ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines different alternatives that want to base an ethical view on the notion of the good life, or to begin an ethical inquiry with the notion of the agent and her life. Even modern ethics is actually based on a particular conception of the good life which must be made explicit. There are several important issues that must be taken into account when one wants to formulate an ethical theory based on the notion of the good life. First, it is important actually to set considerations of the good life as prior to other moral concerns. Second, an 'ethics of the good life' must include issues that the advocates of this approach see as being excluded from the domain of morality in modern theories. Charles Taylor argues that, despite its inarticulacy, there is a powerful moral ideal, underlying the culture of modern liberal democracies: the ideal of authenticity, or self-fulfilment.
