Regarding

I don’t accept the view that there is a single conception of the good life (or of “the good”). Indeed I think it is the dangerous part of the Greek gift of rationality to the Western culture. Whereas Plato argues that we need to use our reason to settle how one ought to live, and for other “moral” questions, he also contends there is a single good life for humans. In his Republic he goes further, claiming that if individuals can not accept and choose his conception, they fail or rationality and need to have their lives controlled by paternalistic philosopher kings who can help them lead the life they would not choose for themselves. Here I’ve drawn them together several criticisms of this view.

were it granted that the rule of the aristoi would lead to the highest external development of society and the individual, there would still be a fatal objection. Humanity cannot be content with a good which is procured from without, however high and otherwise complete that good. The aristocratic idea implies that the mass of men are to be inserted by wisdom, or if necessary, thrust by force, into their proper positions in the social organism. It is true, indeed that when an individual has found that place in society for which he is best fitted and is exercising the function proper to that place, he has obtained his completest development, but it is also true (and this is the truth omitted by aristocracy, emphasized by democracy) that he must find this place and assume this work in the main for himself.[1]

for the democrat[ically-inclined individual], the realization of the ethical ideal must be entrusted to the self-conscious, freely willed actions of every individual in a society. A good that an individual did not self-consciously recognize and pursue for himself was not a good; men could not be forced to be free.[2]

the physician can learn from other physicians how to preserve and restore health, and he can teach his art and craft to his successors, because within well-known limits there are agreed standards for determining whether a body is healthy or diseased....But the diagnosis and treatment of spiritual ills is not on such a firm theoretical or experimental basis. There are no agreed standards for determining whether a soul or a city is healthy or diseased, just or unjust, and this is not because spiritual medicine is an under-developed science, but because it is not a science at all. The lack of agreed standards of justice, which is Plato’s main reason for pressing the analogy between justice and health, is also the decisive reason against accepting the analogy. Plato’s aim is to suggest that he himself knows what is ultimately and absolutely good. If we accept this suggestion, then politics and ethics become, for us, sciences like medicine, learning by experiment and experience how to embody in law and policy the given standards of justice and virtue. But we cannot accept the analogy unless we can accept the suggestion, and we cannot accept the suggestion because Plato can say nothing in its defense that could not equally be said by a rival claimant to ultimate and absolute knowledge of the good, in defense of a different set of ‘absolute’ standards.[3]

Plato claims that an aristocracy (in his sense) is preferable in regard to knowledge, virtue, power, and happiness. But are there other goods which might tip the balance toward some other sort of state/individual—freedom, liberty, or moral choice for example? Consider the following discussion by Norman E. Bowie and Robert Simon:

often, what is not noticed is the invalidity of the inference that therefore all power should be given to the wise benevolent. Thus, if X is selling his house, even if an outside observer Y could get a better price for it, it does not follow that X must turn over the selling to Y. For it is X’s house and he has the right to sell it, even if he does not get the best price available. Similarly, if X were to place his life in Y’s hands and follow Y’s directives, X might have a happier life than would otherwise be the case. However, X has the right to run his own life.[4]

Plato contends that the good for human beings is to have a tightly-ordered soul governed by philosophical reason and live in a civil society which is similarly controlled by reason. Pleasures, loves, freedoms, choices, and any other goods are to be rigidly controlled by the “higher” parts. So essentially he deprives the citizens of his “ideal state” of the opportunity of moral choice.

In his “What Makes Someone’s Life Go Best,” which is in his Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit discusses three theories of

what would be best for someone, or would be the most in this person’s interests, or would make this person’s life go, for him, as well as possible…On .Hedonistic Theories what would be best for someone is what would make his life the happiest. On Desire Fulfilment Theories, what would be best for someone is what, throughout his life, would best fulfill his desire. On Objective List Theories, certain things are good or bad for us, whether or not we want to have the good things, or to avoid the bad things.[5]

which of these different theories should we accept? I shall not attempt an answer here. But I shall end by mentioning another theory, which might be claimed to combine what is most plausible in these conflicting theories. It is a striking fact that those who have addressed this question have disagreed so fundamentally. Many philosophers have been convinced Hedonists; many others have been as much convinced that Hedonism is a gross mistake.

Some Hedonists have reached their view as follows. They consider an opposing view, such as that which claims that what is good for someone is to have knowledge, to engage in rational activity, and to be aware of true beauty. These Hedonists ask, ‘Would these states of mind be good, if they brought no enjoyment, and if the person in these states of mind had not the slightest desire that they continue?’ Since they answer No, they conclude that the value of these states of mind must lie in their being liked, and in their arousing a desire that they continue.

This reasoning assumes that the value of a whole is just the sum of the value of its parts. If we remove the part to which the Hedonist appeals, what is left seems to have no value, hence Hedonism is the truth.

Suppose instead, more plausibly, that the value of a whole may not be a mere sum of the value of its parts. We might then claim that what is best for people is composite. It is not just their being in the conscious states [e.g., pleasure and pain] that they want to be in. Nor is it just their having knowledge, engaging in rational activity, being aware of true beauty, and the like. What is good for someone is neither [just] what Hedonists claim, nor just what is claimed by Objective List Theorists. We might believe that if we had either of these, without the other, what we had would have little or no value. We might claim, for example, that what is good or bad for someone is to have knowledge, to be engaged in rational activity, to experience mutual love, and to be aware of beauty, while strongly wanting just these things. On this view, each side in this disagreement [hedonists and list theorists] saw only half of the truth. Each put forward as sufficient something that was only necessary. Pleasure with many other kinds of object has no value. And, if they are entirely devoid of pleasure, there is no value in knowledge, rational activity, love, or the awareness of beauty. What is of value, or is good for someone, is to have both; to be engaged in these activities, and to be strongly wanting to be so engaged.[6]

We could build on Parfit’s suggestion developing a view which stresses that the good, or good life, for human beings is multi-faceted; and insists on a balance between some, or all of: love of knowledge, love of others, civic concern, pleasurable fulfillment, love of beauty, love of liberty, and a host of other intrinsically valuable ends. While a life which includes the sort of philosophical knowledge Plato recommends may be “good,” such a view insists that if it is devoid of some or all of the other aspects, it is not a “good life.” This view would accept the Socratic claim that “the unexamined life is unworthy living,” without adhering to the Platonic exclusivity which turns this into the only important aspect of the good life.

vacillation between the absolute and the arbitrary stems from a failure to recognize the availability of an alternative. Either there is one right answer or there is not. That is obviously true. The error arises when we interpret the second disjunct as “or there is none.” One way there can fail to be one right answer is that there is none. Another is that there are several. To say that a problem does not admit of a unique solution is not to say that it is unsolvable or that all proposed solutions are equally good. A math student asked to give the square root of 4 can correctly answer +2 or -2. But the fact that there are two correct answers does not entail that every answer is correct. She cannot hope to get credit if she answers 17. Likewise, a work like Madam Bovary admits of multiple correct interpretations. But not every interpretation is correct. The work cannot plausibly be construed as a commentary on the fall of the Roman Empire or a story about a boy and his dog.[7]

We need to exercise care here because, as Elgin points out, there may be more than one objectively correct answer to a “moral question.” There may well be several correct interpretations of, then, of Huck Finn, but no such interpretation can ignore the moral quandary Huck finds himself in as he and Jim come close to the point where Jim will have escaped.

Of course while it is possible that there are many possible goods and good lives, and there might be pluralistic societies where individuals and groups could pursue differing sorts of good lives; it is also possible that there could be incommensurable goods and good lives—ones where such tolerance is not likely or possible. Here, it seems to me, an element of what one might call Plato’s “background view” is important: if there are multiple goods/conceptions of the good life, then reason becomes even more important in dealing with the competitions and conflicts which might emerge among conceptions of the good (and of the good life).

Especially in a democracy, discussion of differing conceptions of goods and good lives is necessary if the citizens are committed to freedom, liberty, equality, and civic responsibility. Of course, Plato has no such commitments, and so paternalism, indoctrination, and “aristocratic control” are key elements to his preferred view of the good state. In a democracy, however, one might find those who value aesthetic experiences and museums and those who value the experiences of competitive sporting events can mutually tolerate the public support of museums and stadiums so that each might experience these elements of the good life. Indeed it is possible that some of the children from each of these “tribes” might find both sorts of experience to be elements of their good lives.

Notes: (click on note number to return to text for note)

[1] John Dewey, “The Ethics of Democracy,” in Philosophical Papers, University of Michigan, 1888, p. 21. The article may also be found in John Dewey: The Political Writings, ed. Debra Morris and Ian Shapiro (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993), p. 61.

[2] Robert B. Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 1991), p. 42.

[3] Renford Bambrough, “Plato’s Political Analogies,” in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, ed. Peter Laslett (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956), p. 108. Emphasis [italics] have been added to the passage once. The essay is also in Plato, Popper, and Politics edited by Renford Bambrough (Cambridge: Heffer, 1967).

[4] Norman E. Bowie and Robert Simon, The Individual and the Political Order (2nd edition) (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1986), p. 130.

[5] Derek Parfit, “What Makes Someone’s Life Go Best,” which is Appendix I of his Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1984), pp. 493-502, p. 493.

[6] Ibid., pp. 501-502. Emphasis [bold] added to the passage.

[7] Catherine Elgin, “Postmodernism, Pluralism, and Pragmatism,” in her Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary (Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 1997), pp. 161-175, p. 194. Emphasis [italics] added to the passage twice.