SCURTE CONSIDERAȚII DESPRE ALEGEREA UNUI PLAN DE VIAȚĂ RESPONSABILĂ ȘI EDUCAȚIA LIBERALĂ

Abstract

Brief thoughts on choosing a responsible life plan and liberal education.
The good life does not consist exclusively in engaging in practices. To begin with, what is required in one practice may conflict with the demands of another: for example, a person’s duties as an artist may conflict with his  responsibilities as a parent. Inevitably, the different practices in which one engages must be harmonized with each other within the framework of one’s life as a whole. There must be a rational, integrative structure into which all these practices fit. The good life must be understood as the goodness of a life viewed as a whole. Life, as defined by the structure of liberal thought, has characteristics that contrast with traditional thought, which is why we have set out to make a brief analysis of this relationship. The good life is no longer centered on the maximum satisfaction of preferred desires compatible with a basic morality. In this liberal vision, nothing prevents external goods – fame, power, money, pleasure – from being the most coveted. Liberalism’s problem of relating the moral framework to the pursuit of personal ends within it – which is not least related to the danger of the moral framework eroding or collapsing in the absence of an acceptable personal justification – disappears in this context, because the dominant ends must be the internal goods demanded by practices, unified life, and the social roles and traditions in which they find their place, which include, among other things, the possession of the virtues, including the more altruistic or „moral” virtues, necessary to sustain these practices and this kind of life. Being morally good, in short, is a necessary and not merely optional part of one’s well-being.