William Irvine's A Guide To The Good Life

The number one objective that humans want to achieve before they are on their death bed is having a good life. They do not want to ponder the fact of accomplishing their goal before they perish into their state of death. To fulfill your life and achieve joy, one must have a philosophy they need to follow during their lifetime.

“The goal for philosophy in the ancient Greek world was not merely life, but to live a good life….[the good life] has important implications in what we do”(Swift 5).

Everything that we do in life, it is all based around our goal that we want ourselves to attain. Every path you take and every choice you make all results in you trying to get closer to your goal. The goal of which will bring you to having a good life. Additionally, having a philosophy makes it easier to make decisions regarding yourself. You already know what goal you have in mind to achieve. Thus you choose the path that can make you reach that goal. To choose without having a philosophy makes it even harder since you would be even more indecisive. Irvine agrees with this notion;

“…having a philosophy of life, whether it be stoicism or some other philosophy, can dramatically simplify everyday living”(Irvine 203).

In William Irvines A Guide to the Good Life, he mentions stoicism and how this philosophy is a perfect model of philosophy and that we should follow it. But he also mentions that just having a philosophy to start off with is key. Following a philosophy is the main point of living and without one you are lost. Hence, to live you must follow a strict philosophy based upon your own ideals and values. My argument is that there is not one coherent philosophy that you must follow, you should be able to pick and choose different parts of d...

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...o achieve that goal in which their philosophy brought to them.

The philosophy that suits you the best is your own. It has been done for thousands of years where people have created their own philosophy. It has been done with the aid of philosophers and schools and can still be done today with our resources. You can always look back at documentation to understand past philosophies and use it in your own. Also, you can use and implement some of the basis of your religion into your own philosophy depending on whether you are actually going to follow it. Everyone’s philosophy should be like a puzzle or a melting pot; everyone believes in the same things but also different things. You want your philosophy to be coherent, understandable for when you are stuck and something that you will die for. Otherwise there is no point in living a life without a specific philosophy.