What was wrong with the Washington Consensus?

 

Just as I was reading the final chapters of William Easterly’s book, Violent Saviours: The West, the Rest, and Capitalism Without Consent, the United States government abducted the president of Venezuela to stand trial on drug charges in New York. I was pleased to see Nicolás Maduro facing justice, even if for the wrong reasons, but at the time of writing it remains to be seen whether the U.S. actions will advance the economic and personal freedom of Venezuelans.

 In the light of recent developments, Easterly’s conclusion seem to me to be excessively optimistic. He states:

“Adam Smith’s prophesied movement of “nations into some sort of respect for the rights of one another” had been partially fulfilled. The relation of the West to the Rest, previously based on coercion, was now based mainly on consent.”

Under the presidency of Donald Trump, the U.S. seems to me to be behaving like a colonial power. President Trump makes no secret of the fact that he is more interested in control of additional territory, oil, and other resources than in promoting respect for human rights, free trade, and the liberal international order.

Apologists for President Trump can claim, with some justification, that big powers have always swung their weight around in their own interests despite their rhetoric supporting the liberal international order. Nevertheless, public support for international norms of behaviour has hitherto signaled a willingness to be held to account publicly for breach of those norms.

 Easterly qualifies his statement that the relation of the West and the Rest is now based mainly on consent:

“The trend toward freedom is neither inexorable nor irreversible. As of this writing, new threats to freedom have emerged with proposed increases in US tariffs and possible restrictions on foreign students. It’s a little premature to declare the attainment of a liberal paradise.”

With the benefit of observation of recent events, however, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the world is currently moving rapidly away from the ideal of relations between nations being based on consent rather than coercion. It is possible, nevertheless, that oppressed people in some countries will manage to achieve more economic and personal freedom over the next few years. The best we can hope for is that before too long Washington will once again embrace the ideal that relations between nations should be based on consent rather than coercion.

Before I discuss Easterly’s view of the Washington Consensus, I will briefly outline what Violent Saviours is about.

The West’s conflicted view of the Rest

Violent Saviours offers a historical account of the conflict between the duelling visions that have influenced the conduct of Western nations toward the rest of the world since the 17^th and 18^th centuries. On the one hand, there are the liberal ideas of consent, self-determination, and equality that make possible positive-sum gains from commerce between groups and individuals. On the other hand, there are the opposing illiberal ideas of coercion, paternalism and racism that yielded a negative sum world of conquest.

Adam Smith was a leading advocate of liberal ideas and a critic of many aspects of colonialism. However, some well-intentioned Enlightenment philosophers (e.g. Condorcet) offered support for the “Development Right of Conquest”. Condorcet sought to justify conquest as offering the hope of eventually “civilizing” the locals.

Over the period from 1776 to 1865, the liberals were mainly on the losing side. They were unable to prevent the West’s adoption of illiberal policies such as colonial conquest and population removal (in countries such as the U.S, and Australia). However, liberals had some victories during that period; most notably, they were able to bring about abolition of the slave trade and of slavery in the United States.

Easterly suggests that over the period from 1865 to 1945 most economists abandoned liberal morality: “Commerce expands but without moral constraints on plunder”. The regression of freedom culminated in World War II, during which liberalism had to fight for its survival.

The period since 1945 has seen the partial victory of liberal ideas with the end of colonialism and a surge in commerce which has partially restored agency to people in the former colonies. Easterly notes that some economists – notably Milton Friedman, P. T. Bauer, and Amartya Sen – revived the idea of individual freedom as “an end in itself”.

It is possible to quibble with some aspects of that account, but I think the important point to focus on is the current state of the conflict between the duelling visions. Easterly writes:

“Yet the legacy of the past is still here. While obviously not equating modern development efforts with slavery, genocide, and colonialism, the question remains of what violations of consent today in the name of progress should be out of bounds.”

That provides the context in which I would like to consider the Washington Consensus.

 The Washington Consensus

The Washington Consensus was the term John Williamson, an economist, invented in 1989 to describe the set of policy reforms that the US Treasury, the World Bank and the IMF believed would be good for Latin American countries. The ten propositions of the Washington Consensus combined fiscal discipline with selective deregulation. They were broadly pro-market but did not entail a vastly diminished role for government. As an advocate of a greater measure of economic freedom than required by the ten points in the Washington Consensus, I recall being bemused to see opponents equate it with “neoliberalism” and “market fundamentalism”. John Williamson had a different reaction. As he discussed in the paper from which I obtained the epigraph, he was concerned that the term was often being used to refer to a more radical pro-market view than he had intended.

The policy ideas in the Washington Consensus were certainly applicable beyond Latin American countries and were not confined to economists in Washington DC. Those ideas were widely accepted by economists with expertise in economic policy in many different countries. I think they are still widely accepted by economists today.

As I was reading Easterly’s discussion of the Washington Consensus, the thought crossed my mind that the era in which it held sway was actually the high point in economic development policy as advocated by the World Bank. The Washington consensus seemed to show more recognition of the importance of economic freedom than subsequent policy approaches emerging from Washington.

One of the problems that Easterly mentions is that many observers thought that pro-market reforms were only desirable if they produced immediate economic gains. The reforms led to anti-globalization protests because they didn’t have an immediate positive impact on economic growth and were often associated with worsening of poverty. As time went on, however, “there was more evidence of growth turnarounds and poverty reduction correlated with movements away from extreme state control”.

As I was reading this, I tried to recollect what I had written in the 1990s about the adjustment process following an expansion of economic freedom. I wrote about some aspects of that question in an article entitled “The New Zealand Model of Economic Reform: A Review” (published in: Agenda: A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1997), ANU Press). My work suggested that the lack of clear evidence of economic benefits in some countries that had undertaken economic reforms in the 1980s could be attributed partly to the time required for new policy directions to become embedded and for adjustment to occur: 

“Profound changes in behaviour, including changes in the willingness of individuals to learn new skills and business practices, are required as people respond to the incentives that policy reforms provide.  It takes time even for the most innovative firms and individuals to accept that new market incentives are likely to be sustained and to develop and implement new strategies.  Widespread adoption requires sufficient time for these new strategies to become demonstrably successful.”

I am pleased that I wrote that even though I missed an important point that Easterly makes. He suggests that the emphasis “on material results alone – on both sides of the debate – neglected Sen’s and others’ arguments for freedom as an end in itself”.

I don’t see freedom as an “end in itself” – freedom is necessary because human flourishing is an individualized and self-directed process. What I think Easterly means is that institutional freedom would be no less desirable if individuals chose to use it ways that made no contribution to economic growth e.g. by increasing the amount of time they spent on leisure activities.

Easterly also suggests that the manner in which foreign governments were encouraged to adopt Washington Consensus polices was problematic:

“Low and middle-income countries could get badly needed loans from the World Bank and IMF only if they agreed to reforms decreed by Bank and Fund staff. The fatal combination of foreign advisors with some coercion would keep discrediting promarket recommendations made by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in the 1990s, especially for Africa, Latin America, and Russia.”

A few pages on, however, the author notes that “the association of liberal reforms with a Washington-imposed Consensus did not turn out to be fatal”. He follows that observation with a long list of “homegrown reformers” who have pursued pro-market reforms. (I have reproduced the list here.)

Unfortunately, Easterly’s list of reformers does not include Javier Milei, president of Argentina. It was probably compiled too soon for that to be possible.

Now that I have mentioned Javier Milei it is worth noting that the U.S. government offered a $20 billion bailout for Argentina prior to the country’s recent legislative elections. The offer was apparently made with strings attached — namely, that the funds would be available only if Milei’s party won the election.

It seems to me that if the U.S. president were to promote a general policy of assisting those low-income countries whose political leaders enthusiastically expand economic and personal freedom, he might be worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.   

Conclusion

William Easterly’s book, Violent Saviours, offers an insightful account of the conflict between liberal and coercive views of economic development since the 17^th and 18^th centuries. He suggests that the legacy of the past is still with us because development economists and policy makers are still confronted by the question of what violations of consent should be out of bounds.

That provided the context in which I considered Easterly’s views of what was wrong with the Washinton Consensus – the moderately pro-market economic policies advocated by the U.S. Treasury, the World Bank, and the IMF during the 1990s. Easterly is clearly sympathetic to espousal of pro-market policies. However, he makes a strong case that such policies should be advocated to promote economic freedom rather than to promote “material results alone”.

The view that Easterly presents is consistent with the idea that liberty is desirable because it provides opportunities for individuals to flourish in the manner they choose.

What questions should I focus on in 2026?

Happy New Year!

If I had asked myself at the beginning of 2025 what questions I should focus over the next 12 months I would have mentioned the implications of declining economic growth rates in high income countries.  I have been particularly interested in the consequences of an increasing proportion of the populations of high-income countries coming to feel that their standard of living is worse than that of their parents at a comparable age. My research suggests that people tend to feel miserable when they assess their standard of living to be lower than that of their parents. I wrote several essays on that topic, including one entitled: How difficult would it be for individuals to adjust to zero economic growth?

I would not have predicted at the beginning of 2025 that during the year I would write an essay entitled: Are integralists opposed to natural rights? That was my most popular essay for the year, with over 4,000 views.

My interest in integralists followed serendipitously from my interest in the role of political entrepreneurship in institutional change. At the beginning of 2025 I was concerned to obtain a better understanding of political entrepreneurship because there seemed to be increasing support in liberal democracies for leaders who proposed changes in the rules of the game which were likely to have detrimental impacts on prospects for individual flourishing. Some essays I wrote on the topic attracted over 3,900 views. I revised those essays during the year and published a series of essays in November addressing issues related to the question: What impact does political entrepreneurship have on freedom and flourishing?

I would not have predicted at the beginning of 2025 that I would have the opportunity to publish four scholarly essays by Edward W. Younkins, on topics that are central to the purpose of this blog.  An essay reviewing books by David L. Norton, was published here in January, a review of Chris Matthew Sciabarra’s book “Total Freedom” was published  here in July, an essay entitled, “How can Austrian Economics be reconciled with the Neo-Aristotelian philosophy of Freedom and Flourishing?”, was published here in October, and an essay entitled, “Can Polarized Moral Politics be Bridged by a Neo-Aristotelian Philosophy of Freedom and Flourishing”, was published here in December. Those essays have all attracted a substantial number of readers.

What next?

It may be possible to predict what I will write about in 2026 from topics that I wish I could understand more fully. Those topics may provide the focus for my future reading.

In a recent post, I have already foreshadowed further reading related to political entrepreneurship and institutional change.

I also feel the need to improve my understanding of the implications of rapid advances in AI. I wrote a series of essays about robots and AI in 2015 and 2016 (one of the better ones is here ) but a lot has happened since then.

Another topic I would like to be able to understand is why birth rates are now below replacement levels in many high-income countries. Can this be attributed to economic insecurity, or has there been a fundamental change in values? Does it pose a threat to civilization, as some have suggested? Does it pose a problem for those of us who believe that human flourishing is an inherently self-directed process?

I don’t expect to be able to push back the frontiers of knowledge in any of the areas mentioned above but it would be nice to end the year with a better understanding of some of the issues involved.

It will be interesting to look back at the end of 2026 to what I have actually written about. I imagine the range of topics touched upon will be broader than the topics listed above. I also hope to be given the opportunity to publish more high-quality guest essays that are consistent with the purposes of this blog.

Why is a sensible person like you driving a car like that?

 

No-one has asked me that question yet, but I thought I should have a speech ready just in case it happens.

The car is a BYD Atto 3. It is an electric vehicle, made in China.

A sensible person? Why would anyone say I was a “sensible person”? Some people might think I would be sensible enough not to choose a car which takes more than half an hour to power up at a charging station, when I could have a car which could be filled with petrol in less than 5 minutes.

My wife and I don’t anticipate spending much time at charging stations. We have decided that at our age the time has come to stop driving on long trips. We expect to be able to charge our new car at home nearly all the time.

Our choice of car has more to do with saving money than saving the planet. I am not going to attempt to justify the government incentives that made this a good decision for us. I will just try to explain why our decision makes sense from our perspective.

The main reason why our decision makes sense can be illustrated from this graph which shows our production and consumption of solar power one day a few weeks ago. The horizontal axis shows the time of day and the vertical access shows power production and consumption in kWh.

 

• The orange area shows what we purchase from the grid at a cost of 42 cents per kWh. 
• The green area shows what we export to the grid. Before we bought the car, we received about 10 cents per kWh for about half of that and only 4 cents per kWh for the rest.
• The blue area shows the amount of our solar energy that we consume ourselves. You can see the point at which I plugged in the car around noon and the point at which I unplugged the car at about 5 pm.

It costs us about 64 cents in foregone revenue to have the car plugged into the power for 10 hours. In that time, we would have added 112 km to the distance we could drive. The cost of petrol to drive that distance in our previous car (Subaru forester) would have been about $20.

Before we bought the new car, we usually spent about $100 per month on petrol. I assumed that home charging might cost us $20 per month, allowing for some charging on cloudy days. So, I estimated that we could have a potential saving in total power bills (difference between saving in cost of petrol and additional cost of electricity) of about $80 per month or $960 per annum. There are also savings in the cost of servicing which have been estimated at around $350 per annum.

So, that means a total saving of about $1,300 per annum.

However, at this point, I needed to take account of the additional cost of EVs (electric vehicles) by comparison with ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles. I used a KIA Seltos GT-Line FWD as the basis for comparison. At the time I was doing my calculations that was priced at around $47,000. That was about $3,900 less than the BYD Atto 3.

Since we are saving about $1,300 a year in running costs, the additional purchase price of the BYD Atto 3 would be recovered in about three years. That is much less than the expected life of the BYD's battery, which comprises a high percentage of the cost of the car. BYD offer an 8-year warranty on the car's battery.

We also looked at other electric cars. The comparable Tesla, VW and KIA cars were a lot more expensive at that time. The MG was cheaper, but we chose the Atto 3 because we liked its shape, color, and battery technology. Unlike the batteries in some other electric vehicles, the lithium iron phosphate battery in the Atto 3 can be fully charged frequently without degradation.

The Atto 3 has everything we were looking for. It has a range of over 400 km on a full battery. It fits our garage; has adequate boot capacity; it can be configured in a way that makes it fun to drive; and it has comfortable seats. It also has lots of safety features which can be switched on and off as required.

The car is naturally silent, but it can be made to emit sound so that blind people are able to hear that it is in their vicinity. I understand that for a few hundred dollars I might be able to make the car sound like an Aston Martin. However, my wife doesn’t think it is worth paying that price.

One thing that concerns me a little about buying a Chinese car is that it might be difficult to get spare parts if Australia goes to war with China. In that event, however, getting spare parts for the car might be the least of our worries.

Summing up

We have bought an electric vehicle because it suits our circumstances. We no longer drive long distances, and we have been exporting a lot of solar power to the grid.

The main point I would like to leave with you is that buying an electric vehicle can sometimes be a sensible choice, irrespective of any feel-good considerations about reducing CO2 emissions. At the same time, I admit that it does feel good to own a solar-powered car.

Addendum 1

This post was prepared for a speech delivered a couple of weeks ago at Charlestown Toastmasters. 

My wife and I purchased the car about 7 weeks ago. We have not yet visited a charging station.

I noted in my speech that I would not attempt to justify the government incentives that influenced our car purchase. I will now outline briefly the main impacts of government policies on the prices we faced.

It is possible that policies of the Chinese government provide an implicit subsidy to foreign consumers of Chinese-made electric vehicles. If so, I am grateful to the people of China for their assistance.

The cost of installing solar panels is subsidized by the Australian government. I expect we would still have installed solar panels if the Australian government had adopted a more rational approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, with a modest carbon tax rather than the mishmash of policies that currently apply. Even so, it may well be that a free market in energy without any carbon tax or other interventions would produce better outcomes for the people who live in this country, since our government's interventions have a negligible impact on the global climate.

The existence of fuel excise, which comprises a substantial proportion of the retail price of petrol, favours EVs relative to ICE vehicles. This excise is sometimes viewed as a road user charge. If that is appropriate, the absence of a similar charge on users of EVs is a price distortion favouring EVs relative to ICE vehicles.

However, in my view the fuel excise lacks the desirable characteristics of a road user charge – it doesn’t accurately reflect marginal costs of road usage, which are associated with congestion costs and road damage. It seems to me that there may be a stronger case for the fuel excise to be viewed as a carbon tax than as a road user charge. Purchase of fuel for use in ICEs is directly related to carbon emissions.  

That brings us back to the question of whether there is a case for Australia to have a carbon tax, given that Australian interventions have negligible impact on the global climate. If fuel excise cannot be justified as a carbon tax, it seems to me that a strong case can be made to eliminate this discriminatory tax, accompanied, if necessary, by an increase in a more broadly based tax such as the GST.

That leaves me doubting whether it would be possible to justify the government interventions that affect the prices on which our purchase decision was made. 

Nevertheless, from the perspective of individual consumers, distorted prices are a feature of the real world that they must accept. There is no prospect that relevant price distortions will be removed in the near future.

I will end on a personal note about the process I went through in contemplating purchase of an electric vehicle. There was an initial psychological barrier associated with the fact that I didn’t see myself as the kind of person who would own an electric vehicle, and particularly not one made in China. I had to acknowledge (to myself) that it didn’t make sense to see car choice as making an ideological statement - except insofar as basing the choice on utilitarian considerations could be said to be making an ideological statement.

I also needed to consider how I might feel if other people assumed that our choice of car involved some kind of virtue signaling about saving the planet from CO2 emissions. I decided that I would probably feel bemused rather than offended if that happened.

Addendum 2

In response to one of the comments below, I estimated the additional cost of electricity for a person in my circumstances who did not have solar panels. Assuming an off-peak rate of 22 cents per kWh, I estimated that the additional cost of electricity from ownerships of a BEV would be about $15 per month. That is still lower than the $20 per month I allowed in my calculation.

Addendum 3

John Freebairn has sent me the following comment relating to the suitability of the fuel excise as a road user charge.

"I offer some contrary arguments to your statement that the fuel excise is not a useful road user fee. Primarily, the fuel excise applies only to fuel purchased for use by on-road vehicles. The excise is exempt for all off-road vehicle uses, including mining, agriculture and shipping. The exemption does not make sense as a CO-2 pollution tax.

While one can agree that the correlation between  fuel consumption by on-road vehicles and social costs of road construction and maintenance, and of congestion, are not equal to unity, I'm sure they are positive. And fuel excise is a relatively simple and low cost tax or vehicle user fee. Modern technology may support more highly correlated and direct road user fees.

To exempt EVs from any form of road user fee means a subsidy and too much investment in and consumption of government supplied road services.

Another issue is that the fuel excise is not a hypothecated road user fee. In fact, the revenue is collected by the Commonwealth, and most road construction and maintenance is paid by the states and local governments. Yet, the Commonwealth in making its revenue grants to the states with advice from the Commonwealth Grants Commission includes consideration of relative costs across the states to provide comparable levels of road services per capita.

Reform of fuel excise as part of a pollution tax, and the introduction of a road user charge for all vehicles to reflect the social costs of investment and maintenance of roads and other transport infrastructure, policing, ambulances and other operating costs, should be on the tax reform agenda."

What did Aristotle have to say about mortality?

 

I had not thought much about what Aristotle had to say about mortality before reading the chapter on mortality in Edith Hall’s book, Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life (Vintage, 2018). (I have previously posted a guest essay by Leah Goldrick discussing Hall’s chapter on leisure.)

Hall’s chapter on mortality led me to ponder the title of Aristotle’s book, On Coming to Be and Passing Away. Hall mentions that book in making the point that Aristotle “undoubtedly saw death as final” even though he was sympathetic to those who were comforted by beliefs about an afterlife.

Passing

The reference to “passing away” brought to mind the use of that term, along with “passing on”, or just “passing” in referring to death. Such euphemisms make sense when motivated by a desire to avoid reminding people of the grief they felt following the death of a loved one. However, they may also refer to an afterlife. When I was a child I had no difficulty accepting my grandmother’s explanation of “passing” as being like moving from one room to another. That view was in keeping with her somewhat Platonic religious beliefs, as a follower of Mary Baker Eddy. Mrs Eddy explained death as a transitional stage in human experience and a product of what she regarded as the false belief that there is life in matter. Mrs Eddy’s beliefs now seem to me to be quite strange, but I still think her view of death is more coherent than some versions of popular theology, which seems to have the souls of dead people hanging around observing their descendants and applauding their accomplishments when they receive awards for sporting and other achievements.

I became agnostic on the question of life after death when I was a young adult. As an old man, I am now almost certain that Aristotle was correct in his belief that death is “the end”. However, I cannot completely rule out the possibility that I could have some kind of ongoing spiritual identity, and might wake up in another place – perhaps a very hot one – or even in another body.

The most terrible of all things?

Actually, Aristotle wrote: “death is the most terrible of all things, for it is the end.” I don’t agree that death is the most terrible of all things. Death can be terrible, but some forms of suffering are more terrible to contemplate than non-existence. I am too much of an Aristotelian to accept a Buddhist view of suffering as encompassing the desires and aversions that are a normal part of living, but the suffering an individual might endure - for example, with approaching dementia - would seem to me to worse than an early death.

However, before agreeing with me, readers should consider the context in which Aristotle stated that death is the most terrible of all things. The passage appears in Nicomachean Ethics III (6) where he is writing of courage and fear. Aristotle begins by making the point that we fear all evils - e.g. disgrace, poverty, disease, friendlessness, death - but the brave man is thought not to be concerned with all of them. He then asks: With what sorts of terrible things is the brave man concerned? It is at that point that he states that death is the most terrible of all things, but qualifies this immediately afterwards by suggesting that the brave man would not seem to be concerned about death in all circumstances. Please read again the relevant passage quoted in the epigraph.

Aristotle goes on to argue that “to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is softness to fly from what is troublesome, and such a man endures death not because it is noble but to fly from evil” (III (7).

The golden mean

Edith Hall notes that, unlike many modern counsellors and psychotherapists, Aristotle did not prescribe “acceptance of death” as the “ultimate goal”. She writes:

“The honest truth about Aristotle’s philosophy is this: the better you have practised his ethics, and therefore the happier you have become, the more it looks, at least at first sight, that you have to lose when you die. If you have succeeded in making highly successful relationships, the thought of the interpersonal contact with your loved one ending can bring extreme but unbearable clarity to the delight your love of them brings, a clarity which may make any philosophical or theological comfort we are offered about death seem useless.”

In Aristotle’s philosophy, Hall suggests: “There is a pervasive sense that acknowledgement of our mortality and confrontation with its full implications can be used effectively to help us to live and die well.”

Hall considers whether Aristotle would have approved of the attitudes to mortality of various writers “whose obsession with death borders on fetishism”. She suggests that Aristotle would have argued for “a mean between deficiency and excess” in “our grappling with the prospect of death”. Looking toward the end an appropriate amount of time can help us to live well.

The thought that an Australian male of my age who is in good health can expect to live, on average, only about six more years helps motivate me to pursue projects that are important to me. That includes writing essays like this one.

A happy life

Hall notes earlier in her book that Aristotle did not reject Solon’s precept that no-one could ever be called happy until they were dead. In her chapter on mortality, she considers Aristotle’s discussion of whether a dead person could be called happy.  

Why would Aristotle take that idea seriously? When I looked at the context (Nicomachean Ethics, I (10) I found that Aristotle began his discussion by acknowledging the absurdity of the idea that a dead person could be called happy, given that happiness is an activity (“virtuous activity of the soul”). In the subsequent discussion, Aristotle adopts the standpoint of an observer assessing whether an individual has had a happy (flourishing) life. He toys with the idea that people could be described as happy and wretched at different times of their lives as their fortunes change. He notes, however, that a person who is truly good and wise always makes the best of circumstances. He ends up asking: “When then should we not say that he is happy who is active in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life?”

A point that Hall draws from Aristotle’s discussion of whether a dead person can be called happy is that “in other people’s memories, your ‘self’ as a unique person is made complete in ceasing to be susceptible to change when you die.”

Towards the end of the chapter, Hall discusses Aristotle’s views of memory and recollection. She notes that those who have passed away live on in the memories of those who loved them and those who were affected by them. She writes:

“An Aristotelian will use her memories in a disciplined and methodical way to help her cope with her own aging process and with the loss of loved ones.”

Hall also provides an interesting account of Aristotle’s thoughtfulness in preparing his will. For example, he stipulated that his slaves were to be freed immediately on his death, or at a specified later date (such as his daughter’s marriage).

 Conclusions

Edith Hall has written a helpful chapter on mortality in her book, Aristotle’s Way. The main message I take from that chapter, and from Aristotle’s writings on the topic, is to face mortality squarely.

Life is for living – for flourishing. Death is the end of life’s journey, but life is all about the journey not the destination. 

Unfortunately, for some people that journey ends unexpectedly and traumatically. 

For those of us who live to old age, awareness of our mortality can help us to make good use of our remaining time.

After individuals have died it is possible to assess more completely whether they have lived well because they are no longer susceptible to change. 

It is appropriate to celebrate the lives of loved ones who have passed away. They live on in our memories as unique individuals.