Whatchoo gonna do bout it?

[pyratesarrrcool]

Yesterday in my ethics class we were discussing the essence of a flourishing life. The teacher asked what we thought about it. Someone responded that he thought a flourishing life was whatever anyone wanted. He thought that if one liked one's life then it was a flourishing life. The class proceeded to talk about this and the teacher somehow

Comments

[pyratesarrrcool]

i see what you are saying but i have some problems with it. first, the logic in your last statement "only you can determine whether your life is "flourishing" or not; no one else is capable of evaluating it because of human bias." is not sound. this argument begs the question. if there is human bias then the individual will be affected by it just as much as the collective. so this does not give the individual grounds to reject the authority of the collective. (do not take me to say that the collective determines right from wrong; that is not what i am say or what i think.) if you would go on to say that human bias makes it impossible to for anyone at all, individual or collective or anyone, to determine an objective definition for "flourishing" then i couldn't disagree more. i am a realist and i trust my senses. i do not have time to spend wondering, perpetually (as the quest will turn out to be), whether or not my senses are showing me the real reality or just some personally-skewed version. second, "flourishing" is not necessarily vague. "flourishing" is vague if you are trying to determine exactly what it refers to. if, however, "flourishing" is a word that is being used to stand in place of a particular meaning, a meaning that denotes some sort of "good life" or eudaimonea, then it is not vague. it is not vague because it is referring to something specific that will be defined as something specific, although it has not yet been defined (we were in the process of that when this whole discourse began). so the word is only vague because the consequent has not yet been agreed upon (this could be what you were saying). with that in mind, "flourishing" is not relative. if it were relative then it could be said that hitler lived a flourishing life which is not the case. you were right to challenge me. i was not very clear.