The Good Life. Aristoteles and Platon.

[Ishoss]

What did they think constituted the good life?

Obviously for Platon the Ideaworld and insight into it would be very important. That the leaders who govern his crazy society must have reached a deeper understanding into the Ideaworld than the rest.

Aristoteles would like a sort of democracy, and thinks a political life is extremely important to live a good life.

Also, according to those guys a good life would be a life of a certain standard, since things aren't relative and there's ONE standard for everything.

Meh, come with your thoughts about this. And also source them cause if it's good, I might steal your sources ideas for my Exphil assignment.

[Denny Crane!]

If we are going to discuss this could we also reference epicurean, stoicism and eastern philosophy to make a more complete contextual look at the notion of life philosophy. Good topic by the way. I'll write in more detail about this.

You have to define virtue, establish values as being objective or individualistic, establish whether these ideals can be attained through personal struggle or through external influence (a paradox IMO), reference platonic world of forms and perfection and finally then there is a more complex edge to this topic that I'd suggest is worth investigating.

The good life needs defined and does that involve happiness? Then we must define happiness and looking at the topic framed in modern views of the likes of Daniel Gilbert (harvard lecturer lit: Stumbling on happiness) that it is an elusive ideal hard to pin down.

So if I'm looking at this topic in the correct way for how you wanted to discuss it I think we have ourselves a discussion.

[The Fishman]

The Good Life was one mean show back in the day, man! You may laugh now, but back then, farmin' 'n' junk was the shizz! You couldn't go anywhere without bumping into some young idealistic couple trying to grow their own produce in their back garden, keeping pigs an' all. Most of us even had our own generators and made electricity from burning manure!

Too bad there were all those snooty rich couples looking down on us, man. We would always try to invite them to dinner or buy produce, but some whacky hijinks would be afoot and pretty soon we would all be back where we started.

[Ishoss]

If we are going to discuss this could we also reference epicurean, stoicism and eastern philosophy to make a more complete contextual look at the notion of life philosophy. Good topic by the way. I'll write in more detail about this.

You have to define virtue, establish values as being objective or individualistic, establish whether these ideals can be attained through personal struggle or through external influence (a paradox IMO), reference platonic world of forms and perfection and finally then there is a more complex edge to this topic that I'd suggest is worth investigating.

The good life needs defined and does that involve happiness? Then we must define happiness and looking at the topic framed in modern views of the likes of Daniel Gilbert (harvard lecturer lit: Stumbling on happiness) that it is an elusive ideal hard to pin down.

So if I'm looking at this topic in the correct way for how you wanted to discuss it I think we have ourselves a discussion.

Well if I've understood those oldies correct then virtues are sides of your own character, and they're gained accordig to Platon partly through dialogue and mostly through contemplation. Aristoteles believes that humans need to socialize in order to develop their virtues. Values are, according to these guys, purely objective. Platon bases this in the Ideaworld, where everything is perfect and constant. Aristoteles bases it on some other .

I don't think Platon thinks that happiness, or at least not the happiness we pursue, is necesarry for the good life. I think he finds the social context of your life, i.e how the state is set up and a very important bit for him is how much insight you have gained into this fantasy world of his.

Aristoteles seem to suggest that material happiness is important. But not the same degree as we do.

But yeah, as you pointed out: what the is happiness? (And questions like those are why I hate philosophy)