4. Here to help
Zig Ziglar Helping others to get everything you want
Baggini’s experience with help the homeless group
Place of altruism in the meaningful life, escape the narrow aesthetic experience, but does helping
other become merely a means of helping ourselves?
Mother Teresa dreamed life is all joy, awoke and saw life is all service. She saw that service is
joy. So helping others can be the meaning of life for some. But not end of story…
not all are so dedicated
Is it the only path
Accepting people’s claims at face value (happy selling drugs)
Who does altruism help & why?
Importance of defining terms (e.g., “freedom”)
Norwegian family & Jewish child (commonality of goodness in general)
Who does altruism help?
Helper or helpee?
Kant’s Duty of Moral Law
The Norwegian couple again
Sense of moral duty overruled other virtues (compassion/love)
No agreed upon rules
Who should be helped? What constitutes need
Fuller life again
Principle of “universilizability”
Kant “act only on maxim through which at the same time you will it to become a universal law.
Helping others is just a mean to an end (that has to be defined). Don’t help just to help. Need or
quality of life.
3 weird problems
odd if helper helped the most
if helping the only purpose, then only some leading meaningful lives
The helped are means to an end for the altruists
Helping the old man across the road who doesn’t want it
If altruism were ultimately successful no need for it
Culture of dependency (codependency)
Mere subsistence enough?
Sacrificing oneself for others
Germ of truth
Don’t confuse means and ends
It can give meaning and can improve others situations
Living better is good
Residing in the simple living of life
We are social creatures
Returns to “life itself is worth living” helping not the purpose but something required of
meaningful life
5. The greater good
Neil Armstrong’s step
$ on space program
Good of the species view
More than the sum of the members
Asymmetrical relation of individual to species
No such thing s humanity
Margret Thatcher denies society (akin to Ockham’s nominalism)
Ontology (Parfit’s ontology of nations p. 75 can be applied to species)
Human Kind before humans
Evolution at level of gene or individuals rather than species
Herbert Spencer and Andrew Carnegie—Social Darwinism
Why/because series
Future utopias vs. lives in the present
Stalinism
Sentient beings
Life going well for a dog vs. carrot
More than this
Transcendence through the group (me; Terror Management theory)
Kierkegaard ethical realm
Cooper Raw Humanism—unbearable existence
Sartre answerable to facticity of world
“We should care for human beings, not abstraction human kind” p. 83
Joy of being an ant
Cartoon Antz
Part of machine. What about Chaos theory and butterfly effect?
Only some of us are “queens”
More germs of truth
Sometimes we do things for the greater good (fighting Nazis)
Ind. must be capable of recognizing what provides life with meaning (or an authority capable of
providing it). 2) Ind. must make personal choice to embrace that meaning or reject it.
The purpose doesn’t have to serve the individual, and the individual doesn’t necessarily always
get it right.
Human urge towards transcendence (new age books)
6. As long as you’re happy
C.P. Snow: If you pursue happiness you’ll never find it
I don’t care what my children end up, so long as they’re happy
The greatest gift that we possess?
Schopenhauer: happiness =frequent repetitions of pleasure
Momentary mood vs. enduring happiness
Aristotle happiness an ultimate end state
Any activity has purpose that is either good in itself or done in order to achieve other purpose.
“That which is always choosable for its own sake.”
Happiness is a virtuous activity of the soul pursued by rational animals
Epicureans; austere, ascetic life. Epicurus “The pleasure of love never profited a man, and he is
lucky if they do not harm him.” “Joyful poverty is an honorable thing.” Goal tranquility, calm
contentment. Not what advertisements sell us.
Kant whichever state provides lasting satisfaction and is good in itself
Happiness in cigar named Hamlet
John Stuart Mill; better to be human satisfied than pig satisfied
Or Socrates dissatisfied than fool satisfied
Cerebral preferences of writers vs. those with raging libidos
Long term relations, health, and $ to a point
Maybe relationships are our highest capacities
Jane Goodall
Choices and the not chosen types of contentment
Virtually happy
Happiness is a ends in itself. Also Frankl’s negative happiness. Maybe not precedent over
everything Galen’s Prima non nocere (first do no harm)
Nozick’s “Matrix-like” thought experiment; simulcra
Authenticity (Self-determination theory in psychology)
Aldous Huxley’s Brave new World
Seek and you shall not find
Linking and societal consumer goals
Worldwide wealthier since 1950 but no happier
Happiness as virtuous activity
Role of temperament, luck, too few resources
G.B. Shaw: But a lifetime of happiness!...it would be hell on earth
Socrates “A good man cannot be harmed in life or death.” Epictetus not things that disturb men,
but their judgments about those things
7. Becoming a contender
Brando as Terry Malloy
What is success and should people make it life’s goal?
Anatomy of Success
Relative goals vs. absolute goals
Focus on having done certain things. Sartre, man is nothing but the sum of his actions, nothing
but what his life is.
Versus becoming a kind of person (like Dweck’s mastery orientation as opposed to performance
orientation).
Yet for Sartre it’s how one knows what was in oneself (doing –becoming linked)
George Baily in It’s a wonderful life.
Relative and absolute success
Successful failures
Chechov’s The Seagull Trigorin, Constantine, & Peter
Upward and downward social comparison
In education “All must have prizes” Gilbert Ryle, counterfeit coins. What if everyone passes set
it at 50% (or gets top grades)?
Importance of choosing and striving. Peter in becoming a Senator
Nina’s quotes pp 112-113
Enduring & becoming
Irina and past glory
Ree on Kierkegaard becoming a never ending process
Living authentically self-actualizing
Terry Malloy’s failure and redemption
True Success
Problem of absolute success, but merely having done not enough, also problem from before of
living for the future and getting goal
Some Absolutes an irreversible form of becoming
Success can give meaning in sense we can succeed in becoming who we want to be. Key is that
we are the authors of our own identities. Judgments people make of themselves speak to who
they are as much as what they have done.
Generally to do well in any arena does involve struggle. Most must work hard to become what
they desire. The struggle must itself be worthwhile, or feeling of success will elude. With or
without external recognition.
Are you free?
Autonomous choices, living authentically vs. materialistic determinism?
Hume’s compatibilism (free of external coercion) tea vs. coffee
Kant for speculative purposes the road of natural necessity much more traveled and useable, yet
for practical purposes foot path of freedom only one to make use of our reason.
Improve thyself
Age of self-help and targeting inadequacies
Group:_________________
1) Use Baggini's example of the play 'The Seagull', to explain problems in defining of
achievement as life's meaning.
2) What was the author's purpose of mentioning of Diderot's quote, "Only the wicked man
lives alone"?
3) Explain the difference between success as doing and success as becoming?
4) Contrast the views of happiness according to Aristotle and the Epicurus.
5) What was one of the reasons Bagginni rejects altruism as “the purpose in life”? What was
his general conclusion about helping others?