The “good life” is a phrase that is used to depict the ideal life for one to populate. Harmonizing to Aristotle. the good life should be free of any greed. full of virtuousness. pleasance. and friendly relationships. every bit good as excellence in whatever you may make. I would hold with all of the things he believed in. Many people in America would reason that the good life would dwell of being instead wealthy without working. holding many friends. a stable household with an attractive partner and so on. I feel this visual image that America has of the good life is wholly incorrect. The good life should be more virtuousness based instead than being all about material objects and what you have for yourself.
What you contribute to others’ lives should be focused on merely every bit much as your ain life when sing whether person has the good life. In parts of Africa. their people could non even conceive of holding what the people of America see to be the good life. Their thought of the good life would be much different and likely much more virtuous than America because they do non hold material objects and their civilization is much more different than America’s. This makes specifying the good life universally rather hard. because the good life can be interpreted so many ways. However. a cosmopolitan definition of the phrase good life is possible ; I believe if you make the primary end comparatively general this undertaking can be done.
One attack that could be used to specify the good life is stressing simpleness. In the book “Walden” . philosopher Henry David Thoreau emphasizes simpleness when seeking to specify the good life. His findings during his isolation in the book “Walden” were rather interesting. He found that by take downing his criterions. he had no room for disappointment. he was ever content. He besides claimed that his new lower criterions aid facilitated pleasures instead than impeding them. but some intelligence was required to appreciate the little things in life. Another cardinal component he wrote about in “Walden” was that material objects can non supply him with inner peace and contentment he sought after when withdrawing to isolation. This means that stuff objects truly can non be a factor when specifying the good life from a simpleness attack. Thoreau’s thought behind doing life simple was happening purdah and seeing if so striping himself would do his perceptual experience of things much more positive than earlier.
Another attack that could assist specify the good life universally is happiness. Four old ages ago. the Dalai Lama one time said ( while learning people about the art of felicity ) “we pay excessively much concern to material things and pretermit our interior resources. ” This statement basically means that we need to put off on the stuff objects that make us unnaturally or temporarily happy and get down happening what is most of import to us. which should be felicity. Theoretically. if you are non happy and can ne’er look to happen felicity. what is the point of life? That old idea is what leads many to suicide. so in order to populate good you need to happen felicity. I digress ; later in his self-help instruction session the Dalai Lama claimed that everyone had the necessities needed to accomplish felicity and a good life. which makes this a really good and wholly plausible cosmopolitan attack to find whether 1 has had the good life. In “Honest Work” . Aristotle mentions how we should be self-sufficing and happen happiness wherever we find pleasure. merely every bit long as we do non seek pleasance in the incorrect and non-virtuous topographic points.
He states that if we find happiness and we are virtuous. no 1 can state us we do non hold the good life because we are the best Judgess of ourselves. He fundamentally states that nil can overrule our perceptual experience of ourselves because we know ourselves the best. Aristotle believed that surplus or defect of pleasance. wealth. award. and virtuousness can make unhappiness. and in order to remain happy we must remain balanced on these nucleus countries. Unlike the Dalai Lama. Aristotle thought that we must hold an unchangeable character and some cognition to move consequently in these four nucleus countries. Without it we would be non-genuine and unhappy which would get the better of the original intent. The felicity attack differentiates itself from simpleness because it is definable ( you are either happy or you are non ) . which simpleness is non.
However. felicity is similar to simpleness in the manner that they are both based entirely on your ain perceptual experience and no 1 else’s. The 3rd and concluding attack that can assist universally specify the good life is virtue moralss. Virtue moralss describe the character of a moral agent as a drive force for ethical behaviour. instead than deontology. consequentialism. or matter-of-fact moralss. Aristotle created a virtuousnesss theory that consisted of moving upon morality and intellectuality.
He claimed that an act was virtuous if one acted intellectually and morally. and that one used wisdom. reason. comprehension. and obeisance to morality when moving upon a state of affairs. If one acts morally it means that they to the full understood the state of affairs and acted in the “right” manner. or at least attempted to move in a moral manner. If one acts truly morally they should hold small to no jobs in life because they do non make a really hard environment for jobs to originate in. A job free environment benefits many facets in life because it creates low emphasis and reduces the sum of state of affairss that slow one’s productiveness.
This attack is slightly similar to the other two attacks I mentioned earlier. in the manner they all are rather complex. necessitate critical thought to grok. and utilize one’s perceptual experience to find if something will take one to the good life. The first attack is slightly similar to the first because it describes how to move to accomplish the good life. It is besides similar to the 2nd attack of felicity because Aristotle was an devouring truster in both. The 3rd attack contrasts from the other two attacks because it has many different subdivisions of subjects instead than one chief subject that one should lodge to. The three attacks I have found to assist specify a cosmopolitan definition of the good life are from rather a broad assortment of countries which makes them a good coupling. so they are every bit balanced and non to a great extent reliant on one or even two facets of life.
