What is a good life?
The question has been asked for thousands of years, and there is no shortage of answers. However, in the cultural milieu of ancient Athens more than two thousand years ago, two philosophers approached this question in two very different ways.
One of them said a good life is a life that feels good. The other said the good life is a good life, whether it feels that way or not.
In the last few decades, with advances in science, we started searching for the answer in the human body—in the blood, the aging brain, and a person’s lifespan.
It turns out your body has a strong opinion about which of these two lives you should be leading.
The Proclivity to Pleasure
Around 300 B.C., the philosopher Epicurus set out to define what makes a good life.
He started with a simple observation. He would watch newborn creatures—whom he called “uncorrupted beings,” move instinctively toward what feels good and away from what hurts.
Epicurean ethics, therefore, holds that nature gives every living thing the same innate instruction: seek pleasure and avoid pain.
In modern parlance, we sometimes consider pleasure a guilt, but for Epicurus, pleasure was, as he wrote, “ … the beginning and the end of the blessed life.”
He did not view pleasure (hēdonē) as indulgences such as feasts, wine, or night parties. The highest form of pleasure, he said, is no sensation at all. It is the state you are in when nothing hurts your body, and nothing grates on your mind—the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.
This state of peace, according to Epicurus, is not achieved by adding more, but rather by needing less. He instructed his students to sort their desires into three baskets:
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Natural and necessary, such as food, shelter, and safety
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Natural but not necessary, such as fine, luxurious food
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Empty of fame, power, and endless wealth. Epicurus said that an empty basket has no limit; it cannot be filled, and if pursued, it will leave you restless for life.
Thus, he offered a hedonistic approach: The good life is grounded in simple pleasures.
That is the first answer to what a good life is.
Antithesis of Pleasure
Greek philosopher and polymath Aristotle believed that all humans ultimately pursue happiness.
Let’s walk through a little thought experiment. If someone asks, “What do you want?” you may say money. Then, they follow up with, “What do you want money for?” You say to buy a plane ticket. They then ask, “Why?”
Your answers: To travel. To visit your favorite vacation spot. To have fun and take in the views. “Why would you want to do all that?” they ask.
In the end, the answer is always: to be happy.
We want money for what it buys and health for what it allows us to do.
But happiness, according to Aristotle, is not a means to an end—it is the end—the final and self-sufficient end.
Aristotle further laid out where this ultimate form of happiness comes from.
He asked, could happiness come from pleasure, honor, or wealth? Sensory pleasure cannot be the highest source of happiness, he said, because a life spent chasing pleasure is a life fit for grazing cattle—because you will always be pursuing a shifting target, happiness can never be obtained.
The problem with honor is that it rests on other people’s opinions, and opinions can change overnight. There are billions of people in the world who would hold you to different standards of honor.
Wealth comes and goes; it is unpredictable—and most importantly, it is a means to an end. Remember? What do you want the money for? True happiness has to be something we wish for its own sake.
Aristotle found that he had to take a step back and ask a deeper question: What is a human being for?
His idea was that, to live a good life, a person must fulfill their purpose well—just as a knife is good when it cuts well, since cutting is its purpose, and a flute player is good when they play skillfully.
What is the one thing that human beings do that nothing else can?
It cannot be just being alive, because plants are also just living. It cannot be perception and movement, because animals have that too.
So what is the one thing that sets humans apart? It is the mind.
The power to reason, to choose, to act on purpose—meaning, doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time.
Our power to reason, to choose, to act on purpose—this rational capacity of the soul—is what makes us human. Aristotle called this form of happiness eudaimonia, or the ultimate aim of life.
Eudaimonia is doing things in line with virtue, he said. In Greek, virtue includes morals such as courage, honesty, generosity, justice, and self-control. Virtues must be actively practiced—not merely preached or aspired to.
He concluded that ultimate happiness comes through exercising the virtues.
The key point is that virtue is a habit you build through action. It is not something you are born with, nor is it a mood you happen to be in. “We become just by doing just acts, and brave by doing brave acts,” Aristotle wrote.
Humans are social beings. A good life happens among others, not alone, Aristotle said. So nearly all virtues are tied to how we treat other people.
Pleasure still has a place in Aristotle’s picture of the good life. He just moves it to a different seat. The person of good character comes to enjoy doing the right thing, so pleasure follows virtue around like a shadow. It is the reward for a life well lived, not the aim of it.
This leads to the second answer to what a good life is: Happiness is not about feeling good, but about being good, and letting the good feelings arise as a result of virtuous living.
Both answers offer insight into how we define a good life. Now, let’s move from philosophy to contemporary science, which answers the question from yet another, equally intriguing, angle.
Looking Inside the Cell
In 2013, researchers analyzed blood samples from people who leaned toward either type of happiness —hedonic or eudaimonic—and examined which genes were more expressed in their immune cells.
People whose happiness came mostly from hedonic pleasure showed more activity in genes that drive inflammation and that are linked to heart disease, cancer, and aging. People whose happiness came from meaning showed the opposite; their immune cells showed less activity in genes that increase inflammation and more activity in genes involved in antiviral defense.
However, later studies have not consistently supported that a hedonic, pleasure-centered approach to life is bad for our health. Also, Epicurean pleasure refers primarily to moderation and a calm mind, rather than a hedonic experience.
Pleasure in moderation is not poison and can be a path to a good life. But pleasure through meaning appears to do something that pleasure, on its own, does not.
Your Reason for Living
A life filled with purpose lowers inflammation, and its effects show up, most dramatically, in the brain.
Researchers measured people’s sense of purpose with simple statements, such as “I have a sense of direction in my life,” or “I have things I look forward to.” Your purpose could be simply having reasons to get up tomorrow, or a grand calling.
One research team in Chicago followed more than 900 older adults for up to seven years to examine whether a sense of purpose predicted later Alzheimer’s disease. People with the strongest sense of purpose in life were about two and a half times more likely to stay free of the disease than the people with the weakest sense of purpose.
A similar pattern appears in research on longevity and cardiovascular health.
One of the most striking findings comes from the Japanese concept of Ikigai, meaning “a reason to live,” which closely resembles Aristotle’s view of a life with purpose.
Researchers asked more than 43,000 Japanese adults a simple question: “Do you have ikigai in your life?”
Seven years later, People who said no to ikigai were about 50 percent more likely to die in those seven years.
Virtuous Intention Matters
To truly benefit from a life of purpose, it needs to be driven by the right intention. Researchers followed older adults who volunteered and asked them why they did so. Some said they volunteered to help other people. Others were honest that they did it mostly for themselves, to feel better, to meet people, or just to get out of the house.
Four years later, the ones who volunteered to help others were less likely to have died. The ones who did it mainly for themselves got no health benefit at all.
The benefit did not come from the activity. It came from the intention behind it. Purpose helps you most when it points outward, at something beyond yourself—exactly what Aristotle said.
Virtues, the things that make a life good, are almost all about how you show up for other people. When you do good honestly, for its own sake, the good finds its way back to you. If you do it as a way to help yourself, the effect fades.
Standing between the two Greek philosophers, where does all of this leave you?
Perhaps a balanced answer is: Enjoy the real pleasures of life, as Epicurus taught, and pursue a life of purpose and virtue, as Aristotle advised.