Happiness and Utopia: Thinking about the Ideal Life

This course examines the notion of an ideal human life, understood as living well in ideal circumstances. This notion is at once familiar and puzzling. On the one hand, we all have some conception of living well - i.e., happiness, flourishing, the good life. And we recognize some circumstances as inimical to human flourishing, such as conditions of famine, poverty, oppression, and exploitation. Moreover, we seem to operate with some idea of good circumstances whenever we wish good fortune for our loved ones, or whenever we work to make our societies more supportive of human well-being. But on closer inspection, the notion of ideal circumstances raises a number of questions. What would human life look like in utopian conditions? Would humans still work and labor, or would we pass our lives entirely in leisure? Could our lives still have meaning and purpose, if there were nothing in our circumstances to struggle against?Would we still need virtues like courage and perseverance, with nothing to fear or overcome? And what about death: is it the ultimate non-ideal circumstance that might be overcome in some future utopia? This course considers such questions in relation to the notion of an ideal human life. We will read a range of philosophical texts, from Aristotle to Thomas More to contemporary thinkers. We will also examine film and works of imaginative literature by writers such as H.G. Wells.