The Finished Life

According to Aristotle, happiness is something we value not as a means to some other end but for its own sake. It has intrinsic value rather than instrumental value.

The good life is one in which a person cultivates and exercises their rational faculties by engaging in scientific inquiry, p...

• Recent research shows that people who have children are not necessarily happier than people who don't have children.
• During the child-raising years, and especially when children have turned into teenagers, parents typically have lower levels of happiness and higher levels of stress.

What is "the good life"? This is one of the oldest philosophical questions. It has been posed in different ways.

How should one live? What does it mean to "live well"?

These are really just the same question.

But the question isn’t as simple as it sounds. Philosophers specializ...

• One basic way we use the word "good" is to express moral approval.
• When we say someone is living well or that they have lived a good life, we may simply mean that they are a good person.
• Socrates and Plato both gave absolute priority to being a virtuous person over all other ...