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The Good Life: Lesson 3

This document discusses different philosophical views on attaining a good life. It examines Aristotle's view that happiness is the ultimate goal and end of all human actions and aspirations. Different schools of thought that developed over history are also presented, including materialism, hedonism, stoicism, theism, and humanism. Each of these approaches understands and pursues the good life from a different perspective. The document concludes that balancing the pursuit of a good life with ethics and technology remains an important consideration.

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Pia Gambe
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175 views27 pages

The Good Life: Lesson 3

This document discusses different philosophical views on attaining a good life. It examines Aristotle's view that happiness is the ultimate goal and end of all human actions and aspirations. Different schools of thought that developed over history are also presented, including materialism, hedonism, stoicism, theism, and humanism. Each of these approaches understands and pursues the good life from a different perspective. The document concludes that balancing the pursuit of a good life with ethics and technology remains an important consideration.

Uploaded by

Pia Gambe
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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THE GOOD LIFE

Lesson 3
LESSON OBJECTIVES
AT THE END OF THIS LESSON, THE STUDENTS
SHOULD BE ABLE TO:
■ Examine what is meant by a good life;
■ Identify how humans attempt to attain what is deemed to be a good life; and
■ Recognize possibilities available to human being to attain the good life.
INTRODUCTION

■ In Ancient Greece, long before the word “science” has been coined, the need to
understand the world and reality was bound with the need to understand the self and the
good life.
INTRODUCTION

■ For Plato, the task of understanding the things in the world runs parallel with the job of
truly getting into what will make the soul flourish.
INTRODUCTION

■ Among the theoretical disciplines, Aristotle include logic, biology, physics, and
metaphysics, among others.
■ Among the practical ones, Aristotle counted ethics and politics. Whereas “truth” is the
aim of the theoretical sciences, the “good” is the end goal of the practical ones.
INTRODUCTION

■ In this lesson, we endeavor to go back a little and answer these questions:


– What does it really mean to live a good life?
– What qualifies as a good existence?

Granting this understanding, we are assumed to be in a better position to reconcile


our deepest existential needs as human beings and science as tool to maneuver around
the world.
ARISTOTLE AND HOW WE ALL
ASPIRE FOR A GOOD LIFE
ARISTOTLE AND HOW WE ALL
ASPIRE FOR A GOOD LIFE
■ Aristotle embarked on a different approach in figuring out reality.
■ Aristotle puts everything back to the ground in claiming that this world is all there is to
it and that this world is the only reality we can all access.
ARISTOTLE AND HOW WE ALL
ASPIRE FOR A GOOD LIFE
■ Plato recognized changes as a process and as a phenomenon that happens in the world,
that in fact, it is constant.
■ For Plato, this can only be explained by postulating two aspects of reality, two worlds if
you wish:
– The world of forms
– The world of matter
ARISTOTLE AND HOW WE ALL
ASPIRE FOR A GOOD LIFE
■ Aristotle, for his part, disagreed with his teacher’s position and forwarded the idea that there is no reality
over and above what the sense can perceive.
■ Aristotle extends this analysis from the external world into the province of the human person and declares
that even human beings are potentialities who aspire for their actuality.
■ Every human being moves according to some end. Every action that emanates from a human person is a
function of the purpose (telos) that the person has.
ARISTOTLE AND HOW WE ALL
ASPIRE FOR A GOOD LIFE

No individual-young or old, fat or skinny, male or female-resists happiness. We all want to


be happy. Aristotle claims that happiness is the be all and end all of everything that we do.
We may not realize it but the end goal of everything that we do is happiness. If you ask one
person, why he is doing what he is doing, he may not readily say that it is happiness that
motivates him.
HAPPINESS AS THE GOAL OF A
GOOD LIFE
■ In the eighteenth century, John Stuart Mill declared the Greatest Happiness Principle by
saying that an action is right as far as it maximizes the attainment of happiness for the
greatest number of people.
HAPPINESS AS THE GOAL OF A
GOOD LIFE
■ Mill said that individual happiness of each individual should be prioritized and
collectively dictates the kind of action that should be endorsed.
HAPPINESS AS THE GOAL OF A
GOOD LIFE

History has given birth to different schools of thought, all of which aim for the good and
happy life.
MATERIALISM

■ The first materialists were the atomists in Ancient Greece.


■ Democritus and Leucippus led a school whose primary belief is that the world is made
up of and is controlled by the tiny indivisible units in the world atomos or seeds.
MATERIALISM

Atomos simply comes together randomly to form the things in the world. As such, only
material entities matter.
HEDONISM

■ The hedonists, for their part, see the end goal of life in acquiring pleasure. Pleasure has
always been the priority of hedonists.
■ The mantra of this school of thought is the famous, “Eat, drink, and be merry for
tomorrow we die.”
HEDONISM

■ Led by Epicurus, this school of thought also does not but any notion of afterlife just like
the materials.
STOICISM

■ Another school of thought led by Epicurus, the stoics espoused the idea that to generate
happiness, one must learn to distance oneself and be apathetic.
■ The original term, apatheia, precisely means to be indifferent.
■ For the stoics; happiness can only be attained by a careful practice of apathy.
THEISM
■ Most people find the meaning of their lives using God as a fulcrum of their existence.
■ The Philippines, as a predominantly Catholic country, is witness to how people base
their life goals on beliefs that hinged on some form of supernatural reality called
heaven.
THEISM

■ The ultimate basis of happiness for theists is the communion with God.
■ The world where we are in is only just a temporary reality where we have to maneuver
around while waiting for the ultimate return to the hands of God.
HUMANISM
■ Humanism as another school of thought espouses the freedom of man to carve his own
destiny and to legislate his own laws, free from the shackles of a God that monitors and
controls.
■ This is the spirit of most scientists who thought that the world is a place and space for
freely unearthing the world in seeking for ways on how to improve the lives of its
inhabitants.
HUMANISM

■ Scientists eventually turned to technology in order to ease the difficulty of life as


illustrated in the previous lessons.
HUMANISM

■ Some people now are willing to tamper with time and space in the name of technology.
■ Social media, as an example, has been so far a very effective way of employing
technology in purging time and space.
HUMANISM

■ Technology allowed us to tinker with our sexuality. Biologically male individuals can
now undergo medical operation if they so wish for sexual reassignment.
HUMANISM

Whether or not we agree with these technological advancements, these are all undertaken in
the hopes of attaining the good life. The balance, however, between the good life, ethics,
and technology has to be attained.
Thank you

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