Good Life
Carmen Madorrán Ayerra
Good life is a term inspired on the universal human aspiration to happiness. Beyond this common aim, it is difficult –if not impossible– to try and define what ‘good life’ is. But we could stay with the idea of happiness, as Aristotle reminds us, as something that is not required to satisfy the question ‘what for’? Unlike many other things that we do for a purpose, it makes little sense to ask why we should be happy, why we should endeavour to have a good life, or try to organise our societies in such a way that its members have more opportunities for living a good life.
We do know, however, that a good life is a key question in philosophy, an issue that has appeared under different names in cultural and intellectual traditions worldwide: where in Europe we speak of ‘good life’, in other places the terms Sumak kausay (Quechua), Suma qamaña (Aymara) or Küme mogen (Mapudungun) are used. This is not to say that the notions referred to by the different authors and cultures are an exact match. In fact, this is not the case even among those who reflect on the meaning of a good life within each one of these traditions. The timeless question of ‘good life’ refers, in the history of Western thinking, to the Stoic and Hedonist currents, although its philosophical relevance leads us inevitably to Aristotle. Indeed, Aristotelian ethics may be understood as an inquiry into eudaimonia (that can be rendered as happiness, good life or successful life), which he linked to the idea of the flourishing of mankind, the development of our highest capabilities. Far from being abandoned by philosophy, this issue is drawing increasing attention, especially from interdisciplinary perspectives, whether in the study of the capabilities, the basic goods, the needs, or the essential elements of living.
A first element shared by the myriad notions of a good life is the impulse, the concern over how I must live. This reflexive regard toward our own life, on the means and ends we bring into play, was expressed by Socrates in “an unexamined life is not worth living”. That is to say, a life that eludes the question on how it should be lived is a life without meaning. A second element that is shared extensively among the many forms of a good life is the connection between individual inquiry on how to live and the question regarding the society in which any good life can be conducted. For Aristotle, a good life, understood as an end toward which we are oriented, is also a collective enterprise with a link to solidarity. Thus, the notion of a good life leads us to ethics, to the question of the art of living, but also, necessarily, to politics regarded as the organisation of a community’s good government. This bond between ethics and politics is key to thinking of a good life, as it carries the sociality that makes up the human condition, without overlooking the fact that the possibilities for any concrete specification for a good life to exist will always refer to the communities in which they arise. This is what we mean today when we speak of interdependence: the awareness of our own wellbeing, that the course of our lives is criss-crossed by the presence of others. In this sense, one person’s aspiration to a good life crosses from the very first moment everyone else’s and, therefore, cannot be isolated from the reflection on the forms of organisation of collective life. In addition, it is necessary to keep in mind that any question regarding a good life today has to be asked on this finite planet, whose limited resources we share with other species. Our wellbeing, and that of all other living beings, is not independent of the fate of the ecosystems we live in and depend on, which is why we speak of ecodependence.
That said, besides these shared traits, the approaches taken to study ‘good life’ are profoundly different. These can be grouped into two major trends. On the one hand, we meet approaches we might refer to as positive or direct regarding the question on good life. These attempt to give a precise definition of the content of such good life (Madorrán, 2023). This approach has been preferred in monotheistic religious traditions, for example. It gives a fairly concrete outline of the vices to be avoided and the virtues to be cultivated in order to attain a successful or good life. On the other hand, we find an abundance of negative or indirect approximations to the question regarding good life, that refrain from giving a closed definition of what a good life means to human beings as a whole. These take an indirect path to examine the indispensable conditions for any concrete description of a good life to be possible. This approach is cultivated in studies of human needs (Sempere, 2009; Doyal & Gough, 1994), capabilities (Nussbaum, 2012; Sempere, 2009), basic goods (Skidelsky and Skidelsky), essential elements for life (Raworth, 2018) or human rights (Matthew Liao, 2015; Wark, 2011), to mention some of the most relevant. Evidently, this second approach is a better fit in plural societies where projects for life and happiness may vary hugely.
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