Good on the way: considering the good life.
The word good is vague. Two different meanings immediately come to mind. The first type of good references quality where the opposite might be poor. This suit is good quality, it was hand-made in London. Good in this sense is a measure of value.
The second type of good references morality and ethical judgements where the opposite might be bad or even evil. Helping people in need is good, but harming them is not. The good here is a measure of rightness, of virtue.
So when we say a good life, do we mean a good life in terms of quality or morality? Or both?
Quality of a good life.
If you ask someone what a good life is they will likely come back to you with a list of necessary comforts and freedoms. Typically the good life in common parlance is more about quality. When people say they want a good life or they are living the good life, usually they mean they are free of restrictions such as work and are able to enjoy whim and fancy at leisure. That is they want to indulge in the pleasures and pleasantries of life without being troubled by the more tedious elements.
This isn’t to be denied. While we don’t need to live in the lap of luxury for a good life, there is a bare minimum that we deem necessary for a dignified life, which is why we find absolute poverty distressing and unacceptable.
But this definition of a good quality of life does not equate with a morally good life.
A morally good life.
It is also the case that we find overindulgence distasteful. Someone who is living the “good life” a bit too much might well be frowned upon for being morally lacking. In which case, there is a medium, between destitution and debauchery, by which we define the good life.
Equally, we can imagine that someone living in poverty with little material wealth or opportunity to enjoy luxuries could live a good life in the moral sense. Morally good in this sense would be treating people with respect and honesty, and acting with temperance and courage, as well as other commonly accepted marks of good character.
So, if a person can have a good life in terms of quality but not in terms of morals; or a good life in terms of morals, but not in terms of quality; it follows that a complete definition of a good life cannot be wholly one or the other. A true good life must then combine something of each. To say that someone led a truly good life, they must have enjoyed certain material comforts and been on the whole morally upright.
If we also think that the right to a good life is universal, and should be available to all then, I suppose, this leaves us with two tasks:
- Raise the living standards of people living in absolute poverty. That is eradicating absolute poverty so all people, everywhere have minimum comforts to live a dignified life.
- Raise the moral standards of people living in relative comfort. That is helping people develop moral and civic virtue.
One burning question remains.
Can there be a good life while poverty exists?
Can people live a good life if they aren’t doing anything to eradicate absolute poverty?
Personal development, that is developing character and virtue, is only half the job, but it is necessary.
Before we can develop collective wisdom, we must develop individual wisdom. Because the collective is made up of individuals. The more people that act virtuously and radiate outwards, then the more society will be transformed as well, as institutions, organisation and businesses realign along more virtuous lines. {dependant on defining what virtuous is, and it won’t be exactly the same for all}.
A morally good life is to develop virtue, but this is not a selfish act because to be virtuous is to act with virtue in the world, to be part of the world, and to take part in it. One cannot be virtuous in isolation. Virtue entails social interactions and participation, something the Stoics saw as clearly as Confucius did. That means to live a life of virtue is to look out from yourself and work to improve society as a whole.
This is part of the morally good life - it is social.
Nobody is perfect, but we keep trying.
It needs to be made clear that while we can talk about good in the qualitative sense as being between the absence of material wealth, that is destitution at one end, and overindulgence, that is gluttony of various sorts, at the other, we cannot put the morally good on a similar scale. Instead, the scale ranges from completely corrupt on the bad end to perfect and pure on the other.
Now, reality would suggest that much as we can imagine something or someone purely good or purely bad, such people don’t truly exist. Our aim, from a moral perspective, is not to be perfect, because no one is, but rather to be more good than bad. And to make an effort in that direction, and again Aristotle, the Stoics and Confucius agreed, was a lifelong pursuit. The key is to have certain moral principles in mind and try to live by them accepting that we are often going to fall short.
Is there such a thing as too good from a moral standpoint? We do talk about the goody-goody-two-shoes, and, these days, virtue signaling with disdain. Someone who tries too hard and too publicly to be good, but this in itself could be considered a vice; moral ostentation, perhaps.
Accepting that there are two basic components to a good life - the qualitative side and the moral side - we need to consider where to go next.
Another question arises. Can I be flourishing, while you suffer? That depends, can I do something about your suffering? Or did I cause your suffering?
What is our good life built on?
A criticism that is laid at Aristotle is that his definition of the good life was limited to a very slim section of society. It excluded women, but more significantly it was supported by slave labour. Aristotle was certainly against mistreating slaves, however the good life of Athenian citizens was supported by the toil and suffering of the slave class. Something Aristotle seemed to accept.
This form of the good life seems selfish and unfair to our ears. If the good life can exist it must be accessible to all. It can’t be built on the toil and suffering of others. That is, it doesn’t seem right if your good life is built on the basis of someone else not having a good life. The exploitation of other people for our benefit is hardly virtuous.
This is clear to see on the micro-interpersonal level. The more uncomfortable questions lie on the macro level. What is harder to realise is that people living in the post-industrial “developed” world have lives that are largely built on the toil and suffering of others. Exploitation continues today, it is just that they are far away spatially and temporally from where the goods are delivered. The effects of climate change on countries and people who have least contributed to it and are yet most affected by it is the most obvious further example.
It is an inescapable fact that globalisation has made the world far more interconnected than in the past. In many ways, it always was interconnected but it is more apparent now, the flows more immediate, and the effects more concrete. It is hard to live life in the modern world without an element of hypocrisy, but that is no excuse for not trying to live with less.
My good life is dependent on your good life.
Consideration of the good life has run through philosophy since the beginning and most particularly since Socrates. Societal inadequacies, changes and dysfunction are causing many people to think again about what a good life is in a modern context. A regeneration of moral and civic virtue is part of that, as is well-being, but it also involves looking beyond ourselves to the wider world. My good life is dependent on your good life.
If we believe that a good life should be available to everyone, everywhere, then we are left with some signposts on how to act.
First, we have to make sure that as much as possible our good life is not directly or indirectly taking away from the good life of other people. This is much harder than it sounds, and as already mentioned, not without hypocrisy and compromise. Still, awareness of and attempts to minimise our impact on the planet and exploitation of others are imperative if we want to achieve a good life in the moral sense.
Second, while we cannot and should not moralise or attempt to convert people to our point of view regarding moral character and virtue, we can contribute to alleviating poverty such that all people have access to the basic material comfort needed for a qualitatively good life. These basics, in order of priority, are clean water, healthcare, and education. Without these, it is hard for anyone to live a dignified life that we would accept as such today, let alone a lofty good life.
If we are not doing those things, it is hard to see that we can call and justify ourselves as having a “good life,” in any sense beyond the superficial.
Picture: Drinking and Composing Poetry, Yao Shou, dated 1485 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/45675