_The Good Life of Teaching_ extends the recent revival of virtue ethics to professional ethics and the philosophy of teaching. It connects long-standing philosophical questions about work and human growth to questions about teacher motivation, identity, and development. Makes a significant contribution to the philosophy of teaching and also offers new insights into virtue theory and professional ethics Offers fresh and detailed readings of major figures in ethics, including Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Bernard Williams and the practical philosophies of (...) Hannah Arendt, John Dewey and Hans-Georg Gadamer Provides illustrations to assist the reader in visualizing major points, and integrates sources such as film, literature, and teaching memoirs to exemplify arguments in an engaging and accessible way Presents a compelling vision of teaching as a reflective practice showing how this requires us to prepare teachers differently. (shrink)

The Good Life, The Examined Life, and the Embodied Life The good life and the examined life have long been advocated as key philosophical goals, and they have often been closely linked together. My paper critically examines this linkage by considering arguments both for and against the value of self-examination for achieving the good life. Because somatic self-examination has been viewed as especially problematic for the philosophical project of achieving the good life, this form of self-examination will be given special (...) attention in the paper, and its discussion will be situated within the larger issue of the extent to which the embodied life is central to the good life. (shrink)

The Good Life and the Ideal of Flexibility The author focuses on the issue of the "good life" in relation to a strong ideal of flexibility that operates in contemporary western culture. The era we live in may be called a "continuous stream of innovations" and can be characterized by a fundamental requirement "to adapt flexibly and cope with the new". The need for such flexibility is mentally and physically demanding; the demands also mark the approach to values, the ideas (...) of the good life and the project of the paths in life. Contemporary people in western civilization are exposed to the pressure of modern culture that has caused problems in the past decades as a result of the incompatibility of its fragmentary value systems. People today apply their abilities in a never-ending whirl of activities and effort where there is no more space available for becoming aware of and for perceiving the deeper meaning of and formulating their specific ideal of the good life. (shrink)

Science and philosophy study well-being with different but complementary methods. Marry these methods and a new picture emerges: To have well-being is to be "stuck" in a positive cycle of emotions, attitudes, traits and success. This book unites the scientific and philosophical worldviews into a powerful new theory of well-being.

Amid the unrest, dislocation, and uncertainty of seventeenth-century Europe, readers seeking consolation and assurance turned to philosophical and scientific books that offered ways of conquering fears and training the mind—guidance for living a good life. _The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution_ presents a triptych showing how three key early modern scientists, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz, envisioned their new work as useful for cultivating virtue and for pursuing a good life. Their scientific and philosophical innovations stemmed in (...) part from their understanding of mathematics and science as cognitive and spiritual exercises that could create a truer mental and spiritual nobility. In portraying the rich contexts surrounding Descartes’ geometry, Pascal’s arithmetical triangle, and Leibniz’s calculus, Matthew L. Jones argues that this drive for moral therapeutics guided important developments of early modern philosophy and the Scientific Revolution. (shrink)

Chinese and Graeco-Roman ethics influence modern philosophy, yet it is unclear how to compare them. Clustered around the concepts of life and the good life, this volume offers a comparative analysis of the core concepts of both traditions: human nature, virtue, happiness, pleasure, the concept of mind, knowledge, filial piety and deliberation. It is thus an essential contribution to comparative ethics as regards both content and method.

It may seem paradoxical to speak of the ‘goodlife’ for demented elderly. Many people consider dementia to be a life-wrecking disease and nursing homes to be terrible places. Still, it is relevant to ask how we can make life as good as possible for demented nursing home residents. This paper explores what three standard philosophical accounts of well-being — subjective preference theory, objectivist theories, and hedonism — have to say about the good life for demented people. It is concluded that (...) the relevant differences between the various philosophical theories manifest themselves not so much in their general account of the substantial content of ‘the good life’ but in a number of specific controversies. These concern the nature of well-being, the necessity of endorsement by the patient, the value of experience and the need for experiences to be rooted in reality. Moreover, it is argued that further research should pay detailed attention to the process of dementia and to the effects of this process on patients' identities, self-conceptions, capacities, preferences, values and the like, and that a narrative approach which incorporates the factor time may offer a more comprehensive account of the good life for demented elderly. (shrink)

In theory, at least, we might achieve a certain sort of invulnerability right at the end of life. Suppose that under favorable circumstances we can live a certain number of years, say 125, but no longer, and also that we can make life as a whole better and better over time. Under these assumptions we might hope to disarm death by spending 125 years making life as good as it can be. If we were lucky enough to accomplish that, afterwards (...) we would be immune to mortal harm. Especially for those who are closer to the beginning of life than to the end, however, this strategy leaves much to be desired. It is like devouring an entire banquet so as to eliminate the danger of someone stealing it from us. Like a feast, a good life is safely ours after it is over, but then safety comes too late to be of any use to us. To be of practical value, we need protection from mortal harm much earlier in life. (shrink)

Medical, psychological, educational and social interventions to modify the behaviour of autistic people are only justified if they confer benefit on those people. However, it is not clear how ‘benefit’ should be understood. Most such interventions are justified by referring to the prospect that they will effect lasting improvements in the well-being and happiness of autistic people, so they can lead good lives. What does a good life for an autistic person consist in? Can we assume that his or her (...) well-being is substantively the same as the well-being of non-autistic individuals? In this paper, we argue that, as it stands, the current approach to the study of well-being is for the most part unable to answer these questions. In particular, much effort is needed in order to improve the epistemology of well-being, especially so if we wish this epistemology to be ‘autism-sensitive’. Towards the end of the paper, we sketch a new, autism-sensitive approach and apply it in order to begin answering our initial questions. (shrink)

In September 2017 Alexander Nehamas kindly accepted our invitation to have a meeting in Athens in order to discuss several issues of philosophical interest; with his latest publication On Friendship as a starting point we soon moved over to a multitude of topics Nehamas has so far dealt with. The whole conversation spirals around the probably most challenging and demanding issue as far as practical philosophy is concerned – yet one every moral agent needs to provide an adequate answer to (...) during his lifetime: Values. Do they exclusively belong to the domain of morality? Nehamas claims that “although moral values […] are important […], they are not the only values that determine whether a life is or is not worthwhile”. This view inevitably shifts the focus from individual values - even fundamental ones such as friendship, art and truth- to the real issue: What is a good life, after all? (shrink)

The paper outlines several forms of ethical attitude to good life and good death in the Socratic literature of the fourth century BCE. A model for the Socratic discussions could be found in Herodotus’ story about the meeting between Croesus and Solon. Within their conversation, Solon shows the king of Lydia that death is a place from which the life of each man can be seen as the completed whole. In his Phaedo, Plato depicts Socrates’ last day before his death (...) in a similar spirit, as the completion of his beautiful life. However, there is no consensus regarding opinions on death among the Socratics. The final part of the paper outlines various meanings of death in the writings of the first generation of the Socratic authors, which arise from different attitudes that the individual philosophers hold regarding the soul as well as other topics. This part puts the principal emphasis on Aristippus, who is considered as the most controversial figure of the Socratic movement. Aristippus makes an interesting opposite to Plato concerning death, since he associates the philosopher’s endeavour for a good life solely with that which is here and now. (shrink)

A Good Life in the Market develops a framework for thinking about business ethics, examining the nature and potential of markets before crisply exploring a set of important issues—from immigration to intellectual property to boycotts to workplace governance. Provocative, engaging, and conversational, Gary Chartier offers tools and perspectives that will help you flourish in the world of business.

Both Ancient Chinese and Greek philosophers provide accounts of the life lived well: a Confucian junzi, a Daoist sage and a Greek phronimos. Cultivation in Early China and Ancient Greece engages in comparative, cross-tradition scholarship and investigates the processes associated with cultivating or nurturing the self in order to live such lives. -/- By focusing on the processes rather than the aims of cultivating a good life, an international team of scholars investigate how a person develops and practices a way (...) of life. They look at what is involved in developing practical wisdom, exercising reason, cultivating equanimity and fostering reliability. Using the thought of those thinkers central to both traditions, including Plato, Confucius, Han Fei and Marcus Aurelius, they examine themes of harmony, balance and beauty, and highlight the different concerns of scepticism across both traditions. They also discuss the action of doing as an indispensable method of learning. As a result, Cultivation in Early China and Ancient Greece is a valuable collection opening up new lines of inquiry in ethics and demonstrating the importance of drawing on philosophical ideas from across cultural traditions. (shrink)

For as long as humans have pondered philosophical issues, they have contemplated the good life. Yet most suggestions about how to live a good life rest on assumptions about what the good life actually is. Thomas Carson here confronts that question from a fresh perspective. Surveying the history of philosophy, he addresses first-order questions about what is good and bad as well as metaethical questions concerning value judgments. Carson considers a number of established viewpoints concerning the good life. He offers (...) a new critique of Mill's and Sidgwick's classic arguments for the hedonistic theory of value, employing thought experiments that invite us to clarify our preferences by choosing between different kinds of lives. He also assesses the desire- or preference-satisfaction theory of value in detail and takes a fresh look at both Nietzsche's Übermensch ideal and Aristotle's theory of the good life. In exploring foundational questions, Carson observes that many established theories rest on undefended assumptions about the truth of moral realism. Arguing against this stand, he defends the view that good means desirable and presents a divine-preference version of the desire-satisfaction theory. In this he contends that, if there exists a kind and omniscient God who created the universe, then what is good or bad is determined by His preferences; if such a God does not exist, what is good or bad depends on what we as rational humans desire. Value and the Good Life is the only book that defends a divine-preference theory of value as opposed to a divine-command theory of right and wrong. It offers a masterfully constructed argument to an age-old question and will stimulate all who seek to know what the good life truly is. (shrink)

This article carves out a new path between the two dominant wings of contemporary egalitarianism. The luck egalitarian emphasis on choice and personal responsibility is misplaced because individuals differ so deeply, and arbitrarily, in their choice-making capacities. Allowing inequalities to result from ‘choice’ is akin to allowing inequalities to stem from the possession of any other morally arbitrary factor – such as skin colour or gender. The move towards relational egalitarianism has been a case of two-steps forward, one-step back. While (...) the shift away from the focus on choice is salutary, the concurrent rejection of luck is problematic, given the prevalence and importance of luck-based discrepancies in opportunities to lead a good life. A new conceptual framework is presented: good life egalitarianism. The guiding idea is that given the unavoidable arbitrariness of human capacities, the foundation for a good life should be assured for people regardless of the actual choices that they make. The essential goods necessary for leading a good life – such as the opportunities to self-determine and to enjoy non-dominating social relationships – should be guaranteed to all. (shrink)

The ancient Chinese text theZhuangziraises a mix of epistemological, psychological, and conceptual challenges against the value and usefulness of philosophical disputation. But instead of advocating the elimination of philosophy, it implicitly embraces a broader conception of philosophy, the goal of which is to engage us to reflect on our limitations, question things we take for granted, and better appreciate alternative perspectives and possibilities. Philosophy thus understood is compatible with a variety of methods and approaches: fictions, jokes, paradoxes, spiritual exercises, argument, (...) disputation, and so on. Philosophical practices, on this view, also pave the way for an open‐minded, adaptive and flexible way of living that is at the core of the Zhuangist good life. (shrink)

Edwin Hartman argues that ethical principles should not derive from abstract theory, but from the real world of experience in organizations. He explains how ethical principles derive from what workers learn in their communities (firms), and that an ethical firm is one that creates the good life for the workers who contribute to its mission. His approach is based on the Aristotelian tradition of refined common sense, from recent work on collective action problems in organizations, and from social contract theory.

The Good Life and the Greater Good in a Global Context brings together scholars working in the fields of the humanities and social sciences who critically examine the notion of the "good life," understood in all of its dimensions--material, psychological, moral, emotional, and spiritual--and in relation to the greater good. In so doing, the authors provide interdisciplinary insights into what the good life means today and how a viable vision of it can be achieved to benefit not just individuals but (...) our interdependent world as well. (shrink)

This essay examines the Ru 儒 notion of ming 命, usually translated into English as “fate,” with an emphasis on the thought of two prominent Ru thinkers, Zhu Xi 朱熹 of Song 宋 China and Jeong Yagyong 丁若鏞 of Joseon 朝鮮 Korea. Although they were faithful followers of the tradition of Kongzi 孔子and Mengzi 孟子, they held very different views on ming. Zhu Xi saw the realm of fate as determined by contingent movements of psychophysical force, whereas Jeong Yagyong believed (...) it to be utterly contingent upon the unfathomable deity, Shangdi 上帝. These differences have important consequences for their conceptions of the good human life as well as the development of their respective cultivation programs. In conclusion, I argue that their differences are directly related to their different stances on the goal of Ru study. Zhu Xi, in confrontation with Buddhism, tried to put all people on the road to becoming a sage, while Jeong Yagyong aimed at the actual attainment of sagehood even if only some people could do so. (shrink)

_Six Myths about the Good Life_ focuses on the values that are worth aiming for in our lives, a topic central to what has been called Philosophy of Life. We all have ideas about the good life. We think that pleasure makes life better. We want to be happy. We think that achievements make a difference. There is something to all these ideas, but if taken simply and generally they all miss out on something. _Six Myths about the Good Life_ (...) explores what they miss and, in the process, gives a sense of what a good life can be. (shrink)

It is well-known that in recent years, alongside the familiar forms of modern ethical theory, such as consequentialism, deontology, and rights theory, there has been a resurgence of interest in what goes by the name of “virtue ethics” — forms of ethical theory which give a prominent status to the virtues, and to the idea that an agent has a “final end” which the virtues enable her to achieve. With this has come an increase of theoretical interest in ancient ethical (...) theories, particularly Aristotle's, an interest which has made a marked difference in the way ethics is pursued in the Anglo-Saxon and European intellectual worlds. In this essay, I shall not be discussing modern virtue ethics, which is notably protean in form and difficult to pin down. I shall be focusing on ancient eudaimonistic ethical theories, for in their case we can achieve a clearer discussion of the problem I wish to discuss. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Human Needs Animal Desires The Good Life.

Máme tři hlavní teorie blahobytu. První je hédonismus. To je teze, že blahobyt jednotlivce zcela závisí na tom, jak se cítí. Blahobyt prostě spočívá v potěšení. Je pro něj dobré, aby prožíval příjemné zážitky ve svém životě. A špatné je pro něj, aby ve svém životě trpěl. Nejlepší život je pak takový, který znamená největší možnou převahu potěšení nad bolestí. Druhá je teorie touhy, která znamená, že něco je pro někoho dobré, protože to splňuje jeho touhu. Je na tom lépe (...) do té míry, do jaké dostane to, co chce. Stručně, blahobyt spočívá v realizaci subjektivních preferencí. Třetí teorie blahobytu je perfekcionismus. To je názor, že dobrý je rozvoj určitých schopností, které jsou charakteristické pro člověka. Tyto schopnosti zahrnují zejména naši racionalitu, teoretickou i praktickou. Blahobyt spočívá v sebe-zdokonalování, v životě excelentní a ctnostné aktivity, resp. v dobrém fungování lidské bytosti. Počiny, jako jsou úspěšné projekty, poznání, estetická zkušenost, rodičovství a přátelství, jsou konstitutivní pro naši lidskou prosperitu. V tomto článku dospívám k závěru, že tyto tři konkurenční teorie ztělesňují odlišné koncepce autenticity. (shrink)

The book offers a historical-systematic overview of the most important concepts of ethics, each of which is presented using three to four exemplary main representatives. Central quotations allow textual access to the respective position, which is explained compactly and clearly. With the title “The Good Life” the author points to the anthropological basis of all ethics. The book is interdisciplinary in nature, incorporating philosophical approaches as well as those from the fields of theology, biology, psychology, sociology, and politics. For the (...) 2nd edition, the book will be expanded to include the chapter “Education - Pedagogical Ethics” and a chapter on universal human rights. (shrink)

In Global Health Impact: Extending Access to Essential Medicines, Nicole Hassoun argues that the concept of a minimally good life grounds the human right to health, which in turn implies the human right to access essential medicines in developing countries. This article argues that Hassoun's argument must be revised. If the temporal unit of a minimally good life is identified, her argument faces a substantive problem, which undermines an important part of her argument. This article then proposes a solution to (...) this problem. If this proposed solution is accepted, Hassoun's project turns out to be more radical than her argument is supposed to be. (shrink)

The students and colleagues of Roderick Chisholm admired and respected Chisholm. Many were filled not only with admiration, but with affection and gratitude for Chisholm throughout the time we knew him. Even now that he is dead, we continue to wish him well. Under the circumstances, many of us probably think that that wish amounts to no more than this: we hope that things went well for him when he lived; we hope that he had a good life.

A moral geography -- Democracy, the moral psychology, and the moral individual -- Premoral and moral culture -- Two forms of antimoralism -- Love and money: the contracting role of the family -- Moral reform and pseudo-moralism -- Cool -- Vengeance and the erosion of law -- The academy -- Science and morality.

In seeking an account of the good life we are looking for what philosophers sometimes term a theory of wellbeing, welfare or prudential good. Philosophical theories of prudential value are often parsed according to a tripartite distinction: hedonism, desire satisfactionism, and objective list theories. This chapter defends the objective list theory. The author argues that repeated application of the method of difference results in a very big objective list of prudential values. The resulting theory termed the “big objective list” theory (...) of wellbeing includes the two main contemporary competitors to objective list theories — hedonism and desire satisfactionism — as well as athleticism, autonomy, beauty, creativity, friendship, happiness, health, knowledge, love, truth, and wealth. The author considers objections to the big objective list as well as objections to the method of difference. (shrink)

The notion of Dignity of Creatures has been voted into the Swiss Federal Constitution by a plebiscite. Philipp Balzer, Klaus-Peter Rippe, and Peter Schaber have given an expert opinion for the Swiss government to clarify the notion of Dignity of Creatures. According to them, by voting this notion into the Swiss constitution, the Swiss have chosen for a limited biocentric approach towards biotechnology. In such an approach genetic engineering of non-human beings is only allowed insofar that their own good is (...) not impaired. It is, however, not clear when the good of a non-human being is impaired. I defend the position that – even if we confine ourselves to animals – their good goes beyond their well being. (shrink)

How can we lead a good life in a world without God? This clear, concise book applies recent thinking in philosophy to the age-old question of what gives meaning to our lives. The prose is simple, the arguments precise, the ideas powerful and thought-provoking. The book deals with many questions: Why does death not destroy the possibility of meaning? In what way is the search for purpose misleading? Why is there not just one thing that is the meaning of life? (...) Why do pleasures and satisfied desires often seem meaningless? What role do our emotions play in discovering that which truly matters? What is the nature of truth? How do our choices and commitments play a part in leading a meaningful life? Is a meaningful life necessarily a happy one? (shrink)

If we take conceptual art seriously, that is, if we consider that art does not have clear-cut boundaries and that it is not limited to the production of aesthetic objects, then a whole spectrum of possible artworks is open to us. Not only can random objects be conceived as artistic, but cognitive states and behaviors can also be meaningfully conceived as pieces of art by their producer and by any sensitive observer. If one is to take one’s life as a (...) piece of conceptual art, one then faces the question of what kind of life would count as a worthwhile piece of art, i.e., what kind of life can have any artistic worth. In this paper, I discuss the possibility that the pursuit of a worthwhile life in the Aristotelian sense, more particularly the meticulous design of a character as a set of good emotional, conative, and behavioral dispositions, can count as an artistic endeavor. My aim is to show how this can be the case, and to show that this bears on major issues in contemporary philosophy of art concerning the relation between ethics and aesthetics. (shrink)

Definition of the problem: Contemporary bioethics as an academic discipline mainly focuses on moral questions – according to its articulated self-concept and the explicit arguments in most areas of bioethical reflection. Concepts and theories of the good life are hardly considered. Arguments: In reality the ‘good life’ plays a much more important role than it is assumed, but mostly only in an implicit way. The article demonstrates this by referencing three selected fields of bioethical discussion. Hence the article argues that (...) bioethics should turn the ‘good life’ into an issue of intense, explicit and systematic consideration. Furthermore, the article provides an initial answer to the questions as to why the ‘good life’ has been marginalized within bioethics up to this point and which function it can assume in future bioethical reflection. Conclusion: The ‘good life’ is the blind spot of bioethics. A more intensive and systematic consideration of the ‘good life’ is a challenge for contemporary and future bioethics. (shrink)

Raymond Angelo Belliotti's Roman Philosophy and the Good Life provides an accessible picture of these major philosophical influences in Rome and details the crucial role they played during times of major social upheaval. Belliotti demonstrates the contemporary relevance of some of the philosophical issues faced by the Romans, and offers ways in which today's society can learn from the Romans in our attempt to create meaningful lives.

We are living in an era when the focus of human relationships with the world is shifting from execution and physical impact to control and cognitive/informational interaction. This emerging, increasingly informational world is our new ecology, an infosphere that presents the grounds for a cognitive revolution based on interactions in networks of biological and artificial, intelligent agents. After the industrial revolution, which extended the human body through mechanical machinery, the cognitive revolution extends the human mind/cognition through information-processing machinery. These novel (...) circumstances come with new qualities and preferences demanding new conceptualizations. We have some work ahead of us to establish value systems and practices extended from the real to the increasingly virtual/info-computational. This paper first presents a current view of the virtual versus the real and then offers an interpretation framework based on an info-computational understanding of cognition in which agency implies computational processing of informational structures of the world as an infosphere. The notion of “good life” is discussed in light of different ideals of well-being in the infosphere, connecting virtuality as a space of potential and alternative worlds for an agent for whom the reality is a space of actual experiences, in the sense of Deleuze. Even though info-computational framework enables us to see both the real world and the diversity of virtual worlds in terms of computational processes on informational structures, based on a distinct layered cognitive architecture of all physical agents, there is clear difference between potential worlds of the virtual and actual agent’s experiences made in the real. Info-computationalism enables insight into the mechanisms of infosphere and elucidates its importance as cognitively predominant environment and communication media. The conclusion is that by cocooning ourselves in an elaborate info-computational infrastructure of the virtual, we may be increasingly isolating ourselves from the reality of direct experience of the world. The biggest challenges of the cognitive revolution may not be technological but ethical. They are about the nature of being human and its values. (shrink)

Nicole Hassoun’s book Global Health Impact: Extending Access to Essential Medicines has three parts. Part 1 is about the right to health, Part 2 offers a concrete proposal for how to promote the ability of people in the developing world to live minimally good lives and Part 3 is concerned with consumer responsibility as it relates to global health. I argue that there is a philosophical tension between the respective projects of Parts 1 and 2. The project of Part 1 (...) reflects a sufficientarian ideal, namely ensuring that each person in our global community has the ability to live a minimally good life. But, the concrete proposal offered in Part 2 reflects a different ideal, namely maximizing global health benefit. While these two ideals may often converge on a set of feasible health outcomes that we should aim to bring about, they can also diverge. The extent to which they diverge depends on our specification of the minimally good life. It is therefore crucial that we have a criterion for distinguishing lives that are at least minimally good from those that are not. Unfortunately, Hassoun’s proposed criterion is problematic in that no life satisfies it. (shrink)