Aristotle
Books 1, 2, and 8 — happiness as the human end (eudaimonia), virtue as a settled habit forged through practice, and friendship as constitutive of the flourishing life — are essential reading for everything that follows in this course.
Discussion Questions
- In Book 1, Aristotle argues that happiness is the ultimate end goal of human life (the telos) and that happiness can be found in the lifelong exercise of virtue. How does this conception of happiness differ from the contemporary American conception of happiness? Which is closer to what the Founders meant when they listed "the pursuit of Happiness" among the unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence?
- In Book 2, Aristotle argues that we become virtuous by performing virtuous acts — that virtue is not innate, nor taught by lecture, but is acquired by repeated practice until the disposition becomes settled. What follows from this for how a society should be organized? For how a law school should be organized? For how you should organize your week?
- Go back to Washington's Rules of Civility — how might these practices have informed Washington's own views on virtue and how it is formed? Or affected his own cultivation of virtue?
John Finnis
Natural Law and Natural Rights, pp. 59–99 (the basic goods)
Discussion Questions
- Is Finnis's list of basic goods an alternative to Aristotle's account of eudaimonia, or is it a specification of what eudaimonia actually consists in? Does the answer matter?
Iris Murdoch
The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts, in The Sovereignty of Good (1970), pp. 75–101
Discussion Questions
- Is Murdoch right that genuine moral life requires sustained attention to what is real outside the self — and that much of what passes for moral reflection is actually self-regarding fantasy?
- If she is, what does that imply for how a person — or a lawyer, or a judge — should think about the moral dimensions of their work?