Plutarch’s Cosmological Ethics

Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. 45-120 CE) is the most prolific and influential moral philosopher in the Platonic tradition. This book is a fundamental reappraisal of Plutarch’s ethical thought. It shows how Plutarch based his ethics on his particular interpretation of Plato’s cosmology: our quest for the good life should start by considering the good cosmos in which we live. The practical consequences of this cosmological foundation permeate various domains of Greco-Roman life: the musician, the organiser of a drinking party, and the politician should all be guided by cosmology. After exploring these domains, this book offers in-depth interpretations of two works which can only be fully understood by paying attention to cosmological aspects: 'Dialogue on Love' and 'On Tranquillity of Mind'.

Research on a Good Life and Coordinated Development Based on Intelligent Communication and k-Means Algorithm

Due to the rapid development of society and economy, people have more and more urgent needs for a better life and coordinated development between regions. However, research on people’s good life and coordinated development based on new era technologies such as intelligent communication is not sufficient. The future of smart communications technology will be all over the place, from television to mobile phones and the Internet, and ICT is making the world look new, helping hundreds of millions of people to live, work, and play in the most creative ways. At the same time, ICT is managing cities in innovative ways, especially in an increasingly integrated information society, exchanging information knowledge and communicating on the move. In order to understand the impact of intelligent communication on people’s good life and coordinated development research, this paper uses intelligent communication and k-means algorithm-based methods to study people’s good life and coordinated development and conducts questionnaire surveys and constructs corresponding evaluation indicators analysis. The results showed that 36% of the respondents were satisfied with the housing environment, 24% were relatively satisfied, 76% were satisfied with the greening environment, and 13% were relatively satisfied. 41% of people are satisfied with their health, and 32% are satisfied with their work status. This shows that people’s good life and coordinated development are inseparable from rapid economic development, but rapid economic development alone is far from enough because rapid economic development can improve people’s material living conditions, but not necessarily promote people’s life coordination in the spiritual world. Therefore, for people’s good life and coordinated development, the improvement of material economy and the construction of spiritual level are indispensable.

What is Good? A Study of Educational Insights in Nicomachean Ethics (Book I, II and III)

This work is a study of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Book I, II and III) to characterize the good: the good that features in education and good life. Nicomachean Ethics teaches us that human good is neither in thought/theory, nor in action/practice alone, it is neither an exclusively individual prerogative, nor an outright social preserve. And, human good is impossible without education. The practice of education can neither be isolated nor conceptualized apart from the demands of human life. If education is for human well-being—for human good—the good then is not in action alone, but action in accordance with the excellence (or virtue) 1 of the actor. What unifies reason and action, knowing and doing is learning to be an excellent (or virtuous) person—a person who is well-disposed in her affections and action, whose judgements are true, and decisions correct; and whose intellect and character are in harmony with the human nature.

The Marriage Law Amendment Bill, 2010: Through a Gendered Lens

India has taken a big step in the year 2005 by amending the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, giving women the equal right of inheritance as their male siblings. However, there remains a loophole where women are still marginalized when it comes to the division of property; the division of matrimonial property after separation. It is observed that divorce leads to women facing several hurdles starting from the legal system to their natal homes; the conditions are not suitable for women to have a good life after divorce due to loopholes in the legal system in India. Due to these issues faced by women, they are forced to stay loyal to their exploitative marriage for the rest of their lives. The introduction of the Marriage Law Amendment Bill of 2010, which eases the laws on divorce, brings further problems for women as they subjected to a rough legal system that upholds social morality over constitutional morality.

WRITING COLLABORATIVE HAPPINESS

In this article, I discuss a collaborative research project with two urban cohousing communities: Kankanmori, in Tokyo, and Quayside Village, in North Vancouver. The project focused on the joint production of the good life in the two communities, both of which situate well-being as simultaneously social and subjective, thus expanding beyond mainstream approaches to happiness narrowly focused on the individual. In what follows, I describe the particular forms that collaboration took over the course of the six-year project and then provide a brief overview of the positive contributions cohousing can make to social and environmental sustainability.

The Good Life and Climate Adaptation

The need to adapt to climate change brings about moral concerns that according to ‘eco-centric’ critiques cannot be resolved by modernist ethics, as this takes humans as the only beings capable of intentionality and rationality. However, if intentionality and rationality are reconsidered as ‘counterfactual hypotheses’ it becomes possible to align modernist ethics with the eco-centric approaches. These counterfactual hypotheses guide the development of institutions, so as to allow the pursuit of a ‘good life’. This mean that society should be organized as if humans are intentional and, following Habermas’s idea of ‘communicative rationality’, as if humans are capable of collective deliberation. Given the ecological challenges, the question becomes how to give ecological concerns a voice in deliberative processes.

Kryzys idei neutralności moralnej prawa

The idea of the moral neutrality of law is a characteristic element of liberal political and legal doctrines. This concept is also an element of constitutional principles regulating the limits of permissible legislative interference in the sphere of freedom. In such context, the bond linking it with the clearly defined axiology from which it derives is severed. The aim of this study is to consider to what extent the principle of the moral neutrality of law, being a principle affecting the activity of the legislator, retains its potential in identifying and limiting totalizing practices aimed at systematically limiting choices in the field of the concept of a good life and favouring a specific vision of the legal and political order in both spheres of human activity, individual and collective. The numerous variants of the moral neutrality of law formulated in political philosophy, and the distinctions between individual variants, in conjunction with the criticism of this concept, make it necessary to pay attention to whether this way of limiting totalizing practices is a good tool, resistant to the changing conditions. A review of critical arguments directed against the idea of neutrality leads to the conclusion that the weakening of the concept of the moral neutrality of law translates not only into its value in identifying and preventing totalizing practices, but also into weakening the protection of fundamental values, such as individual autonomy.

HAPPINESS AND THE GOOD LIFE

The question I raise is whether happiness constitutes a good life. I argue that it does not and contend that the good life is based on three essentials: worthwhile activities, worthwhile character, and worthwhile relationships. I provide examples of possibly happy lives that are not good and good lives that are not happy.