Good people are happier. But how to become a good and happy person?
Aristotles’ virtue ethics along the empirical ruler. Do we even need an ethical system if everyone is virtuous and happy? And positive psychology: how to become a happier and better person?
We must treat each other humanely, you will agree that with me. But what is humane, and how do we become that? Even before philosophers started to consider what we owe to our fellow human beings, people were already thinking about how to ensure that coexistence runs as smoothly as possible. Already before our era, the idea of virtue ethics emerged both around the Mediterranean and in Asia. The point is not that we try to define our behaviour in precise rules, but that we all learn to behave virtuously and humanely.
Aristoteles
Aristoteles plays a leading role in this episode. Coincidentally, I am writing this article in Halkidiki, the Greek Macedonian peninsula where Aristoteles was born in 384 BCE. Aristoteles became a student of Plato in Athens, but his emphasis was significantly different. Plato placed great emphasis on an eternal reality that differs from what we can perceive. Aristoteles focused on the world that we can perceive with our senses. Aristoteles's most influential book was his Ethika Nikomachea, about ethics.
Three core concepts play a role in Aristoteles' ethical system: arete (virtue), eudaimonia (happiness, human flourishing) and phronesis (thoughtfulness, practical wisdom). In short, the world will benefit greatly if we all learn to become virtuous people. We don't need moral rules then; people naturally treat each other well. People should live virtuously, in accordance with nature, using reason, focusing on things that are good for us. Reason helps us control our animal desires and set goals. To this end, we must have good habits or virtues that ensure that we keep an eye on what is good. The state, created out of general interest, must aim at the good, virtuous life and must educate its citizens in this.
For Aristoteles, the good coincided with the difficult to translate concept of eudaimonia. You could translate it as happiness, but that is actually too simplistic. It's about living your life the way it was meant to be lived. Pleasure can certainly play a role in this, but who enjoys pleasure for a lifetime? We enjoy when something succeeds, and there is nothing wrong with that, but that does not mean that we should focus on that pleasure, but on the activity that succeeds. Then the pleasure will come naturally.
Most often today, eudaimonia is translated as flourishing; one might describe it as the life we want for our children, or more generally, for people we love. What we should focus on, according to Aristoteles, is to make all the activities in our life work. Our marriage worked, we are successful in our job, we are a successful parent. And those are the big things in life. But if you have baked an excellent apple pie, you have also accomplished something. Goals we set are good in themselves, not means, such as money. Eudaimonia is an excellent, active life that we organise according to the choices we make ourselves, in autonomy. Someone may be an excellent slave, but a slave does not live the life that life was meant to live. Eudaimonia is the telos of human life: the destiny and the ultimate goal. But eudaimonia is not passive: one must continue to work at it using our soul and reason and applying our virtues. For non-virtuous people, eudaimonia is unattainable.
Most evil actions do not arise from an evil character, although there are people who are affected by it. Most people fail to make virtuous choices if their virtues are not yet anchored enough in their behaviour, or because they do not have enough control over themselves. Most people dabble a bit. They know deep in their hearts what is right, but too often they are guided by their instincts, by the path of least resistance, or they do not know how to find the right middle way.
Then there are also people who do have the discipline, but virtue still takes effort. They behave well, but they don't do it wholeheartedly. The highest state is that a virtuous life no longer costs us any effort. We must strive for that, but how does one achieve that?
Because people have been taught the virtues from an early age and can learn from good examples, they are able to live together harmoniously. Of course there are always conflicts of interest, and not everyone has the same good in mind, but that's not the point. People can learn from each other, also from each other's mistakes. And with the help of phronesis, thoughtfulness, we are able to approach conflicts intellectually and take the path that is in everyone's interest.
Other thinkers on virtue
Virtue ethics is also common in Eastern philosophy. Where Aristoteles emphasised reason, Kǒngzǐ (Confucius, 551-471 BCE) focused mainly on a harmonious relationship with others. He regarded anyone who focuses only on himself as a petty or weakened person. Our relationship with others is determined by the role we have in each relationship. As a child you fulfil a role in relation to your parents, as an employee in relation to your employer, as a friend in relation to your friends, as a teacher in relation to your student, etc. If you fulfil your role selflessly and are completely absorbed in it, including the rituals that go with it, then you are automatically an excellent, harmonious and virtuous person.
Aristoteles had learned from Plato that a virtuous life is only possible if we control our natural instincts with our reason. But Plato also believed in a transcendent world. Concepts such as goodness and justice are not merely human concepts. According to Plato, these are concepts that actually exist, but knowledge about them does not come naturally to us. Only with the utmost effort can we hope to catch a glimpse of it. Aristoteles was more down-to-earth about this. For him we do not have to dream of transcendental concepts. Happiness and virtue can be found in the world, if we just do our best and let ourselves be instructed by sensible people. Until the Enlightenment, Plato's transcendental view was dominant, among the Stoa, but especially among Christian thinkers.
According to the Stoa, it is best to join the imperishable natural order. The gods determined what would happen; As a human being we couldn't measure up to that. Just accept it. We will be disappointed when we expect things from life.
Virtue is central to Stoic morality. Virtue is control over our drives and our emotions. Virtue is letting ourselves be guided by reason. Our property, our freedom, our health, our happiness: everything can be taken from us, except our virtue. Therefore, the most important thing we can work on is our virtue. For Cicero, the core of the solution lay in how to deal with others. If everyone learns to be virtuous, we will naturally come to terms with each other.
It will not be surprising that Christian thinkers were very fond of Plato's transcendental view of virtue. The Lord works in mysterious ways, Isaiah already taught. Don't try to understand God, he warned, because you won't succeed. Trust God and do what you are told, even if it goes against your natural instincts. Thomas Aquinas was of course also on that track, and Kant was also in that tradition.
The Scottish thinker David Hume broke the transcendental tradition. All sound knowledge must be based on direct experience, this Enlightenment thinker stated. Metaphysical and theological views about the will of God and the nature of nature are speculative, and therefore cannot form a basis for moral theory. And if we manage to gain empirical knowledge about the nature of nature, we cannot necessarily derive moral rules from it. Knowing that humans are naturally aggressive does not mean that humans should behave aggressively. Logical reasoning can go a long way, but can we also use reason to determine which goals we should want to achieve? Hume didn't think so, and argued that our natural drives are our primary motivation. And our mind helps us to achieve it.
Reason is, ought to be, the slave of our passions, and can never pretend to be destined for anything other than to serve and obey them.
— David Hume, A treatise on human nature (1739)
According to Hume, we are virtuous if we have an eye for your fellow man. That earns us social appreciation. But we can also receive social appreciation for bad behaviour. As a mafioso, your gang appreciates you when you blackmail people or do other nasty things. That is not the kind of appreciation Hume intended. He therefore attached a condition to the appreciation we strive for: our behaviour must be aimed at increasing happiness or utility. This made him a precursor of the utilitarians.
If we believe that people should be virtuous, it may mean that virtue is a calculating method of fulfilling our natural drives. Or virtue is in itself a natural impulse. According to Hume, virtue is not necessarily rational behaviour. Not all behaviour that focuses on others benefits us. So there must be an element of natural inclination in virtuous behaviour. Hume calls that element a sense of humanity. Humanity is a human need that can be separated from self-interest, and for which we do not need a god.
Before it gets too sappy, it is time to bring out Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche thought the ethical theories of Kant and Hume were bourgeois nonsense. Who says that living a virtuous life makes people happier? Be realistic, he said, and look at what really drives people. Deep down, man is not satisfied with contentment and peaceful coexistence. Man wants competition. He wants more. He wants to excel and dominate. In short: people want power. Submission to the common good goes against human nature.
The world is full of misery. Not only nature causes disasters, but most disasters are caused by people. We wage war, we taunt, defraud, rob each other and, if necessary, we will let half the world die if it suits us. All those beautiful optimistic theories of the Stoa and Christianity, of Hume and Kant, are unprovable. We allow ourselves to be led to believe this in order to give life meaning. To comfort us. Nietzsche admits that his theory is also unprovable, but he thinks you have to hand him one thing: at least he is realistic and honest.
If things stand like this, what is virtue? According to Nietzsche, virtue is that we reconcile ourselves with the reality of existence. Life is not a pony camp. So we should behave accordingly. Get what we can out of ourselves. And that includes our competitiveness, our desire for power, to excel and dominate. Nietzsche's übermensch is not modest or good, they are noble free spirits. You only get respect if you earn it. A noble spirit claims its role, fights for its honour, and creates order and aesthetics.
Nietzsche's merit is not that he introduced a sound moral system. He certainly didn't have the last word. His view of human nature is very negative and one-dimensional. And as Hume rightly pointed out, a value-free, accurate description of human nature does not provide a moral theory. But you have to give Nietzsche credit for bringing us face to face with the facts: people are completely incapable of behaving according to the lofty ideals of moralists. Human suffering is inevitable. And not only do we need our fellow human beings — they too often get in our way.
Virtue ethics analysed
So much for the theory. Virtue ethics is an attractive idea. Moral precepts are impossible; reality is too complex for that. Universal moral laws, like natural laws, do not exist. Instead, work on creating happy, righteous people. They will work it out among themselves.
Suppose we want to put Aristoteles's lessons into practice, then we need to know whether they are correct. Which assumptions should we test empirically? Most philosophers have no interest in empirical testing. But fortunately, we have the academic disciplines of psychology and pedagogy. Can they, together with virtue ethicists, jointly give the theory more substance?
We are talking about these types of questions:
Objectively speaking, what exactly is eudaimonia?
Can we learn virtues?
What virtues are we actually talking about?
Does a virtuous life make us happy?
We will now address those questions.
Psychologists in search of happiness
Psychology has traditionally been concerned with combating disorders: fears, delusions, depression, etc. In 1998, the prominent psychologist Martin Seligman advocated also highlighting the other side: where do positive emotions come from, and how do we stimulate them? It led to a flood of publications and it also became a popular scientific hype. Now, 25 years later, not all findings have been empirically substantiated, but positive psychology seems to be here to stay, and has even penetrated clinical psychology (the treatment of serious negative emotions).
But what is happiness, according to psychologists? One might say: having predominantly positive emotions. But an important problem is that they are subjective. There is no reliable method with which we, as an outsider, can measure someone's happiness without interviewing them. And when we ask questions, we inevitably encounter subjectivity. Someone can be a ray of sunshine all the time, and at the same time say that they are deeply unhappy inside. Or think about your own past: many people only realise afterwards that they had a happy childhood or student years. We are notoriously bad at experiencing our own happiness, and happiness is a fleeting emotion that we must learn to recognise. It seems inevitable to further define the feeling of happiness and break it down into more measurable emotions.
According to Seligman, happiness consists of three components: pleasure, engagement and meaning. The ten emotions most associated with it are: joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe and love. Instead of the general question of how happy we are, we you can be more specific. We might even measure it objectively. And it also gives us better guidance: anyone who wants to be happier must especially work on those ten emotions.
(And yes: I have also applied principles of positive psychology in my life, with favourable results. I feel better about myself than, say, ten or twenty years ago.)
How to become happy
Happiness research has made great progress in recent decades. There is a lot of literature about it. Positive psychology strives for a positive self-image and states that people can influence this themselves. A number of commonly shared findings:
Positive psychology recognises that everyone is different. Anyone who wants to address their mental weaknesses and shortcomings (which are often innate or the result of experiences at a young age) is doomed to frustration. Instead, we should look for the things we have a talent for, and highlight and develop them. This means that everyone can ultimately excel in something, which is good for our self-image and our mental well-being. We can then better accept what we are less good at.
We often have too high expectations about ourselves. As a result, we continually disappoint ourselves, which leads to negative feelings. We need to teach ourselves to set smaller, achievable goals and learn habits that are easy to maintain. If they succeed, it will strengthen our self-esteem, allowing us to take on new challenges.
We give too much attention to our own negative feelings and experiences. We must teach ourselves to pay attention to positive things. We must train ourselves to be grateful for the nice things about ourselves, about others, and about things that happen to us.
Exercise, walking, meditation and mindfulness are good for our mental well-being. Choose which activity suits you and, if possible, make it a habit.
We can train ourselves to be kind, to do small things for others, to highlight positive things in others, to take an interest in others, to undertake activities together, not to invest in things but in (shared) experiences. Kind, positive people have more friends, and people with an enjoyable social life are happier. That leads to a positive spiral. Eudaimonia is contagious.
Nice that we know this. But we're not there yet. An important question still remains: what is the relationship between virtue and happiness? Are good people happier? Let us first look at the virtues.
Virtues
What makes someone a good person? Ask any person for a list of virtues, good personal qualities, and you will get a different list from everyone. Plato came up with three categories: wisdom, courage and temperance, and justice as a mediator between the three. Aristoteles expanded that list into a whole laundry list. Many came after him with their own laundry list. But no one has managed to have the final say in this.
Personal experiences, beliefs, age, education, social position and cultural background all influence our answer to the question of what makes someone a good person. The best attempt so far has been made by psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman. They did not take any chances; the list seems fairly complete and culturally neutral. From the back seat you can still hear scientists grumbling that the grouping should be better, but for now, it is the best we have.
You can also test yourself here for free on your own 24 virtues and strengths.
The happy villain
Imagine the fictional Tony Soprano, from the television series The Sopranos. A criminal, a mafia boss, but also a good fellow, a man of his word, a good boss to his people, a nice neighbour, and a loving father and husband. Scroll back to the insights of positive psychology and check whether Tony could also apply those insights. Indeed: according to positive psychology, Tony Soprano could achieve a decent state of happiness.
So, what is still missing? Social appreciation first of all. A crook must always look over his shoulder, be on his guard, and runs the risk of being exposed. But you can also receive social appreciation for bad behaviour. Appreciation from the people you take good care of. And you can get prestige because you are so rich and successful, especially if you also donate a lot to charities.
According to Hume, your behaviour should be aimed at increasing happiness or utility. But that doesn't necessarily make you happier. Think of the do-gooder, the idealist, or the saint, who only wants to sow love and happiness. It is precisely those types of people who come up against the limits of human virtue.
An Aristotelian argument is that we become happier knowing that we are doing the right thing, that you we a righteous person. On the other hand, thinking that we are virtuous is different from being virtuous. Religious or ideological terrorists will also think that they are on the right track and derive a positive self-image from this. Or think of people who wallow in their moral superiority, because they are committed to the great good, the fate of the world, the great redistribution, or because they worship the right god. They are not necessarily nice people.
Another Aristotelian argument is that virtuous people become more aware of virtuous people and things, and develop habits aimed at satisfying that virtuous taste. But that is an argument that bites itself in the tail. You can also tell yourself that the colour pink makes you happy. Get rose-coloured glasses and you'll see that it works.
A happy villain remains a villain. Yet Tony Soprano reached the limits of his happiness. He had to undergo psychotherapy because he started having anxiety attacks. You are probably not a mafia boss, but you could probably use a little more happiness in your life. Does it help you become a better person?
Are good people happier?
For a two thousand years old Greek, Aristoteles was not far wrong. Happiness is more than pleasure. And we can learn happiness. And, he also stated, happiness and virtue go hand in hand. But is that correct? Are good people happier? Of course we hope so. Pride comes before a fall, universe always settles the score. Open the drawer of folk wisdom completely. Strangely enough, this question has not actually been systematically investigated until recently. Only with the rise of positive psychology did scientists begin to seriously consider the question.
How happy you are is largely out of your control. Hereditary factors play the largest role, on average about 50%. You also have no control over whether life smiles at you or whether great adversity will strike you. Yet such external factors are only responsible for about 10% of your happiness on average. Then you are left with about 40% of your happiness that you can influence yourself. It's not everything, but it's not nothing either. Compare it with a healthy lifestyle. It does not guarantee a long and healthy life, but it does help.
The good news is that according to empirical research, all 24 VIA virtues correlate positively with happiness. But that correlation is not equally strong for every virtue. Love, gratitude, hope, interest, zest and perspective correlate most strongly. If you want to become happier, invest in those virtues.
Love. You have warm, sincere and close personal ties with a number of people, with a great element of unconditionality. You can also accept that people love you. You seek out people you love, and you help ensure that they are doing well.
Gratitude. You feel blessed for the good things that happen to you and for the people around you. You reflect on pleasant experiences, you learn to recognise them at the moment and to express them. You realise that positive experiences can also happen to you without you having to put in any effort yourself.
Hope. Optimism, looking forward to upcoming events, trusting that you can handle setbacks and that your efforts can bear fruit.
Interest. You open yourself up to new experiences and meeting other people. You want to know what moves people. You go out, go to unknown places, try new things, investigate things you didn't know before.
Zest. Enthusiasm and energy. You do not do things half-heartedly, but with conviction and inspiration. You see your life as an adventure.
Perspective. You don't get lost in the details, but you keep the big picture in mind, the main perspective. You set long-term goals and do not allow yourself to be distracted by incidents and coincidences. You take interest in others, also to become wiser yourself.
What these qualities have in common is that they make your world bigger. But: don't pick just one, but work on a bunch of virtues at the same time. This way your virtues remain better balanced and you don't run the risk of going too far. Once you've taken the VIA test, pick the two or three of the qualities above that you score reasonably well on. It is easier and more effective to work on qualities that you already have a talent for, than on virtues that you demonstrably have difficulty with.
So, you want to boost some of your virtues. How do you do that? The main reason why people fail to do this is discipline. We have already seen that people tend to set too high expectations for themselves. And when it doesn't work out, they get frustrated and give up again. The solution is twofold: set small, achievable goals, and make them a habit.
Starting a gratitude journal is an example. Set a fixed time in your day that is not often disturbed by the daily chaos, for example before breakfast, or in the evening before you go to sleep. Reserve five minutes of your time to write down three nice things that happened to you the past day. Place the notebook in a permanent place, in plain sight, for example in the kitchen or next to your bed. Before you know it, gratitude has become a habit.
Another small example. Birthdays are a great opportunity to pay special attention to your friends once a year. But I always forgot them; they are in my calendar, but I didn't receive a reminder. I have now installed an app. The main screen of my phone now shows the name of the person whose birthday is that day.
Not only do virtues make you happy, but it also works the other way around. People who become happier also become more virtuous. They have more discipline, are more productive, more generous, more honest and more grateful. And happiness is contagious, but I already said that. Therefore, do not forget the other lessons of positive psychology, which we discussed earlier.
Towards a virtuous society
Virtue ethics is one of the three main families in ethics. The idea is that societies become better, more just, if their inhabitants are virtuous. We saw above that there are now strong empirical indications that this is correct. If all is well, people will look after each other better, treat each other with more respect, work better together, become more tolerant, and unethical behaviour will occur less. But how do we achieve such a society?
First of all, by telling each other about it, as I do in this article. This might start a snowball effect. But it is not without reason that Aristoteles paid special attention to the education of children. They are more malleable and have a whole life ahead of them. And then education quickly comes into the picture. What are the experiences of raising virtuous, happy children?
Insights are still scarce. Positive psychology is still relatively young, and educationalists are reluctant to follow the delusion of the day. It is difficult to devise and introduce good new pedagogical methods, and evaluation can take years. However, there are pedagogical interventions that have already been positively evaluated.
Mental resilience first. Everyone experiences setbacks, big or small. In line with the Stoa, it is not the external event that determines our happiness, but our response to it. Mental resilience training can have a beneficial effect on our optimism, and can moderate the effects of anxiety and depression and help prevent behavioural problems. One of the techniques is to consciously reflect on unpleasant experiences, to learn to put that experience into perspective and also to connect favourable interpretations with that experience.
Another technique that can have an effect on mental resilience is mindfulness. With mindfulness you learn to observe the processes in your own head and body from a distance, without immediately attaching judgement or emotion to them. With mindfulness you learn to maintain calm and pay more attention to the here and now, instead of a continuous focus on potentially frightening or stressful events in the past or in the future. With the right method, children also benefit measurably, in terms of subjective well-being, fears and concentration.
Gratitude and forgiveness can also be trained at a young age. I already mentioned the gratitude journal, a technique that children can also benefit from. Children can also be taught to reflect on conflicts and incidents that they experience among themselves. Learning to write letters in which the other is forgiven is one of the techniques used. More techniques to teach children virtues are still being developed.
Aristotle's egg?
Gradually we know better and better how people can become happier and better people. It is hopeful that society can benefit from this, partly due to the snowball effect: happiness and virtue are contagious and they reinforce each other.
But suppose it works. Let's imagine what the world would look like then. We would stop building institutions based on justice, freedom and equality. Instead, we put all our energy into eudaimonia. Everyone in the world starts to focus on achieving happiness, positivity, autonomy and virtue. What would the world be like then?
Naturally, everyone is tolerant towards each other. But it would not mean that all misery would be eradicated. Some people are luckier than others, or approach their lives more skilfully. Inequality would continue to exist. But because everyone is virtuous, we would no longer tolerate dire poverty. The rich would stand in solidarity with the poor. Natural disasters would still occur, and so would diseases. Of course we would take care of each other if that happened. Crime would probably still occur: crimes sometimes arise from a misunderstanding, or are committed on an impulse — think of a crime of passion, for example. But because a virtuous society is also forgiving, we would no longer need prisons. Criminals are no longer punished, but cared for and guided. This also applies to people who behave unvirtuously based on a mental disorder. Human nature does not change, so addictions are still lurking. Naturally, the use of addictive substances is discouraged, but those who fall prey to them are lovingly guided. In any case, the number of crimes and addictions will decrease drastically, because those who are happy and virtuous have no need to steal anything from someone else or get drunk. And not everyone in the world has to be 100 percent virtuous full-time. That's not realistic anyway. If the majority is like that most of the time, lost sheep will automatically be helped back on the right path. A pub quarrel does not escalate, the businessman who negotiates too sharply is reprimanded, the greedy banker is punished.
Perhaps the most difficult problem in a virtuous society is that of different insights and externalities. Most differences of opinion can be resolved with tolerance. One prays before eating and the other doesn't, no problem, you don't get in each other's way. One person is attracted to men and the other to women, and another does not want to be binary or is attracted to both. Fine.
But suppose that part of society is strongly opposed to nuclear energy. The risks are too great, and you will never get rid of nuclear waste. Another part of society sees nuclear energy as the only realistic way out when fossil energy runs out. Both positions are arguable, even for virtuous people. How do we get to decide what to do? And suppose that the pro-nuclear energy group decides to build a number of nuclear reactors for itself. The other group, which absolutely disagrees with this, suffers from this. After all, the risk of a nuclear accident is global, and we only have one Earth to store nuclear waste. You cannot solve this problem with virtue. Similar problems arise, for example, between meat eaters and vegetarians, between fighters against greenhouse gases and those who do not see the point. Or between supporters and opponents of stem cell research or abortion.
In order to make a decision on these types of issues, you can hardly avoid institutions that regulate what can or must or may, and what cannot. And institutions are also useful to ensure that cooperation runs smoothly.
And it does not necessarily have to be social problems that cannot be resolved between virtuous people. Suppose you are terminally ill and you want euthanasia, but your spouse believes that people should not make decisions about life and death. A virtuous person can take either position. Virtue itself doesn’t resolve this dilemma. Or you work with a colleague for whom honour is a very important virtue, while you believe more in a pragmatic approach when a rival slanders the reputation of your company.
The conclusion is obvious. With attention to eudaimonia and virtue, the world can become a much better place. But a paradisiacal state will not arrive. There will continue to be ethical issues, even between virtuous people, and conflicts of interest will continue to exist. We will discuss different approaches in the next episodes. Kant's deontology and Mill's utilitarianism are discussed successively. And after that, let’s see what happens next.
For further reading
Aristoteles, Ethika Nikomacheia (4e century BCE, also translated into English)
David Hume, A treatise on human nature (1739)
David Hume, An enquiry concerning the principles of morals (1751)
Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886, also translated into English )
Christopher Peterson, Martin Seligman, Character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification (2004)
Stan van Hooft, Understanding virtue ethics (2006)
Barbara Fredrickson, Positivity (2009)
Daniel C. Russell (ed.), The Cambridge companion to virtue ethics (2013)
Kristján Kristjánsson, Virtues and vices in positive psychology (2013)
Pelin Kesebir, Ed Diener, A virtuous cycle. The relationship between happiness and virtue, in: Nancy Snow, Franco Trivigno (ed.), The philosophy and psychology of character and happiness (2014)
Rick Snyder c.s. (ed.), The Oxford handbook of positive psychology (3rd edition, 2016)
Dan Buettner c.s., Ways to greater happiness: A Delphi study, Journal of Happiness Studies (2020)
Rosalind Hursthouse, Virtue ethics, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2022)
This was the fifth episode in the series on morality and toleration. The episodes so far are:
The morality that everyone is born with
About the moral modules that all people have in common. About kin selection, cooperation, empathy and much more.Playing games with morality
Our ingrained moral modules interact. With simple games you can simulate how people in societies interact with each other. About dealing with power, division, revenge and trust.The morality of our inner hunter-gatherer, farmer and citizen
Our morality is layered: every phase of human history has left its mark. Culturally, there are still layers of hunter-gatherer, farmer, and citizen in our ethics.Annoying questions about good and bad
Is there such a thing as moral knowledge? And how do we find out? About self-doubt, man-eaters, emotional judgements, and the difference between theft and vegetables.Good people are happier. But how to become a good and happy person?
Aristotle's virtue ethics along the empirical ruler. Do we even need an ethical system if everyone is virtuous and happy? And positive psychology: how to become a happier and better person?
The next episode in this series will be about Immanuel Kant's deontology.
But first, next week there will be an article in the series on Christianity and toleration, about the Reformation.