Essay on "Meaning of Life"

Essay 4 pages (1475 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Life in Aristotle, Socrates, King, and Frankl

The Nicomachean Ethics starts by saying that all knowledge and purpose aims at some good (Aristotle, trans. 1893, 1094a1). In medicine, for example, the good is health (1097a7). But what is the highest good? According to Aristotle, the highest good is that which is achieved for itself alone rather than as a useful means to something else (1094a2). He goes on to show that this ultimate goal is happiness (eudaemonia), because happiness is that which is self-sufficient, final, most desirable, and always chosen for itself rather than for sake of something else (1097b7). He links happiness directly with rationality, saying that it is "a certain kind of exercise of the vital faculties in accordance with excellence or virtue" (1099b9). Happiness is an activity of the soul that involves the excellent use of reason. The happy person will never be miserable (1100b10) because reason leads him to endure suffering with a noble calm (1100b10). The moral character, honed through rational habit, allows his true worth to shine through even in the worst of misfortunes. Living intelligently leads essentially to flourishing and well-being.

Being aligned with virtue, in Aristotle, entails developing a disposition to choose the mean between the extremes of excess and deficiency. Virtue is always moderation (1107a6). The more excellent one's practice of virtue, the more one aims at and achieves the middle way. The highest virtues are intellectual, such as the contemplation of wisdom which gives an intrinsic pleasure. One cannot possess virtue if one does not take pleasure in doing virtuous acts. Wealth, honor, fame, and other external goods are subordinate. While mental happiness is best, virtue is not abstract (1098a7). The real meaning of life, "man's function," that is advanced in the Nichomachean Ethics seems to be the enactment of reason in daily living.

By this token, all forms of irrationality and immoderacy are obstacles to the achievement of happiness. Some obstructions to virtue and well-being are given in books 5-7, such as slavish enjoyment of physical pleasure, vice, incontinence, brutality. They encompass anything that is opposite of the mean (temperance), any kind of acting excessively or without enough desire.

Earlier, Socrates (as spoken through Plato) asserted several key formulations of the point of human life. In the Apology, Socrates claimed that the main purpose is to strive after excellence. He says, "Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively" (Plato, trans. 1997, 30b). Goodness for him meant how humans arrange their cares and priorities. He says he tried to persuade others "not to care for any of his belongings before caring that he himself should be as good and as wise as possible" (36c). This is where his famous principle, "know thyself," comes in. The greatest good for a human, he thought, was to discuss virtue every day (38a). It is through this self-examination that life becomes meaningful because it creates self-development and the knowledge that one is acting rightly. It makes sense: how can one know how to act until one has thought about it? Significance arises in formulating how to live practically a just, wise, and good life. Again as in Aristotle, it is not an idealized form of goodness or justice.

The good life in Crito means living in the right way (Plato, trans. 1997, 48b) with the understanding that "virtue and justice are man's most precious possession" (53c). In this sense, a good life must possess self-awareness. It is not a wealth, fame, career, family, or pleasure-based life -- these things are distractions from true purpose and ought not to be prioritized over self-analysis and virtue. In Crito, life is not worth living if corrupt with unjust actions (48a). To prevent self-corruption and improve wisdom, one must follow just actions. For Socrates, this is a private affair, not a public one (32a). Further, it involves never returning wrong for wrong (49b-d). It was this idea of non-retaliation -- if one is beat, one does not beat back -- that made him refuse to run away from his commitment to Athens as a citizen (52c). The context of his devoted stand for principles and philosophy in the face of conviction and a sentence of death, which he did not fear but faced with equanimity (29a), made his stance more poignant and salient.

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