Relation to oneself· Happiness and desire
Eudaimonism
Axis: The highest good — What makes a life truly good: pleasure, flourishing, or virtue?
The highest good is human flourishing in all its dimensions: exercising one's capacities, fulfilling one's proper function, leading a fully realized life. Pleasure accompanies such a life, but it is not its goal.
Movements 8
Skepticismexplicit
What torments a person, the skeptic argues, is not the event but the opinion held about it, judging it good or bad by nature: whoever pursues what he takes for a good and flees what he takes for an evil knows no rest. To suspend that opinion is therefore to defuse the disturbance at its source. is thus not a goal the skeptic aims at directly, which would make him dependent once more: it supervenes by surprise, as the unexpected fruit of . Here lies the school's paradox: one reaches serenity precisely by giving up the search for it in a knowledge of the good.
Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 25-30 · Diogenes Laertius, Lives, IX, 107-108
Aristotelianismexplicit
The argument proceeds from the proper function: as the flute-player's good lies in performing his function well, the human good lies in the activity specific to humans, the exercise of reason, which neither plant nor animal shares. The sovereign good thus cannot be pleasure, which every beast pursues, against ; nor an external good like honour, which depends on others. It is , an activity of the soul in accord with virtue: an active fulfilment, not a possessed state, unfolding across a whole life and requiring also goods of body and fortune.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I, 7 · Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, qq. 1-5
Show inferred positions (6)
Marxisminferable
Marxism locates the good in human flourishing: not pleasure or private virtue, but the free development of everyone's faculties and needs, made possible by the abolition of alienation and exploitation. The society aimed at is one where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 · Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Pragmatisminferable
For pragmatism, the good is not a fixed end to contemplate but growth itself: the continuous enrichment of experience, the development of capacities, the intelligent resolution of problems that makes life fuller. Dewey rejects the idea of an immutable highest good in favor of an open, revisable flourishing.
Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy · Dewey, Democracy and Education
Taoisminferable
The Taoist good is flourishing through accord with the Tao: following one's spontaneous nature (ziran), acting without forcing (wu-wei), savoring simplicity and contentment. It is neither Confucian virtue nor the pursuit of pleasures, but an easeful, attuned life, where health, longevity and inner peace arise from harmony with the course of things.
Laozi, Tao Te Ching · Zhuangzi
Empiricisminferable
Moral empiricism, from Hume to the utilitarians, measures the good life by experience: a balanced blend of pleasures, useful activity and agreeable relations. Virtue is worth its effects, its utility and agreeableness, not worthwhile in itself; the asceticism that sacrifices sensible happiness is rejected as contrary to nature.
Hume, An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals · Mill, Utilitarianism
Existentialisminferable
Existentialism does not receive the good from a nature or a heaven of values: the successful life is the authentic existence that assumes its freedom and realizes itself in chosen projects. This self-realization carries a quasi-moral demand, authenticity and responsibility against bad faith, without merging into a pleasure or a codified virtue.
Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism · Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
Rationalisminferable
The rationalists converge on an intellectual highest good: the perfection and joy of the knowing soul. Descartes' firm contentment, Spinoza's blessedness as the intellectual love of God, and Leibniz's increasing perfection place the good life in the accomplished exercise of reason, where flourishing and virtue unite, more than in pleasure.
Spinoza, Ethics, V · Descartes, The Passions of the Soul · Leibniz, Monadology
Philosophers 13
Sextus Empiricusexplicit
The end the skeptic aims at is , the absence of disturbance in matters of opinion, together with , the moderation of unavoidable feelings. But the remarkable trait is that it is not pursued as a good by nature, which would already be a dogmatic thesis: Sextus reports that tranquillity supervenes on whoever suspends judgment, as a shadow follows a body, by a chance the skeptic notes only after the fact. This is neither the hedonism of pleasure nor the perfectionism of virtue, but a happy form of life reached by subtraction, by ceasing to hold things good or bad in themselves.
Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I, 25-30 (the goal of skepticism)
Aristotleexplicit
If every action aims at an end, and ends link up as means, then, on pain of infinite regress, there must be a final end willed for its own sake and never for the sake of anything else: this self-sufficient good is . What it consists in is settled by the function argument (ergon): as the flute-player has his excellence, the human has his own, the activity of the soul's rational part carried out in accordance with virtue. Happiness is therefore neither pleasure, nor honour, nor wealth, but an excellent activity unfolded over a whole life, whose highest form is contemplation.
Nicomachean Ethics, I.7 (1097b) · Nicomachean Ethics, X.7
Pyrrhoexplicit
The testimony's third question gives the end aimed at: to one who holds things indeterminate and gives up pronouncing on them, there comes first (saying nothing), then , the absence of disturbance. The highest good is thus neither pleasure nor virtue, but a peace reached by subtraction: it is by ceasing to believe things good or bad by nature that one ceases to pursue or flee them, and the disturbance falls away. is said to have likened this imperturbability to the calm of a sage whom nothing reaches. The eudaimonist strand remains, since tranquillity is indeed the flourishing sought, but without the proper function or the excellence of the Aristotelian successful life.
Aristocles (after Timon), cited by Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, XIV, 18 · Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers, IX, 107-108
Nietzscheexplicit
Nietzsche mocks the pleasure-happiness of the utilitarians as much as the morality of duty: the good is neither enjoyment nor disinterested virtue. It is the enhancement of life, the flourishing of power and self-overcoming, the great health of one who dares to create himself and to say yes to existence. A transvalued eudaimonism, where success is measured by strength and greatness, not by comfort.
Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows · The Gay Science, IV-V · Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Śaṅkaraexplicit
The sovereign good is (mokṣa), understood as the recognition of the identity of the self and the absolute: not a pleasure, not even a virtue for its own sake, but the achievement of what one already is. This liberation is described as bliss (ānanda), a beatitude that is the very nature of : we are close to a eudaimonism, the sovereign good being the realized fullness of being. A perfectionist strand remains, since the path demands discipline, renunciation and purification of the mind, but these means do not create liberation: they remove what was veiling it.
Commentary on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad (on ānanda) · Upadeśasāhasrī
Spinozaexplicit
The summit of knowledge, the third kind, grasps things in God; this necessarily generates a joy referred to its cause, the . Hence the reversal peculiar to Spinoza: blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself, for to know adequately is already to be powerful and free.
Ethics, V, props. 32-36 (intellectual love of God, blessedness) · Ethics, V, prop. 42 (blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself)
Show inferred positions (7)
Marxinferable
For Marx, the good life is neither the pursuit of pleasure nor the observance of a virtue, but the full flourishing of the human being: the free unfolding of one's powers and needs, unalienated creative activity. True wealth is that of universally developed individuals, which only a society freed from exploitation makes possible.
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 · Grundrisse
Descartesinferable
Descartes develops no systematic ethics, but the provisional morality and the analysis of in locate the sovereign good in the right use of and firmness of judgment, the source of a stable inner contentment close to a self-mastery .
Discourse on Method, III · The Passions of the Soul, arts. 153-156 and 212
Beauvoirinferable
The good, for Beauvoir, is neither pleasure nor a nature to be fulfilled, but the authentic existence that assumes its freedom and realizes itself in open projects. This self-realization is inseparable from a moral demand: to will one's own freedom is also to will that of others. Self-realization and the value of freedom are knotted together, against the abdication of seriousness.
The Ethics of Ambiguity
Humeinferable
Hume sketches a sociable, temperate good life: a blend of delicate pleasures, activity, friendship and benevolence. Virtue itself has worth only through what is useful and agreeable, to oneself and to others; the monkish virtues, fasting and mortification, are rejected as useless and so vicious. Neither rigorism nor pure hedonism, but a natural human flourishing.
An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, IX · A Treatise of Human Nature, III
Leibnizinferable
Happiness consists in a continual progress toward new pleasures and new perfections: felicity is not a state but a path () along which the mind grows in knowledge and power (perfectionism). Pleasure is integrated, but as the feeling of a perfection, not as a sensory end, hence a minor hedonist weight.
Principles of Nature and Grace, §18 (happiness as perpetual progress toward new pleasures) · New Essays, II, 21 (felicity as a road rather than a dwelling)
Sartreinferable
Lacking given values, the good is not received but made: it is the authentic existence that assumes its freedom and its project without taking refuge in bad faith or in a reassuring essence. The successful life is the one that lucidly realizes itself in action and engagement, more than a codified virtue or a pursued pleasure.
Existentialism Is a Humanism · Being and Nothingness, IV
Zhuangziinferable
Zhuangzi's sovereign good is (xiaoyao you): a life loosened from honors, offices and rankings, that delights in whatever comes and plays with the world's metamorphoses. Refusing the court that offers him a ministry, choosing to stay "a turtle dragging its tail in the mud," he aims neither at accumulated pleasure nor at the discharge of a function, but at a joy without object, the ease of one who clings to nothing. This felicity is not the Greek of a life made good by perfecting a nature, yet it shares the idea of a flourishing, tinged with a keen taste for the jubilation of the moment.
Zhuangzi, ch. 1 (Free and Easy Wandering) · Zhuangzi, ch. 17 (the turtle in the mud)
Characters 1
Show inferred positions (1)
Odysseusinferable
For Odysseus, the good of a life is neither pleasure nor the blissful oblivion Calypso offers, but the fulfilment of his own life: to become fully who he is again, king, husband and father, in his recovered home. He leaves immortal delight for this task of an existence carried through to its end and its form, closer to a concrete , the flourishing of a whole life, than to a mere pursuit of pleasure.
Odyssey, V, 203-224 (the refusal of Calypso) · Odyssey, XIII-XXIII (the recovery of his household)
Argument
- For a flautist, a sculptor, a craftsman, the good and 'doing well' lie in their proper function, in the work they alone can accomplish. Let us ask the same: does the human being, as a human, have a proper work?
- Neither mere life, which it shares with plants, nor sensation, which it shares with animals, is proper to it: what is proper is the soul's activity in accordance with reason, the life of a being able to deliberate and give form to its conduct.
- Now the good of a thing is to perform its proper function excellently. The human good is therefore the exercise of this rational activity in accordance with the excellence proper to it, virtue, and this not for a day, but over a whole life.
Therefore So the highest good is neither pleasure nor virtue taken apart, but : the whole activity of a human life carried out excellently, with pleasure crowning it rather than being its aim.
See the pageObjectionAttacks the position
- The path of fulfillment makes the good the full unfolding of oneself: developing one's talents, carrying out one's projects, becoming all one can be.
- But in sport as elsewhere, this fulfillment is soon measured by success: by the time, the rank, the medal. And rank knows no rest, the record broken becomes the new floor, and there will always be someone stronger. You no longer realize yourself, you compare yourself.
- To compare yourself is to hang your worth on the gaze and the defeat of others. named this passion to be worth more than one's neighbor, which he set against amour de soi, the simple concern to live. It knows no satiety, for its object is not a good to reach, but a gap to maintain.
- Fulfillment then turns into an : no longer unfolding what one is, but forever proving one's worth, under the gaze of a judge, oneself or others, whom nothing contents.
Therefore So to make success into self-fulfillment is to trade an end one reaches for a comparison that always recedes: you do not realize yourself, you wear yourself out not to fall behind.
See the pageObjectionAttacks the reasoning
- The argument draws the human good from a 'proper function', as one draws the good of a knife from the use for which it is made.
- But a tool has a function because a craftsman designed it for an end; an organ, because it serves the life of the organism. Does the human being, as such, have in the same way a task assigned to it in advance?
- If the human has no nature fixed before existing, if it begins by being nothing and makes itself, then there is no 'work of man' from which to deduce its good: it falls to each to invent what, for them, makes a fulfilled life.
Therefore So the argument assumes what it should prove, that the human has a proper function: remove that premise, and flourishing ceases to be a given measure and becomes a work to invent.
See the pageObjectionAttacks the position Thought experiment
- Flourishing, the eudaimonist grants, also requires certain external goods: health, friends, the means to live, a measure of good fortune.
- But then the highest good depends on what no one controls: illness, exile, the death of loved ones can shatter it, like old king Priam who loses everything at the end of his life.
- A final end that a stroke of luck can tear away is not fully our own: one would have built one's life on what fortune lends and takes back.
Therefore So either the highest good remains hostage to fortune, or it must be sought on the side of what alone depends entirely on us.
See the pageYour own yardstickHabitInspired by Seneca
Compare yourself only to who you were yesterday.
To fulfill yourself is to unfold what you can, not to prevail over others. advised measuring your progress against yourself, comparing what you are to what you were rather than to others. Carried into sport, it means making your own path your only judge: the movement learned, the endurance gained, the fear overcome, without ever refreshing the ranking.
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- PrescriptiveVital Thought experimentHappiness without reality
Would a life of perfect but wholly simulated pleasure be the highest good, or does the highest life require contact with reality, and not merely the feeling of happiness?
a life - PrescriptiveVitalWanting or feeling
Is wellbeing what one feels, or the fulfilment of what one truly wants, even when one never experiences that fulfilment, like a child who flourishes after our death?
a life - PrescriptiveVitalWhat we want or what is good
Does wellbeing depend entirely on what each of us desires or feels, or are some things, such as health, friendship, or knowledge, good for us whether we want them or not?
wellbeing - PrescriptiveMoral Thought experimentVirtue in the face of misfortune
Was his life, in spite of everything, a good one? In other words: is happiness safe from misfortune, or can it be torn away from us?
a life - PrescriptiveMoral QuestionSucceeding without uprightness
Imagine someone clever and unscrupulous: he has lied, betrayed, crushed his rivals, and was never troubled for it. Rich, admired, surrounded by others, he dies old and content, without the slightest remorse.
a life - PrescriptiveThe three lives
Among the life of pleasure, the active life turned toward the city, and the contemplative life, which deserves to be called the highest?
a life - PrescriptiveActing or being well-off
Is happiness an activity, a way of exercising one's soul day after day, or the state of one who has all they need to be happy, whatever they do?
the soul's activity, the satisfaction of desires - PrescriptiveExistentialVocation or self-invention
Is the good life the fulfillment of a nature or function given to us, or is there no fixed nature, each person having to invent what, for them, makes a life good?
a life - PrescriptiveAlone or with others
Is flourishing self-sufficient, or does it require friends and a city, so that one cannot be fully happy apart from others?
the city, our bonds