The Good Life and the Ideal of Flexibility The author focuses on the issue of the "good life" in relation to a strong ideal of flexibility that operates in contemporary western culture. The era we live in may be called a "continuous stream of innovations" and can be characterized by a fundamental requirement "to adapt flexibly and cope with the new". The need for such flexibility is mentally and physically demanding; the demands also mark the approach (...) to values, the ideas of the good life and the project of the paths in life. Contemporary people in western civilization are exposed to the pressure of modern culture that has caused problems in the past decades as a result of the incompatibility of its fragmentary value systems. People today apply their abilities in a never-ending whirl of activities and effort where there is no more space available for becoming aware of and for perceiving the deeper meaning of and formulating their specific ideal of the good life. (shrink)

The Good Life, The Examined Life, and the Embodied Life The good life and the examined life have long been advocated as key philosophical goals, and they have often been closely linked together. My paper critically examines this linkage by considering arguments both for and against the value of self-examination for achieving the good life. Because somatic self-examination has been viewed as especially problematic for the philosophical project of achieving the (...) class='Hi'>good life, this form of self-examination will be given special attention in the paper, and its discussion will be situated within the larger issue of the extent to which the embodied life is central to the good life. (shrink)

The Good Life and the Greater Good in a Global Context brings together scholars working in the fields of the humanities and social sciences who critically examine the notion of the "good life," understood in all of its dimensions--material, psychological, moral, emotional, and spiritual--and in relation to the greater good. In so doing, the authors provide interdisciplinary insights into what the good life means today and how a viable vision of it can (...) be achieved to benefit not just individuals but our interdependent world as well. (shrink)

This article carves out a new path between the two dominant wings of contemporary egalitarianism. The luck egalitarian emphasis on choice and personal responsibility is misplaced because individuals differ so deeply, and arbitrarily, in their choice-making capacities. Allowing inequalities to result from ‘choice’ is akin to allowing inequalities to stem from the possession of any other morally arbitrary factor – such as skin colour or gender. The move towards relational egalitarianism has been a case of two-steps forward, one-step back. While (...) the shift away from the focus on choice is salutary, the concurrent rejection of luck is problematic, given the prevalence and importance of luck-based discrepancies in opportunities to lead a good life. A new conceptual framework is presented: good life egalitarianism. The guiding idea is that given the unavoidable arbitrariness of human capacities, the foundation for a good life should be assured for people regardless of the actual choices that they make. The essential goods necessary for leading a good life – such as the opportunities to self-determine and to enjoy non-dominating social relationships – should be guaranteed to all. (shrink)

Jordan's The Good Life is philosophy in the grand style and this means that the book is philosophical in method and outlook and contains no historical baggage. Whatever one may think of Jordan's views, only an extremely narrow thinker could fail to acknowledge that in this comprehensive treatment of moral issues there is to be found an instance of that constructive philosophy which, in these times, is so often lamented but so infrequently produced. The Good Life (...) stands as a profound, thorough, and original treatment of issues which in the past have been clouded over and obscured by philosophers who have been more interested in promoting the success of their own particular ism than in facing the concrete situation in all its complexity and honestly reporting as much as is given them to see and to understand. (shrink)

A Good Life in the Market develops a framework for thinking about business ethics, examining the nature and potential of markets before crisply exploring a set of important issues—from immigration to intellectual property to boycotts to workplace governance. Provocative, engaging, and conversational, Gary Chartier offers tools and perspectives that will help you flourish in the world of business.

The book offers a historical-systematic overview of the most important concepts of ethics, each of which is presented using three to four exemplary main representatives. Central quotations allow textual access to the respective position, which is explained compactly and clearly. With the title “The Good Life” the author points to the anthropological basis of all ethics. The book is interdisciplinary in nature, incorporating philosophical approaches as well as those from the fields of theology, biology, psychology, sociology, and politics. (...) For the 2nd edition, the book will be expanded to include the chapter “Education - Pedagogical Ethics” and a chapter on universal human rights. (shrink)

Chinese and Graeco-Roman ethics influence modern philosophy, yet it is unclear how to compare them. Clustered around the concepts of life and the good life, this volume offers a comparative analysis of the core concepts of both traditions: human nature, virtue, happiness, pleasure, the concept of mind, knowledge, filial piety and deliberation. It is thus an essential contribution to comparative ethics as regards both content and method.

나는 『맹자』 「양혜왕」편 전반에 걸쳐 개진되는 ‘여민동락’ 논의를 ‘행복’의 관점에서 비판적으로 논의하고자 한다. 내가 행복하다고 여기는지의 여부와 실제의 삶이 일치하지 않는다는 점에서 주관적인 심적 상태로서의 행복은 좋은 삶과 갈등을 낳을 수 있다. 따라서 우리가 진정한 행복을 추구하는 것은 이미 주관적인 심리상태를 극복하고 어떻게 살아야 좋은 삶인가라는 고전적인 질문으로 회귀하게 된다. 이를 위한 논의의 배경으로 제선왕과의 대화에 등장하는 독락과 여민동락의 내용을 설명하려고 한다. 제선왕의 경우 그에게서 발견되는 욕구의 위계를 통해 독락으로 표현되는 주관적인 행복감이 자신이 지향하는 좋은 삶과 어긋나 있음을 밝힐 것이다. (...) 맹자가 제시하는 여민동락이 즐거운 삶과 좋은 삶을 일치시키는 논리를 설명하고 ‘연대’의 이면에 작동하는 상호이해와 공감의 역동성을 고찰할 계획이다. 측은지심으로 포착할 수 있는 이런 공감의 힘이 어떻게 여민동락과도 이어질 수 있는지 논증하려고 한다. 恕의 황금률로 포착해낼 수 있는 측은지심과 여민동락의 同異를 검토하고 ‘여민동락’이라는 유가적 행복론을 좋은 삶에 관한 이론적 틀로 요약, 정리할 계획이다. 이를 통해 주관적인 행복감이 우리의 삶을 좋게 만드는데 어떻게 기여하는가를 간략하게 설명하려 한다. (shrink)

Hartmut Rosa’s research has been extremely influential in promoting the view that modernity and late modernity are characterized by “speeding up,” or structural “dynamic stabilization.” More recently, Rosa has turned to describing the existential effects of living in late modernity, and the particular view of the good life it encourages. Late modernity began with the promise to make the world more available, attainable, and accessible. Unfortunately, however, the high-level instrumentalization that characterizes these changes led to feelings of alienation. (...) Rosa’s solution is to develop a philosophical method for fostering what he calls “resonance.” In this article, I will introduce the Daoist notions of the “mechanical heart-mind,” “self-so,” “nonaction,” “knowing satisfaction,” and “rambling” as potential complements to Rosa’s concept of resonance. I argue that they can serve to bolster Rosa’s view and provide a more active way to conceive of the good life through engagement with our social and natural environments. (shrink)

_The Good Life of Teaching_ extends the recent revival of virtue ethics to professional ethics and the philosophy of teaching. It connects long-standing philosophical questions about work and human growth to questions about teacher motivation, identity, and development. Makes a significant contribution to the philosophy of teaching and also offers new insights into virtue theory and professional ethics Offers fresh and detailed readings of major figures in ethics, including Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Bernard Williams and the practical (...) philosophies of Hannah Arendt, John Dewey and Hans-Georg Gadamer Provides illustrations to assist the reader in visualizing major points, and integrates sources such as film, literature, and teaching memoirs to exemplify arguments in an engaging and accessible way Presents a compelling vision of teaching as a reflective practice showing how this requires us to prepare teachers differently. (shrink)

Notre Dame Philosophy professors Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko have gone deep with that work in their wildly popular and influential undergraduate course GOD AND THE GOOD LIFE, in which they wrestle with the big questions about how to live and what makes life meaningful. Now they invite us into the classroom to tackle such issues as what justifies your beliefs, whether you should practice a religion, and what sacrifices you should make for others--as well as to (...) investigate what Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Murdoch have to say about how to live well. Sullivan and Blaschko teach us how to reason through real-world case studies by doing the timeless work of philosophy like escaping our own caves, learning to doubt everything, asking strong questions, grasping our own purpose, and wrestling with the problem of evil and the existence of God. For at least the past 2500 years philosophers have taught that goal-seeking is an essential part of what it is to be human--and crucially that we could find our own good life by asking better questions. Their virtue ethics approach resonates profoundly in our own moment. Philosophers know that our "good life plan" is one that we as individuals need to be constantly and actively writing. In that work, we can achieve some meaningful control even if the world keeps throwing surprises our way. THE GOOD LIFE is a winning guide to tackling the big questions of being human with the wisdom of the ages. (shrink)

Both Ancient Chinese and Greek philosophers provide accounts of the life lived well: a Confucian junzi, a Daoist sage and a Greek phronimos. Cultivation in Early China and Ancient Greece engages in comparative, cross-tradition scholarship and investigates the processes associated with cultivating or nurturing the self in order to live such lives. -/- By focusing on the processes rather than the aims of cultivating a good life, an international team of scholars investigate how a person develops and (...) practices a way of life. They look at what is involved in developing practical wisdom, exercising reason, cultivating equanimity and fostering reliability. Using the thought of those thinkers central to both traditions, including Plato, Confucius, Han Fei and Marcus Aurelius, they examine themes of harmony, balance and beauty, and highlight the different concerns of scepticism across both traditions. They also discuss the action of doing as an indispensable method of learning. As a result, Cultivation in Early China and Ancient Greece is a valuable collection opening up new lines of inquiry in ethics and demonstrating the importance of drawing on philosophical ideas from across cultural traditions. (shrink)

Rousseau's Emile has attracted an avalanche of critical responses. His theme of negative education, or as he defines it, “well-regulated freedom”, has been denounced as outright manipulation in disguise, which instead of respecting the child's autonomy and dignity, places him at the whim of the teacher's machinations and stratagems. His recommendation that the child's imagination be curtailed (that he may not acquire desires which cannot be satisfied) is widely held to militate against one of the most cherished goals of education: (...) the fostering of the natural curiosity of the child. Rousseau is also accused of professing an “ideology of childhood” which ignores the real needs of children. In the sterilized environment which Rousseau proposes for the growing child, affection, praise and approval, are some of the sacrifices made to this ideology. Furthermore, his views on women are considered degrading, outrageous and blatantly sexist. Yet despite the myriad criticisms leveled against his work, Rousseau's Emile highlights one of the most exacting challenges for education — how to educate the child without alienating him. Rousseau connects this issue with the larger problem of alienation: namely, that experienced by man within the modern social order. Rousseau's views anticipate the contemporary debate between virtue-based and deontological ethics. The purpose of this paper is (i) to describe Rousseau's diagnosis of the problem of alienation as it arises in the various spheres of human life, paying special attention to the moral domain, and (ii) to assess the solutions he offers to the problem of alienation. These solutions are based on a conception of the good life which, I argue, is unacceptable. I also argue that this conception dissipates one form of alienation only at the expense of creating another. The paper begins by tracing the changes which the concept of alienation has undergone, and consequently I draw a distinction between two kinds of alienation — conscious and unconscious. I demonstrate that even if Rousseau is successful in offering a remedy for conscious alienation, this very remedy itself gives rise to unconscious alienation. (shrink)

The students and colleagues of Roderick Chisholm admired and respected Chisholm. Many were filled not only with admiration, but with affection and gratitude for Chisholm throughout the time we knew him. Even now that he is dead, we continue to wish him well. Under the circumstances, many of us probably think that that wish amounts to no more than this: we hope that things went well for him when he lived; we hope that he had a good life.

We are living in an era when the focus of human relationships with the world is shifting from execution and physical impact to control and cognitive/informational interaction. This emerging, increasingly informational world is our new ecology, an infosphere that presents the grounds for a cognitive revolution based on interactions in networks of biological and artificial, intelligent agents. After the industrial revolution, which extended the human body through mechanical machinery, the cognitive revolution extends the human mind/cognition through information-processing machinery. These novel (...) circumstances come with new qualities and preferences demanding new conceptualizations. We have some work ahead of us to establish value systems and practices extended from the real to the increasingly virtual/info-computational. This paper first presents a current view of the virtual versus the real and then offers an interpretation framework based on an info-computational understanding of cognition in which agency implies computational processing of informational structures of the world as an infosphere. The notion of “good life” is discussed in light of different ideals of well-being in the infosphere, connecting virtuality as a space of potential and alternative worlds for an agent for whom the reality is a space of actual experiences, in the sense of Deleuze. Even though info-computational framework enables us to see both the real world and the diversity of virtual worlds in terms of computational processes on informational structures, based on a distinct layered cognitive architecture of all physical agents, there is clear difference between potential worlds of the virtual and actual agent’s experiences made in the real. Info-computationalism enables insight into the mechanisms of infosphere and elucidates its importance as cognitively predominant environment and communication media. The conclusion is that by cocooning ourselves in an elaborate info-computational infrastructure of the virtual, we may be increasingly isolating ourselves from the reality of direct experience of the world. The biggest challenges of the cognitive revolution may not be technological but ethical. They are about the nature of being human and its values. (shrink)

논문에서는 어떤 삶이 좋은 삶인가 하는 문제를 플라톤이 그의 우주론적인 논의와 연관해서 어떻게 밝히고 있는지를 분석해 볼 것이다.????필레보스????에 의하면, 우주 자연에서 온갖 좋은 것은 한정되지 않은 것들과 한정자들이 혼합될 때 창출된다(26b). 이 말은 ‘대립적인 것들’(한정되지 않은 것들)에 일정 비율들(한정자들)이 개입되어 ‘적도’와 ‘균형’이 이루어질 때 온갖 좋을 것이 창출된다는 것을 뜻한다. 이런 점에서 한정되지 않은 것과 한정자의 혼합은 대립적인 것들의 ‘적도나 균형을 이룬 혼합’이라고 표현할 수도 있으며, 이것이 바로 우주 자연에서 좋은 것들이 창출되는 방식이다. 다른 한편 플라톤은 인간의 좋은 삶을 위해서는 (...) 즐거움과 지식이 다 필요하다고 보고 이 둘이 혼합된 삶이 좋은 삶임을 밝힌다. 그러고는 이 혼합된 삶이 우주론적 논의에서 언급된 ‘한정자’와 ‘한정되지 않은 것’이 ‘혼합된 부류’의 일부로 간주한다(27d). 그런데 어떻게 혼합된 삶이 혼합된 부류의 일부라 할 수 있는지는 아주 불분명해 보인다. 이와 관련해서는 혼합 요소들 각각이 한정자와 한정되지 않은 것의 결합체이므로, 혼합 자체도 그런 결합체라는 견해가 있다. 그러나 이런 견해는 결합의 오류를 범한 것으로 보인다. 필자는 혼합요소들보다는 요소들의 관계를 주목해 보아야 한다고 생각하며, 특히 요소들간의 ‘불화가 없는 혼합’, ‘적도와 균형을 지닌 혼합’에 대한 분석이 필요하다고 보았다. 다음으로 우주에서 좋음이 실현되는 방식에 따라 적도와 균형을 이룬 ‘혼합된 삶’은 어떤 삶인지를 살펴보았다. 이 삶의 구성과정은 세 단계로 나눠볼 수 있다. (1) 오직 가장 참된 지식들과 가장 참된 즐거움들만의 혼합. 이것은 현실적이지 않고 이상적인 혼합이다. 이런 혼합을 추구한다면 현실을 모르는 우스운 일이 될 것이다. (2) 불가피한 지식들과 불가피한 즐거움들의 추가적 혼합. 이것은 인간의 현실적인 조건을 반영한 것이며, 따라서 현실적인 것이다. 다시 말해 그것은 인간의 좋은 삶보다는 그저 인간의 삶 자체를 가능하게 하는 것이다. (1)-(2) 단계의 혼합이 이루어지면 이상과 현실이 어우러진 혼합된 삶이 창출되는 것이다. 이 삶은 그저 삶이 아니라 좋은 삶이며, 그것도 신의 좋은 삶이 아니라 인간의 좋은 삶이다. 그리고 이 삶을 좋은 삶이 되게 한 원인은 이 삶 속에 있는 적도와 균형이다. (3) 가장 크고 가장 강렬한 즐거움을 지성을 비롯한 인지적 요소들과 섞은 혼합. 이것은 이상적인 것도 현실적인 것도 못된다. 이런 혼합은 적도와 균형을 갖지 못한 것으로서, 존속할 수 없고 그것의 요소들까지 파괴시키고 말기 때문이다. 따라서 그런 즐거움들은 삶에서 배제되어야 한다는 것이 플라톤의 생각이다. (shrink)

이 논문은 ‘세 가지 유파의 철학자들(아리스토텔레스, 에피쿠로스, 스토아)은 대중을 상대로 하는 자신의 역할을 어떻게 이해했는가?’라는 질문을 탐구 질문으로 삼는다. 이 질문에 대한 답변을 이끄는 키워드는 ‘좋은 삶’이다. 이들 철학자들이 볼 때 철학자가 해야 할 역할은 ‘좋은 삶’이 무엇인지 혹은 왜 중요한지를 대중들에게 밝혀주고 이들이 좋은 삶을 살 수 있도록 도와주는 것이다. 여기까지 이들은 목표를 공유한다. 하지만 대중들을 위한 좋은 삶이 구체적으로 어떤 것이고 좋은 삶을 살도록 도와주는 방법은 구체적으로 어떤 것인가라는 질문에로 들어가게 되면, 이들은 각자 다른 답변을 제시한다. 그리고 좋은 (...) 삶에 관한 이들의 답변 분화에서 철학자의 자기이해 상(像)도 차이를 보인다. 철학자의 자기이해 상의 차이는 이론철학과 실천철학 사이의 관계에 대한 이해의 차이를 가져온다. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Human Needs Animal Desires The Good Life.

A moral geography -- Democracy, the moral psychology, and the moral individual -- Premoral and moral culture -- Two forms of antimoralism -- Love and money: the contracting role of the family -- Moral reform and pseudo-moralism -- Cool -- Vengeance and the erosion of law -- The academy -- Science and morality.

Máme tři hlavní teorie blahobytu. První je hédonismus. To je teze, že blahobyt jednotlivce zcela závisí na tom, jak se cítí. Blahobyt prostě spočívá v potěšení. Je pro něj dobré, aby prožíval příjemné zážitky ve svém životě. A špatné je pro něj, aby ve svém životě trpěl. Nejlepší život je pak takový, který znamená největší možnou převahu potěšení nad bolestí. Druhá je teorie touhy, která znamená, že něco je pro někoho dobré, protože to splňuje jeho touhu. Je na tom lépe (...) do té míry, do jaké dostane to, co chce. Stručně, blahobyt spočívá v realizaci subjektivních preferencí. Třetí teorie blahobytu je perfekcionismus. To je názor, že dobrý je rozvoj určitých schopností, které jsou charakteristické pro člověka. Tyto schopnosti zahrnují zejména naši racionalitu, teoretickou i praktickou. Blahobyt spočívá v sebe-zdokonalování, v životě excelentní a ctnostné aktivity, resp. v dobrém fungování lidské bytosti. Počiny, jako jsou úspěšné projekty, poznání, estetická zkušenost, rodičovství a přátelství, jsou konstitutivní pro naši lidskou prosperitu. V tomto článku dospívám k závěru, že tyto tři konkurenční teorie ztělesňují odlišné koncepce autenticity. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the life of Doug Forcett who's famous in the afterlife as the human who most closely guessed the afterlife's true nature in the episode Don't Let the Good Life Pass You By of the show The Good Place. In this episode, Michael and Janet visit Doug. They find him living a life of self‐denial and sacrifice. Michael and Janet had hoped that Doug's life would provide a template for how people should (...) live. One of the reasons that Michael and Janet's rejection of Doug's lifestyle is philosophically interesting is that there is a long tradition of regarding people who sacrifice for the sake of others as heroes. To be fair to utilitarianism and other theories demanding great sacrifice, Doug's self‐sacrifice goes further than merely treating everyone else's interests as being as valuable as his own. (shrink)

What makes your life go well for you? In this paper, we give an account of welfare. Our core idea is simple. There are impersonally good and bad things out there: things that are good or bad period, not (or not only) good or bad for someone. The life that is good for you is the life in contact with the good. We’ll understand the relevant notion of ‘contact’ here in terms of (...) manifestation: you’re in contact with a value when it is manifest in parts of your life or parts of your life are manifest in it. So, the more the good is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the good, the better for you. The more the bad is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the bad, the worse for you. We’ll argue that this account is extensionally adequate: it explains the welfare value of achievements, friendships, knowledge, pleasures and virtues. Moreover, it has a number of explanatory virtues: it’s unified, elegant and explanatorily powerful. So, we’ll suggest, it’s an excellent account of welfare, and in many ways superior to its main competitors. (shrink)

In public philosophy, the question is how best to engage people with the fascinating yet complex mix of science and philosophy that underpins discussions of the good life. Reasoning about the good life implies adopting – consciously or not – a philosophy of life. For instance, the authors briefly compare three paths to the good life: Christianity (a religion), Stoicism (a philosophy), and Buddhism (which has both religious and philosophical strands). They discuss some (...) of the issues that come up when they engage in public philosophy about the good life by way of an in‐depth look at a particular example. Lastly, the authors explore a number of approaches to philosophical public discourse on these themes, based on their experiences as a public philosopher as well as on the published literature. (shrink)

Fred Feldman's fascinating new book sets out to defend hedonism as a theory about the Good Life. He tries to show that, when carefully and charitably interpreted, certain forms of hedonism yield plausible evaluations of human lives. Feldman begins by explaining the question about the Good Life. As he understands it, the question is not about the morally good life or about the beneficial life. Rather, the question concerns the general features of the (...) life that is good in itself for the one who lives it. Hedonism says (roughly) that the Good Life is the pleasant life. After showing that received formulations of hedonism are often confused or incoherent, Feldman presents a simple, clear, coherent form of sensory hedonism that provides a starting point for discussion. He then presents a catalogue of classic objections to hedonism, coming from sources as diverse as Plato, Aristotle, Brentano, Ross, Moore, Rawls, Kagan, Nozick, Brandt, and others. One of Feldman's central themes is that there is an important distinction between the forms of hedonism that emphasize sensory pleasure and those that emphasize attitudinal pleasure. Feldman formulates several kinds of hedonism based on the idea that attitudinal pleasure is the Good. He claims that attitudinal forms of hedonism - which have often been ignored in the literature -- are worthy of more careful attention. Another main theme of the book is the plasticity of hedonism. Hedonism comes in many forms. Attitudinal hedonism is especially receptive to variations and modifications. Feldman illustrates this plasticity by formulating several variants of attitudinal hedonism and showing how they evade some of the objections. He also shows how it is possible to develop forms of hedonism that are equivalent to the allegedly anti-hedonistic theory of G. E. Moore and the Aristotelian theory according to which the Good Life is the life of virtue, or flourishing. He also formulates hedonisms relevantly like the ones defended by Aristippus and Mill. Feldman argues that a carefully developed form of attitudinal hedonism is not refuted by objections concerning 'the shape of a life'. He also defends the claim that all of the alleged forms of hedonism discussed in the book genuinely deserve to be called 'hedonism'. Finally, after dealing with the last of the objections, he gives a sketch of his hedonistic vision of the Good Life. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), French phenomenological philosopher and Talmudic commentator, is regarded as perhaps the greatest ethical philosopher of our time. While Levinas enjoys prominence in the philosophical and scholarly community, especially in Europe, there are few if any books or articles written that take Levinas's extremely difficult to understand, if not obtuse, philosophy and apply it to the everyday lives of real people struggling to give greater meaning and purpose, especially ethical meaning, to their personal lives. This book attempts to (...) fill in the large gap in the Levinas literature, mainly through using a Levinasian-inspired, ethically-infused psychoanalytic approach. All of the essays included in this book are animated by the Levinasian assumption that it is the ethical relation to the other person (and, in one case, dog!) that is primary. That is, there is a human tendency in us, an often inhibited, muted or repressed tendency, as psychoanalysts have taught us, to see the needs of others as more important (or at least as important) than our own and therefore be willing to sacrifice for others. Moreover, once this human tendency to be for the Other is consciously embraced and made part of one's way of being in the world the possibility for a greater degree of personal fulfillment and happiness is often enhanced. Thus, the art of living the "good life" involves embracing "goodness" as one's guiding metaphor, an existential orientation in which, says Levinas, "the Other counts more than myself." As social psychologists have repeatedly shown, in social life, paradoxically, it is often the case that "the more you give, the more you get." Being for the Other, in other words, is often self-affirming!. --- Product Description. (shrink)

Raymond Angelo Belliotti's Roman Philosophy and the Good Life provides an accessible picture of these major philosophical influences in Rome and details the crucial role they played during times of major social upheaval. Belliotti demonstrates the contemporary relevance of some of the philosophical issues faced by the Romans, and offers ways in which today's society can learn from the Romans in our attempt to create meaningful lives.

Amid the unrest, dislocation, and uncertainty of seventeenth-century Europe, readers seeking consolation and assurance turned to philosophical and scientific books that offered ways of conquering fears and training the mind—guidance for living a good life. _The Good Life in the Scientific Revolution_ presents a triptych showing how three key early modern scientists, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, and Gottfried Leibniz, envisioned their new work as useful for cultivating virtue and for pursuing a good life. Their (...) scientific and philosophical innovations stemmed in part from their understanding of mathematics and science as cognitive and spiritual exercises that could create a truer mental and spiritual nobility. In portraying the rich contexts surrounding Descartes’ geometry, Pascal’s arithmetical triangle, and Leibniz’s calculus, Matthew L. Jones argues that this drive for moral therapeutics guided important developments of early modern philosophy and the Scientific Revolution. (shrink)

Current research in Intercultural Information Ethics is preoccupied, almost exclusively, by moral and political issues concerning the right and the just These issues are undeniably important, and with the continuing development and diffusion of ICTs, we can only be sure more moral and political problems of similar kinds are going to emerge in the future. Yet, as important as those problems are, I want to argue that researchers' preoccupation with the right and the just are undesirable. I shall argue that (...) IIE has thus far overlooked the issues pertaining to the good life . IIE, I claim, should also take into account these issues. Hence, I want to propose a new agenda for IIE, i.e. the good life, in the current paper. (shrink)

Influencers and digital creators Stevie and Sazan Hendrix show readers that the good life they're looking for won't be found in the latest purchase, career success, or dream location--it's found by intentionally cultivating the simple, everyday moments that make up a real, good life.

This book engages in cross-tradition scholarship, investigating the processes associated with cultivating or nurturing the self in order to live good lives. Both Ancient Chinese and Greek philosophers provide accounts of the life lived well: a Confucian junzi, a Daoist sage and a Greek phronimos. By focusing on the processes rather than the aims of cultivating a good life, an international team of scholars investigate how a person develops and practices a way of life especially (...) in these two traditions. They look at what is involved in developing practical wisdom, exercising reason, cultivating equanimity and fostering reliability. Drawing on the insights of thinkers including Plato, Confucius, Han Fei and Marcus Aurelius, they examine themes of harmony, balance and beauty, highlight the different concerns of scepticism across both traditions, and discuss action as an indispensable method of learning and, indeed, as constitutive of self. The result is a valuable collection opening up new lines of inquiry in ethics, demonstrating the importance of philosophical ideas from across cultural traditions. (shrink)