This is a question that has been asked through the ages and many great minds have come up with ideas about how to be a good person and live a good life.
Aristotle (384bc-322bc) developed the idea of ‘Virtue Ethics’ with a focus on developing our virtues. He developed the idea of the ‘mean’, also known as the ‘golden mean’ where one worked toward s having just the right amount of each virtue. For example, I could be angry as long as it is the right amount of anger given the circumstances and anger directed at the right person. Virtue ethics provides a means of identifying a way of determining how to live a good life but we still have to identify the virtues and and then develop them within ourselves.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) explored the principles of living a good life through ‘Deontology’ or the the study of duties or obligations. He proposed the ‘Categorical Imperative’ such that we would seek a maxim that not just us but everyone must follow. For example, take the question of whether it is okay to tell a lie. If everyone was a lying most or all of the time then we would never be able to trust them and society could not function. Hence, Kant would say we cannot lie; ever. The principle is to develop ultimate rules and live by them, regardless of the outcome.
British philosophers Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) put forward a form of ‘Consequentialism’ known as ‘Utilitarianism’. This is the idea of doing the greatest good for the most people. Whereas deontology focuses on the rules, consequentialism and utilitarianism focus on the outcome.
Although virtue ethics, deontology and consequentialism form the basis of most western secular philosophical approaches to being a good person and living a good life, there are also many religions telling us how to live life the ‘right’ way. Rather than a way of working out for ourselves how to live a good life, the major western religions are very prescriptive such as the example of the Ten Commandments.
All of these approaches speak to old narratives that still play a role to varying degrees in western societies. However, in the modern world, we are not only immersed in old narratives but constantly subjected to the voices of those telling us how to live a good life by buying their product, living in a certain location, looking a certain way and so on. Consumer capitalism rests on the premise of buying a good life!
The rise of the importance of the individual has also created a shift in what we seek as a good life. It is common theme for people to pursue ‘happiness’ even though they tend to be unclear just what they mean by that beyond the absence of unpleasant experiences. Suffice to say, there are many ways of thinking about how to live well.
In this work, there is no right answer to the question of being a good person and living a good life. What is good is an assessment we make as an individual set in the context of the meta-narratives of the communities within which we live. This approach lends itself more to T. M. Scanlon’s idea of ‘Contractualism’, which establishes rules or maxims that everyone in a community can agree as acceptable. This involves conversations to establish those agreements and they may change over time as communities evolve. It also means different communities can and do define a good life differently.
Regardless of their communities, the vast majority of people simply adopt a narrative and unquestioningly live out their lives based on those ideas. Unfortunately these narratives have internal contradictions creating breakdowns when people are confronted with real-life situations. Being good does not mean being perfect but many people feel they should be. However, moral perfection is both impossible to attain and I think a bad idea to even attempt.
A basic principle of this work is we have to constantly navigate uncertainty. Believing there is a one right way to live is contradictory to this idea as we each find ourselves in different situations in different contexts. The principle here is there are no clearcut rules to follow or perfect outcomes to achieve, rather what makes a good life lies in doing well and finding an appropriate balance in all three aspects of life – ‘I’, ‘We’ and ‘It’. Our inner experience – body, mood, emotions and thought – also provides a constant feedback loop providing information to help us interpret how we are dealing with situations.
We can always seek to become who we would like to be but that is an organic evolution rather than the result of a clear and well-defined plan. Who we would like to become today may be different in the future. Our sense of ourselves is a in a constant flux even though it may not seem that way. How we interpret the world evolves as we do. Every situation we experience has the potential to reinforce, redefine or create a story of who we and others are and how the world is.
Ultimately, according to this practice, the key to living a good life is to not expect to find THE answer, but to constantly live in questions and generate appropriate situational answers. Every question and answer is part of the enrichment of meaning of our life. We do not find the one answer to a good life, we create many answers by living in the question.