“A Life of Virtue is a

Life Worth Living”

RACHELLE MAE O. MENDEZ
BSED FILIPINO 2B
According to many philosophers, especially ancient philosophers, the secret to having a life worth
living, is not only to examine your life, but to actively aspire to being a good person. What is a good
person, though? Many may think about being a successful, charitable, kind, funny, and inspiring. How
do you reach these goals? Of course, here too, there have been a lot of philosophers with varying
opinions. Perhaps the most prevalent through history, were virtue ethicists. And while most people
nowadays, when they hear or read the word “ethicists” think about ‘utilitarians’, ‘divine command
theorists’ etc., virtue ethics is an entirely different branch of ethics.

As such, attaining a virtuous character, becoming a virtuous person, is a process rather than an
incident. Where utilitarian ethics has an incidental character, going situation by situation, step by step,
the virtue ethicist tries to be one unit of virtue. This process is akin to a kind of therapy. The virtue
ethicist mauls over their actions to decide whether they have chosen the best path available to them,
given their abilities and knowledge. They adjust themselves accordingly. Should they have lost their
patience with someone, they will try to set in place some kind of safeguard so they shall, in the future,
be more mild mannered.
In order to live a life worth living, people must be able to enjoy and love what
they are doing, not be afraid of change, and embrace change and accept
challenges. Living a life worth living for a human being means not being afraid of
the unknown, embracing challenges and not being afraid to be yourself because a
person would not be able to do what they most enjoy if they are afraid of being
themselves. Often times, people are afraid to be themselves as a result of social
norms and may be afraid of what society may think and perceive them as. In the
first position paper, I was unclear with a number of points and contradict myself
somewhat.
A person that does not have self-knowledge thinks they know things that they do not actually
know. They cannot live a life of excellence because they do not actually know about
themselves or society. One of my friend’s from home is a senior in high school and he has
been applying to colleges. Throughout the process I have talked to him and his older sister
and it seems as though he changed his mind on what he wants to major in because he thinks
what he originally wanted to do was unrealistic. This is an example of someone that does not
have self-knowledge, he changed his mind not because he wanted to major in political science
but because he was afraid he would not make it as a sports broadcaster. He is chasing material
things such as money as opposed to putting his happiness and what he actually wants to do
first. This is a very evident problem in society today. It seems as though people major in
certain subjects for the wrong reasons. This is because they are either aware they want to
major in a certain subject area but because they are afraid they will fail or they will not get
material things that they want and strive for. Knowing that you do not know is very crucial
because someone does not know that they do not know something, it leads them to not
seeking a greater and deeper truth and actually figuring out what they believe or what they
want to do in there living life.
This is essential to living a life of excellence because once a person realizes that
there are things he or she does not know, they may begin to seeker the truth even
if they may never get an answer. They may not get an answer because there are
things in life that people will never know such as what happens after life. Despite
this, people can still come to conclusions and different views, beliefs and morals
based on observations using logical reasoning and faith. In order to rebuild your
beliefs and opinions, one must first have a foundation to base it upon. St.
Augustine realized that faith and reason are the two ways of getting at the
fundamental truth which is essential to living a life well-lived. If someone is able
to get at the deeper truth and reason of their life, they will be content. Once I got
to college, I started to rebuild my beliefs and morals after joining InterVarsity,
which is a bible study for student-athletes on campus. In high school I was not a
religious person but I was always curious.
In the book A World of Ideas by Lee A. Jacob, we come across a wise man Aristotle.
He explains that there are two kinds of virtue: intellectual and moral. Our virtue is
what makes us different. Intellectual virtues is what we are born with and what we
learn in the world and it is our job as humans and what we have inherited that makes
our desire to learn more powerful than ever before. We develop wisdom to help
guide us to a good life and knowledge leads us to be successful. By reading Aristotle
he has given me an insight to what life should be like and how one should life and I
agree on some points he make. People should aim for what they desire most in life
and go about it in the right way by working hard, but also Aristotle says, “Happiness
involves not only a completeness of virtue but also a complete life time of
fulfillment” (704). Aristotle believes that happiness is the ultimate goal in life. You
cannot reach ultimate happiness unless we work hard and become successful.
Aristotle hits two main points and rules to live by, one being, “But this point
will be consider later by itself makes choice worthy and lacking in nothing” .
Which means even when one is down the desires of living life is not impossible
to overcome; two being, “Happiness seems, more than anything else, to answer
to this description: for it is something we choose always for its own sake and
never for the sake of something else” . Which means do what makes you happy
be able to continue to do something because one has a passion for it and no one
cannot take that away because Aristotle says,”…those who desires and actions
are controlled by reason will derive much profit from a knowledge of these
matters” . Which mean happiness can be explained in terms of reason;
Therefore, do something because it make you happy it will be seen by the
choices we make in life. On the other hand, virtue is the concept of something
that is good: a virtuous person is a life living virtue.
When Mr. Mallock's book with this title appeared some fifteen years ago, the jocose answer that "it
depends on the liver" had great currency in the newspapers. The answer which I propose to give to-
night cannot be jocose. In the words of one of Shakespeare's prologues,—

"I come no more to make you laugh; things now, That bear a weighty and a serious brow, Sad, high,
and working, full of state and woe,"

must be my theme. In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of
things works sadly; and I know not what such an association as yours intends, nor what you ask of
those whom you invite to address you, unless it be to lead you from the surface-glamour of existence,
and for an hour at least to make you heedless to the buzzing and jigging and vibration of small
interests and excitements that form the tissue of our ordinary consciousness. Without further
explanation or apology, then, I ask you to join me in turning an attention, commonly too unwilling, to
the profounder bass-note of life. Let us search the lonely depths for an hour together, and see what
answers in the last folds and recesses of things our question may find.
According to most contemporary philosophers who write about well‐​being,
virtue is not a constitutive part of well‐​being: it is possible to have well‐​being
without virtue. Now I would agree with this if being virtuous meant being a
goody‐​two‐​shoes who constantly sacrifices her own interests for the sake of
other people, or who thinks that no one should be happy till everyone is happy.
But this is not my conception of virtue. I would also agree that virtue would
not be a constitutive part of well‐​being if well‐​being were simply a matter of
satisfying our desires or being successful in our goals. For desires and goals
can be vicious. So how we define virtue and well‐​being makes a big difference
to how we conceive of their relationship. This doesn’t mean that we can define
them any‐​old‐​how in order to reach the conclusion we want: our philosophical
concepts have to capture the coherent conceptual core of everyday ways of
thinking and speaking about virtue and well‐​being. But more on this in a
moment.
Some philosophers concede that if you find that being virtuous is
necessary for your happiness and sense of worth, then it is necessary for
your well‐​being. But if you find that it isn’t necessary for your happiness
and sense of worth, then you can have well‐​being without virtue. There
are significant exceptions to this trend, especially among scholars of
ancient philosophy, such as Julia Annas, Martha Nussbaum, and Daniel
C. Russell, but it is the trend. Of course, most philosophers who deny that
well‐​being requires objective values don’t deny that morality is objective.
Wayne Sumner, who jumpstarted the contemporary philosophical interest
in well‐​being, and Daniel Haybron, who jumpstarted the contemporary
philosophical interest in happiness, both fall into this category.
You may be wondering about the difference between happiness and well‐​being. Some people use
the two terms interchangeably, but I follow most contemporary philosophers in distinguishing
between happiness as a psychological concept and well‐​being as a normative one. Happiness in
ordinary parlance has many different meanings: pleasure, passing feelings of joy or delight,
contentment, and so on. What I mean by happiness is a long‐​term sense of fulfillment, a deep,
ongoing sense of satisfaction with one’s life, with little pain, sorrow, or regret. Well ‐​being requires
more than happiness. As many philosophers understand it, well‐​being is the highest prudential
(personal) good, the best kind of life for an individual. This last bit is important: the life must be
good for the individual living it, and a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of it being good for
him is that he think and feel that it is good for him. Borrowing from Aristotle, I explicate the idea
of the highest prudential good (HPG) in terms of the most complete life for the individual as a
human being, a life that lacks no fundamental important good. I think this is the right way to
conceive of well‐​being as an ideal, because when we think about our HPG, we think in terms of the
best life for ourselves, not a so‐​so life, much less a life that’s barely worth living. I argue that this
ideal of well‐​being is quite widespread, even if most people don’t articulate it explicitly. Also
widespread is the view that this ideal can be realized only in a life that is both happy and
objectively worthwhile.