Imagine reaching the end of a long life and being able to look back on everything you did.
What would make you think:
That was a good life?
Would it be happiness? Love? Achievement? Wealth? Adventure? Raising a family? Helping other people? Understanding the world? Creating something that lasts?
Perhaps simply having enjoyed being alive would be enough.
This question has occupied philosophers for more than two thousand years because it lies underneath many of the choices we make.
We spend enormous amounts of time pursuing things we hope will improve our lives.
But how often do we stop to ask what improvement actually means?
Before deciding how to live, perhaps we need to ask what makes a life worth living well.
Is the Good Life a Happy Life?
The obvious answer might be happiness.
Most people would rather be happy than unhappy, and many of our decisions are attempts to move towards experiences we expect to enjoy.
But happiness is surprisingly difficult to define.
Does it mean pleasure?
Feeling cheerful?
Being satisfied with your life?
Could someone experience plenty of pleasure while living badly?
Imagine spending your entire life inside a machine capable of generating whatever experiences you wanted. You could feel successful, loved and happy without any of it actually happening.
Would you choose to enter?
Philosopher Robert Nozick used a similar thought experiment, known as the Experience Machine, to challenge the idea that pleasure is all we value.
Many people feel that something would be missing.
We do not merely want the experience of friendship. We want actual friends.
We do not merely want to feel that we achieved something. We want to have achieved it.
Perhaps the good life requires more than feeling good.
Aristotle and Human Flourishing
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle approached the question differently.
He used the term eudaimonia, often translated as happiness but perhaps better understood as flourishing or living well.
For Aristotle, a good life was not simply a succession of pleasant experiences.
It involved developing the qualities that allow a human being to flourish.
Courage.
Justice.
Generosity.
Friendship.
Wisdom.
Self-control.
These qualities were virtues.
Aristotle believed they developed through practice. We become courageous by acting courageously and generous by practising generosity.
The good life was therefore something we learned how to live.
It also had to be judged across an entire lifetime.
A bad afternoon does not make a bad life, just as a pleasant afternoon does not necessarily make a good one.
How Much Pleasure Do We Need?
Another ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus, placed pleasure closer to the centre of the good life.
But Epicurus is often misunderstood.
Epicureanism did not mean endlessly pursuing luxury, food, drink and entertainment.
Epicurus thought that uncontrolled desires often make us unhappy.
If every luxury creates another desire, satisfaction remains permanently out of reach.
He therefore favoured relatively simple pleasures: friendship, tranquillity, freedom from fear and freedom from unnecessary pain.
Some desires are natural and easily satisfied.
Others — wealth, status, fame and endless consumption — can expand indefinitely.
Epicurus therefore asked an unexpectedly modern question:
How much do we actually need in order to be happy?
Perhaps a person who needs very little has discovered a form of wealth unavailable to someone who can never have enough.
What Can We Control?
The Stoics approached the good life from another direction.
Much human unhappiness, they argued, comes from trying to control things that are not under our control.
We cannot completely control whether other people admire us.
We cannot prevent every illness or misfortune.
We cannot control the past.
Eventually, we cannot prevent our own death.
But we can exert some control over how we respond.
Stoic philosophers such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius therefore emphasised the distinction between what depends upon us and what does not.
This did not mean becoming emotionless or passively accepting injustice.
It meant recognising where our efforts can actually make a difference.
A life spent demanding that the universe conform to our wishes is likely to involve considerable frustration.
The Stoics instead tried to develop the character needed to face whatever happened.
Their question remains useful:
How much of our unhappiness comes from wanting reality to be different from what it is?
Does Money Make a Good Life?
Money clearly matters.
Poverty can bring insecurity, stress and restricted choices. Having enough money for food, shelter, healthcare and a reasonable degree of freedom can dramatically improve life.
But does having increasingly more continue making life increasingly better?
The philosophical problem begins when money changes from being a means into becoming an end.
Why do we want it?
For security?
Freedom?
Status?
Experiences?
To provide for other people?
Those goals are not necessarily the same.
A person can spend so much time acquiring the resources for a good life that there is little time left to live one.
This does not make wealth bad.
It makes the question “What is it for?” important.
The same can be asked about careers, possessions and social status.
They may contribute enormously to a good life.
But they are not necessarily the good life itself.
Do We Need Other People?
Few philosophical traditions imagine the best human life as completely solitary.
Aristotle considered friendship one of life’s great goods.
Epicurus built a community around friendship.
Modern psychology likewise finds strong connections between supportive relationships and wellbeing.
Other people provide love, companionship, cooperation, challenge and a sense of belonging.
They also complicate our lives.
Relationships create obligations. Loving someone makes us vulnerable to loss. Communities sometimes require us to put other people’s interests before our own.
Yet perhaps that vulnerability is not an unfortunate defect in the good life.
Perhaps it is part of what gives life value.
A completely protected life might also be a life protected from many of the experiences that matter most.
Is the Good Life About Achievement?
Some people find meaning through accomplishment.
They build businesses, discover things, create art, raise families, climb mountains, write books or dedicate themselves to mastering a skill.
Achievement can provide direction and satisfaction.
But achievement creates another trap.
There is always another target.
A promotion leads to another promotion. A record can be broken. Recognition fades. Someone else becomes more successful.
If our sense of a worthwhile life depends entirely upon external achievement, satisfaction may remain permanently somewhere in the future.
This does not make ambition pointless.
It raises a more interesting question:
Is the value found only in reaching the destination, or also in becoming the person capable of making the journey?
Should a Good Life Help Other People?
Perhaps a good life cannot be judged entirely by how it feels to the person living it.
Imagine two equally happy lives.
One person spends their life largely pursuing personal enjoyment.
The other experiences similar happiness while also improving the lives of many other people.
Is there any reason to consider the second life better?
Ethical traditions often say yes.
Religions have emphasised compassion, charity and service. Utilitarian philosophers have argued that other people’s wellbeing matters as much as our own. Thinkers such as Peter Singer have asked how much responsibility relatively fortunate people have towards those whose suffering they could prevent.
Helping others can also provide something different from pleasure: purpose.
This suggests that a good life may involve not only what we receive from the world, but what we contribute to it.
Do We Need Difficulty?
A perfectly easy life sounds attractive.
But would it necessarily be a good one?
Many things people value most involve difficulty.
Learning an instrument.
Raising children.
Building relationships.
Understanding a difficult subject.
Creating art.
Recovering from failure.
Exploring unfamiliar places.
Difficulty can produce frustration and suffering, and there is nothing automatically virtuous about suffering itself.
But a life from which every challenge had been removed might also lose opportunities for achievement, courage, learning and growth.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche strongly rejected the idea that the best life simply minimises discomfort. Struggle could contribute to self-development and the creation of something greater.
We do not need to embrace unnecessary suffering to recognise the point.
Sometimes the things that make life difficult are also the things that make it worthwhile.
Should We Live in the Present?
Many traditions have warned against spending our lives somewhere other than where we actually are.
We replay the past.
We anticipate the future.
We postpone happiness until something has been achieved.
When I finish this project.
When I earn enough.
When I retire.
When everything is finally sorted out.
But life never occurs in the future.
It is always experienced now.
This does not mean we should ignore tomorrow. Planning is one of the abilities that allows humans to build meaningful lives.
The challenge is to prepare for the future without allowing preparation to consume the present.
A good life may require both:
a direction in which to travel and the ability to notice the journey.
Is There One Good Life for Everyone?
Perhaps not.
Aristotle’s flourishing life, Epicurus’s tranquillity and the Stoic emphasis on character overlap in places but are not identical.
People also differ enormously.
One person may flourish through family and community. Another through exploration. Another through creativity, scholarship, public service, craftsmanship or contemplation.
Different cultures have developed different ideals of what a successful human life looks like.
This does not necessarily mean that anything counts as a good life.
Human beings appear to share many needs: relationships, security, some degree of autonomy, opportunities to develop abilities and reasons to feel that life matters.
But the balance may differ.
There may be many ways of living well rather than one ideal blueprint.
What About a Life That Doesn’t Go to Plan?
Philosophy becomes most useful when life refuses to cooperate with our theories.
People become ill.
Relationships end.
Careers fail.
Plans collapse.
People we love die.
If the good life requires everything to go according to plan, then much of our wellbeing depends upon luck.
Ancient philosophers were acutely aware of this problem.
The Stoics tried to locate the good life primarily in character because external circumstances could always be taken away.
Aristotle was less optimistic. He thought flourishing required at least some favourable external circumstances.
The tension remains.
How much does a good life depend upon what happens to us, and how much upon how we respond to what happens?
Perhaps both matter.
We cannot control everything that shapes a life.
But within those limits, we can still influence what we value, where we direct our attention and how we respond.
Knowing Yourself
The ancient Greek instruction “Know thyself” points towards another requirement for living well.
What actually matters to you?
Not what advertising tells you should matter.
Not necessarily what your culture defines as success.
Not simply what other people expect.
Understanding our own motives is difficult because we inherit many ambitions before examining them.
We may spend years pursuing status before asking why we wanted it.
We may compare ourselves with people whose lives we would not actually choose.
Philosophy creates an opportunity to examine those assumptions.
A good life may therefore require not only making good choices but occasionally questioning the standards by which we are making them.
So What Is the Good Life?
There is no single answer accepted by everyone.
Pleasure matters.
Relationships matter.
Health, security and freedom matter.
Achievement can matter.
Character matters.
Purpose and contribution can matter.
So can curiosity, creativity, experience and understanding.
Different philosophical traditions place these ingredients in different orders.
Perhaps the mistake is expecting one of them to provide everything.
A life devoted entirely to pleasure may become empty.
Achievement without relationships may become lonely.
Security without freedom may become restrictive.
Self-sacrifice without any concern for one’s own wellbeing may become destructive.
And endless preparation for a better future may prevent us appreciating the life already happening.
The good life may therefore be less like discovering a single secret and more like learning how to balance several genuine human goods.
The Examined Life
Socrates is traditionally associated with one of philosophy’s most famous claims:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
We need not take that literally to understand the challenge.
Human beings can move through life following habits, expectations and ambitions they have never consciously chosen.
Philosophy interrupts that process.
Why do I want this?
What am I trying to achieve?
What do I actually value?
What am I neglecting?
What kind of person am I becoming?
There may be no universal formula for answering those questions.
But asking them gives us the opportunity to live more deliberately.
Where the Question Leads
The question of the good life connects almost everything we have explored so far.
To decide how we should live, we need to consider what makes something right or wrong.
To hold ourselves responsible for our choices, we encounter free will.
To understand happiness, suffering and experience, we encounter consciousness.
And once we ask whether a good life requires some larger purpose, two even bigger questions appear:
and eventually:
Perhaps the good life is not something philosophy can design for us.
That may be precisely the point.
Philosophy can show us possibilities, reveal assumptions we did not realise we were making and introduce us to people who have spent their lives thinking about the same problem.
But eventually each of us has to live an answer.
The question is not simply:
“What makes a good life?”
It is also:
“Given the life I have, what would it mean for me to live it well?”