What Makes a Good Life? How the Great Traditions and Modern Research Answer It

Start hereAristotle judged a happy life over its whole length. Today the World Happiness Report ranks countries on a single 0 to 10 question. Can one number capture what he meant?

People have asked what makes a life go well for thousands of years. Philosophers and religious teachers gave answers, and researchers now measure it with surveys. This page looks at four old answers in their own words, then at what the big modern studies measure and what they can’t tell us. It ends with a short test you can borrow from each.

011. A simple example

Think of two questions: how was your day? and how is your life going? A great day can sit inside a hard year, and a dull day inside a good one.

Most of the answers below are about the second question. They ask what holds up over a whole life, not what feels good this afternoon.

022. What the words mean

The Greeks had two words for life. In the standard dictionary of ancient Greek, bios means a mode of life, as opposed to zōē, the life an animal has. A way of life, in that sense, is something you shape.

The Greek word usually translated happiness is eudaimonia. Its first meaning in the same dictionary is “prosperity, good fortune, opulence”. True, full happiness is listed as a second sense. It is often translated flourishing as well as happiness. It describes a whole life going well, not a mood.

033. Four old answers, one test each

Aristotle: judge the whole life

In D. P. Chase’s translation of the Nicomachean Ethics, the good of a human being is “a working of the Soul in the way of Excellence”. Aristotle adds that it must be over a complete life. He writes that “it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring”, and one short time does not make a person happy either.

Test: would this still look good over a whole life, not just today?

Epicurus: pleasure, but the quiet kind

Epicurus said pleasure is the goal, then explained what he meant. “By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.” He also wrote that we often pass over pleasures when greater annoyance would follow from them.

Test: will this pleasure cost me pain or trouble later? Our page on what Epicurus actually taught goes further.

Epictetus: sort what is yours

The Stoic teacher Epictetus begins his Enchiridion with one split. “There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power.” Within our power, he says, are opinion, aim, desire and aversion; beyond it are body, property, reputation and office.

Test: is this within my power? See our summary of the Enchiridion.

The Buddha: a middle way

In an early Buddhist discourse, the Buddha speaks to five mendicants near Varanasi. He says there are two extremes that “should not be cultivated by one gone forth”. One is indulgence in sensual pleasures; the other is self-mortification.

Between them is the middle way of practice, which the discourse identifies with the noble eightfold path: right view, purpose, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and immersion. The quotations are from Bhikkhu Sujato’s translation.

Test: am I at an extreme? More of the early texts are checked on our page of Buddha quotes.

044. How researchers measure a good life

The World Happiness Report asks one question

Its country ranking rests on a single question, the Cantril Ladder. People imagine a ladder from 0, the worst possible life for them, to 10, the best. Then they say which step they stand on now.

• In most countries, about 1,000 people are asked each year, and the report combines the last three years of answers.
• Six factors, including GDP per capita, healthy life expectancy and having someone to count on, account for more than three-quarters of the differences between countries.
• The report says those factors show “lines of correlation rather than reflecting clean causal estimates”.

Doesn't hold up The happiness ranking is built from income and social benefits. It is built from how people rate their own lives; the six factors only help explain the differences.

The Global Flourishing Study measures more

This study asks about happiness and life satisfaction, health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, close relationships, and financial and material stability. The answers are averaged into an index from 0 to 10.

Its first results paper describes over 200,000 people in 22 countries. Reports count the places differently:

• the paper’s own list has 22 countries and territories, Hong Kong among them;
• Gallup’s 2024 write-up says 21 countries and one territory;
• a Harvard news story says 22 countries and one territory, Hong Kong.

We follow the paper’s own list of 22 places.

Two findings from that first wave stand out:

• Age. Pooled across the countries, flourishing was essentially flat through ages 18 to 49, then rose with age. Even life satisfaction looked more J-shaped than the U-shape earlier work suggested. The authors say it is an open question whether this is an age effect or a cohort effect, and that only later waves of the study can tell.
• Religious attendance. People attending services at least weekly scored 0.41 points higher on average than those who never attend, accounting for other factors. In Indonesia and Tanzania there was no notable difference. The authors stress “these results are only associations”. In the paper, they add that other longitudinal and experimental studies suggest attendance may play a causal role.

055. What the long studies say about relationships

The Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed two groups of men for over 80 years. One is 268 Harvard graduates from the classes of 1939 to 1944; the other is 456 men who grew up in inner-city Boston.

One peer-reviewed result shows what such findings look like. Researchers interviewed 81 older couples, 162 people; the men came from the study’s two groups.

• People more securely attached to their spouse had less depression and greater life satisfaction 2.5 years later.
• For women, greater security also predicted better memory.

The limits are the authors’ own. All participants were white and from two particular generations. Because the memory, mood and wellbeing measures were each taken at only one time point, they say the direction of effects cannot be established, and that they could not test links with changes in wellbeing. They also say replication is required.

A wider review points the same way. Across 148 studies with 308,849 people, those with stronger social relationships had a 50% greater likelihood of survival over an average follow-up of 7.5 years. The authors add that “causality is not easily established”, because people cannot be randomly assigned to be isolated or married. They note the same is true of smoking, and point to experimental, cross-sectional and long-term evidence linking relationships with pathways associated with death. They judge the effect comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality.

Partly The research proves good relationships make us happier and healthier. The link is strong and consistent across many studies. It can’t be tested by random assignment, so the case for cause rests on indirect evidence, as it once did for smoking.

066. How to use it

• Rate your life on the ladder. Pick a number from 0 to 10 today and again in a month. Note what you think moved it.
• Borrow a test from each tradition. Will this hold over a whole life? Will this pleasure cost me later? Is this within my power? Am I at an extreme?
• Check the wider list. The flourishing study asks about health, meaning, character, relationships and money, not just mood. Pick the area you have neglected and take one small step this week.
• Put people on the calendar. Relationships show a strong, consistent link in this research. That is an association, not a cure, but it is cheap to act on. A new hobby with other people is one way in.

07Quick answers

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How we checked this · Last checked October 2026

• We read the old texts in public-domain or openly licensed translations, Chase's Aristotle, Hicks's Diogenes Laertius, Higginson's Epictetus and Bhikkhu Sujato's translation of the discourse, plus the Greek dictionary on Perseus.
• For the research we read the World Happiness Report's FAQ, the Global Flourishing Study paper and Gallup's write-up, the Harvard study's own page, the couples study and the full text of the 148-study review.
• The flourishing study's place count differs between sources, so we show all three and follow the paper's own list.
• For the 148-study review we give the authors' full argument on cause, including their comparison with smoking, not only their caution.
• The couples study's full text blocks scripts, so we read it in a browser.

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