THE GOOD LIFE

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. 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. In an attempt to understand reality and the external world, man must seek to
understand himself, too. It was Aristotle who gave a definitive distinction between the theoretical and
practical sciences. Among the theoretical disciplines, Aristotle included logic, biology, physics, and
metaphysics, among others. Among the practical ones, Aristotle counted ethics and politics.
Whereas "truth" the aim of the theoretical sciences, the "good" is the end goal of the practical ones.
Every attempt to know is connected in some way in an attempt to find the "good" or as said in the
previous lesson, the attainment of human flourishing. Rightly so, one must find the truth about what
the good is before one can even try to locate that which is good.
In the previous lesson, we have seen how a misplaced or an erroneous idea of human
flourishing can turn tables for all of us, make the sciences work against us rather than for us, and
draw a chasm between the search for truth and for the good. 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

It is interesting to note that the first philosopher who approached the problem of reality from a
"scientific" lens as we know now, is also the first thinker who dabbled into the complex
problematization of the end goal of life: happiness. This man is none other than Aristotle.

Compared to his teacher and predecessor, Plato, Aristotle embarked on a different approach
in figuring out reality. In contrast to Plato who thought that things in this world are not real and are
only copies of the real in the world of forms, 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. For Plato,
change is so perplexing that it can only make sense if there are two realities: the world of forms and
the world of matter. Consider the human person. When you try to see yourself in front of the mirror,
you normally say and think that you are looking at yourself-that is, you are the person who slept last
night and you are the same person looking at yourself now, despite the occasional changes like a
new pimple that grows on your nose. The same is true for a seed that you threw out of the garden
last month. When you peek into the same patch of land where the seed ingrained itself into, you may
be surprised to see a little plant showing itself to you and to the sun. Plato recognized change as a
process and as a phenomenon that happens in the world, that in fact, it is constant. However, Plato
also claims that despite the reality of change, things remain and they retain their ultimate "whatness";
that you remain to be you despite the pimple that now sits atop your nose. Plato was convinced that
reality is full of these seemingly contrasting manifestations of change and permanence. For Plato,
this can only be explained by postulating two aspects of reality, two worlds if you wish: the world of
forms and the world of matter. In the world of matter, things are changing and impermanent. In the
world of forms, the entities are only copies of the ideal and the models, and the forms are the only
real entities. Things are red in this world because they participate in what it means to be red in the
world of forms.

Aristotle, for his part, disagreed with his teacher's position and forwarded the idea that there
is no reality over and above what the senses can perceive. As such, it is only by observation of the
external world that one can truly understand what reality is all about. Change is a process that is
inherent in things. We, along with all other entities in the world, start as potentialities and move toward
actualities. The movement, of course, entails change. Consider a seed that eventually germinates
and grows into a plant. The seed that turned to become the plant underwent change from the
potential plant that is the seed to its full actuality, the plant.

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. When a boy asks for a burger from a Filipino burger joint,
the action that he takes is motivated primarily by the purpose that he has, inferably to get full or to
taste the burger that he only sees on TV. When a girl tries to finish her degree in the university,
despite the initial failures she may have had, she definitely is being propelled by a higher purpose
than to just graduate. She wants something more, maybe to have a license and land a promising job
in the future. Every human person, according to Aristotle, aspires for an end. This end, we have
learned from the previous chapters, is happiness or human flourishing.

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. Hard-
pressed to explain why he is motivated by what motivates him will reveal that happiness is the grand,
motivating force in everything that he does. When Aristotle claims that we want to be happy, he does
not necessarily mean the everyday happiness that we obtain when we win a competition or we eat
our favorite dish in a restaurant. What Aristotle actually means is human flourishing, a kind of
contentment in knowing that one is getting the best out of life. A kind of feeling that one has maxed
out his potentials in the world, that he has attained the crux of his humanity.

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. At a time when people were skeptical about claims on the metaphysical, people
could not make sense of the human flourishing that Aristotle talked about in the days of old. Mill said
that individual happiness of each individual should be prioritized and collectively dictates the kind of
action that should be endorsed. Consider the pronouncements against mining. When an action
benefits the greatest number of people, said action is deemed ethical. Does mining benefit rather
than hurt the majority? Does it offer more benefits rather than disadvantages? Does mining result in
more people getting happy rather than sad? If the answers to the said questions are in the affirmative,
then the said action, mining, is deemed ethical.

The ethical is, of course, meant to lead us to the good and happy life. Through the ages, as has
been expounded in the previous chapters, man has constantly struggled with the external world in
order to reach human flourishing. 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 called atomos or seeds. For Democritus and his disciples, the world, including
human beings, is made up of matter. There is no need to posit immaterial entities as sources of
purpose. Atomos simply comes together randomly to form the things in the world. As such, only
material entities matter. In terms of human flourishing, matter is what makes us attain happiness. We
see this at work with most people who are clinging on to material wealth as the primary source of the
meaning of their existence.

Hedonism

The hedonists, for their part, see the end goal of life in acquiring pleasure. Pleasure has
always been the priority of hedonists. For them, life is about obtaining and indulging in pleasure
because life is limited. The mantra of this school of thought is the famous, "Eat, drink, and be merry
for tomorrow we die." Led by Epicurus, this school of thought also does not buy any notion of afterlife
just like the materialists.

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. We should, in this worldview, adopt the fact that some things are not within our control.
The sooner we realize this, the happier we can become.
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. 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. For
humanists, man is literally the captain of his own ship. Inspired by the enlightenment in seventeenth
century, humanists see themselves not merely as stewards of the creation but as individuals who
are in control of themselves and the world outside them. 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.

As a result of the motivation of the humanist current, scientists eventually turned to technology
in order to ease the difficulty of life as in the previous lessons. Scientists of today meanwhile are
ready to confront more sophisticated attempts at altering the world for the benefit of humanity. 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.
Not very long ago, communication between two people from two continents in the planet will involve
months of waiting for a mail to arrive. Seeing each other real time while talking was virtually
impossible. Now, communication between two people wherever they are, is not just possible but
easy. The Internet and smart phones made real time communication possible not just between two
people, but even with multiple people simultaneously.

Technology allowed us to tinker with our sexuality. Biologically male individuals can now
undergo medical operation if they so wish for sexual reassignment. Breast implants are now available
and can be done with relative convenience if anyone wishes to have one. Hormones may also be
injected in order to alter the sexual chemicals in the body.

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.

SUMMARY

Man is constantly in pursuit of the good life. Every person has his perspective when it comes to what
comprises the good life. Throughout history, man has worked hard in pointing out what amounts to
a good, happy life. Some people like the classical theorists thought that happiness has to do with the
insides of the human person. The soul, as the seat of our humanity, has been the focus of attention
of this end goal. The soul has to attain a certain balance in order to have a good life, a life of
flourishing. It was only until the seventeenth century that happiness. became a centerpiece in the
lives of people, even becoming a full-blown ethical foundation in John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism. At
present, we see multitudes of schools of thought that all promise their own key to finding happiness.
Science and technology has been, for the most part, at the forefront of man's attempts at finding this
happiness. The only question at the end of the day is whether science is taking the right path toward
attaining what it really means to live a good life.