Six Myths About the Good Life: Thinking About What Has Value

170 Pages·2006·0.74 MB·English

by  Joel J. Kupperman

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S M
IX YTHS
ABOUT THE
G L
OOD IFE
Thinking about What Has Value
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Joel J. Kupperman
S M
IX YTHS
ABOUT THE
G L
OOD IFE
Thinking about What Has Value
Hackett Publishing Company,Inc.
Indianapolis/Cambridge
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Copyright © 2006 by Hackett Publishing Company,Inc.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
10 09 08 07 2 3 4 5 6 7
For further information,please address
Hackett Publishing Company,Inc.
P.O.Box 44937
Indianapolis,IN 46244-0937
www.hackettpublishing.com
Cover design by Abigail Coyle
Text design by Elizabeth Wilson
Composition by Brighid Willson
Printed at Edwards Brothers,Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kupperman,Joel.
Six myths about the good life:thinking about what has value / Joel J.Kupperman.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-87220-783-8 (cloth :alk.paper) — ISBN 0-87220-782-X (pbk.:alk.paper)
1. Happiness.2. Success.3. Quality of life.4. Conduct of life. I.Title.
BJ1481.K87 2006
17—dc22
2005020868
ISBN-13:978-0-87220-783-7 (cloth)
ISBN-13:978-0-87220-782-0 (pbk.)

Adobe PDF ebook ISBN: 978-1-60384-060-6
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Contents
Preface vii
Introduction ix
1. Myth One—Pursuing Comfort and Pleasure Will
Lead to the Best Possible Life 1
2. Myth Two—The Desirable Life Equals the One
That Is Most Happy 22
3. Myth Three—The Good Life Requires Reaching
a Good Equilibrium,a Point at Which the
Important Difficulties Are Resolved 45
4. Myth Four—Reason Rather Than Emotions
Would Be the Best Indicator of What Would
Be a Good Life 64
5. Myth Five—There Is No Real Connection,
At Least in This Life,Between True Virtue
and a Desirable Kind of Life 82
6. Myth Six—True Virtue Is Impeccable 110
7. How Can We Know What Has Value? 128
Bibliography 145
Appendix 149
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Preface
T
his book represents an attempt to write good philosophy for a
readership that would consist largely of intelligent nonspecialists,
including people with very little prior knowledge of philosophy.
It seemed to me that it could be done:John Perry,Peter Singer,and (clos-
er to the territory of this book) John Kekes provided some successful
recent models.But clearly it was not going to be easy.
Writing style was always a concern;I was helped by a copyeditor friend,
Julie Tamarkin,whose first-stage copyediting undoubtedly made the man-
uscript more tolerable to its first readers.There are a number of people to
whom I am grateful for helpful suggestions or pointers or timely encour-
agement, or some combination of these.Let me express thanks to Pam
Benson, Norman Fiering, John Kekes, Donald Kelley, Karen Ordahl
Kupperman,Peter Ohlin,Bonnie Smith,David Wong,and especially my
editor at Hackett,Deborah Wilkes.Three anonymous readers for Hackett
made unusually helpful suggestions.
Let me express gratitude to the Positive Psychology Network,led by
Martin Seligman,for inviting me to their conferences at Akumal in 2001.
This led to a discussion group in New York that included at various times
Paul Rozin,Claude Fischler,Daniel Kahneman,and Alan Page Fiske.I am
especially grateful to Paul Rozin and Alan Fiske for their comments on a
paper, “Comfort,Hedonic Treadmills,and Public Policy,”which was the
precursor of the first chapter of this book.
Thanks also to the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute,
directed by Richard D.Brown with Francoise Dussart,for a fellowship in
2003–4 that propelled this book (and a simultaneous project,Ethics and
Qualities of Life) forward, and to the National Endowment for
the Humanities for a fellowship in 2004–5 that allowed me to finish both
books in a timely manner.In the final two weeks of the revision process,
I benefited from the hospitality of the National Humanities Center.
Chapter 1 of this book has some overlap with “Comfort, Hedonic
Treadmills,and Public Policy,”Public Affairs Quarterly 17 (2003);the final
chapter has some overlap with “The Epistemology of Noninstrumental
Value,”Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2005).I am grateful
to both journals for permission to include this overlapping material.
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Introduction
T
his book is about good lives—lives that are both desirable and
enviable—and about what is important to them.There is a prob-
lem of method,though.The topic of good lives is to a large extent
resistant to generalizations.What is important and wonderful in one good
life may be deleterious in another.Imagine a book about “Great Paintings”
or “Great Poems.”What kinds of general truths could it legitimately
convey?
There are important truths,though,that deny easy and attractive gen-
eralizations.These generalizations come as thoughts about good lives,in
many cases ideas that were handed down to us.Often they have a nugget
of truth,which is then exaggerated or oversimplified.They may fit one
kind of good life better than other kinds. Often they simply represent
what we would like to believe.
One assumption underlying this book is that everyone could benefit
from thinking further, and in less simplistic ways, about good lives.
Another is that a useful first step is to summon up obvious and appealing
generalizations and to see what is faulty about them.Prominent in the
work of some philosophers (in the twentieth century notably Ludwig
Wittgenstein) is the idea that thinking effectively about life requires
philosophical therapy, loosening the hold of attractive and simple ideas
that get in the way of our intelligence.
“Philosophical therapy” can be appreciated in relation to a central
characteristic of philosophy,at least in the West since the time of Socrates
and Plato.This lies in the importance of argument,of being able to argue
for one’s conclusions.In much philosophical writing,the relation of argu-
ment to conclusions is clearly marked;often the conclusion then is pre-
sented with an air of “Here is the truth;all inquiry into these topics now
may cease.”There is something faintly comical in this,especially because
inquiry into the topics usually does not cease.
An idea that underlies much of Wittgenstein’s therapy suggests that
most of us gravitate to generalizations which cover a range of cases,some
of which are significantly different from others.The generalizations are
appealing because most of us would like not to think too much,or to pay
close attention to the variations among particular cases.Wittgenstein’s
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