In The Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle sets out to discover the "good life" for human beings: the life of happiness or eudaimonia. "Eudaimonia" is perhaps best translated as flourishing or living and doing well. Most, if not all, people will agree that a flourishing life comprises social trust and respect, family and friendship, leisure, avoiding escapable morbidity and premature death, living in safe and clean environments, having political and civic freedoms, having adequate shelter, being able to read, write, and count, being well-nourished, socially integrated etc.
How much money do we actually need to lead a "good life"? How much is enough? These questions might seem impossible to answer but they are not trivial. Making money cannot be an end in itself (it cannot be the chief aim and highest priority of individuals and societies) for the simple reason that there is nothing to do with money except spend it. The answer to these questions depends on what we think we need enough money for: our needs or our wants. For some of us the material pre-requisites of well-being and the "good life" have already been met.We have enough material resources and assets to adequately meet our needs. It is, however, in relation to our unlimited wants (in comparison with others) that we feel we lack and are competing for scarce or limited resources.In their book How Much is Enough?: Money and the good life, Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky assert: "The beginning of sanity in this matter is to think of scarcity in relation to needs, not wants ... we are all, in principle, capable of limiting our wants to our needs; the problem is that a competitive, monetised economy puts us under continual pressure to want more and more ... considered in relation to our vital needs, our state is not one of scarcity but rather of extreme abundance."It seems to me that, in modern society, individualism, acquisitiveness and consumerism - not community, generosity and moderation - are celebrated and held up as the ideal. Instead of striving for a better society, the sole quest of many is to better their own position - as individuals - within the existing society.
