The document discusses different philosophical perspectives on achieving "the good life." It examines views such as: 1) Living morally/virtuously according to Socrates and Plato. Focusing on virtues like courage and honesty. 2) Pursuing pleasure according to Epicurus. However, Epicurus believed higher pleasures like friendship were most important, not just sensual pleasures. 3) Fulfilling one's human capacities according to Aristotle. This involved living virtuously, with good health, friends, respect and exercising reason through activities like philosophy. The document also discusses finding meaning through things like family, work, or causes. It notes that while some may feel happy, their actions may not truly reflect living well

1. MODULE 3 – THE GOOD LIFE
Objectives:
At the end of this lesson, the learner should be able to:
1. examine what is meant by a good life
2. identify how humans attempt to attain what is deemed to be a good life
3. recognize possibilities available to human being to attain the good life
Introduction
Many philosophers have attempted unlocking the old philosophical question, “what is the good life?” “How
should one live well?” what does it take to live fruitfully? In this module, these questions will be answered as we
understand all about achieving the good life, what every individual strives throughout his or her life.
What is meant by a good life?
According to Westacott (2018), there are three ways by which we can understand what is meant by
“a good life" or "living well." These are the Moral Life, Life of Pleasure. and Fulfilled Life. Read the full article
below.
What is the Good Life? The various
meanings of “living well”
By Emrys Westacott
What is "the 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. For what do phrases like "the
good life," or "living well,” mean? They can be understood in at least three ways.
The Moral Life
One basic way in which we use the word “good” is to express moral approval. So when we say that
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 uses 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
an 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 memo 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 plenty 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 Life of Pleasure
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.

2. Pleasure is enjoyable, it's fun, it's......well.....pleasant! The view that pleasure is the good, or to put it another
way, that pleasure is what makes life worth living, is known as hedonism. Now, 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. In fact, though, this is a misrepresentation of
Epicureanism. Epicurus certainly praised all kinds of pleasures. But he didn't advocate that we lose ourselves
in sensual debauchery for various reasons:
• Doing so will probably reduce our pleasures in the long run since over indulgence tends to cause
health problems and limit the range of pleasure we enjoy.
• The so-called “higher” pleasures such as friendship and study are at least as important as
"pleasures of the flesh.”
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 concept 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.
The Fulfilled Life
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 an instrumental value.
So for Aristotle, the good life is the 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. There is a problem with this way
of thinking about happiness in this way, though. Imagine a powerful sadist who spends much of his time
gratifying cruel desires.
Or imagine a pot smoking, beer guzzling couch potato who does nothing but sit around all day watching
old TV shows and playing video games. These people may have plenty of pleasurable subjective experiences.
But should we really describe them as "living well?" Aristotle would certainly say no. He agrees with Socrates
that to live the good life one must be a morally good person. And he 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.
But Aristotle's idea of what it means to live well is objectivist rather than subjectivist. It isn't just a
matter of how a person feels inside, although that does matter. It's also important that certain objective
conditions be satisfied. For instance:
• Virtue: They must be morally virtuous.
• Health: They should enjoy good health and a reasonably long life.
• Prosperity: They should be comfortably off (for Aristotle this meant affluent enough so that they don't
need to work for a living doing something that they would not freely choose to do).
• Friendship: They must have good friends. According to Aristotle human beings are innately social; so
the good life can't be that of a hermit, a recluse, or a misanthrope.
• They should enjoy the respect of others. Aristotle doesn't think that fame or glory is necessary; in fact,
a craving for fame can lead people astray, just as the desire for excessive wealth can. But ideally, a
person's qualities and achievements will be recognized by others.
• They need good luck. This is an example of Aristotle's common sense. Any life can be rendered unhappy
by tragic loss or misfortune.
They must exercise their unique human abilities and capacities. This is why the couch potato is not
living well, even if they report that they are content. Aristotle argues that what separates human beings from
the other animals is reason. So the good life is one in which a person cultivates and exercises his rational

3. faculties by, for instance, engaging in scientific enquiry, philosophical discussion, artistic creation, or
legislation. Were he alive today he might well include some forms of technological innovation.
If, at the end of your life, you can check all these boxes, then you could reasonably claim to have lived
well, to have achieved the good life. Of course, the great majority of people today do not belong to the leisured
class as Aristotle did.
They have to work for a living. But it's still true that we think the ideal circumstance is to be doing for a living
what you would choose to do anyway. So people who are able to pursue their calling are generally regarded as
extremely fortunate.
The meaningful life
A lot of recent research shows that people who have children are not necessary happier than people
who don't have children. Indeed, during the child raising years, and especially when the children have turned
into teenagers, parents typically have lower levels of happiness and higher levels of stress. But even though
having children may not make people happier, it does seem to give them the sense that their lives are more
meaningful.
For many people, the well-being of their family, especially their children and grandchildren, is the main
source of meaning in life. This outlook goes back a very long way. In ancient times, the definition of good
fortune was to have lots of children who do well for themselves. But obviously, there can be other sources of
meaning in a person's life.
They may, for instance, pursue a particular kind of work with great dedication: e.g. scientific research,
artistic creation, or scholarship. They may devote themselves to a cause: e.g. fighting against racism; protecting
the environment. Or they may be thoroughly immersed in and engaged with some particular community: e.g.
a church; a soccer team; a school.
The Finished Life
The Greeks had a saying: Call no man happy until he's dead. There is wisdom in this. In fact, one might
want to amend it to: Call no man happy until he's long dead. For sometimes a person can appear to live a fine
life, and be able to check all the boxes-virtue, prosperity, friendship, respect, meaning, etc.-yet eventually be
revealed as something other than what we thought they were. A good example of this is Jimmy Saville, the
British TV personality who was much admired in his lifetime but who, after he died, was exposed as a serial
sexual predator.
Cases like this bring out the great advantage of an objectivist rather than subjectivist notion of what it
means to live well. Jimmy Saville may have enjoyed his life. But surely, we would not want to say that he lived
the good life. A truly good life is one that is both enviable and admirable in all or most of the ways outlined
above.
Source:
Westacott E. (2018) What is the good life? https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-the-good-life-4038226
From the above article, good moral would mean to lead us to the good and happy life. Throughout history,
man has persistently struggled in order to attain human flourishing and has given birth to different schools of
thought, which aim for the good and happy life.
Materialism
The first materialists were the atomists in Ancient Greece. The
atomist philosophers thought that universe and matter are only made
up of atoms “atomos” or seeds. These are indivisible particles,
assembled by chance and in a purely mechanical way. The founders of
this theory was the Greek philosopher Leucippus and his disciple
Democritus (around 460 - 370 B.C.). This belief aims that comfort,
pleasure, and wealth are the only highest goals.

4. Hedonism
Epicurus continued the theory of materialism, which does not buy
any notion of afterlife. The hedonists see the end goal of life in attaining
pleasure. For hedonists, since life is limited, one must indulge itself with
pleasures - "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die". They strive to.
maximize their total pleasure, the difference of pleasure and pain, and if
the pleasure was finally gained, happiness remains fixed.
Stoicism
Stoicism is one of the schools of thought in philosophy created for
those who live their lives in the real world. It was founded in Athens by
Zeno of Citium (early 3rd century BC). Stoicism asserts that virtue (e.g.
wisdom) is happiness and judgment should be based acts on behavior
rather than words. People do not have any control and must not rely on
external events, only for themselves and their responses. This philosophy,
helps a person to overcome destructive emotions and acts on what can be
acted upon. Stoicism also differs from other schools of thought with its
purpose as a practical application rather than intellectual enterprise.
Theism
The ultimate basis of happiness for theists is the communion
with God. They believe that they can find the meaning of their lives by
using God as the creator of their existence. Theism is a belief that one or
more gods exist within the universe, and that gods are often omniscient
(all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful), and omnipresent (all-
pervasive). This belief incorporates Monotheism (belief in one god) and
Polytheism (belief in many gods). The Abrahamic faiths such as Judaism,
Christianity, Islam, as well as Hinduism are all theistic religions.
Humanism
Humanism is another school of thought that affirms that human beings
have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape their own lives. “It is
not theistic and does not accept supernatural views of reality" – IHEU;
International Humanist and Ethical Union.
Further, humanists see themselves not only as the stewards of creation but
as individuals who have control for themselves as well as the world outside them.
Most scientists dwell on this thought that the world is a place for discovery in
seeking ways on how to improve the lives of its inhabitants. As a result, scientists
eventually turn to technology to ease the difficulty of life, that is, to live
comfortably.
What is the ultimate goal of a good life?
"Aristotle was the originator of the concept of eudaimonia (from daimon – true nature). He deemed
happiness to be a vulgar idea, stressing that not all desires are worth pursuing as, even though some of them may
yield pleasure, they would not produce wellness. Aristotle thought that true happiness is found by leading a
virtuous life and doing what is worth doing. He argued that realizing human potential is the ultimate human goal"
(Boniwell 2008).
Beniwell (2008) emphasized that feeling good is not good enough for a good life. Each person must realize
his/her potentialities which would lead him/her to the greatest fulfillment - daimon.

5. What is the role of technology in achieving good life?
According to Vergragt (2006), in his essay about how technology could contribute to a sustainable world,
technology will support and enhance a “good life" for all citizens without compromising the earth's ecosystem or
the prospects of later generations. As Stutz (2006) stated, a good life requires essentially basic human needs are
met and aspirations for freedom, belonging, and self-realization are fulfilled as much as possible. Vergragt also
noted that technological innovation in the context of the good life and how it can be supported or threatened,
depending on the way technological innovations are influenced and steered by human decisions and institutions.
Technology, however, allowed us to tamper time and space. Social media as an example has been very
effective in doing this. Communication has been a lot easier for people from different parts of the world. They can
talk and see each other in real time and send messages instantly without waiting for a letter mail to arrive.
Technology also allowed us to fiddle with our sexuality by injecting hormones in order to alter the biochemical
in our body. Whether, we use such technological advancements or not, these are all in the pursuit of attaining a
good life. It is the question of how we decide on what kinds of technology to use or not to use as well as the
balance between the good life, ethics, and technology has to be achieved.
Below is an excerpt from an interview of a graduate at University of Montana Philosophy Program,
Professor Albert Borgmann, the author of Technology and Good Life.
Activity 1
Answer the following questions comprehensively.
1. Define, in your own word, the meaning of a good life.
2. How can one achieve a good life according to the article, “What is the Good Life?” by Emrys
Westacott?
3. Can technology lead us to a good life? Explain your answer.
4. What did Prof. Albert Borgmann mean when he said, “the ones that enhance focal practices and
communal celebrations, and do not diminish or replace them.” That would be the rule of thumb.
Activity 2
A. Watch the documentary film entitled “That Sugar Film” (2015).
B. Read The Concepts of the Public Good: A view from the Filipino Philosopher by Rolando Gripaldo.
Task: Write a reflection paper on how the two (2) topics relate to the season about “The Good Life.” Support
your stand.