while the vice of lack is “mock modesty” (Aristotle II.7). Therefore, in living the good life, the point of Aristotle is for the Greeks not only to avoid both excesses but to constantly live a disciplined life between a lack and an excess. Reason is another quality that Aristotle required for living a good life. According to Aristotle, what makes happiness possible or attainable is adopting the state of “a being-at-work [or activity] of the soul in accordance with reason, or not without reason” (Aristotle I.7). This means that the only way to attain happiness is to value reason in one’s work and life, and to make reason a standard requirement in every endeavor. Moreover, for Aristotle, a good and virtuous life must possess completeness. Aristotle equates happiness with the idea of completeness: “…we choose [happiness] always on account of itself and never on account of anything else” for “no one chooses happiness…for the sake of anything else at all (Aristotle I.7). Moreover, happiness is “something complete and self-sufficient, and is therefore, the end of actions” (Aristotle I.7). Therefore, one will realize that he or she is living the good life if in his actions, he does not desire anything else other than doing that action by itself. As long as a person still does something in order to attain another thing, then he is not truly happy. Furthermore, according to Aristotle, a good life is all about the perfection of one’s work. In simple human terms, this means that “the one who is at work in accordance with virtue will act and act well” and “it is the ones who act rightly who become accomplished people” (Aristotle I.8). Therefore, before one can say that one lives a good life, then he must make sure that work must come with virtue and righteousness. Perfection therefore is synonymous to possessing virtue, and it is this state of perfection that naturally brings about accomplishment and true happiness. Moreover, this virtue must naturally come with a good reason (Aristotle VI.13). For Aristotle too, a friendship of virtue, or almost any type of friendship, is an attribute of a good life. According to Aristotle, “For good people too are pleasant to each other [and] for the good are also useful to each other” (Aristotle VIII.4). This means that, practically speaking, any type of friendship is essential to a good life, although the best is still a perfect friendship or the friendship of virtue, which is “the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue” (Aristotle VIII.3). Friendship, however, in any form, must be that of virtue since both friends are good to each other. It is therefore hard to define goodness and virtue without any reference to the utilitarian principles of pleasure and utility. Nevertheless, Aristotle’s point is that friendship, especially that of virtue, is essential to a good life. Utilitarianism Utilitarianism comes close to Aristotle’s virtue ethics for oftentimes and practically, virtue is expressed as pleasure and utility. For 19th century British philosopher John Stuart Mill, “The utilitarian doctrine is that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that end” (Mill IV). Based on this definition of “desirable,” it is clear that Mill and Aristotle have a very similar standard of happiness and a good life. For Mill, the good life is simply absence of pain and presence of pleasure. According to the British philosopher, the good life must be based on the Greatest Happiness Principle, which states that happiness is “an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments [or pleasure], both in point of quantity and quality” (Mill II). Quantity is determined by counting the number of things that give one either pleasure or pain, and quality is determined through the decision of “competent judges,” or people who are “qualified by knowledge” (Mill II). Thus, for Mill, the presence of more pleasure than pain in terms of quantity and quality in life means that it is a relatively much happier life. Therefore, the good life is a spectrum based on the quantity and quality of pleasure and pain involved in it. The best life is therefore 100% pleasure and 0% pain, while the worst life is the exact opposite. Nevertheless, just as Aristotle had to painstakingly explain the meaning of virtue, Mill had to do the same thing to “happiness derived from pleasure.” For Mill, a good life is filled with happiness derived from pleasure, which is never anything base, pornographic or insulting. This happiness can be intelligently determined by a being of “higher faculties” for only “a being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy…than one of an inferior type” (Mill II). Based on this statement, Mill therefore believes that utilitarian happiness or pleasure is best distinguished from beastly pleasures in terms of quality. Therefore, one needs a noble character like that of a philosopher, and a sense of dignity and higher faculties in order to determine which pleasures are relatively higher than the beastly pleasures of a pig. His noble character will also be instrumental in the attainment of true happiness or a higher level of happiness. Thus, the good life, according to Mill, is a life full of higher pleasures as determined by a high level of intellect and judgment, and a life with the least pain. Mill also believes that sometimes a good life requires certain sacrifices. According to Mill, in his masterpiece of ethics Utilitarianism, “All honor to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world” (Mill II). Furthermore, Mill states that “…anyone can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his own” (Mill II). Thus, the good life is not only about the happiness of the individual directed towards himself but also the happiness of all other individuals with and through whom he lives. Moreover, unlike Aristotle, who values more the individual attainment of happiness or the practice of virtue towards another person, Mill’s utilitarian philosophy includes collective happiness as a prerequisite to a good life. The good life, according to the utilitarians, is all about higher pleasure and some sacrifices from which collective happiness is derived. However, it does not teach any form of sacrifice for the sake of itself. Jeremy Bentham, who was a predecessor of Mill’s, believed that “The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the inhabitants of this earth pursue it consistently, and in a day’s time they will have turned it into a hell” (Bentham 4). This clearly means that asceticism alone for its sake or “for the greater glory of God” is useless and is therefore not going to make someone happy. The only level of asceticism that can define a good life is therefore one whose purpose is directed towards the happiness of the person or of many people. Existentialism While Aristotle and the champions of Utilitarianism have laid out their rules and guidelines on how a good life should be lived, they somehow emphasized the idea of duty while disregarding the concept and role of freedom in the good life. It was therefore the first group of philosophers known as existentialists who defined a good life in the context of freedom. For the 20th century French existentialist philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, a good life is a life of freedom. This freedom is not just freedom from external control or bondage but freedom that one recognizes in his being. Thus, as long as this is not the way freedom is viewed by an individual, he will not be truly free and he will therefore not be able to live a good life. “Man does not exist first in order to be free subsequently; there is no difference between the being of man and his being-free” (Gardner 149). This means that as long as a person believes that he is bound to do something out of duty and that there are a priori rules and principles behind this, then he is not totally free and that he cannot therefore live a good life. Moreover, the good life, for Sartre, is one where the individual has the freedom to build himself. According to Sartre, “It is because we are nothingness and lack that we are obliged to make our selves” (Gardner 154). This therefore means that a good life is not one which is merely following rules set by society or by another person. A good life is a life where one constantly creates and recreates himself with the freedom that is given to him by virtue of his birth and of his being human. Thus, as long as one fashions his life according to what he believes it should be, then he is free and he is living the good life. According to the 19th century Danish existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, freedom has a price and that is need for courage. Therefore, since one is free, then one has to endure the consequences of freedom, and one of this is the need for courage. Thus, a good life is one filled with courage and with no room for cowardice. For Kierkegaard, “Whoever remains faithful to his decision will realize that his whole life is a struggle” and that “the archenemy of decision is cowardice” (Kierkegaard 4). Moreover, the happy individual who is living a good life knows that “at decisive moments you have to renew your resolve again and again and that this alone makes good the decision and the decision good” (Kierkegaard 4). These statements of Kierkegaard mean that, with freedom, there is no one else nor even God to make a decision for someone. He or she should therefore rely on this own decision, and if ever it proves to be wrong, then he should change it to make it good. There is no such thing as mistake but just a constant proving of oneself as a courageous man or woman. On the other hand, cowardice is not recognizing the freedom to make a decision, and thus relying only on God or others or on circumstances to make decisions for the person. Kierkegaard therefore knows that freedom and courage are the true marks of a good life. This concept of freedom still has one more interpretation left. According to 19th century German existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, freedom is cleansing the mind of what has brainwashed people for so long: “the moral concepts of ‘guilt,’ ‘conscience,’ ‘duty,’ and ‘sanctity of obligation’ [which were all born out of] blood” (Nietzsche 3). Although Nietzsche did not exactly believe in ethical truths or in the idea of a good life, he somehow implies in the Genealogy of Morals that certain moral concepts of sin and punishment must make life extremely miserable. Thus, the good life, according to Nietzsche, is one which is not filled with conscience and duty, for this life is just infested with guilt and depression, and this life is entirely unproductive. Moreover, as implied by the teachings of Nietzsche, in order to live the good life, one should understand that the path to life is not one of passiveness and sacrifice but one of action, strength and resolve. According to Nietzsche, “The nature of the pleasure which the selfless, self-denying, self-sacrificing person experiences from the beginning: this pleasure belongs to cruelty” (Nietzsche 10). Thus, it would be horrible to think if everyone sacrificed himself for the sake of the many, which is actually a useless sacrifice. Moreover, Nietzsche’s point is that “as a matter of fact, at all times the aggressive human being, as the stronger, braver, more noble man, has had on his side a better conscience as well as a more independent eye” (Nietzsche 12). Thus, it is not enough to be good to each other or to be strong. If one wants to live a good life, then one has to advance himself forward. Nietzsche, praises the strong people who make a truly good change in this world like the scientists and inventors who brave criticism and risk their reputation in order to make positive changes in this world. The one who lives a good life is therefore not just the man who is good and who has freedom but the one who actively uses this freedom to do something truly remarkable in this world. The good life is to be lived in many ways depending on a specific philosophical tradition. For Aristotle, it is a life where one lives with the virtue that is the mean between a vice of lack and a vice of excess, and a life dedicated to the pursuit of things which are good in themselves, i.e. the virtues. For the advocates of Utilitarianism, the good life depends on the cultivation of higher pleasures for one’s sake and for the sake of the many. Moreover, for the existentialists, the good life is all about recognizing one’s freedom and having the freedom to make decisions for oneself, to fashion one’s life in the way he or she wants, and to make a distinctive mark in this world. In short, the good life is one where the person remains virtuous toward himself and others, and where he lives in the freedom to pursue not only what is good for himself but also what is ultimately helpful for everyone else. He also has no vices of lack or excess, no pain or guilt in himself, and no humility that crushes his creative spirit. Top of Form Bottom of Form Works Cited Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. W. D. Ross. Ontario, Canada: Batoche Books, 1999. Web. Bentham, Jeremy. Happiness is the Greatest Good. n.d. Web. Gardner, Sebastian. Sartre’s Being and Nothingness: A Reader’s Guide. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009. Web. Kierkegaard, Soren. Provocations. LDolphin. n.d. Web. Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. 2008. Web. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought). Eds. Keith Ansell-Pearson & Carol Diethe. Revised Student ed. 2006. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, Inc. Read More