Singer's Argument Essay: What Makes A Good Life?

Humans are constantly plagued by the question of meaning and value of life. They seek significance and worth in the things they pursue. As conscious beings, they evaluate the importance of the life they live and the life they leave behind. People from diverse backgrounds, philosophers, scientists, writers, have tried to answer the fundamental question what constitutes a good life. According to Dworkin, a good life is not just about living in some pleasurable way; it is about creating a good life in a critical way.

It can be argued that living a good life entails treading down a moral path, doing all that morality requires us to do; however Dworkin posits that moral principles should be interpreted so that being moral makes us happy. In his
Singer first sets his premise that suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad (Singer 231). If we are capable of preventing something bad like death from famine and other disasters from occurring, without sacrificing something of comparable moral importance, then we should. Therefore, we ought to contribute as much as we can to the alleviation of poverty-induced famine to the point where contributing more would do us more harm than benefit the needy. Singer’s principle prescribes that we need to contribute as much as possible to alleviate poverty because morality demands this of affluent people and nations because they are simply obligated to make efforts to prevent the bad from happening. Dworkin would regard Singer’s principle as the austere view, and that it would be an illegitimate answer to say that morality provides its own only justification, that we must be moral simply because that is what morality demands (Dworkin 2). Furthermore, Singer puts forth an application of his principle with an example: if I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing (Singer 231). On the other hand, Dworkin questions: “Should
Dworkin suggests that it is important to focus on the process rather than the product, the journey over the goal. In his essay, Dworkin further explains that the impact a life leaves behind is hardly ever taken into consideration while evaluating the quality of a life lived as evidenced by Aristotle’s emphasis on acquiring knowledge and Plato’s on order and balance (Dworkin 7). Not everyone discovers penicillin or writes the words to King Lear, and if we were to determine a life lived according to the consequences it leaves behind, only a few lives would be considered worth living. Expounding upon the value of a good life, Dworkin then goes on to state that like art, life is valued based on the process just the way the art of creating is valued over the creation. A good life is one that is lived while enjoying the simple pleasures like friendship and accomplishing small acts like playing a tune or a part or a hand, throwing a curve or a compliment, make a chair or a sonnet or love. On the contrary, Singer believes that we should contribute to causes like famine relief whose outcomes are almost always guaranteed. His vision of a moral life is about working towards a cause that brings about positive impacts like the alleviation of poverty. Responding to Singer’s principle, Dworkin would probably assert that “it is the performance rather than the product value of living