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Course Unit - Good Life

The document discusses the concept of "the good life" from various perspectives. It begins by outlining course objectives related to defining, understanding, and examining shared concerns that make up the good life. It then examines different ideas of the good life from philosophers like Aristotle and concepts like health, wealth, love and happiness. It also discusses perspectives like hedonism, stoicism, theism, humanism, and finding a balanced life. The document suggests that while science and technology impact modern thinking about matter, the single-minded pursuit of any one thing is not always beneficial, and balance is important for a good life.

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Joseph Lleno Eusebio
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© © All Rights Reserved
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101 views

Course Unit - Good Life

The document discusses the concept of "the good life" from various perspectives. It begins by outlining course objectives related to defining, understanding, and examining shared concerns that make up the good life. It then examines different ideas of the good life from philosophers like Aristotle and concepts like health, wealth, love and happiness. It also discusses perspectives like hedonism, stoicism, theism, humanism, and finding a balanced life. The document suggests that while science and technology impact modern thinking about matter, the single-minded pursuit of any one thing is not always beneficial, and balance is important for a good life.

Uploaded by

Joseph Lleno Eusebio
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Science, Technology and Society

COURSE MODULE COURSE UNIT Session


7 2 3

The Good Life

✓ Read course and unit objectives


✓ Read study guide prior to class attendance
✓ Read required learning resources; refer to unit
terminologies for jargons
✓ Proactively participate in classroom discussions
✓ Participate in weekly discussion board (Canvas)
✓ Answer and submit course unit tasks

At the end of this unit, the students are expected to:


1. Define the good life.
2. Understand the concept of the good life.
3. Examine shared concerns that make-up the good life.

The good life


A PUZZLING PROBLEM
• People want to be healthy but many consume junk food
• People want to be happy but many do things that make themselves miserable
• Most things that taste good are probably bad for you.
• Most things that give you thrill are probably bad for you too.
What is the good life?
• People have different ideas of what constitutes the good life.
• Wrong pursuits may lead to tragic consequences.
• Correct pursuits may lead to flourishing.
ARISTOTLE (NICOMACHEAN ETHICS 2:2)
All human activities aim at some good. Every art and human inquiry, and similarly every action
and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has been rightly
declared as that at which all things aim.
Nicomachean Ethics and Modern Concepts
Eudaimonia- Eu-good, daimon- spirit= good life
Good life- happiness and virtue
Virtue- intellectual and moral
The 4 Pillar of the Good life
• Health, wealth, love and happiness

THE HAPPINESS PURSUIT


• Everybody wants more happiness and success.
• It’s good to know how to optimize happiness and success.
• There is a wide agreement that happiness is the greatest human good.

RISK FACTORS
• The happiness pursuit becomes one’s ultimate purpose in life.
• The happiness pursuit is not guided by a philosophy of life informed by general principles of
meaning, spirituality and virtue.

Golden Rule

• Confucius: What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.


• Aristotle: We should behave to others as we wish others to behave to us.
• Buddhism: Hurt not others with that which pains thyself.
• Christianity: D unto others as you would have them do unto you.

➢ They make personal happiness and success their ultimate end of life without moral compass
and without the desire to pursue inner goodness.
Disillusion- King Solomon realized the vanity of success long, long ago: The world will never be
enough: “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing”( Eccl.1:8)
➢ It takes more and more to reach the same level of happiness- addiction, money etc.
➢ Nothing in this world can fill the spiritual vacuum within us.
➢ Dreams are often broken when reality strikes.
FATE AND CIRCUMSTANCE
➢ Bad things happen to good people
➢ Reversal of fortune
➢ For some people, most days are bad days. ( poverty)

Living an authentic life means living with deep acceptance on the facticity of death resulting to a life
lived-Heidegger
The unexamined life is not worth living for-Socrates
The Holistic Approach
good people, good community and world peace= good life
MATERIALISM
A form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and
that all things, including mental aspects and consciousness are results of material interactions.
❑ The first materialists were the atomists in Ancient Greece.
❑ Democritus and Leucippus led a school whose primary belief is that the world is made up of and
is controlled by the tiny invisible units in the world called atomos or seeds.
❑ Atomos simply comes together randomly to form the things in the world.
Classification of Materialism
1. Naïve materialism
2. Dialectical materialism
3. Metaphysical materialism

Hedonism
Is a school of thought that argues that the pursuit of pleasure and intrinsic goods are the
primary or most important goals of human life.
➢ A hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure (pleasure minus pain) but when having finally
gained that pleasure, happiness remains stationary.
➢ “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.”
Stoicism
▪ Another school of thought led by Epicurus.
▪ The stoics espoused the idea that to generate happiness, one must learn to distance oneself
and be apathetic.
▪ The path to happiness for humans is found in accepting this moment as it presents itself, by not
allowing ourselves to be controlled by our desire for pleasure, or our fear of pain.
THEISM
• The belief in the existence of the Supreme Being or Deities
• Describes the classical conception of God.
• The ultimate basis of happiness is the communication with God
• Monotheism- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism

Humanism
• A school of thought espouses the freedom of man to carve his own destiny and to legislate his
own laws, free from the shackles of a God that monitors and controls.
• Is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings,
individually and collectively.
• Refers to nontheistic life stance centered on human agency and looking to science rather than
revelation from a supernatural source to understand the world.
The Good Life is a Balance Life
✓ A single-minded pursuit is not always beneficial.
✓ Active engagement needs to be balanced by rest.
✓ Exclusive love needs to be balanced by greater love.
✓ Achievement needs to be balanced by acceptance.
✓ Self-transcendence needs to be balanced by fair treatment.
No one can deny the fact that science and technology has a profound impact on how modern
man thinks and appreciates matter. It can be concretely seen in the present conditions of man
in the society. The desire to feel satisfaction of research and development through genetic
engineering, cloning and the likes opened endless doors for skeptics.

Virtue is the excellence of character that empowers one to do good and be good.
Happiness defines a good life.
Eudamonia refers to good spirit

Study Questions

Watch the documentary short film 'That Sugar Film (2015). Answer the following questions:
1. What is the relationship between the good life and science?
2. Based on the short film, does technology always lead us to the good life? How and Why?
McNamara, DJ., VAlverde VM, Beleno III, R. Science, technology
and Society.C&E Publishing Inc. 2018. Chapter 6 pp. 70-73. ISBN:
978-971-98-0935-7
Javier Serafica JP, PAwilen G., CAslib Jr. BN, Alata EJ. Science
Technology and Society. First Edition. 2018. Rex Bookstore, INc.
(RBSI). Chapter 2 pp.75-81. ISBN 978-971-23-8671-8
The Good Life-Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org
Birgit Ohlin, MA,BBA. What is the Good Life? How Positive
Psychology Can Create Meaning. Positive Psychology.com
Emrys Westacott.What does it mean to live the Good
Life?.February 26,2020. ThoughtCo. https//:www.thoughtco.com

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