Another area of Ethics deals with the ideal life which human beings should lead. There are various views about the chief good or aim of life. One such aim is pleasure, conceived as consisting simply in the gratification of the particular impulses as they arise. This is known as hedonism. Happiness is seen as another goal of life. Happiness is sought over the whole of one’s life. It consists of enjoying various pleasures in moderation and in avoiding dissipation. The pleasures can consist of ties of family and friendship, intellectual interests, aesthetic enjoyments and spiritual pursuits. Some writers like Hobbes and Nietzsche have taken a radically different view arguing that people may pursue power or self assertion as an alternative goal.
There is a sublime conception of ideal human life. It holds that human impulses must be subjected to a moral law to encompass them in a rational system. This view emphasises the law of reason or of duty. The feelings which people experience in adopting this mode of life are very different from mere satisfactions. Pursuit of self-interest leads to a type of satisfaction quite different from following duty; sensual enjoyments yield satisfactions different from those that arise from poetic or religious emotion. Carlyle describes such higher types of feelings as blessedness than as happiness. Spinoza uses the term beatitude in this sense. This form of happiness is found, according to Spinoza, in the “Intellectual Love of God,” i.e. in the appreciation of the universe as the realisation of a spiritual principle. Spinoza says, that “happiness (beatitude) is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself,” i.e. it is an essential aspect in the attainment of the right point of view. A very different self is realised in each of these cases; and the accompanying feeling of self realisation is therefore different.
Moral ideal in these conceptions consists in some form of self-realisation i.e. in some form of the development of character; and the end is seen as moral perfection than as happiness. Moral life is viewed as a process of growth. According to Green, the essential element in the nature of man is the rational or spiritual principle. Man resembles animals in having appetites, sensations and mental
images. However, all these, and everything else in man’s nature, are modified by his reason. This is because man is rational, self-conscious, and spiritual. This is the essential aspect of human nature. The significance of the moral life consists in the constant endeavour to make this principle more and more explicit - to bring out more and more completely our rational, self-conscious, spiritual nature. Green says that men should attain a moral status which is most completely rational.