CHAPTER 5

The Good Life

A. What is a Good Life?

This is one of the oldest philosophical questions. It has been posed in different ways—
How should one live? What does it mean to “live well”?—but these are really just the same
question. After all, everyone wants to live well, and no one wants “the bad life.” But the question
isn’t as simple as it sounds. Philosophers specialize in unpacking hidden complexities, and the
concept of the good life is one of those that needs quite a bit of unpacking.

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. They possess and practice many of the most important
virtues. And they don’t spend all their time merely pursuing their own pleasure;; they devote a
certain amount of time to activities that benefit others, perhaps through their engagement with
family and friends, or through their work, or through various voluntary activities. This moral
conception of the good life has had plenty of champions. Socrates and Plato both gave absolute
priority to being a virtuous person over all other supposedly good things such as pleasure,
wealth, or power.

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.

It is worth noting, though, that in both the Gorgias and the Republic, Plato bolsters his
argument with a speculative account of an afterlife in which virtuous people are rewarded and
wicked people are punished. 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. But devout believers are
confident that their piety will not be in vain. 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 ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus was one of the first to declare, bluntly, that what
makes life worth living is that we can experience pleasure. Pleasure is enjoyable, it’s fun,
it’s...well...pleasant! The view that pleasure is the good, or, to put I another way, that pleasure is
what makes life worth living, is known as hedonism. The word “hedonist,” when applied to a
person, has slightly negative connotations. It suggests that they are devoted to what some have
called the “lower” pleasures such as sex, food, drink, and sensual indulgence in general.

Epicurus was thought by some of his contemporaries to be advocating and practicing

this sort of lifestyle, and even today an “epicure” is someone who is especially appreciative of
food and drink. But this is a misrepresentation of Epicureanism. Epicurus certainly praised all
kinds of pleasures. The good life has to be virtuous. Although Epicurus disagreed with Plato
about the value of pleasure, he fully agreed with him on this point.

Today, this hedonistic conception of the good life is arguably dominant in Western
culture. Even in everyday speech, if we say someone is “living the good life,” we probably mean
that they enjoying lots of recreational pleasures: good food, good wine, skiing, scuba diving,
lounging by the pool in the sun with a cocktail and a beautiful partner.

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.

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. We value many things because they are a means to other things. For
instance, we value money because it enables us to buy things we want;; we value leisure
because it gives us time to pursue our interests. But happiness is something we value not as a
means to some other end but for its own sake. It has intrinsic value rather than instrumental
value.

So for Aristotle, the good life is a happy life. But what does that mean? Today, many
people automatically think of happiness in subjectivist terms: To them, a person is happy if they
are enjoying a positive state of mind, and their life is happy if this is true for them most of the
time.
Aristotle agrees with Socrates that to live the good life one must be a morally good
person. He also agrees with Epicurus that a happy life will involve many and varied pleasurable
experiences. We can’t really say someone is living the good life if they are often miserable or
constantly suffering.

Michael Soupios and Panos Mourdoukoutas wrote a book entitled The Ten Golden
Rules on Living a Good Life where they extracted “ancient wisdom from the Greek philosophers
on living the good life” and mapped it into modern times. Here is a summary of what they wrote,
extracted from a Forbes article written by Dr. Mourdoukoutas:
 1. Examine life, engage life with a vengeance;; always search for new pleasures
and new destinies to reach with your mind.
2. Worry only about the things that are in your control, the things that can be
influenced and changed by your actions, not about the things that are beyond your
capacity to direct or alter.

3. Treasure Friendship, the reciprocal attachment that fills the need for affiliation.
Friendship cannot be acquired in the market place, but must be nurtured and treasured
in relations imbued with trust and amity.

4. Experience True Pleasure. Avoid shallow and transient pleasures. Keep your
life simple. Seek calming pleasures that contribute to peace of mind. True pleasure is
disciplined and restrained.

5. Master Yourself. Resist any external force that might delimit thought and
action;; stop deceiving yourself, believing only what is personally useful and convenient;;
complete liberty necessitates a struggle within, a battle to subdue negative
psychological and spiritual forces that preclude a healthy existence;; self-mastery
requires ruthless candor.

6. Avoid Excess. Live life in harmony and balance. Avoid excesses. Even good
things, pursued or attained without moderation, can become a source of misery and
suffering.

7. Be a Responsible Human Being. Approach yourself with honesty and

thoroughness;; maintain a kind of spiritual hygiene;; stop the blame-shifting for your
errors and shortcomings.

8. Don’t Be a Prosperous Fool. Prosperity by itself is not a cure-all against an ill-

led life and may be a source of dangerous foolishness. Money is a necessary but not a
sufficient condition for the good life, for happiness and wisdom.

9. Don’t Do Evil to Others. Evildoing is a dangerous habit, a kind of reflex too

quickly resorted to and too easily justified that has a lasting and damaging effect upon
the quest for the good life. Harming others claims two victims—the receiver of the harm,
and the victimizer, the one who does harm.

10. Kindness towards others tends to be rewarded. Kindness to others is a good

habit that supports and reinforces the quest for the good life. Helping others bestows a
sense of satisfaction that has two beneficiaries—the beneficiary, the receiver of the
help, and the benefactor, the one who provides the help.
 A. What is Human Existence?

The meaning of existence is derived from philosophical and religious contemplation and
scientific inquiries about, social ties, consciousness and happiness. Many other issues are also
involved, such as symbolic meaning, ontology, value, purpose, ethics, good and evil, free will,
the existence of one and multiple Gods, conceptions of God, the soul and the afterlife.

Philosophers have tried to find the secret of existence, the meaning of it all. Aristotle
teaches that each man's life has a purpose and that the function of one's life is to attain that
purpose. He explains that the purpose of life is earthly happiness or flourishing that can be
achieved via reason and the acquisition of virtue. Articulating an explicit and clear
understanding of the end toward which a person's life aims, Aristotle states that each human
being should use his abilities to their fullest potential and should obtain happiness and
enjoyment through the exercise of their realized capacities. He contends that human
achievements are animated by purpose and autonomy and that people should take pride in
being excellent at what they do. According to Aristotle, human beings have a natural desire and
capacity to know and understand the truth, to pursue moral excellence, and to instantiate their
ideals in the world through action.
 Plato’s reputation comes from his idealism of believing in the existence of universalis.
His Theory of Forms proposes that universals do not physically exist, like objects, but as
heavenly forms. In the dialogue of Republic, the character of Socrates describes the Form of the
Good. His theory on justice in the soul relates to the idea of happiness relevant to the question
of the meaning of life. In Platonism, the meaning of life is in attaining the highest form of
knowledge, which is the Idea of the Good, from which all good and just things derive utility and
value.

B. What is a Public Good?

Rolando Gripaldo, a Filipino philosopher, argues that the concept of the public
good carries largely the politico-ethical sense, which subsumes the politico- ethical
senses. The public good is public in the sense that the beneficiaries are the general
public. The government or state pursues it with a service orientation while private
corporations pursue it with a profit orientation. He also cites mixed public goods which
are pursued by private organizations with a service motivation. Government corporations
are basically motivated by service through having profit is not precluded. He also talks
about public bads, such as corruption, pollution and crimes.

A public good is that which benefits by its use, the communal or national public.
This can be perceived in two levels. The first level comes from the people themselves.
They perceive the public good to be beneficial to most if not to all of them. This utilitarian
consideration is important in that, on the other hand, it serves as the ethical standard by
which the public-through a civil society-unify themselves in consideration of their
individual and social benefits. As individuals, they may of course think in terms of their
own selfish benefits from a public good, but there is also a recognition that unless they
work together for their common welfare, the public good aspired for may not
materialistic. They as individuals may suffer as beneficiaries from its nonrealization. In
this regard, then elements of unity (bonding together for individual interests) and
subsidiarity (working together for the common good) are significant aspects of a national
public good from the communal or national people’s point of view. The second level
comes from the local or national government, which believes or assumes with the
utilitarian perspective that a particular project or service is desired by the populace as
necessary for their common welfare. As such, the local or national government views it
as a public good. Examples of these assumed necessary public services or public goods
are national defense, education, public health, public ports/airports and highways, social
services, postal services, and the like.