Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

about our experiences. Thirdly, the company of others. He seemed to think it was especially bad to have to eat alone.

A similar, perhaps related, idea to the good life is the ‘common good’, again derived from Aristotle. He saw us as social and political creatures, who could only find happiness through good community. The idea was carried forward, especially by Thomas Aquinas.

Life, for each of us, is a plan not just to achieve happiness and security, but also a way of becoming the person we would like to be. This is very much a separate quest — a path to deeper joy — the search for the true meaning of ‘the good life’.

Could we aim at the good life without actually trying to be good? Could we aim at it without being a good and virtuous person? The good life suggests not — it suggests that it is more that just a superficially happy, enjoyable life. Instead, it is the result of aiming at virtue. So the progression here (and adding to what was said in the previous section) is — beauty, leading to truthfulness, equality and fairness, leading to equity, leading to justice and other values, leading to private ethics and public morals, then the good life.

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This section on beauty can usefully be concluded by quoting from Plato and seeing the depth of meaning that beauty had for the ancients: ‘…when he looks at beauty in the only way beauty can be seen — only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of

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