Life in Aristotle, Socrates, King,

¶ … Life in Aristotle, Socrates, King, and Frankl The Nicomachean Ethics starts by saying that all knowledge and purpose aims at some good (Aristotle, trans. 1893, 1094a1). In medicine, for example, the good is health (1097a7). But what is the highest good? According to Aristotle, the highest good is that which is achieved for itself alone rather than as a useful means to something else (1094a2).

He goes on to show that this ultimate goal is happiness (eudaemonia), because happiness is that which is self-sufficient, final, most desirable, and always chosen for itself rather than for sake of something else (1097b7). He links happiness directly with rationality, saying that it is "a certain kind of exercise of the vital faculties in accordance with excellence or virtue" (1099b9). Happiness is an activity of the soul that involves the excellent use of reason.

The happy person will never be miserable (1100b10) because reason leads him to endure suffering with a noble calm (1100b10). The moral character, honed through rational habit, allows his true worth to shine through even in the worst of misfortunes. Living intelligently leads essentially to flourishing and well-being. Being aligned with virtue, in Aristotle, entails developing a disposition to choose the mean between the extremes of excess and deficiency. Virtue is always moderation (1107a6).

The more excellent one's practice of virtue, the more one aims at and achieves the middle way. The highest virtues are intellectual, such as the contemplation of wisdom which gives an intrinsic pleasure. One cannot possess virtue if one does not take pleasure in doing virtuous acts. Wealth, honor, fame, and other external goods are subordinate. While mental happiness is best, virtue is not abstract (1098a7). The real meaning of life, "man's function," that is advanced in the Nichomachean Ethics seems to be the enactment of reason in daily living.

By this token, all forms of irrationality and immoderacy are obstacles to the achievement of happiness. Some obstructions to virtue and well-being are given in books 5-7, such as slavish enjoyment of physical pleasure, vice, incontinence, brutality. They encompass anything that is opposite of the mean (temperance), any kind of acting excessively or without enough desire. Earlier, Socrates (as spoken through Plato) asserted several key formulations of the point of human life. In the Apology, Socrates claimed that the main purpose is to strive after excellence.

He says, "Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively" (Plato, trans. 1997, 30b). Goodness for him meant how humans arrange their cares and priorities. He says he tried to persuade others "not to care for any of his belongings before caring that he himself should be as good and as wise as possible" (36c). This is where his famous principle, "know thyself," comes in.

The greatest good for a human, he thought, was to discuss virtue every day (38a). It is through this self-examination that life becomes meaningful because it creates self-development and the knowledge that one is acting rightly. It makes sense: how can one know how to act until one has thought about it? Significance arises in formulating how to live practically a just, wise, and good life. Again as in Aristotle, it is not an idealized form of goodness or justice.

The good life in Crito means living in the right way (Plato, trans. 1997, 48b) with the understanding that "virtue and justice are man's most precious possession" (53c). In this sense, a good life must possess self-awareness. It is not a wealth, fame, career, family, or pleasure-based life -- these things are distractions from true purpose and ought not to be prioritized over self-analysis and virtue. In Crito, life is not worth living if corrupt with unjust actions (48a). To prevent self-corruption and improve wisdom, one must follow just actions.

For Socrates, this is a private affair, not a public one (32a). Further, it involves never returning wrong for wrong (49b-d). It was this idea of non-retaliation -- if one is beat, one does not beat back -- that made him refuse to run away from his commitment to Athens as a citizen (52c).

The context of his devoted stand for principles and philosophy in the face of conviction and a sentence of death, which he did not fear but faced with equanimity (29a), made his stance more poignant and salient. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a political activist whose main purpose in life was to confront oppressive and demeaning social forms such as segregation and material inequality with calls for social justice. He believed strongly in the government's protection of civil rights and equal opportunities for all its citizens.

If a government failed to do so, he called for civil disobedience. King (1986) stated that freedom must be taken from the oppressors (p. 292). His concept of meaning was formulated in the crucible of unjust laws and centered on the notion of social justice. This meant attaining freedom, dignity, and social equality for all, not just for the privileged. His advocacy of non-violent protest aligned him with Socrates, as did his subversive speech.

He felt strongly that it was every person's ethical duty to stand up peacefully but powerfully against all forms of oppression, and like Socrates he was willing to face death bravely for his cause. As opposed to Aristotle and close to Socrates, he affirmed that one must work to change the material conditions of life as well as social consciousness, rather than stress endurance through hardship. Any form of injustice within society that prevented freedom, imposed inequality, or humiliated personal dignity was an obstruction to life's meaning.

As King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" (p. 290). Viktor Frankl's views on meaning developed in the extreme conditions of Nazi concentration camp. He affirmed that, despite all the physical and mental stress and suffering of such conditions, a human can -- in fact must -- chose a future- and goal-oriented attitude toward life in order to find meaning.

Suffering, he believed, is not necessary for meaning, but it is an opportunity to emphasize the notion that dignity, worth, and inner freedom can be achieved and held through refusal to submit to oppressive forces. Frankl (1984) writes, "It is this spiritual freedom -- which cannot be taken away -- that makes life meaningful and purposeful" (pp. 75-76). His view is close to Aristotle and Socrates, but veers from King in that it does not assert strongly that unjust conditions must end.

Rather, Frankl thought that they were a test through which could come a higher meaning. (Although he does say that one can influence destiny.) Goals key this existential freedom to decide to rise above fate, and they are unique to each individual. There is no abstract and universal meaning here, but only personal, specific, and concrete aims that only the individual can determine. Each must find and give themselves their own reason or purpose for living (a future expectation).

Frankl's existentialism seems the most diffuse concept of meaning among those discussed here. He refuses to.