Larry Jackson - The Good Life

2014 FALL HONORS LECTURE

PURSUITS OF HAPPINESS: FROM ARISTOTLE TO AMERICA

Presentation by Dr. Larry Jackson October 16, 2014

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WELCOME BY DR. GLENN NEFF

Assistant Professor of English, Mount Aloysius College Welcome to the Mount Aloysius College Honors Program. I want to welcome you all to the 2014 Fall Honors Lecture. The Mount Aloysius College Honors Program is designed for students of all academic disciplines who enjoy critical thinking and problem solving within an environment of highly interactive learning. The goal of the Honors Program is to create a community of scholars designed to enhance each others’ understanding of the world.

the goals of the Honor Society in just a few sentences.

In our Senior Honors Seminar I’ve been having students sort of summarize their experience in the Honors Program, and I ask them in one succinct paragraph, to summarize it. And I think one of our students, John Moist, did more than that. He summarized his experience, but he also summarized

I believe it was Aristotle who said that philosophy begins in wonder.

And if I’m wrong, we have the perfect man to correct me later today. But it’s this sense of wonder that is a key objective of the Mount Aloysius Honors Program—to have students foster a certain quality of mind in which the mind never ceases

And to quote John—“The Honors Program has given me opportunities that I couldn’t have dreamed of, from trips across states to mind-opening discussions. The Honors Program has succeeded in challenging me and pushing me far beyond any expectations I had. My horizons have been greatly broadened through my participation in the Honors Program.”

to wonder about our world and about the people who inhabit this world.

Henry David Thoreau in his writings, often lamented the idea that people never move beyond an elementary level in reading and thinking. “You know,” he said, “we’re lucky to find one in a thousand—no, one in a hundred thousand, who will push themselves to a deeper level.”

And I think with this in mind, the Fall Honors Lecture is designed to move us all to a little deeper level of thinking. And I think we’ve really done a good job with our speaker this fall in particular. So I welcome President Tom Foley who will now formally introduce our speaker for this afternoon.

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REMARKS OF THOMAS P. FOLEY, JD

President, Mount Aloysius College Thank you, Glenn. Mount Aloysius is fairly unique in the ranks of higher education institutions in that we choose a theme each year, and we try to build our Orientation, our Connections classes, our Speakers Series, and as many other events as we can, into exploring the ideas behind that theme. Our theme this year, of course, is The Good Life, and this lecture is our fifth cut at that theme.

Let me just review quickly the first four cuts.

At Convocation, Father Byron told us in no uncertain terms that The Good Life for him was a life lived generously in the service of others, and he cited nine principles from the letter of Paul in the gospel; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and selfcontrol.

At Orientation and in your Connections classes some of you have wrestled with all manner of lists related to The Good Life, top ten lists of secrets to The Good Life compiled by everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Pope Francis, from the Wall Street Journal to Mahatma Gandhi.

In her Mercy Week lecture, Sheila Carney used poetry and prose to describe two lives well-lived. In Ireland, Catherine McAuley and in America, Frances Warde—two women who were prime examples of how to lead The Good Life.

In his All College Liturgy remarks Father Mark told us what The Good Life isn’t when he reminded us that we did not choose as our theme The Easy Life or The Fun Life. There’s nothing wrong with both of those

things in moderation, but we chose The Good Life with all its inherent challenges.

And at this time in our approach to the theme, it may be far easier to identify those things that aren’t The Good Life. For example, in Gandhi’s Pathways to Peace, he cites what he calls seven social sins; wealth without work, pleasure without conscious, science without humanity, knowledge without character, politics without principle, commerce without morality, and worship without sacrifice.

But today is our fifth cut, our fifth chance at the reset button, as it were.

And today’s cut, our Fall Honors

Lecture, is aimed at a short course on the long history of intellectual and moral thought on the idea of “The Good Life, Pursuits of Happiness: From Aristotle to America,” by Dr. Larry Jackson.

Before I introduce Dr. Jackson, I want to say something about the idea of reset buttons as we all struggle to define and live The Good Life. A couple months ago I saw again a movie called Groundhog Day. How many in here have seen that movie?

Okay. That’s enough that I think you’ll understand what I’m about to say.

Bill Murray is in the lead role. It’s an entertaining morality play as Murray

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fumbles his way through a succession of do-overs during which he relives his Groundhog Day in our very own Punxsutawney, PA—over and over again. For those of you who haven’t seen it, he wakes up every morning and it’s the same day again, and he has to decide what to do with that.

In the course of re-orchestrating this day in his life, Murray evolves from an egocentric jerk into a much more complete human being who appreciates the goodness of others and yearns to replicate it in himself.

I’m not sure we will get many chances to replay anything in our lives until we get it perfect, like Murray did in the movie. But I do believe there’s a metaphor in there for all of us in this Mount Aloysius year of The Good Life. I think the real point is that when Murray got the chance to hit that reset button

over and over, he ultimately realized that his own path to The Good Life is through goodness in a moral sense, and not goods in a material way.

time and find our way, if not to true happiness, at least to our own version of a good life and a meaningful existence.

Our oldest son Tom says that the lesson of Bill Murray’s experience is the more you give, the more you get.

Part of The Good Life for each of us lies in our interactions with others and how much of our happiness we share. And maybe that’s the calculus of happiness, a rationale well-known to ancient philosophers, familiar to founding fathers, but sometimes distant to us as we speed so quickly into our own futures.

Today we get the chance to hit that reset button thanks to the genius and the talent of Dr. Larry Jackson. On paper, Larry’s a Ph.D. in Philosophy who serves as the Director for Global Academic Planning for one of the leading universities on the planet, NYU, led by its highly regarded President John Sexton, whose vision is matched only by the power of his will.

Well, we’re going to get to hit that reset button each time we schedule an event here that explores the idea of The Good Life. And it’s up to us to take that discussion one step further and plumb our own depths each

Larry is responsible for curriculum planning and development at NYU’s 11 global sites and two portal campuses. He’s also a frequent lecturer and presenter, has had his work published recently by the New School for Social Research, and by the collaborative American Forms of Poetry. He’s lectured on such diverse topics as “The Politics of Poetic Spaces and The Meaning of Frame: Politicizing Derrida’s Aesthetics.”

This lecture is our fifth event so far.

This is actually Larry’s fourth event today, and he only got here at 11:30 last night. At breakfast he managed to fit Descartes, Kant, Hobbes, Rousseau, Augustine, Plato, politics, Alex Rodriguez and the Brooklyn Dodgers into a fascinating conversation with Drs. Dragani and Rohlf and eight students.

At 10 o’clock, Dean Zukowski, Professors Garmen, Boyce and Kisel and about 40 of our nursing students participated in his Socratic lecture on tragic choices. Later with our College Technology Committee, in a conversation led by Senior Vice President Suzanne Campbell he shared his own insights on technology in the global classrooms, for which he is responsible, and he tells me he really picked the brains

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of our first-rate committee on the subject.

family to go to college, let alone achieve a Ph.D.

me when we tried to match wits with his very impressive boss.

So Larry has been very busy today, but that’s nothing new for him, because the most interesting thing about our Fall Honors lecturer for 2014 is that he’s very much like many of you. He’s a Pennsylvanian who’s hardworking to a fault. He’s interested and informed on a wide range of issues, philosophical or otherwise, and he’s the first in his

He’s also a risk taker. When I traveled to Abu Dhabi last year with Dr. Jackson, he was right next to me when we took spins on a 15-foothigh camel. And trust me, that’s a lot scarier than it looks. He was right next to me when we played with falcons, which people tell us are actually deadly, though they didn’t damage us. And he was right next to

Larry, we are delighted that you took the time and the risk of that treacherous drive last night from New York City to be here with us today. Let me invite you now to the podium to deliver the 2014 Mount Aloysius Fall Honors Lecture.

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FALL HONORS LECTURE BY DR. LARRY JACKSON Thank you so much. It is such a pleasure to be here.

I had the great pleasure of meeting President Foley nearly a year ago, I guess, and he spoke with so much enthusiasm about this community, about all of you students and faculty here, and I’m very pleased to see that everything he said about you is true. This is a wonderful community. It’s been very welcoming.

Everyone has been very kind. And I’ve been so impressed by the various insights that I’ve heard today and the wisdom that has really been shared with me. And I feel a little guilty because I feel like I’m learning a lot more than I’m teaching while I’m here.

I especially want to thank those faculty and students that I’ve had an opportunity to meet with today, students of theology with Dr. Rohlf and Dr. Dragani, students of nursing with Dean Zukowski, and of course, the IT Committee. It’s just been a wonderful experience and I’ve enjoyed those conversations immensely.

Now, I think that this series also really embodies the best of what a liberal arts education should be about, the idea that you take common themes, important issues, issues like how we ought to live, things like The Good Life, or in previous years, questions about citizenship and hospitality, which are two issues that go very closely together. These are issues that matter immensely. These are issues that are very important.

You might be thinking right now, come on, Jackson, there’s war in the Middle East, there’s disease in West Africa, what do you mean The Good Life is important? Well, all of those kinds of issues, which change from day-to-day, month-to-month, yearto-year, they all leap back to these same profound questions. How should we live? How should we be with one another? How should we regard one another?

And I think that this speaker series really allows you to see that we can have a variety of perspectives on these questions. And yet, that variety, that diversity of perspectives can only lead back to certain com-

monalities, certain things that we share in common as human beings.

And I think that that really embodies not only the best of an academic community like Mount Aloysius College or New York University, but it really also embodies the very best of the democratic society as well—a place where we can really celebrate a diversity of views and opinions and recognize a certain amount of, you might say, human solidarity.

That’s how Walt Whitman put it is his wonderful essay from—I think it was 1877—you can tell me— Democratic Vistas, where he talks about personality and solidarity, the diversity of our viewpoints and ideas and our commonality as people.

So, The Good Life. What is The Good Life?

Now, this is a very old question in the history of philosophy. Western philosophy as we know it, goes back to Ancient Athens about 2,500 years ago. We’ve all heard the names Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. Yes, it was Aristotle who said philosophy begins in wonder.

Socrates said it too, apparently.

And one of the oldest questions that these philosophers have been asking is the question of what The Good Life is. And so it’s an important issue for me as someone who reads a lot of philosophy and has a degree in philosophy. But every time I hear the phrase The Good Life, I think of this guy in the picture on the screen behind me. Now, that’s my dad, Art Jackson. And he’s retired now, but when he was 18 he went to Vietnam. He’s a decorated Vietnam veteran. He came back and he was a cop in Philly for nearly 20 years.

And when he left the police department he continued to work several jobs, sometimes more than one at the same time. Working double shift as a security guard, and he’d go to deliver bread at 4:00 in the morning. And he did all of this so that I could have food, I could have clothes, I could have shelter. And probably more important than all of those things in his eyes, so that I could have an education.

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And on the rare day off that he might have, I have an image of him, a picture of him sitting there, his feet up, probably a cold beverage in his hand, watching the Phillies. They might even be winning, which would be really a rare occasion. And he would turn to me in those moments and he would say, “Larry, this is The Good Life.” And what he meant by that was an experience of serenity or tranquility. All of his basic needs were being met. The mortgage check was paid. It was in the mail. We had food, we had shelter, we had clothes.

We had everything that we needed.

And as a result of that, he could really enjoy some leisure. Now, leisure is a very important thing. We all need to get some rest. But it’s especially sweet or it’s especially important when you live the kind of hard life that he was often living in those years, working as hard as he was.

There’s a view of the world that goes with this, I think, which is that the world can be a very difficult place as well. We have pushy bosses and

wrestling with bill collectors, a lot of stresses and worries that are out there in the world. And it can be very nice to retreat from the world and to enjoy the serenity of being in a private place where we don’t have to deal with all of those things. And as a result, we’re free of suffering, free of anxiety, free of worry, free of pain. So that’s the picture of The Good Life that I get from my father, that I associate with my childhood.

But of course, no sooner do I think of that when I think of this lady.

That’s my mom, Jackie Jackson. And yes, that really is her name. And I told her I was going to try to find an embarrassing picture to use, so that’s why her eyes are closed here.

And my mother, she’s still working.

She actually just announced her retirement, pending retirement, yesterday. But she still works fulltime. She always worked very hard.

And in addition to working full-time, she raised me, which I can assure you was no easy task.

And on top of that, when her father, my grandfather, had a debilitating stroke and he needed to be cared for, we took him in. And she took care of him for four years, the last four years of his life. He was completely paralyzed on one side of his body.

He needed a lot of care. And after he died and his sister got sick, we took her in and my mother took care of her for the last four years of her life.

And as if all of that weren’t enough, on Thursday night you’d find my mother at St. Phillip Neri, the local Catholic parish, running church bingo, and on Sundays you’d find her after mass running the church breakfast. And every summer she’d run the church carnival. She probably put in 20, 30, 40 hours a week just doing these volunteer activities.

And I asked her recently, I said, “Mom, why did you do that? That’s crazy, you could have been spending that time just enjoying yourself, kicking back, relaxing, or you could have been doing something that

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would have allowed you to make more money.” She said, “Larry, I was never so happy as in those moments when I was doing something that I thought was important, something that I thought was of value, where I was giving something of myself.”

And then she went on to tell me a story, that she actually had lied about her age when she was a teenager, not for the reasons that most teenagers lie about their age. She wasn’t trying to get into a movie or a bar or anything. She lied about her age so that she could volunteer at the local hospital, and she was too young to do it.

So the vision—or the picture of The Good Life that I have for my mother is a picture of service or devotion, and this is characterized by giving, a sense of selflessness. Nothing that goes along with this is about making money. It’s not about glory. It’s not about being popular. It’s about giving for the sake of giving, and yet at the same time it can be enjoyable. It’s a kind of joyful labor.

Anyone who knows me well can tell you that if I have to sweep a floor or cook something I’m miserable. You don’t want to be around me. I’m going to be really cranky. And yet I can see my mother and the others, usually women, that she volunteered with, and there was a great sense of joy in what they were doing. There was also a sense of humility. There was a sense of belonging to something bigger, of serving something greater than themselves.

And here, too, there is a view of the world. The world is good, but it’s a little imperfect. It requires some housekeeping. And the way you fix things, the way you improve things is by engaging locally with your community. You don’t go off to Washington and pass legislation. Do they pass legislation in Washington

anymore? I don’t know. But you don’t change the world all at once. You go out and you serve your neighbor one by one by one. It’s a local experience, almost an intimate experience, face to face.

But I have one final picture of The Good Life which comes from my youth. And it comes from this place.

This is the seal of my high school.

This is a sidewalk on our campus. I went to a small high school. I actually started there in the seventh grade. It was called Perkiomen School. About 200 students there. And it was a really special place. And we were expected to do well in our classes, of course, as students are at any school, but that was never enough.

In addition to doing well in our classes, we had to play sports, we had to be on the debate team, we had to do theatre, we had to do music, we

had to do art, and we were expected to do well in all of those areas. And so the picture of The Good Life that I saw in that very small community was one of a flourishing of excellence. It was the idea that the way to live well is to do well.

And according to this picture you distinguish yourself, but you always do so within the community. It’s only among your peers that you can really distinguish yourself, that you can really stand out. Be yourself. Be unique, but you need a community of people to support you. And so there was always the sense of both pride and belonging, of standing out, of being special in some way, and yet being part of this small, very special community.

According to this picture, all areas of life are important. There might be some that are more important

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than others. Our studies were, of course, the most important aspect.

But it was, as I said, not enough to be a bookworm. You also had to be a good athlete, you also had to be a musician. You at least had to try. You had to at least take the risk of doing those things. And finally, the view of the world here is that the world is a challenge to be faced, that with this flourishing of excellence you can go out into the world and you can do something really good.

So those are three pictures that I have of The Good Life; a picture of serenity or tranquility, a picture of service or devotion, and finally, a picture of flourishing of excellence. Now, it just so happens—and I swear to you this is just a coincidence—that those are basically the three major theories of The Good Life in the history of western philosophy going back 2,500 years. And so what I’d like to do now is to connect each of those pictures to each of these theories. I want to talk a little bit about what three different philosophers have said about The Good Life, just to give you an overall sketch of their thought.

After that, I’d like to offer five criteria for The Good Life. These are standards. These are basic standards that I think any theory of The Good Life has to meet. And we’re going to test each of these theories. We’re going to assess them and see if any of them is right or if any of them is wrong. And then finally, I want to say a little something about the relevance of all of this to us, to people who live in the United States in the 21st century. I want to talk a little bit about The Good Life in America.

So Part Two, Philosophers on the Good Life. So our first philosopher is a guy named Epicurus. Epicurus lived about 2,400 years ago. He lived about 400 years before Jesus, and he lived in an age which was known as

the Hellenistic Age. Now, this was right after the death of Alexander the Great. And after Alexander’s death, the great empire that he had built was divided in three.

And I think of it as being a time in history not unlike our own. If you’re as old as I am, you know that about 25 years ago the Soviet Union collapsed—an important and great moment in history. The world became, though, a little more chaotic.

It was no longer always clear who was in charge, who was running things.

And a lot of what we’re dealing with in the world today is a lot of the chaos that has come. It’s the fallout from not really having the same sort of structure of these two mighty superpowers running everything.

Well, that’s what the Hellenistic Age was like. Once the Greek empire was split into three, there was a sense that the world was much more chaotic.

And as a result of that, philosophers like Epicurus tended to retreat into private life, get away from the world.

The world is a messy, complex place.

That’s not where we want to be.

And so the vision of The Good Life that Epicurus has is known as ataraxia. There actually is an English word ataraxia, as well. And if you know anything about Ancient Greek, you know that the A at the beginning of a word means not or un. It’s the negation of something. So the word anarchy, for instance, means without rule or without a ruler. Well, this word is exactly the same. This one means without pain or without disturbance or without anxiety, and it’s usually translated just as tranquility or serenity.

Now, Epicurus actually wrote quite a bit in his day, but we don’t have many of those writings now. One of the writings that we have is known as the Letter to Menoeceus. And in this

letter Epicurus basically lays out his whole philosophy, and he says that pleasure is the most important thing that we can seek. Everything that we do in life is about pleasure. It is the alpha and the omega of a happy life.

Sometimes that gets translated as a blessed life as well.

But here’s the thing. Epicurus has a very strange definition of pleasure.

It’s not the definition that I would give of pleasure. His definition is the state wherein the body is free from pain and the mind is free from anxiety.

So pleasure is simply the absence of pain. It’s nothing more than that, according to Epicurus. That strikes me as a pretty weak definition of what pleasure is. So Epicurus goes on to say when we do not suffer pain, we no longer need pleasure. Pleasure is just the absence of pain.

Now, Epicurus says that happiness is being free from pain in the body and anxiety. So how do we do that? Well, there are different ways of achieving that state. So for the body, the way we became pain free is only to satisfy the most basic needs, the simplest of all needs, the most natural of all needs.

And that means that we should avoid any kind of complex pleasures or any pleasures that might eventually lead to pain. It’s important for Epicurus to be self-sufficient.

And if your pleasures are too complicated, if you like luxurious things, if you like really good, rich food, you might became too dependent on it.

You might start to need it. Epicurus says no, no, give up the rich food, give up the luxury, live simply, eat bread and water. That’s his definition of pleasure.

When it comes to the mind, the way we free ourselves from anxiety, according to Epicurus, is through study. I know not everybody in this room probably shares that view,

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that studying is the way to get rid of anxiety. It’s usually the cause of it; right? Through study and meditation two things will happen according to Epicurus. The first thing that will happen is you realize that pain isn’t such a bad thing. Pain should be avoided, but all pains are temporary, and no pain is so great that you can’t bear it. So that’s one way to get rid of anxiety. You stop being afraid of pain because you realize pain is no big deal.

The other benefit of study and meditation is that you stop fearing death and the gods. Now, if you’ve read your Greek mythology, you know that the gods in Greek mythology are constantly toying with humans. They play games with us. They’re not loving, they’re not benevolent, they’re not doing good things for us. Epicurus says all of that is simply wrong. Spend a little time thinking about the gods, meditating

about the gods and you realize that that is not the case. The gods aren’t toying with us.

He also says that there’s no reason to fear death. And this is probably Epicurus’ most famous line. It’s a clever line, though I think it’s dead wrong. Epicurus says, “Death is nothing to us; when we are, it is not; when it is, we are not.” So if you study and you meditate on that thought long enough, you won’t be afraid of death.

So that’s Epicurus’ philosophy. It’s the pursuit of pleasure, but pleasure is merely the absence of pain, and we do this by only satisfying the most basic pleasures, by avoiding complex pleasures, by avoiding pleasures that will lead to pain in the long run, and we do this by studying and meditating and coming to a state of clarity about death and the gods.

We’re going to have a very different view from St. Augustine. This is our second philosopher on The Good Life. Now, I’d like to roll up my sleeves because it feels a little more like we’re getting some work done here—getting our hands dirty with these philosophers.

So Augustine lived about 400 years after Jesus. Major important figure in the history of the Catholic church, and a major important figure also in the history of philosophy. Among his words you’ll find all sorts of theological writings. The early centuries of the Catholic church were really a time of argument, of a lot of different contesting ideas about God, about Jesus. And Augustine loved to get involved in these arguments, and a lot of his writings are about that.

But he also wrote two very important philosophical texts. The first is The Confessions, which I think is one of

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Christianity. He takes it from the Greeks and he applies it to Christian thought.

And the great chain of being is simply the idea that everything that exists, exists on this continuum. It’s a hierarchy, a continuum. At the top you have a highest being and at the bottom you have a lowest being, and everything has a place in between. So for Augustine, of course, the highest being is God. In the beginning there only was God and nothingness, and ex nihilo, out of nothingness, God is able to create all that there is. So God is the supreme being, the highest being.

And among the things that God created are the angels, who are lower than God. And then he created us, the humans. We’re lower than the angels. We have freedom, we have consciousness, we have motion, but we have our problems and mistakes and our flaws as well. the most beautiful and most sublime works of literature in the history of writing. And if you haven’t read it, I urge you to go out and please read it as quickly as you can. All right.

I take that back. Get into reading it as quickly as you can, but really take your time with it while you are reading it. His other major philosophical text is City of God Against the Pagans, which took him 13 years to write. It’s very thick, and it was him responding to the presence of evil in the world.

For Augustine, the vision of The Good Life is characterized by caritas.

Caritas is a Latin word. It’s the origin of our word charity. But it doesn’t simply mean writing out a check and pouring a bucket of ice water over your head. All of that’s very good, and I’m glad people were doing it, but that’s not the kind of charity that Augustine has in mind.

Caritas also means love. And again, not romantic love, not the love that you might have—that I have for coffee, for instance, but rather an unconditional, giving love. It’s selfless.

That’s caritas. And Augustine defines this love as doing good in accordance with God’s will. So the will is a very important part of all of this as well.

We have to turn our will towards God, and the will has always to be subsident, beneath God. Now, to really understand what this means, you have to know something about Augustine’s view of the universe. Augustine thought that the universe was a highly structured order. But unlike a scientist, Augustine thought that what gave the universe its structure and its order was love. Call this the “great chain of being.” The “great chain of being” is an old philosophical idea and actually predates Christianity. But Augustine, I think, was the first to apply it to

Beneath humans, you’ll find my cat Perry, your dog, rats on the New York City subway, various animals.

Animals can move around. They seem to respond to their environment. They have a little bit of intelligence, but not as much as humans.

Beneath the animals you’ll find the insects. You’ll find the cockroaches that exist in the kitchens of New York City. I’m really painting a bad picture of New York. Bees, spiders, all of those things are there. Again, they can move freely, but they don’t seem as smart as animals. Under insects, you’ll find plants. Plants are alive, but they really don’t do much. And under the plants, you’ll find rocks and grains of sand, all of that inanimate stuff.

And according to Augustine, God created all of it and God loves all of it, even the rats and the cockroaches. It’s all good. It might not be convenient

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for us when we see a cockroach in our kitchen. It might not be convenient for us when a rat runs in our way while we’re on the subway, but those are all evidence of God’s creation.

They’re all part of God’s creation so God has some purpose for them, or some plan. And as long as we can appreciate that, as long as we can see in everything that is evidence of God’s love and God’s plan, then we’re living in accordance with God’s will.

So here’s an example. You take gold.

You look at gold and you say gold is good. God created gold. Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it a wonderful example of the power and the benevolence of God? That’s fine. Then you look at gold and you say I want all the gold for myself. I want all the money.

I want all the power. I want this gold to be able to glorify myself and ratify my ego and rule over others. Then you’re sinning because then you’re being greedy. Augustine asks do you love the earth? Then you will be the earth, meaning you’ll be the corpse under the ground. But do you love God? Then you will be with God. Here’s a really beautiful quote from The Confessions. “I put my question to the earth.” Augustine is seeking God and he’s saying where is God? “I put my question to the earth, and it replied, I am not he, and to all things which stood around the portals of my flesh, I said, `tell me of my God. You are not he, but tell me something of him.’” Here’s the really important part. “Then they lifted up their mighty voices and cried, `he made us.’ My questioning was my attentive spirit, and their reply, their beauty.” So as long as you see things of the Earth and of the world in that way, as evidence of God’s power and love and creation, you are living in accordance with God’s will.

How else can you love God? I don’t think that that’s an easy question to

answer. For Augustine, it’s by loving your neighbor. Augustine goes so far as to say we actually cannot love God unless we love our neighbors. Our neighbors are those who are right there, all around us. They live in the same time as us, they live in the same world as us. And so it’s by loving them and serving them that we are best able to, in fact, love and serve God. Now, who is my neighbor?

Everyone. Everyone that you ever meet is your neighbor, according to Augustine.

And I hope you’re seeing that Augustine actually adds another axis to the great chain of being. The great chain of being runs from the top down to the bottom. And Augustine, when talking about our neighbors and how we love our neighbors, he adds this vertical axis. He turns it into a cross, that to love God, to look upwards, to turn upwards to God, you have to turn to your neighbor, you have to turn sideways. It’s only through loving and serving them that you’re able to love and serve God.

Now, according to this view the greatest possible sin is pride. It’s the refusal to serve God. It’s the refusal to serve your neighbor. And the greatest virtue then is humility and willingness to serve.

So that’s our second theory of The Good Life, which comes from Augustine. So we’ve got Epicurus with serenity or tranquility, the absence of pain, and we now have Augustine with love and charity and service and devotion to our neighbors. We’re going to have a very different theory of The Good Life now from Aristotle. Aristotle is kind of one of the big three of philosophers. About 2,500 years ago in ancient Greece, there was a very strange guy named Socrates who went around talking to people and asking them questions. And Socrates had a bunch of fans and they hung out and listened to everything Socrates had to say. Socrates never wrote anything himself, but among his most famous fans was Plato. Plato wrote all of these beautiful dialogues which are based on the conversations that Socrates

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was having, and Plato’s student was Aristotle.

Aristotle also was the teacher of Alexander the Great. And Aristotle wrote probably 200 books, maybe more than 200 books, on just about every subject under the sun. He wrote about oceans, he wrote about constitutions, he wrote about history, he wrote about literature, he wrote about the theater, he wrote about justice, he wrote about politics. Just about every subject that was known to the ancient Greeks in his time.

But my favorite work by Aristotle, and I think probably his most important, is a series of lectures that he gave in ancient Athens called The Nicomachean Ethics. Whoa, weird title. What does that mean, Nicomachean Ethics?

Nicomachus was the name of Aristotle’s father, and also of his son. And the theory is that the series of lectures that he gave in ancient Athens was actually dedicated to either his father or son, hence Nicomachean Ethics.

This word ethics comes from the Greek word ethika, which means character. So the ethics for Aristotle,

it’s not going to be a series of rules.

Aristotle is not going to say, here is what you must do, here is what you must never do. Aristotle is going to talk about different ways that we can develop our character as human beings. His word for The Good Life is eudaimonia. Now, I know you’ve heard this word already in one of President Foley’s talks.

Eudaimonia is a word that was associated with several different ancient Greek philosophers, but most of all with Aristotle. And it’s translated in a variety of ways, as happiness, prosperity, blessedness, success. My favorite definition of this word, though, is to flourish.

The eu at the beginning of Eudaimonia means good or well.

And your daimon was kind of a guardian angel. It’s a little deity that supposedly lived over your shoulder.

You could never see it because every time you turned around, it swiveled behind you. So that meant your god is looking out for you, your guardian angel, your daimon is looking out for you. You’re living well as a result.

This was kind of a myth that the ancient Greeks had.

Now, the way we flourish or live a happy life according to Aristotle is through virtue, through actually a series of virtues. Virtues are acquired qualities of excellence that enable us to achieve various goods. So, acquired qualities of excellence that enable us to achieve goods. So to develop virtues is to become very good at certain things. And among the virtues that Aristotle lists—he has a whole range of them, a whole series—are courage, fair mindedness, friendliness, generosity, modesty, patience, self respect, truthfulness, wittiness, and my personal favorite, righteous indignation.

Now, these are all forms of excellence.

These are all ways of doing things well in life. And every virtue has two vices, two opposite extremes that are really bad. So if you take courage, for instance, courage is a virtue. We would ordinarily think that the vice that goes along with the virtue of courage would be cowardice. That’s only one of the vices. The other vice might be having too much bluster,

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being reckless, going into situations and taking risks that you shouldn’t take. So every one of these virtues functions in that way. For every one of these virtues there are two extremes which are vices.

All of these virtues fall into two categories. There are virtues of character, things like courage and generosity and modesty, and there are also virtues of intellect, truthfulness, fair mindedness, good judgment, wisdom. And for Aristotle, it’s these virtues, the virtues of the intellect, which are the highest virtues. They’re the most important virtues. But the only way to be truly virtuous and to live a happy life is to possess all of these virtues. It’s not enough just to have one or two. It’s not enough just to be smart. You have to be courageous as well. You have to be generous, you have to be modest.

So how do you acquire these virtues?

We’re not born with them. We don’t just develop them naturally. We acquire them through education and through other shared practices.

Anybody have an idea of what I might do in my other shared practices?

Anybody who was in the theology group this morning might be aware of all of this. Things like sports, things like music lessons. All the stuff that you got to do as you’re getting an education and you’re growing up, all of that is to instill us with certain virtues, to teach us how to have discipline and hard work, to teach us how to have self-respect. And we practice these virtues as well. You don’t just learn them. It’s not as simple as that. They require a lot of work, a lot of exercise and practice.

And they also require this, which people usually don’t like to hear— obedience to authority. Who wants that? But you’ve got to listen to your teachers and your coaches and your professors. Professors here, you can thank me later.

It’s through that kind of obedience that you are able to learn these various virtues. And it always has to happen in the midst of community, according to Aristotle. It’s in a community where we have duties and obligations, where there are certain expectations for us, where we have standards of excellence and where we have rewards and punishments.

So I always think of Aristotle’s ethics as really being a great example of a college campus or an academic community where you do have certain duties and obligations. You have to go to class, you have to do your homework. We have standards of excellence. We have various ways of honoring people who do all of those things especially well, and they get various rewards for it. Every now and then somebody gets recognized.

Now, this sounds pretty heavy, right, duties and obligations and standards of excellence? But another important point for Aristotle is that it must be enjoyable. We must actually enjoy doing all of these things. We have to enjoy having all of these virtues and practicing these virtues as well.

So those are our three theories of The Good Life. Now, you’ll see that I’ve taken the three pictures that I began with and I’ve fleshed them out a little. I’ve given you a more elaborate argument defending each of them. The pictures and the theories aren’t exactly the same, but they’re similar enough. So we have Epicurus, serenity or tranquility, the absence of pain. We have Augustine, caritas, love, charity. And now we have Aristotle, flourishing through excellence.

What I’d like to do now is to assess these theories. I want to see if any one of these theories can really provide us with an answer of what The Good Life is, and then I want to

convince you that I know what The Good Life is.

So, criteria. When we use this word criteria in philosophy, we mean it the way it’s always used in everyday language. You go to class, you get a syllabus. Your professor says, okay, the criteria for success in this class are the following—you must show up, you must be on time, you must have done the reading, you must do all of the assignments, you must contribute to class discussion. Those are criteria.

They’re standards that you have to meet. So these are going to be the standards that our theories of The Good Life are going to have to meet.

So here’s our first criterion: Any definition of The Good Life must be positive. Now, this doesn’t mean that it must be happy. This doesn’t mean that it must be optimistic. When philosophers talk about negative and positive concepts or negative and positive definitions, we mean this: a negative definition or a negative concept tells us what something is not. If you say, Jackson, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose, you’ve given me a negative definition of freedom, a negative concept. You told me what freedom is not. Freedom is the lack of tyranny, or freedom is not spending the night in jail. You’ve told me what freedom is not. It’s a negative definition, a negative concept.

Now if you say to me freedom is being among one’s peers, and through respectful disagreement and discussions, shaping the course of destiny and the future of your society; you’ve given me a positive definition of what freedom is.

Marriage. If you say Jackson, marriage is just the absence of dating and the absence of solitude, you haven’t actually told me what marriage is. A positive definition

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of marriage would be two people committing to spend their lives together, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and health. That’s a positive definition.

So our definition of The Good Life must also be positive. We must be able to say what it is. So let’s run through each of those theories.

Epicurus. Positive definition or not?

What do you think? Let’s put it to a vote. Yeah, Epicurus gives a negative definition. Epicurus only tells us what The Good Life is not. The Good Life is not painful. The Good Life is not filled with anxiety. But he never actually tells us what The Good Life is. So by this criterion, Epicurus fails.

How about Augustine? Does he give us a definition of what The Good Life is as a positive concept? What do you think? Caritas, love, charity, serving your neighbors, doing good in accordance with God’s will? Yes. All right. Good. Augustine, very positive definition of what The Good Life is.

Augustine has a very robust definition of what The Good Life is.

How about Aristotle? Positive?

Negative? To flourish through excellence. What do you think? Yes, positive definition. So according to this criterion, we have two philosophers who are able to give us a positive definition of The Good Life—Augustine and Aristotle. Poor Epicurus is left out in the cold here.

He only has a negative definition of The Good Life, so he fails here. But he’s not voted off the island just yet.

Criterion two: The Good Life must be social. We are social beings. Aristotle calls us bios politikos. That means political beings. That means that we cooperate, we work in cooperation with others. We exist in families, communities, societies, among friends, coworkers and fellow citizens.

We have a variety of different types of relationships with different types of people.

And any theory of The Good Life, I want to convince you, has to take into account a variety of social relationships. It has to take into account the various social dimensions of our lives. It has to be able to say, well, this is what The Good Life looks like when we’re in a family, this is what The Good Life looks like when we’re with our community, this is what The Good Life looks like when we’re with our friends. You get the point.

So our question then is going to be are these theories of The Good Life social or are they solo? I hope that you all get my Star Wars reference here. I’m, again, dating myself. I’m not 2,500 years old, but I’m not 25 either.

So Epicurus. What do you think? Is he a social philosopher or is he a solo philosopher? What do you think?

Solo, exactly. Exactly. It’s tranquility, it’s serenity, it’s going off and studying and meditating. In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus does say, ah, it’s good to have a friend, but he doesn’t say it’s necessary to have a friend. And it’s not clear to me how you could ever build any kind of relationship on the basis of tranquility or serenity. I like to kick back as much as anybody else does. I have President Foley convinced I’m hardworking to a fault, but every now and then I like to ease up and relax. But that’s not the basis for any kind of relationship.

Relationships might include feelings.

We care about our friends, we love our significant others, we love our parents, we feel respect for our fellow citizens. Those are all good feelings to have, but they’re not actually the basis for a relationship. The basis for a relationship of any kind is having common practices, common interests,

shared activities, plans, goals that you formulate together. Epicurus doesn’t have any of that, so he’s solo. He fails on criterion two. I’m giving the answer away.

Augustine. All right. So you’re thinking oh, Augustine, okay, he’s social, right, he talks about our neighbors and stuff, loving our neighbors. Yes, he’s definitely more social in his theory of The Good Life than Epicurus is. But I’m not entirely satisfied with Augustine on this count, and here’s why. Because Augustine talks about loving everyone equally in this way. And I think that that’s a wonderful ideal, but I also think that it’s more important to love your child more than your neighbor, for instance.

So I think that Augustine doesn’t quite give us a variety of social relationships. He only really gives us one kind of social relationship. An important one, one I admire very much, but I think his philosophy doesn’t really give us the means to think about the other types of social relationships that are important for us.

And in fact, to bolster my claim here, I will simply note that in The Confessions, in one chapter Augustine tells us of the death of both his son and his mother, and he refuses to mourn.

He doesn’t mourn their deaths at all.

They don’t have a special place for him. In fact, Augustine never even tells us the name of the mother or of his son. So Augustine tends to reduce all relationships to just one level.

Another problem with Augustine sometimes on the social question, which other Christian thinkers have sometimes criticized before—Dante, in fact, criticized him for this—is that he sometimes can reduce other people to opportunities. You’re my neighbor, you’re an opportunity to get closer

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to God—rather than seeing other people as true individuals.

Okay. Aristotle. I’m making him mostly social here because Aristotle does give us a variety of virtues. He gives us a variety of situations in which we can acquire those virtues and in which we can practice those virtues. I don’t think he’s quite perfect, though, because Aristotle delivered these lectures in ancient Greece amongst people who were very much like him. They shared his values, they shared his ideas, they shared his opinion. They were all men, and they all owned property.

They left their wives and the slaves at home.

And I think it can be very difficult to apply the types of ethics that Aristotle talks about in that sort of small community to a vast and diverse society like the United States. I think that’s why Aristotle’s philosophy works very well as a way of understanding education, but not very well as a way of understanding society as a whole. So Epicurus fails. Augustine and Aristotle do a little better, but they’re not great on this criterion.

Criterion three: The Good Life must be varied. So not only are we all different from one another, but the circumstances of our lives will change over time. So the good life can’t be that you’re 25, you have a Maserati and you’re independently wealthy, because eventually you’re going to turn 26 and the Maserati is going to break down and the stock market is going to crash and that’s going to be the end of your being independently wealthy. So we know joy and sorrow, pain, we know prosperity, we know want in life. We’ve all known youth.

Hopefully, we’ll all know old age. So The Good Life has to take in account a variety of circumstances that we live throughout our lives.

So what do you think? Epicurus, varied life or not? What do you think? Yeah, not. For Epicurus it’s just tranquility, serenity. He doesn’t really give us any variation.

How about Augustine? Varied life?

What do you think? Yeah, I think it’s pretty varied. With the three, Augustine is up there. Augustine does imagine loving our neighbors in a variety of situations and contexts.

How about Aristotle? Varied life or not? I think a pretty varied life, actually, these different virtues that we apply to very different circumstances in our lives.

So on this criterion, again, poor Epicurus. He’s such a slacker. He fails again. Augustine and Aristotle do better. So we have positive, social, varied. Those are our first three criteria.

Criterion four: The Good Life must be sustainable. You might really love to work out at the gym. It’s a great experience. It’s a lot of fun. It makes you feel really good. It can’t be your life, though, because you

can’t work out all the time; right?

You’re at the club, you’re looking great, you’re wearing your favorite outfit, it’s your birthday, your jam is playing, everybody loves your dance moves, everybody’s smiling at you, everything you do is right.

That’s a happy moment. It’s not The Good Life, though, because eventually you’re going to get tired of the song, you’re going to want to turn the music down, you’re going to want to be alone, you’re going to want to experience some solitude, you’re going to want to be able to actually have a conversation, not just have the loud music.

So The Good Life has to be sustainable. It can’t just be a good moment or the same good moment again and again and again and again and again.

Kind of a reversal of Groundhog Day. So Epicurus. What do you think?

And by sustainable, I mean you have to take into account human needs and limitations as well. So Epicurus.

What do you think, sustainable or not sustainable? What do you think?

Yeah, totally unsustainable. So he

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gets six surfers doing a headstand.

It’s totally unsustainable. There’s no way you can live a whole life of tranquility and serenity, being free of pain and anxiety. I think it would get really boring if you did, quite honestly.

How about Augustine? Sustainable? What do you think? I’m of two minds here, so I’m going to split the difference and say he’s partly sustainable. I think for some people he most certainly is, and I’ve known people who have lived this kind of life. I think for most people, probably not. I think that it’s good to have moments of charity and love the way Augustine describes them, but I don’t know that most people can really live that way all the time.

How about Aristotle—sustainable or unsustainable? I think he’s mostly sustainable. I think that because he talks about several different virtues and he talks about enjoyment. I think that for the most part what Aristotle describes is, in fact, sustainable.

So those are four of our five criteria.

We’ve had positive, social, varied, and sustainable. Kanye actually has a song called The Good Life, and I wanted desperately to be able to use it in some way, but I couldn’t.

But it’s this phrase, pursuits of happiness. And you all know the line. It is the line that is probably best known from our 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; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Beautiful, beautiful statement, and a statement that’s been echoed, by the way, in almost every state constitution as well, that we have the right to pursue happiness.

Unfortunately, when Thomas Jefferson was writing that beautiful line he didn’t add a little footnote— Oh, and by the way, by the pursuit of happiness, I mean the following. So what on Earth did he mean? What is the pursuit of happiness, and why is it a right that cannot be taken away from us?

Well, we know that something strange happened there. We know that Thomas Jefferson was familiar with all of these philosophers. In one of his letters from 1819, he actually says “I’m an Epicurean. I consider Epicurus’ philosophy to contain everything rational in the world of philosophy.”

So there you have it. Jefferson must have been an Epicurean. The pursuit of happiness is simply the right to have serenity and tranquility in life.

There we go.

Because in 1813, in another one of his letters, Jefferson wrote that he considered the teachings of Jesus to be the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which have ever been offered to man. And listen to what he says about those teachings. Listen to how he describes them. I find this really exciting. That “they are more pure and perfect than the most correct of the philosophers.”

So the teachings of Jesus are even better than Epicurus. And here’s why—because they teach us about universal philanthropy. Now, what’s philanthropy a word for? For charity,

for giving, for loving your fellow man; right? And it’s not just philanthropy or love or charity for our friends and neighbors and countrymen, but all mankind, gathering all into one family under the bonds of love and charity.

So there you have it. Thomas Jefferson thought that The Good Life is caritas and that the pursuit of happiness should be the right to serve others, to care for others, to love others. Maybe not, because in another letter, here’s Jefferson actually talking about the Declaration of Independence. And he says there’s nothing original in the Declaration of Independence. All I did was pull together all the ideas that were in circulation at the time, everything that everybody was talking about, and I put it down on paper. And if there is any real authority to the Declaration of Independence, any reason to believe in it, it’s simply because of the ideas of these philosophers, Aristotle, Cicero, Locke and Sidney.

So here he is referring to the Declaration of Independence itself and about Aristotle. So clearly, the pursuit of happiness must be about flourishing, it must be about virtue.

Well, I’m going to say something else.

I’m going to suggest something which is contrary to what Jefferson claims here—that there was nothing original in the Declaration of Independence. I want to say that there was something

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very original in the Declaration of Independence. There was something very original simply by virtue of its existence.

The Declaration of Independence was a group of people who got together and they said we have a right not only to determine the course of our own lives as individuals, but together to work to create a new society. So it’s the power to determine the course of our lives and to bring something new into the world, not just as individuals, but together as a society, and not just out of a sense of duty, but out of actual enjoyment.

That’s why Jefferson calls it the pursuit of happiness. This is what I think he means. It’s the happy, enjoyable experience of being able to shape the future of your world. And that’s the element that I think is missing from all of our philosophers, something that we only can find in this.

Now, Hannah Arendt—she is probably my very favorite philosopher. A 20th century philosopher who lived in New York City; she was originally from Germany. And Hannah, as I like to call her—as if I’m on a first-name basis—Hannah is probably the great philosopher of human freedom. And that’s really what we’re talking about. The pursuit of happiness is freedom. And it’s freedom amongst your peers, freedom to disagree with people, freedom to shape the course of your world and your life and your society. And it seems to me that that is what Jefferson meant by the pursuit of happiness and that that is a fundamental, essential component in any good life.

So let’s go back over our definition of The Good Life now. The Good Life is flourishing, doing well in a community. It is having opportunities for tranquility and serenity and peace, and also opportunities to serve

others. But on top of that, it’s also having the power and the right to change the course of your society, to actually engage in the public business of your nation.

So the greatest happiness that Jefferson can imagine is the happiness of actually transforming society. It’s the happiness of freedom. It’s the happiness of democracy.

And I think that without that element, we can’t really seriously talk about The Good Life. And that’s why people through the centuries have struggled for that, because they knew that without the power to change their world and their society they couldn’t live The Good Life.

So in closing, I just want to give the last word now to poets. The poets are the great rivals of the philosophers because we philosophers worry that the poets might, in fact, be just as wise as we are, maybe even more so, and they can prove it in fewer words.

So I think that the vision of The Good Life that I’ve been trying to advance here, a life of excellence, of serenity, of service and of freedom is best summarized by the great 20th century poet, Frank O’Hara. He said, “Grace to be born, and to live as variously as possible.”

And here’s one last quote from Jefferson. This is just to finally really prove that I’m right about human freedom and that that’s what Jefferson meant when he talked about the pursuit of happiness. At the end of his life, Jefferson was writing letters.

He was corresponding with John Adams. Jefferson and Adams hated each other at one time. They were bitter, bitter rivals.

But towards the end of their lives there was a bit of a thaw, and in one of the great coincidences of history— does anybody know when the two men died? They died on exactly the same day. They died on the 4th of July, 1826; exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. And I swear I heard it somewhere, but I couldn’t dig this up, that Adams actually said right before he died, “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

So they’re exchanging letters towards the end of their lives, and they start to imagine what the afterlife might be like. And John Adams has some things to say about it, and Jefferson says, “no, no, no, I think that’s wrong.”

And here’s what Jefferson proposes of the afterlife. The afterlife, heaven, it’s Philadelphia in 1776. “May we meet there again, in Congress, with our antient, our old colleagues, and receive with them the seal of approval, well-done, good and faithful servants.”

Thank you very much.