The Good Life is the Virtuous Life
Ryan Bender
What is the Good Life? I believe there is only one correct answer to this question. The Good Life is understanding one’s purpose in life and striving at all times to attain virtue through goodness, beauty, and truth. The way we live inevitably reflects what we believe is important in life; whether it be money, power, respect, freedom, or anything else, we find these things to be good in themselves and worth making an effort to acquire. It is thus clear that we make value judgments in things to determine what we will strive for based on their inherent goodness. But who is to determine what is the best thing, what is the most worth our time to seek, or what it is that will make us the happiest? A brief look through history shows us that neither money, nor power, nor respect, nor freedom have been the solution to living a truly good life. There always seems to be something more, something missing, and we are not quite sure what it is or how to attain it. Saint Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “because you have made us and drawn us to yourself… our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.” I believe that the Good Life is this search for fulfillment, not only in mundane, everyday affairs, but ultimately in the quest for eternal salvation.
There are several pieces of evidence that I am going to work through to expand upon and support the above claims. First, I assert that if one does not believe in God, or at least the possibility of a being as such, there is no hope in the search for the Good Life. To live a truly good life it is necessary to have the proper view of it, therefore if one does not believe in the ultimate Good or the means through which we are partakers in His eternity through the immortal soul, what good is in a search destined to yield naught but dissatisfaction, disappointment, and discontent? In his Moral Absolutes, contemporary philosopher John Finnis writes, “The basic human goods, taken with factual possibilities, delimit the range of intelligent action; anything one does which does not somehow instantiate one of those goods is pointless.” I strongly believe that we must first recognize at least the possibility of goods as such, and the possibility of the existence of God and the immortal soul before attempting to seek the Good Life.
Second, now that we recognize the possibility of a higher good, I will discuss why it is important to seek the Good Life correctly. I have said that the Good Life is seeking to act virtuously; I repeat this statement. This is, however, easier said than done. After all, why should we even want to try to do this? Is virtue worth the effort required to attain it? I claim that the answer is a resounding yes for two reasons. The founding fathers of America stated in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” I believe that the pursuit of true happiness is equivalent to the pursuit of virtue, since it is through virtue that we find happiness. Thus, if these truths are self-evident, it is most fitting that we should all seek to live in accordance with them. Additionally, Aristotle said in his Nicomachean Ethics, “For no function of man has so much permanence as virtuous activities (these are thought to be more durable even than knowledge of the sciences), and of those themselves the most valuable are more durable because those who are happy spend their life most readily and most continuously in these.” Virtue, therefore, is indeed worth the difficulties it presents in our lives when we strive for it. To act virtuously is not only a Christian attitude, but it is also conducive to a happy life. Thus, in the search for the Good Life it is essential to simultaneously search for the virtuous life. Temperance, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Faith, Hope, Charity — all of these are necessary traits becoming of a person striving for the Good Life. It is through these virtues that we find true happiness.
Third, I assert that the Good Life is attainable. Now that we have covered why it is important to seek the Good Life correctly, we can move onto how we may do so. While we may be inclined to think it too difficult a task to achieve a virtuous life, many of history’s greatest minds have thought otherwise. For example, Josef Pieper wrote in his work Leisure: the Basis of Culture, “Just as in the realm of the Good, the greatest virtue is without difficulty, so in knowing, the highest form would be the lightening-like insight, true contemplation, which comes to one like a gift; it is effortless and not burdensome.” Therefore, we should be able to strive for virtue without it being burdensome, but rather a pleasure in itself because it is good and right. Additionally, when we seek for what is good, true, and beautiful in the virtues we are acting in accord with natural law. Thomas Aquinas put it in his Treatise on Law, “because laws are laid down to direct human actions, law makes human beings good as much as their actions conduce to virtue.” When we act in accord with natural law as a reflection of the divine law put down by God, we are acting virtuously, and it will become not only less and less difficult, but at the same time more and more beneficial to our living of the Good Life.
Now it is time to discuss a few examples of how the Good Life has been lived by others and strived for in my own life. The first person that comes to my mind when I think of someone who truly lived the Good Life is Jesus Christ. He made of Himself an example to all people for how we should live our lives, and how we can be happy. He said, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven.” Jesus tells us that if we have the virtue of faith, we should seek our reward in eternal life rather than merely on this earth. Additionally, Saint Augustine searched long for the Good Life, and it was not until he found the importance of God and his immortal soul that he discovered it. Augustine is a perfect example of someone who sought after the vain pleasures of this world, but finding nought but emptiness and regret he was eventually drawn inevitably towards what is actually good, true, and beautiful: the virtues, which lead to eternal salvation.
In my own life, I have experienced a proportional relationship between my personal fulfillment and happiness, and my interior spiritual life. For example, when I began attending the Catholic Traditional Latin Mass when I was 18, I noticed an increase in the intensity of my search for the Good Life. This fact ties back into my first and second points of this essay. The search for the Good Life will produce a result proportional to what we give to it; thus if we only dedicate a small amount of our time and thought to finding it, the Good Life may be very hard to find; whereas if we commit ourselves to finding what is true, good, and beautiful in life, and seek what is virtuous we will be rewarded with a truly good life.
In conclusion, I believe the Good Life hinges upon the desire to be virtuous, and the longing for true happiness through virtue. Furthermore, I believe the Good Life is the best way to live, and thus worth striving for. If we are on the road to the Good Life, searching for the truth in all things, we can be confident that we will not only be happy as a result, but we will also be doing what is right and proper as human beings. I believe everyone should commit themselves to the search for the Good Life. If we do not strive for the most important things in life, what then are we striving for?
"O gentlemen, the time of life is short!
To spend that shortness basely were too long,
If life did ride upon a dial's point,
Still ending at the arrival of an hour."
- William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Act 5, Scene 2
Works Cited
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, digireads.com Publishing, 2016.
Aquinas, Thomas, Treatise on Law, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., Indianapolis, IN, 2000.
Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 2012.
Pieper, Josef, Leisure: the Basis of Culture, Saint Augustine’s Press, South Bend, IN, 1998.
Finnis, John, Moral Absolutes Tradition, Revision, and Truth, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C. 1991.
Declaration of Independence, transcript from www.ourdocuments.gov, 2018.
The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Edition, Saint Benedict Press, Charlotte, North Carolina 2009.