A meaning to life: Part 3 - Actualisation for everyone

At the end of last post we elaborated on an answer to Meanlife by appealing to Eudaimonia. This led to:

EudaimoniaAnswer:   the answer to Meanlife is that each human should aim for human flourishing - they should leave an enriching life where they can develop theoretical and moral virtue.

 So far our analysis has been relatively abstract, but in this week I hope to ground it more concretely by forming an initial association between Eudaimonia and self-actualisation, as well as arguing that a societies purpose is to maximise this actualisation.

Eudaimonia in practice

The Aristotelian notion of Eudaimonia is somewhat abstract, if a little vague. 'Human flourishing', 'The telos of man', 'Theoretical and moral wisdom' - these sound great but lets make it more concrete. An initial caveat is that I'm sure there are many philosophers who have analysed Aristotle far more than myself - my interest here is not in perfectly capturing Aristotle's view, but to express my own perspective as having grown (to some extent) out of my own reading of Aristotle's work.

I think a good place to start is to focus on 'theoretical and moral wisdom'. Aristotle focuses his analysis of man on their ability to reason, thus it seems plausible to think that part of Eudaimonia revolves around improving our reasoning abilities. What does that mean? More broadly I'd consider reasonining to be practice of considering different positions, their relation with one another and coming up with a conclusion. I'd associate it fairly closely with concepts of rationality. I'm personally an Accuracy First epistemologist, which means that what matters to me is that we have accurate beliefs - where a belief is accurate if it is 'close' to the truth. A rational person is one who maximises their accuracy given their evidence. So part of improving our ability to reason is to develop how we think about arguments, how we use logic and how we come to conclusions given our evidence. Let us call these skills 'meta-theoretical knowledge'. 

We can then mention broader 'theoretical knowledge' as things that help us deal with specific domains. For example, we can imagine that as an engineer, I might need to have a grasp of physics and material sciences in order to build something safe. Theoretical knowledge is still useful as it helps us respond to specific instances, where the additional knowledge allows us to establish relationships between propositions and concepts ('this material will break under this force'). It however contrasts with our meta-theoretical knowledge which touches at the purest of theoretical virtues.

On to moral wisdoms. I think that Aristotle is touching on the wisdom one gains through engaging in different moral actions and decisions. As we learn more about the world, we have a better perspective of the moral dimension - we have a better perspective on what is good and what is bad. When we're younger we might be told never to lie, however a few years later might learn of the concept of a 'white lie'. I'd also be open to thinking that emotions are some kind of indicator to moral concepts, and our ability to understand the emotions of others also improves over time. They key concept here is that we know more about people, more about the world and this gives us the knowledge of how to behave better.

Between these two concepts is a clear sense of self-improvement and self actualisation. We as humans need to develop ourselves for the better - both rationally and morally. Achieving this actualisation can take a life time - it's certainly not something one learns in specific instances, but something developed over time with deliberate practice.

Now, I would consider self actualisation as something a broader than what Aristotle is calling Eudaimonia. For example, I would see physical feats (e.g. training oneself to run a marathon) as fitting in with actualisation, even if its not directly related to moral or theoretical wisdom. Essentially, I'm less concerned by the idea that Human's telos is reason, but more focused on this broader notion of flourishing and living one's best life.

This leads me to my final analysis of Meanlife:

ActualisationAnswer:   the answer to Meanlife is that each human should aim for self-actualisation- they should develop themselves and strive to achieve their potential.

 What is the purpose of society?

 On its most basic level, we could consider a society a group of people. Generally we might expect them to have come together for some additional purpose - safety, common interest, familial all come to mind. Now an initial question comes to mind - all other things being equal, is it better for humans to be in a society or not? I'm not entirely sure if this is a philosophical question, as I imagine that it's probably better answered by athropological or biological analysis. 

Anyhow, I ask this question because we already have an analysis of the meaning of life for an individual person, so it's natural to ask whether a larger society helps, deters, changes this analysis.

If we focus for now on the normative side, we might argue that a society should be there to help improve the lives  of the people in the society. I.e. we should group together only if it helps us in some sense. And what sense is most relevant? Well I think the natural answer is to say that we should group together only if it helps us achieve the meaning of life - self actualisation.

Now, should society be helping each individual person achieve actualisation, or should it be trying to maximise (more broadly) the potential of the group of people? It's worth noting that the former may have a specific tension - if two individual people are trying to e.g. become the president of the society then it will be hard for both of them to reach actualisation. Of course, one might argue that the 'winner's' potential was higher (and they achieved it) while the loser's potential was lower (and they also achieved it) but I still feel there is some tension. For the latter, we might focus on enabling everyone as a collective - e.g. we aspire towards a society that is overall more advanced, humane and so on, even if some people may have a more stifled experience (for example, we might avoid funding research on more 'exploratory' topics such as space travel, and instead centre it on smaller and local issues). Anyhow, I won't focus on this distinction and I think the ideal society should achieve some kind of balance between the two.

What would this ideal society look like? Well one way to think about this is to consider what currently stops people in society achieving their potential. Suppose I'm an artist - I'm reasonably talented and would like to spend the rest of my life painting. Let us further suppose that while I'm good, I'm not *that* good, people probably won't be paying millions for my work and it is unlikely to be shown in any major exhibits. Still - I have a love for painting. Now in our current society it might be tricky to for me to devote my life to painting, as I normally need to spend time 'working a job'. If we assume that this takes around 35-40 hours a week, this significantly reduces the time I have to focus on my passion and achieve actualisation.

One response to this might be to say that I could instead be unemployed and just receive benefits from the government. There are a number of reasons why I think this is unconvincing. The first is that it's not really 'sustainable' in the sense that the government see benefits as a short-term solution. You're in theory expected to constantly be looking for new jobs and they might take away your benefits if you spend all your time painting, with no evidence of job hunting. The other problem is more of a social issue - some people may consider it shameful to need to take benefits. We want society to encourage us to achieve our potential - not shame us about doing so. 

I conclude from this that an ideal society should be able to provide sufficient income to it's members such that they can spend their time pursuing self actualisation. This would probably take the form of some kind of universal basic income, but I'm fairly neutral at the moment about how it would be done or funded - I'm currently just expressing a theoretical ideal.

Another thought I had was that some people might not have any explicit passions in life that they want to do. The ideal society I think would also need to have a way to help or at least encourage people to find their passions.

It's clear to me that the creation of this ideal society would be fantastic, as it would help a lot of people achieve their actualisation. Indeed, i think that the goal of achieving this ideal society would in itself be a great accomplishment and something that I myself would like to strive towards. Of course the exact properties of this ideal society are not fixed - the broader goal is to help as many as people achieve actualisation as possible.

I'm going to leave it there for this post. In my next post I'm going to discuss in a bit more detail my thoughts around creating this ideal society and helping people achieve self actualisation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A meaning to life: Part 2 - Eudaimonia, enrichment and flourishing

Last post we refined our question on the meaning of life to the following:  

Meanlife: What is a / the purpose o f an individual's existence?

We then ended last post with the HappyAnswer to MeanLife: "The answer to Meanlife is that each human should aim to be happy. The reference to 'purpose' is because it is good for a human to be happy.

Now, I mentioned that there were various kinds of metaphysical concerns around this answer. My interest however is to look at the more practical issues around what happiness means. My aim is to get to a satisfactory analysis to this answer that I can then practically apply in my own life.

Let me first revisit the two readings of happiness that I previously mentioned. The first is around happiness in a hedonistic sense - seeking pleasure. The second is happiness in a flourishing sense - enrichment and eudaimonia. I argued for the latter, but let's take a quick look at the former.

 Hedonism

There are different ways people might get pleasure, but the hedonistic kind if quite specific. It's about the maximising of the 'good feelings' of pleasure beyond all else. We aren't talking here about the pleasure we might get from reading a book in the morning. We're talking about the exact dopomine we're getting from taking drugs or having an orgasm. Hedonism is focussed on that feeling of pleasure regardless of where it comes from. The causation does not matter, and even the epistemology does not matter. 

What's wrong with this? Well in some sense nothing, and in another sense a lot. There's a sense in which its hard to argue against the good feelings. After all, most would say that being happy requires one to feel good - is it a problem to reverse this and say that if one feels good then one is happy? 

Let's consider some objections to happiness = hedonism. The first is an epistemic objection and I'll explain it via a pop culture reference! In the film 'The Matrix' a character discusses how they are satisfied for their brain to be fed false memories and experience, as long as those false memories are experiences are ones in which they are doing well. In essence, they would be happy to be in a situation where their life was a lie, but they were experiencing a lot of pleasure. In my view, this captures some of the essence of hedonism - it's about pleasure above all, which also means pleasure above truth. The hedonist would rather live a false life of pleasure than a real life of pain. Is that a problem? Not obviously, but I do feel like something is going wrong if the answer to 'What is the meaning of life' somehow resolves into a solution where a false life of pleasure becomes the model answer.

I think the epistemic issue expands a bit further when we consider hedonistic committment to things like drugs. The feeling of the high when on drugs may be incredible, but there's a sense of falsity that seems to mimic the Matrix situation. When a drug addict is in a constant sense of craving for their next high, surely they are not in a happy situation - even if their experience of the drug provides this hedonism. 

The other issue worth considering it the causation aspect. It's about considering 'Why am I happy, or why have I derived pleasure? Not to fully go down a naturalistic argument, but I would argue that the pleasure we experience from activities such as sex is because the body wants to encourage certain things that are 'good for you'. In this sense, the pleasure is meant to be some kind of bodily reward mechanism and not something to aspired for in itself. I think this is more relevant when we consider certain drugs which provide chemical highs - there's a sense in which we want to be rewarded the 'natural way' - just hitting the chemicals almost feel cheating as we are getting the reward without doing anything. We should be getting pleasure as a reward for doing good things, not as a prize for a competitition that we've cheated.

I don't think this is a real take down of hedonism, but I wanted to share some intuitions as to why I didn't go down this route. 

Eudaimonia

The Philosopher Aristole describes eudaimonia as the highest human good - and the only good that is desirable in its own sake. Eudaimonia refers the condition of human flourishing and living well, and is sometimes translated as happiness. According to Aristole, every entity has some kind of characteristic function that distinguishes it (also known as its Telos or purpose), with the highest good of a thing being its performance against its Telos. Thus the virtue of a knife is that which enables it to cut well, the virtue of an eye is that which enables good seeing. To Aristotle a person's telos is eudaimonia, and thus eudaimonia defines what human excellence and virtue is meant to mean.

Now Aristotle believes that the telos of man is their ability to reason, and thus achieving eudaimonia is in some sense about being a rational individual. Aristotle connects virtue and rationality together, where he places great praise on gaining intellectual virtues such as theoretical wisdom and rationality, but also places emphasis on moral virtues such as justice and courage. Furthermore, these virtues are not innate talents or specific pieces of knowledge - they are traits that are developed with practice, and reflection throughout ones life. This discussion of course feeds into the theory of 'Virtue Ethics', a form of normative ethics that proposes that encourage us to live virtuously.

That's a lot of exposition, but I think the central point here is that achieving this kind of virtue or flourishing is essential to doing good as a human. It is challenging and requires experience and practice, but is something we should strive for. Note that this assessment of Eudaimonia shares some parallels with what we might call self actualisation which I would see as being achieved through enriching one's life. The goal to achieve these virtues is a goal of self enrichment, where we develop ourself and become better people.

I am therefore proposing that by happiness, I actually mean the striving to achieve Eudaimonia.

A few short objections or concerns to consider before I talk about what this all practically means. I guess the first thought is a simple one - what if Aristotle is wrong. Sure we can broadly understand the idea that the purpose of a knife is to cut, but I might not share the exact intuition that the purpose of a human is to become a moral intellectual. I think the idea that we should develop moral virtues (such as kindness, justice etc) seems plausible if we want to associate goodness and purpose. However it isn't quite clear why theoretical virtues. In a sentence - what does reason have to do with all this? I guess if we are to consider eudaimonia as more about 'reaching my potential' and 'human flourishing' I can see buy that developing my virtues across the board has some value.

The second thought to consider is along the lines of 'what does this have to do with happiness'? Aristotle himself mentions that eudaimonia takes time and that 'a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy'. This is interesting, as I think he's attempting to draw a contrast with hedonistic views of happiness. One does not achieve eudaimonia simply by having short bursts of happiness - it requires time. I think there are two ways to justify the eudaimonia view of happiness. The first is to consider an association between flourishing and happiness, which does seem plausible. Another way is to look at our objections to Hedonism and see if Eudaimonia can address them. 

Let's look at the epistemic objection first, which argues that a hedonistic analysis of happiness would prefer a pleasurable life of lies than a struggling life of truth. Eudaimonist would not need to committ to the same conclusion - as they are open to the idea that happiness may require struggle - after all eudaimonia is something achieved after a life of experience. Furthermore, the eudaimonia places some emphasis on achieving theoretical wisdom and epistemic virtue. It seems plausible that they could avoid the pleasurable life of lies.

Second, we get to the causation based objection. Again, I don't think this is necessarily the best objection, but I do think that the Eudaimonist can respond very effectively. If the Eudaimonist is right, then eudaimonia is what one gets once one has succeeded in achieving a life of virtue, suceeded in self flourishing and enrichment. In this sense, one deserves the satisfaction they get - if they are happy its because they got it through a hard battle through life.

There are additional thoughts as to whether there is a third alternative to happiness, but I won't go into detail here. 

I will end today's post with a new conclusion, another refined answer to Meanlife.

EudaimoniaAnswer:   the answer to Meanlife is that each human should aim for human flourishing - they should leave an enriching life where they can develop theoretical and moral virtue.