Abstract
Philosophers and social critics have promoted different conceptions of the good human life for some 2000 years. Such philosophical conceptions always included, or relied entirely on models of good psychological functioning or mental health. In contrast, psychologists have only recently entered the debate about the Good Life. It was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that theorists such as Baldwin (1906), James (1890), Freud (1961), Horney (1937), and Erikson (1963) began to articulate models of mental and psychological health. These models can be understood as attempts to define (in part) a good human life. Many contemporary philosophers believe that there are as many conceptions of the Good Life as there are persons who seek it (e.g., Nozick, 1974; Rawls, 1971). The findings of this study, however, indicate that although the sources of our conceptions differ widely across time and culture, the number of actual views of the Good Life may be finite. Moreover, despite the 2000 years that passed between ancient philosophers and early psychologists, these groups, too, produced some strikingly similar ideas about the Good Life. Further, there is dramatic similarity between the Good Life concepts of many philosophers and the work of contemporary developmental psychologists. Finally, the results presented here demonstrate that educated adults, many of whom have studied neither philosophy nor psychology, also construct similiar good life concepts.
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Armon, C., Dawson, T.L. (2002). The Good Life. In: Demick, J., Andreoletti, C. (eds) Handbook of Adult Development. The Springer Series in Adult Development and Aging. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0617-1_15
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