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The Good Life as a Meaningful Life

In: Philosophy and Psychology

Submitted By blaine
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The Good Life as a Meaningful Life

Life… An everyday task in which each and every human being participates. We interact, procreate, strive to better our standards of living and look for the answers to questions, which in our society, have not yet been answered. This task which demands our outmost attention and participation is a task in which everyone takes part. Yet we do not know much about it. We do not know the aim of life, how it should be lived, we do not even have a clear definition for the phenomena in which we all participate. There are many attempts to give a definition to life and explain what a good or meaningful life is or should be. Each one of these outlooks which can be described as theories have their own pros and cons. If all the pros of the theories are chained together, will that give the ultimate meaning to life? Are broad theories like that of Aristotle pointing in the direction of the good or meaningful life? Or is life and the meaning there of just as broad or narrow as an individual chooses to make it for himself?

One of the popular approaches to the meaning of life is the teleological approach. This approach suggests that life is a process in which you are working towards an ultimate goal. The theory does not state that the final end is a point at which you can stop trying, but rather that you are continually adding to the meaningfulness of your life by participating in the process of reaching your goal from one situation to the next. This theory however could leave a person always grasping towards the future, living a planned out life to reach his ultimate goal and attain that “perfect” state and they end up forgetting about the present. This leads to the success story. In this theory the end is self chosen and viewed as something that must be attained. Reaching this goal will act as a reward for what you have sacrificed to reach your

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