What is a good human life?
Write a 5-page paper in response to the following prompt. What is a good human life? How should one make good decisions and pursue good goals? In your final paper, you will compare two of those approaches, one of which must be Aristotle’s. Your paper should do four things: Specify a case involving someone who would be asking themselves the questions above: What is a good human life and how should I make good
decisions and pursue good goals? Your case could put someone in a specific decision-making context, but the decision in question should be ethically and personally weighty, and something that would affect someone over a longer term (for example, the choice to become a vegetarian for ethical reasons, or to enlist in the military, or to become a parent, not the choice to donate $50 to a specific charity). You must think about
ethical values in broader and longer terms. Present how Aristotle would approach the case, drawing on specific aspects of his view, specific passages from the text, and showing how he would advise the person. Present how another moral theorist (Mill, Kant, Epictetus, or Emilie du Châtelet) would approach the case, drawing on specific aspects of their view, specific passages from the text, and showing how they would
advise the person. Compare and evaluate the two approaches, determining which is better and why. (There are several different ways that one view might be better than another, but strong responses will move beyond an evaluation that simply asserts which one is right, or which one is closer to your own beliefs). You are encouraged to use those four tasks to structure your paper, beginning with an introduction, moving on to the
specific case, then applying two views to that case (in whichever order seems best), then moving to the comparison and evaluation, and then to your conclusion. You’re also encouraged to keep your paper balanced between those different tasks, and not to spend a disproportionate amount of space on one in relation to the others.