Danielle H.
Levitt
Analytic paper 1
March 3, 2014
How to Be a Good Person: Beliefs and Values
Being a good person is a hard thing to describe. Most would agree that being a good
person entails caring about others and actually acting on that compassion. Being a good person,
however, also includes other aspects such as beliefs and values. Belief is the acceptance of
something as undeniably true while values are the principles or ethics that a person lives by. So
you could say that a good person must have beliefs that can be backed up by the values they
hold. For most, there are many things held in common with how to be a good person, but
ultimately it is up to each person what they define as “good”.
Each author we have looked at holds different views about the reasoning of how we
attain our “good” values. Unamuno would say that they are natural to us. Russell would say we
learn what our values are from how they are taught to us rather than by intuition. Unamuno and
Russell have similar definitions when explaining how to be a good person; however, they differ
in respect to the relationship they give between belief and values.
Beliefs, or what we hold to be true, correlate with values closely, but they are different
as well. Both Unamuno and Russell would agree that our beliefs are not factual. A person may
believe something is true, but this doesn’t make the belief itself true. Unamuno exemplifies this
through the beliefs of the villagers and Don Manuel. The villagers believe in their faith and an
afterlife. Don Manuel believes that no such afterlife exists. Both parties assume truth in their
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beliefs, yet neither belief can be solidified as the factual truth. Russell determines our beliefs to
be similar to Unamuno’s version.
As Russell explains it, he compares different beliefs to be opinions, the complete
opposite of factual truth. He makes the point that beliefs are not necessarily true because they
change from person to person. Also, if our opinions change then our previous beliefs will be
skewed and become false.
Values are what we hold to be acceptable principles or modes of behavior. It seems that
both men would agree that values are subjective to our beliefs. Russell states that whatever
ethics we may hold are influenced by outer sources. That is to say values are the expression of a
general interest upon a person. He also says values are interrelated with our personal desires
