Happiness is the highest good.
The thesis claims that happiness—understood as overall balance of pleasure over pain or human flourishing—is the highest good and the ultimate purpose of life.
Loading the atlas
The atlas · 31 theses · 35 relationships
Browse a structured corpus of philosophical investigations. Filter by subject, epistemic status, and recency — or search across claims, authors, and evidence.
Status
Filters operate on the stored corpus. Empty results are real: no thesis has been manufactured to fill a category.
3 theses in Ethics with status Underdetermined
The thesis claims that happiness—understood as overall balance of pleasure over pain or human flourishing—is the highest good and the ultimate purpose of life.
The thesis claims that humans possess a natural disposition toward prosocial and morally good behavior that is at least as basic as selfishness. Current philosophical literature mentions human nature but provides no decisive empirical support for this specific claim.
Epicurus argues that death is not harmful to the person who dies because when death occurs the person no longer exists and thus cannot experience sensation. This supports the claim that we need not fear death. However, alternative views hold that death can be harmful by depriving a person of future goods, leaving the thesis underdetermined.
Sorted by relevance to query. Evidence strength is not used as a sort key because verification currently checks quoted wording, not the strength or relevance of the evidence.
View as knowledge map →