Many philosophers continue to look askance at Flanagan's empirical and hypothetical approach to eudaimonistic scientia, and to the suggestion that some facts about flourishing should inform our "value judgments." I'm still trying to understand why. Is it misplaced loyalty to a miscast reverence for Saint David of Edinburgh? Or for Aristotle? Or Buddha?
And speaking of the happiest, flow-iest man on earth, Mathieu Ricard...
We look as well today at Flanagan's discussion of Stoics, Skeptics, and Epicureans. "The good life for all," he says, is a more demanding ethic than Aristotle's. Nobody ever said democracy would be easy.
Buddhist psychology is all about alleviating suffering. I wonder if it's enough about optimizing joy, too. And this will inevitably bring us back to one of next time's topics, illusion. Might be worth revisiting a HAP 101 session, early last Fall, devoted to the theme.
Flanagan's main refrain, still, is that we give up our childish habits of thought and live up to our birthright as rational social animals who can handle the truth about our condition as finite material beings living in a material world. Can't argue with that, but I hope we'll draw a careful distinction between childish and child-like. That might be just the distinction a cherry-picking pragmatic pluralist needs, to preserve the integrity of the "thousand-eyed present."
We look as well today at Flanagan's discussion of Stoics, Skeptics, and Epicureans. "The good life for all," he says, is a more demanding ethic than Aristotle's. Nobody ever said democracy would be easy.
Buddhist psychology is all about alleviating suffering. I wonder if it's enough about optimizing joy, too. And this will inevitably bring us back to one of next time's topics, illusion. Might be worth revisiting a HAP 101 session, early last Fall, devoted to the theme.
Flanagan's main refrain, still, is that we give up our childish habits of thought and live up to our birthright as rational social animals who can handle the truth about our condition as finite material beings living in a material world. Can't argue with that, but I hope we'll draw a careful distinction between childish and child-like. That might be just the distinction a cherry-picking pragmatic pluralist needs, to preserve the integrity of the "thousand-eyed present."
The future of research is a daunting source of apprehension and speculation. Michael Sandel and Bill McKibben have aired serious concerns about genetic and other "enhancement" research as potentially catastrophic for our capacity to achieve or even recognize "meaningful" lives. Enhanced may not mean improved.
The Times has a cover story today we should notice: Ethicists are split over the use of genetic testing of embryos... to ensure [parents] that a bad gene would not be passed to their children.