The Good Life

"I recently used The Good Life for my course Philosophy Through Film. I was pleasantly surprised by the development of the students' excitement for and interest in the assigned readings. Throughout the semester the students commented on the helpfulness of the editor's introductions for each reading, and they became increasingly interested in philosophy. The book was a huge success!"
     —Megan Altman, Florida Gulf Coast University

SKU
17453g

Edited, with Introduction, by Charles Guignon

1999 - 325 pp.

Grouped product items
Format ISBN Price Qty
Cloth 978-0-87220-439-3
$40.00
Paper 978-0-87220-438-6
$20.00
Instructor Examination (Review) Copy 978-0-87220-438-6
$3.00

Organized around themes such as harmony with one’s self and with the world, right relation to God, the use of reason, self-exploration, and living in a disordered world, the selections in this anthology explore traditional philosophical thought from Plato to de Beauvoir on the topic of human flourishing.


Reviews:

"I recently used The Good Life for my course Philosophy Through Film. I was pleasantly surprised by the development of the students' excitement for and interest in the assigned readings. Throughout the semester the students commented on the helpfulness of the editor's introductions for each reading, and they became increasingly interested in philosophy. The book was a huge success!"
     —Megan Altman, Florida Gulf Coast University

 
  ". . . a marvelously wide-ranging selection of philosophers’ attempts to define the good life. . . . Making selections for a modest-sized volume on such an issue is a daunting task, requiring negotiating the Scylla of breadth but superficiality and the Charybdis of detail but narrowness. On this score one has to say Guignon has done just about as well as can be done. . . . The editor’s introductions to each selection are quite helpful and accurate. . . . [An] excellent anthology that undergraduate philosophy teachers will no doubt find extremely useful in the classroom.”
     —Whitley R. P. Kaufman, Philosophy in Review

 

About the Author:

Charles Guignon is Professor of Philosophy, University of South Florida.



Table of Contents:

Introduction.

Classical Sources: The Ideal of Harmony
1. Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
2. Plato, The Republic
3. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
4. Lucretius, On the Order of Things
5. Epictetus, The Handbook

Religious Ways of Life
6. Siddhattha Gotama Buddha, "The Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness"
7. Augustine, Confessions
8. Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian”
9. Dostoevsky, “The Russian Monk” from The Brothers Karamazov
10. William James, "The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness," from The Varieties of
Religious Experience

The Use of Reason
11. René Descartes, The Passions of the Soul
12. Baruch Spinoza, The Ethics
13. Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

Self-Exploration
14. Michel de Montaigne, "Of Experience" from the Essays
15. Blaise Pascal, Pensees
16. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile
17. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

Self-Realization
18. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
19. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
20. Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

Social Involvement
21. Marx, "Alienated Labor," from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
22. W. E. B. DuBois, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings, “ from The Souls of Black Folk:
Essays and Sketches
23. Martin Buber, “The Way of Man, According to the Teachings of Hasidism,” from
Hasidism and Modern Man
24. Alasdair MacIntyre, "The Virtues, the Unity of Life and the Concept of a Tradition,”
from After Virtue
25. Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education

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