My first philosophy course at UBC was PHIL 100. My professor, Professor Samantha Matherne, on the first day of the lecture said, “This course is going to be about living the good-life”. I cannot count the number of times she used the phrase ‘good-life’ in our course. Well I can count them but that is not the point. At the end of every book we read, she would say, “So, what is [philosopher’s name]’s conception of the good-life?” I moved on in Philosophy and went ahead with studying a lot of things without every considering the question that Prof. Matherne always asked at the end of a book, “What was her/his conception of the good-life?”

Go ahead and look up best-selling philosophy books. There will be a list by Amazon and bunch of other websites that offer lists. Browse through a few.
“On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes” by Alexandra Horowitz. “Mastermind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes” by Maria Konnikova. “How children succeed” by Paul Tough. “Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making , Problem-solving and Prediction” by John Brockman. “Manage your day-to-day”. “Give and take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success”. “The Examined Life: How we Lose and Find Ourselves”. “How to stay sane”.
They are all answering some aspect of the larger question, “What makes a good life?”.

Let’s, however, take all of this a little back in time. The time when the mechanical printing press was in full swing and books were sold at a large scale. The same place were Shakespeare made his fortunes from selling his plays. Britain in December, 1689. This was the year that John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding was first published by Thomas Basset. Locke’s book was the first “overwhelming success” for a philosophy book, as described by John Price while writing the article “Philosophy Books” for the The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Needless to say, a reliable source.

I will look at a number of theories to see why the book was successful, except the theory of the good life. The question of a good life is germane to our generation where religion does not play a big part in our daily lives. If you asked the question as to how one should lead a good life in 1689, the answer would be in the religion that is popular at the time and place. But this only makes it more interesting because the answer won’t be obvious to me.

So, what can you expect?