What is Good? The Search for the Best Way to Live

A.C. Grayling’s What is Good? The Search for the Best Way to Live is a concise work of moral philosophy in which he surveys major answers, from classical Greece to the modern era, to the question of what constitutes a good life, contrasting secular, human-centered ethics with religious, transcendental conceptions of moral value. Moving through figures such as the Greek poets, Christian thinkers, Enlightenment philosophers, and contemporary human rights frameworks, he shows how different ages have grounded goodness in pleasure, virtue, duty, or divine command. Grayling ultimately defends a broadly secular ideal that locates moral value in human flourishing, autonomy, and our responsibilities to one another, proposing that a good life is one that feels worthwhile to live and contributes constructively to the lives of others.