A Good Life - a consideration of purpose and ethics

A discussion of a good life should not be limited to a human centric perspective. It is not a question that should be asked of individual humans within human society but instead as a question to be asked in relation to our place in the natural world- relational to a planetary ecosystem. In rejecting speciesism, the question," What is a good life?" can be rephrased as, "What is a flourishing human being?" and therefore becomes one of many equivalent questions, for example: "What is a flourishing river?", "What is a flourishing tree?" A list may be drawn for each living species.

For humans, in addition to our basic behaviours of eating, drinking, reproducing, moving, breathing etc, our species has the ability to make choices, to be creative, to form relationships and society, to explore mechanics and pursue scientific discovery and to express wonder. To fulfil this criteria is living a good life or flourishing.

In contrast, the question of an 'ethical' life is a purely human concern as it involves our species' unique ability to rationalise and make decisions in relation to one another and the world. We can ask whether a tree is flourishing but not whether it is behaving ethically.

The multiple practical ways in which humans may achieve the goal of flourishing includes their ability to choose and arbitrarily decide virtues (courage, modesty, generosity, volume of voice, self aggrandisement, stoicism etc) which become the ethics we adopt. A danger comes if we conflate purpose and ethics and think we can discover ethics as objective. Unlike the 'traits' of humankind (by which we judge our 'flourishing') these ethics, although agreed, accountable guiding principles for our families, communities and nation states, are debatable- subjective and inconsistent across ages, geographies and societies.

The important association between the two, a 'good' life and an 'ethical' life, is that we are the only species capable of deliberately damaging others ostensibly to further our own flourishing. Furthermore, as a species, we are capable of deliberately upsetting the natural balance of nature on a planetary scale to the same end.

However it is erroneous to believe that it logically follows from the fact we have this ability, to conclude that we are superior to other parts of nature and we are justified in using Nature as a resource to further our species’ flourishing. In fact the that our flourishing may result from the use of all nature as a resource is in itself a misconception. Eventually the exploitation of the planet and consequent destruction we wreak in the name of our 'flourishing' has the opposite outcome.

A guiding maxim could be that we shouldn't negatively impact the flourishing of others (human or nonhuman) as whatever we do must lie within a position of positive or neutral impact on our planet as a harmonious whole purely as an matter of objective fact- to do so allows us to survive and flourish either because on a human centric level, organised, harmonious human community is beneficial to the individual as well as society or on the largest scale, because the intricacies and delicately balanced interrelations between the planet’s many ecosystems means living within the harmonious community of the whole Earth provides the best environment in which we may flourish.

A view that we must operate to promote the flourishing of others, allows us to hold a moral position on murder, slavery and animal welfare. Simultaneously it rejects many religions- for involving a welfare hierarchy of Earth's inhabitants’. It also rejects Utilitarianism- as an end that promotes any misery or suffering fails to protect the right of all to flourish.

What it doesn’t reject is the golden rule of compassion, ‘Do not to others what you would not have done to you.’ In fact it extends this to encompass all of Nature. I do not mean to say that we should anthropomorphise the natural world by treating them like our human counterparts but that we should extend the respect and reverence they deserve allowing and encouraging their characteristic, species specific flourishing.

Holding that there is a moral responsibility toward the harmony of the planet and upholding the golden rule of compassion stops us sliding into existential nihilism. Ethics in terms of responsibility and relationship are worth debating.