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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 17:30:37 GMT -5
reposting -------
AAdmin (1/25/06 2:23 am)
New Topic: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.
Bellow text deals with human virtue and its highest good which is happiness. Please feel free to comment on the text and feel free to state your own opinions as they relate to the text.
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Describe Aristotle's view of virtue ethics. Provide examples.
In Aristotle's written work (called 'Nicomachean Ethics') Aristotle wrote a masterpiece when it comes to analysis of human morality and the end (purpose/final destination) of human life. The work is a masterpiece that is still used today. His basic idea is that the great(est) thinker or Aristotle shows us that he believes that absolute moral standards do not exist and that analysis of ethics have to be be based on understanding of human psychology while taking into account daily life and human nature.
The highest good for Aristotle could not have been defined without understanding what it means to be virtuous. Basic idea is that all human actions strive towards some goal and such goal is good. All actions were leading not towards any good but towards a highest good. Such good is the one that is wanted and desired for itself only. Thus, such highest good is self-sustaining and all that is needed to fulfill someone. For Aristotle the highest good is happiness ('eudaemonia') and he stated that all men seek it as final destination although they might disagree on the manner or the kind of life it make take to achieve it. They also disagree on even the meaning of happiness but they all, nevertheless, seek it as the final thing in their search.
For Aristotle happiness could not be found only in pleasure, fame or honor since neither one of those are self-sustaining but dependent on other influences. For him happiness would have to be tied to functions specific of only man. To find this out Aristotle analyzed the three functions of a soul and focused on one that is specific to only a man or human beings. This eliminated nutritive or vegetative soul (shared with animals and plants) and it also eliminated perceptive or sensitive soul (shared with animals). The only one left was the rational (responsible for thinking and reasoning) soul which is to be found in humans only.
For Aristotle, therefore, a human function would mean doing that what makes us human and to be good at the very thing that makes us unique. Therefore we are talking of the ability of humans to reason and, more importantly, for using this ability rather then just being aware of it. For Aristotle there are two ways a soul can engage in and one is reasoning (divided between practical and theoretical reasoning) and the other is following reasoning. For him a man who does this would be happiest since he would be fulfilling his own purpose or nature as it can be found within the rational soul. He even goes a step further and states that a thinker is not only happy but closest to the divine.
He believed that people can be categorized in four categories according to their ability to use reason. First category is composed of virtuous or those who have no moral dilemma about what is right and enjoy doing what is right. Second category is composed of those who are continent or those who are virtuous most of the time but, first, have a moral dilemma within them to overcome. Third category is composed of those who are incontinent or those who are not virtuous most of the time even though they also start of with having a moral dilemma. Fourth category is composed of those who are vicious or those who do not put much value in virtue and who do not therefore try being virtuous.
Virtue ethics relate to ethical systems that primarily focus on what kind of person a man should try to become. One of the aims therefore of virtue ethics is offering what kind of characteristics a person with virtue would have. Ultimate aim of virtue ethics is what Greeks referred to as 'eudaimonia' which roughly translates as 'success' or 'flourishing'. The general idea in virtue ethics is that all humans gravitate towards leading a good, happy and satisfying life. He also believed that every ethical virtue is a mean or in between two extremes (extremes such as excess, having too much, and deficiency or lacking). For him virtue can only be a 'mean' (or a medium as in moderation) of a given situation. This would also mean that it is impossible to make absolute set of rules or a formula that could be used to resolve every practical problem. On the other hand Aristotle was not a moral relativist and believed that some (meaning more extreme) emotions (such as hate, envy or spite) and some (again meaning more extreme) actions (such as murder or theft) are never justified.
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle grouped the virtues in two groups and those are as moral virtue and as intellectual virtue. For Aristotle there are two kinds of intellectual virtues (intellectual virtue is the result of learning), one is what in Greek is called 'sophia' which means 'wisdom' (term which in this case it relates to theoretical wisdom) and another Greek term called 'phronesis' which means ' prudence' (term which in this case it relates to practical wisdom). The moral virtues (which exist as the result of habit and practice) according to Aristotle included courage, truthfulness, justice and moderation. He argued that everyone of those moral virtues was in effect a mean or medium between two surrounding vices or extremes.
For Aristotle for a person to be happy such person would have to find himself within the mean. An example of such mean is the virtue of bravery. Bravery is a a mean that is situated between two extremes or vices such as being a coward on one side and behaving in a reckless manner on the other. Being a coward really means feeling too much fear or more then the given situation at hand would reasonably demand. On the other hand, behaving in a reckless manner would be exact opposite of the first extreme or vice. In this case it is that a given person is feeling the amount of fear that is too small then the given situation at hand would reasonably demand. Therefore each one is clearly an extreme or vice.
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 17:31:37 GMT -5
Anittas (1/25/06 2:43 am)
Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.
I find it peculiar that Aristotle doesn't mention "love" as a way to achieve happiness. Even if love is an emotion, it can also be a state of mind. Perhaps he wanted to distance himself from the physical world, as the text implies, and only focus on the mind, but then again, love doesn't have to relate to the 'pleasure of the flesh'. Other philosophers, such as Voltaire, argued instead that one should live to the laws of nature and "plant their garden" while Marcus Aurelius mentioned philosophy as the thing that is most worthy. Samuel Johnson would also try to examine felicity and find that there isn't much to it (he was a bit depressive) while Jesus is supposed to have said to "lie in the grass and be happy." Perhaps it's a combination of everything. We can't dismiss our nature and deny our needs, without feeling that we miss something, and we can't be happy without the stimulation of the mind. Happiness relates very much to emotions, whether Aristotle and Mr. Aadmin likes it or not.
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 17:33:34 GMT -5
AAdmin (1/25/06 3:58 am) Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion. Quote: Happiness relates very much to emotions, whether Aristotle and Mr. Aadmin likes it or not. First let me state that I was merely summarizing what has been stated by Aristotle rather then expressing my humble opinion (humble as I could never dare compare myself with the immortal name of Aristotle). I must state that your opinion expressed here is rather interesting and certainly something to consider. If we are to go by following the mean we have to ask yourselves whether love is indeed contained within the mean. If it is contained within the mean then certainly love will have two extremes on each side of it. Not only that but love will have to be viewed as a normal and everyday event rather then one that needs special circumstances to occur in order to present itself. One can argue that love is indeed a mean. It can be argued that it is a mean and that it's excess is infatuation or obsession with a desired subject and that its deficiency is lack of interest for a desired subject (this one is also oxymoron since there can not be any lack of interest for desired subject otherwise it is not desired any more - but for the sake of argument lets resume). But infatuation or obsession with a desired subject and lack of interest for a desired subject do not seem to be extremes versus each other for one is consisting of giving total attention towards a given subject and another consists of ignoring a given subject. If the two were extremes of the mean then the relationship between the two would prove itself mutually binding at all times but this doesn't appear to be the case. For example on any given day and with any given individual it can be stated that they will be either ignored by many or will ignore many people that might be in their walking vicinity. This can not be possibly viewed as a reversed extreme from the other extreme which would be to be infatuated. Reason is that one is caused to be infatuated (by hormones or whatever other biological reasons for example) while another is not being caused to be ignored (in fact you are most likely not even aware of the ignored subject). Therefore I see no action versus reaction principles here to apply themselves (if mean was the mid point of a supposed 'pendulum' here). Therefore it doesn't appear that love can be viewed as a mean since the supposed two extremes (and only two possible extremes that can be expressed here) are not even in relation to each other thus neither to the mean. Now if love can not be viewed as a mean then what it could be viewed as? Well lets assume that the normal everyday state of an average human is one where he is unaffected (emotionally speaking again not to be equaled with ignoring others or total lack of interest of others) of emotional dependence or love towards another. Such person is pretty much fond of them-self and doesn't need another person to make his day feel EMOTIONALLY complete. Even it can be argued that such state of mind is the state that can be viewed as a mean (as it truly appears neutral in terms of expressing any negative or positive emotional state to it). I would equate such state of mind as being similar to a pendulum that is not moving in either direction but stagnating. The movement of such pendulum occurs when a subject has fallen in love. In simple terms subject has become emotionally dependent (in a positive mode) on focused subject. The fact that this in itself is an extreme and not a mean can be seen by the fact that love is practically always accompanied (and the stronger the love impulse the more extreme the case becomes) by 'Halo Effect' in a positive mode. Halo effect or tunnel vision in this case is allowing the affected subject to see only the positive side of the subject they are focusing on. Clearly the pendulum has moved from its initial resting place into one direction away from the resting place. Opposite of love is of course hate which is practically always accompanied (and the stronger the hate impulse the more extreme the case becomes) by halo effect in a negative mode. Halo effect or tunnel vision in this case is allowing the affected subject to see only the negative side of the subject they are focusing on. Clearly the pendulum has moved into yet another position (again away from the resting place) and that is the opposite side of the love position of the pendulum. The relationship between love and hate can also be viewed with relative ease with numerous cases (which we all have seen with our own eyes at some time of our lives) where love turns into hate and in some cases from love to hate and back to love. Often such changes occur with relative ease. We are obviously seeing example of action reaction principles on an emotional level here (let me state here that emotions are not driven by logic or reason and thus are not a good starting point to finding the highest good - happiness). Also considering that love is directly dependent on an outside source it is not of permanent value and nothing of temporary nature can represent Aristotle's highest good or happiness which is self-sufficient and certainly not an extreme. Third (and finally) I will state my opinion. I also believe that happiness is the highest attainable good a human can achieve. I also believe that although avenues one might approach to achieve happiness might differ that this highest good is nevertheless of the same substance in itself. Love here is only means of achieving this highest good but it is of temporary nature rather then permanent one thus I would not view it as effective mean of achieving such good. I for one believe that the very question poses a paradox in itself (at least on a first glance). Reason is that happiness is often equaled with an emotional bliss which is clearly an extreme rather then a mean (opposite of it would certainly be deep depression). I believe that happiness is clearly living always within the mean and here is the punch line - being happy with one self (thus never searching for happiness from any outside source). In this context happiness really means having inner peace and maintaining it (but how to achieve this). One can strive to 'improve' themselves or the situation they are in (in fact should strive for improvement if for no other reason but to service their community in a best manner possible as means of contributing to it and thus in doing their part in paying their debt to the community - as one is product of it) but seeking happiness should not be the primary reason for it. Reason, for as long as you are placing happiness outside of yourself it will stay outside. You might brush against at times which will give you bliss-like state of mind (or rather emotions) but such will not remain indefinite for the brush has to end sooner or later.
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 17:35:19 GMT -5
Anittas (1/25/06 7:05 am)
Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.
There are different types of love and not all of them relate to hormones, or involve being in love in a soap-opera kind-of-way. A parent may love their child without any interference from hormones and a child may feel love towards their pet without interference from hormones. In fact, they may not even have those hormones troubling them too much. There's a difference between love and passion, where the latter involves teenage dramas. Genuine love doesn't change overnight, as you like to imply, Aadmin.
Now, I like to argue that goodness cannot exist without love. Again, don't think of love as "making out" and writing corny poetry. One can feel love towards humankind, as in being philanthropic, and others may save their love for their group of selected people. Love doesn't have to be physic, as in faster heartbeats and release of hormones and other signals. It can be deeper than that. Johnson said that when one does something good and knowing that he has absolutely nothing to gain from it - which includes getting recognition for his good dead - then he truly did mean to do something good. Many others have tried to justify the essence of good. I read in an article that Zoroaster also struggled to justify the need of good without expecting incentives. Sort of, do good for the sake of good. The question, however, is if merely doing good will satisfy most people, and the answer is of course no. People need to get some recognition for their good deeds. That's when they most feel good about them selves and experience some happiness. My answer to all of this is balance. A little of this and a little of that...
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 17:38:11 GMT -5
AAdmin (1/25/06 9:40 am) Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.I was not relating to what you called "soap-opera kind-of-way" love. Such love is not love but lust. It is a western distorted perception of love. Even today in English language love is often understood for lust. Example in the west is when one meets another have a one night stand and refers to it as them making love - obviously here love means lust or intercourse. Therefore again I am not referring to lust but love, actual love (I though you being Balkanian would not need me to make this distinction for you). I am pretty sure that in no way did I relate my above text to sex or lust. The love (yes love) between (as for example between a man and a women) primarily rests on affection, respect and trust and as a result is most likely to occur when people are younger (thus more trusting) rather then older. --- Everything that occurs within ours bodies is chemically based and certainly feeling strong emotional attachment towards a certain subject is no different (whether hormones or as I said earlier "or whatever other biological reasons"). 'Genuine love' truly does take time to occur and reverse hold true or does take time to go away (again laws of action and reaction). The love you are referring to is most reminiscent of the Mediterranean (Med) concept of love (hence the words ' Romance' for love stories, which may be as sensual as emotional, or the fact that play 'Romeo & Juliette' was focused on Italy) which is by far the strongest/most intense love concept globally speaking. Old Persian (Iranian people are Meds by race and culture) language has 64 different words for love whereas English only has one and even this one is misunderstood (do to inability to separate emotional from the physical part in the meaning of the word 'love' and this inability restricts them from understanding its actual meaning). Such Med concept implies feeling a very strong emotional dependence towards a subject (spouse, child, country, religion, etc.) - often towards more extreme positions (extreme by western or nordic standards which are more reason based in this subject - read more here) where the subject might mean more to that person then their own life. But make no mistake we are still outside of the mean and strictly within extreme therefore my previous analysis firmly stands in all its elements. Also the fact is that it is highly reminiscent of an addict whose strong addition (in this case emotional, chemically based) will not disappear over night just as it was not formed over night. --- Goodness has to exist without love or rather independent of love or anything else to be of any real or permanent substance (it has to hold true in every occasion/case). When in love (especially in the med type of love) the 'Hallo Effect' (or 'Tunnel Vision' or seeing what you want or prefer to see) is very strong and not enabling one to see a complete picture. Such person is akin to (at least) a partly blind person and to claim that such partly blind person can see a complete visual picture is of course unrealistic. Goodness can not be subjective which love certainly is therefore relationship between the two is nonexistent no-matter how much our emotions (which again are not driven by reason) wants us to believe. Love can easily cause us to harm another if we see them as a threat to us or our beloved ones and the threat perhaps does not even exist. Harming another another can never be viewed as good, perhaps in certain situations justifiable (self-defense) but never good for it is not a mean but an extreme. --- People are essentially selfish by nature (degrees may vary) and therefore concept of "do good for the sake of good" is non-realistic. Of course what I stated does not have to be viewed in a necessarily negative light. When a person is performing a good dead such good dead is done with expectation of receiving at least some sort of gratification by doing it. Such gratification does not have to come from outside of you (such as monetary or a simple praise by others) but can come from even within you (in a form of a worm feeling that is giving one a higher sense of purpose - a clearly emotion driven response contained within them). ---- I again repeat that any happiness that one seeks outside of themselves can only be of temporary nature for it is outside of them therefore never to be fully reached and much less possessed indefinitely. It is dependent by things that they might at best have a partial control over but never a full one. Becoming more enlightened by philosophy for example is of much stronger and more permanent essence and thus much more self-fulfilling and self-sustained since enlightenment received from knowledge/wisdom is of much more permanent nature then something so volatile as love (thus self-sustained permanence versus emotion driven volatility dependent on outside influences). That is not to say that an individual should not seek it and create family (far from it, our society rests upon you doing just that) but I prefer viewing the world for what it is rather then what I want it to be.
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 17:53:55 GMT -5
Xpo FERENS(1/27/06 1:15 am) Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.Where can you go wrong with the combined genius of Plato and Aristotle? Anyways, what follows bellow (which I kindly ask be read in its entirety before further posting) are two quotes from W. H. Auden's introduction to The Portable Greek Reader. In the first quote you will find the real score on love. The second deals more with the topic of this thread. QUOTE: The Erotic Hero : About three-quarters of modern literature is concerned with one subject, the love between a man and a woman, and assumes that falling in love is the most important and valuable experience that can happen to human beings. We are so conditioned to this attitude that we are inclined to forget that it does not go back beyond the twelfth century. It does not exist, for instance, in Greek literature. There we find two attitudes. There are plenty of lyrics of the serenade type -- the "In delay there lies no plenty, then come kiss me sweet-and-twenty" kind of thing, expressing a simple, good-tempered, and unserious sensuality. There are also, as in the poems of Sappho or the story of Jason and Medea, descriptions of serious and violent sexual passion, but this is not regarded as something to be proud of but as a disaster, the work of merciless Aphrodite, a dreadful madness which makes one lose one's dignity and betray one's friends and from which any sane man or woman will pray to be spared. Our romantic conception, that sexual love can transform the lover's character and turn him into a hero, was unknown.
It is not until we come to Plato that we find descriptions of something like what we mean by romantic love spoken of with approval, yet the differences are still greater than the resemblances. In the first place it is assumed that this kind of love is only possible in a homosexual relation; and in the second, it is only approved of as the necessary first stage in the growth of the soul. The ultimate good is the love of the impersonal as universal good; the best thing that could happen to a man would be that he should fall in love with the Good immediately, but owing to the fact that his soul is entangled in matter and time, he can only get there by degrees; first he falls in love with a beautiful individual, then he can progress to love of beauty in general, then to love of justice, and so on. If erotic passion can or ought to be transformed in this way, then it was sound psychological insight on Plato's part and not simply the cultural pattern of erotic life in Greece that made him exclude the heterosexual relation, for the latter leads beyond itself, not to the universal, but to more individuals, namely the love of and responsibility for a family, whereas, in the homosexual case, since the relation of itself leads nowhere, the love which it has aroused is free to develop in any direction the lovers choose, and that direction should be towards wisdom which, once acquired, will enable them to teach human beings procreated in the normal way how to become a good society. For love is to be judged by its social and political value. Marriage provides the raw material, the masculine eros the desire and knowledge to mold that material into its proper form.
The two great modern erotic myths, which have no parallels in Greek literature, are the myth of Tristan and Isolde, or the World Well Lost for Love, and the countermyth of Don Juan, the seducer.
The Tristan-Isolde situation is this: both possess heroic arete in the epic sense; he is the bravest warrior, she is the most beautiful woman; both are of noble birth. They cannot marry each other because she is already the wife of his king and friend, nevertheless they fall in love. In some versions they accidentally drink a love potion but the effect of this is not really to make them fall in love but rather to make them realize that they already have and to accept the fact as predestined and irrevocable. Their relation is not "platonic" in the conventional sense, but the barriers of marriage and circumstances give them few opportunities for going to bed together, and on each occasion they can never be certain that it will not be the last. The love they feel for each other is religiously absolute, i.e., each is the other's ultimate good so that not only is sexual infidelity inconceivable, but all other relations to other people and the world cease to have any significance. Yet, though their relation is the only value that exists for them, it is a torment, because their sexual desire is only the symbolic expression of their real passion, which is the yearning of two souls to merge and become one, a consummation which is impossible so long as they have bodies, so that their ultimate goal is to die in each other's arms.
Don Juan, on the other hand, is not an epic hero; ideally, his external appearance is that of the man who nobody notices is there because he is so utterly commonplace, for it is important to the myth that he, the man of heroic will and achievement, should look to the outward eye like a member of the chorus.
If Don Juan is either handsome or ugly, then the woman will have feelings about him before he sets to work, and the seduction will not be absolute, i.e., pure triumph of his will. For that, it is essential that his victim should have no feelings of her own towards him, until he chooses to arouse them. Vice versa, what is essential for him about her is not her appearance but simply her membership in the class Woman; the ugly and the old are as good as the beautiful and the young. The Tristan-Isolde myth is unGreek because no Greek could conceive of attributing absolute value to another individual, he could only think in comparative terms, this one is more beautiful that that one, this one has done greater deeds that that one, etc. The Don Juan myth is unGreek, as Kierkegaard has pointed out, not because he sleeps with a number of women, but because he keeps a list of them.
A Greek could understand seducing a girl because one found her attractive and then deserting her because one met a more attractive girl and forgot the first one; but he could not have understood doing so for an arithmetical reason, because one had resolved to be the first lover of every woman in the world, and she happened to be the next integer in this infinite series.
Tristan and Isolde are tormented because they are compelled to count up to two when they long to be able only to count up to one; Don Juan is in torment because, however great the number of his seductions, it still remains a finite number and he cannot rest until he has counted up to infinity.
The great enemy of both is time: Tristan and Isolde dread it because it threatens change, and they wish the moment of intense feeling to remain unchanged forever, hence the love potion and the irremovable obstacle in the situation which serve as defense against change; Don Juan dreads it because it threatens repetition and he wishes each moment to be absolutely novel, hence his insistence that for each of his victims it must be her first sexual experience and that he only sleep with her once.
Both myths are dependent upon Christianity, i.e., they could only have been invented by a society which has been taught to believe a) that every individual is of unique and eternal value to God, irrespective of his or her social importance in the world, b) that dedication of the self to God is an act of free-choice, an absolute commitment irrespective of feeling, made with infinite passion, and c) that one must neither allow oneself to be ruled by the temporal moment nor attempt to transcend it but make oneself responsible for it, turning time into history.
Both myths are diseases of the Christian imagination and while they have inspired a great body of beautiful literature, their influence upon human conduct, particularly in their frivolous watered-down modern versions, which gloss over the fact that both the romantic couple and the solitary seducer are intensely unhappy, has been almost wholly bad. Whenever a married couple divorce because having ceased to be a divine image to each other, they cannot endure the thought of having to love a real person no better than themselves, they are acting under the spell of the Tristan myth. Whenever a man says to himself "I must be getting old. I haven't had sex for a week. What would my friends say if they knew," he is re-enacting the myth of Don Juan. It is significant also -- it might interest Plato though it would probably not surprise him -- that the instances in real life which conform most closely to the original pattern of both myths are not, in either case, heterosexual; the Tristan and Isolde one actually meets are a Lesbian couple, the Don Juan a pederast. QUOTE: The Contemplative Hero : The ideal Man of Greek Epic is the strong individual; the Ideal Man of Greek Tragedy is the modest citizen with a reverence for the law of justice; the Ideal Man of Greek Philosophy has something in common with both: Like the latter he is one who keeps the Law but, like the former, he is an exceptional individual, not a member of the chorus, for to learn how to keep the Law has become a heroic task which is beyond the power of the average man. To the question "What is the cause of evil and suffering?" Homer can only answer, "I don't know. The caprice of the gods perhaps"; Tragedy answers, "The violation of the laws of righteousness and justice by arrogant strong men"; Philosophy answers, "Ignorance of the Law is which leaves the minds of men at the mercy of their bodily passions."
The Homeric hero hopes by brave deeds to win glory before he dies; the tragic chorus hopes by living modestly to escape misfortune as long as they live; the contemplative hero hopes for ultimate happiness of soul when he has succeeded in learning to know the true and eternal good, and so delivering his soul from the entanglements of his body and the temporal flux; and beyond this he must teach society how to attain the same freedom from injustice.
In theory, the possibility of doing this should be open to all alike but in practice it is limited to those souls whom the heavenly eros has inspired with a passion for knowledge, and whom temporal circumstances allow them to devote their lifetime to the search for wisdom; the stupid who cannot, the frivolous who will not, and the poor who have no time to understand are debarred. They may have valuable social functions to perform but it is not for them to say what the laws of society should be. That is the duty of the philosopher.
This ideal is stranger to us than it looks at first sight. We are familiar with two kinds of contemplative men: First, the religious contemplative as represented by the various orders of monks and nuns or by the individual mystic. His aim is to know the hidden God, the reality behind all phenomena, but he thinks of this God as a person, i.e., what he means by knowledge is not objective knowledge about something which is the same for all minds and once perceived can be passed on to others by teaching, like the truths of mathematics, but a subjective relationship which is unique for every individual. A relationship can never be taught, it has to be voluntarily entered into, and the only possible method of persuading another to do it is personal example. If B is a friend of A and C is not, B cannot make C a friend of A by describing A, but if B, as the result of his friendship with A has become the kind of person C would like to be and is not, C may decide to try and make A's acquaintance, too.
Objective knowledge is the field of another kind of contemplative, the intellectual, the scientist, the artist, etc., and the knowledge he seeks is not about any transcendent reality but about phenomena. The intellectual, like the religious contemplative, requires individual passion but in his case it is confined to the search for knowledge; towards the object of his search, the facts, he must be passionless.
What is puzzling to us about the Greek conception of the contemplative hero is that these two kinds of activity are inextricably mixed, sometimes he seems to talk of a transcendent God as if He were a passive object, at other times of observable phenomena, like the movements of the planets, as if they were persons for which one could feel personal passion. Nothing is more bewildering to us about Plato, for instance, than the way in which, in the middle of a piece of dialectic, he will introduce what he himself admits to be a myth but without any feeling on his part that it is a peculiar thing to do.
It is hard to say whether one should call the Greeks more anthropomorphic in their thinking than we or less. On the one hand, in Greek cosmology everything in nature is thought of as being alive; the laws of nature are not descriptions of how things actually behave, laws of, but like human laws, laws for, laws which they ought to obey and can fail to obey properly. On the other, in Greek political theory, human beings are thought of as if they were merely the matter out of which through his techne the craftsman-politician fashions the good society as a potter makes a vase out of clay.
To the Greeks the essential difference between man and nature was that the former can reason if he wants to, whereas for us the essential difference is that man has a self, i.e., that he and, so far as we know, apart from God, he alone is conscious of existing, and this consciousness is his whether he wants it or not, whether he is intelligent or not. The Greeks therefore had no real conception of the will as distinct from desire, so that, though they had, of course, observed the psychological fact of temptation, that one can desire what one knows is wrong, they were at a loss as to how to explain it. The weakest point in Greek Ethics is its analysis of Choice. This is all the more serious because politics is not peripheral but central to Greek Philosophy; the formation of the Good Society comes first, the quest for personal salvation or for scientific truths about matter or imaginative truths about the human heart second. Through identifying the active source of the Good with Reason not with Will, they doomed themselves to the hopeless task of finding the ideal form of society which, like the truths of reason, would be valid everywhere and for everyone, irrespective of their individual character or their historical circumstances.
A concept is either true or false. A mind which entertains a false concept may be brought through steps of argument to entertain the true one, but this does not mean that a false concept has grown into the true; there is always a point in the dialectic, like the moment of recognition in tragedy, when the revolutionary change happens and the false concept is abandoned with the realization that it always was false. The dialectic process may take time, but the truth it discovers has no history (1).
To think of the political problem as a problem of finding the true form of organization leads either to political despair, if one knows one has failed to find it, or, if one thinks one has been successful, to a defense of tyranny for, if it is presupposed that people living in the wrong kind of order cannot have a good will and people living in the right kind cannot have a bad one, then not only will coercion be necessary to establish that order but also its application will be the ruler's moral duty.
The Republic, the Laws, even the Politics, should be read in conjunction with Thucydides; only a political situation as desperate as that which the historian describes could have produced in the philosophers who were looking for cure at once a radicalism which would break completely with the past to build up society again ab initio and a pathological horror of disunity and change. Living as we do in an age of similar stasis on a world-wide scale, we have witnessed a recurrence on both the Right and the Left, at both the economic and the psychiatric epicenters, of similar symptoms.
Further, we have seen with our own eyes the theory of creative politics put into practice, and the spectacle is anything but Utopian. This experience by forcing us to take Plato's dialogues seriously not as playful exercises in logic, has altered our attitude, I think, to the other dialogues. If there is an essential not an accidental relation between his metaphysics and his politics, and the latter seem to us disastrously mistaken, then there must be a crucial error in the former as well, which it is of the utmost importance that we detect, if we are to offer a positive substitute for the Platonic kind of solution to the political crisis.
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 17:55:46 GMT -5
Anittas (1/27/06 2:55 am) Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion. Good post, Xpo. Most of it is above my level, but I don't agree with Plato when saying that true love can only exist between homo-sexual couples. I believe that a similar Platonic love can exist between a man and a woman. Perhaps not in the beginning, but later on in their life. I agree that the love between a man and a woman relates to their making of offspring and Freud argued it better when saying that we choose to love the one we want to have children with - as in, we want to better our offspring by choosing someone who has what we miss. I believe that formula to only be a part of the "recipe". Other thinkers have mentioned other things that play a part in the formation of partnership love, as we ought to call it in order to distinguish it from other forms of love, and they may all be right. Aadmin, I believed you spoke about lust because you said the following: where love turns into hate and in some cases from love to hate and back to love. I don't know what kind of love turns into hate, and then back to love. I can only think of teenage dramas where this sort of things happen, tho we all know that it's not genuine love. Perhaps you meant something else. Perhaps you were talking about the state-of-mind: that we sometimes have love on our mind when we feel good, or, when we feel loved; and that sometimes we have hate, grief, frustration, on our mind when we feel unloved, lonely, etc. Is that what you meant?
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 17:58:07 GMT -5
Xpo FERENS(1/27/06 4:15 am) Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.From another source: This concentration on the development of strong and honorable men, upon whom the very life of the state depended, ultimately resulted in the creation of an aesthetical male ideal. (As opposed to the feminine "Hollywood" ideal prevalent in the West today; focusing, as it does, on sex, romance, and the female form, instead.) And it naturally follows that, in such a society, the manly virtues (aretes) would also be the most prized. And since there were no military academies to train young men in these virtues, this important task was taken up by the older, experienced males who grew to love their charges, just as these young men grew to love and respect their elder mentors. Such training also put a great deal of emphasis on the importance of friendship, especially in the need for a close companion or friend on the battlefield. So important was this training considered to be, that families unable to find a suitable pedagogue for their son felt socially slighted and disadvantaged. The aesthetical ideal of the male mentioned above (similar in its essentials to the idealized Christian feminine ideal, which inspires male effort to a higher good) is delineated in Plato's Symposium, where we are presented with the mystical realization of Plato's famous Doctrine of the Forms. Socrates, having been instructed in matters of love by the priestess, Diotima, seeks to show that by understanding "Eros" (love), we can learn to approach the Forms, toward which our souls are oriented. This is done initially by admiring a young man's body as a thing of beauty. One continues this "aesthetical ascent" by the admiration of all bodies, then on to human institutions -- such as the state -- until, finally, one can come to understand and love the beauty not only of nature but of the Supreme Beauty of God Himself: an evolutionary process that is ultimately meant to purify one's soul, and free one from the enslavement of the flesh.
In Xenophon's version of the Symposium (sometimes titled, Banquet), Socrates expounds on the importance of a love that transcends bodily desires. He tells one of his fellow banqueters that: "My heart is set on showing you ... that not only humankind but also gods and demi-gods set a higher value on the friendship of the spirit than on the enjoyment of the body. For in all cases where Zeus became enamored of mortal women for their beauty, though he united with them he suffered them to remain mortal; but all those persons whom he delighted in for their souls' sake he made immortal." It is this love -- a love on a plane higher than that of the merely physical -- that has come to be known as "Platonic love" in all of the languages of the world. And it is just this love that set the standards of behavior that existed between teacher and boy, as well as between adult friends in ancient Greece. Though it never reached such lofty heights, the admiration of the beauty of the male form was also prevalent in the Roman world as evidenced by such as St. Augustine of Hippo (arguably Christianity's most heterosexual saint), who said that the body was obviously created for more than mere utilitarian purposes; it was also meant to be admired for its beauty. As an example, he cites the beard which has no functional purpose but was given to men to make them beautiful. and [Plato]In his Laws he states quite categorically that "... male does not touch male for this purpose, since it is unnatural...." And again, in the same work, he tells us that "... when male unites with female for procreation the pleasure experienced is held to be due to nature (kata physin), but is contrary to nature (para physin) when male mates with male or female with female, and that those ... guilty of such enormities [are] impelled by their slavery to pleasure." I just wanted to establish that homo-Platonic love is not in any way sexual. I find the most Platonic aspect of heterosexual relationships, besides the love of the female form in all its beauty, would have to be the love of reproductive outcome itself in its godly nature.
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 18:00:22 GMT -5
Anittas (1/27/06 6:43 am) Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.I find the most Platonic aspect of heterosexual relationships, besides the love of the female form in all its beauty, would have to be the love of reproductive outcome itself in its godly nature. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying there. Are you saying that there's more to it when loving a woman, beside the "reproductive outcome", or are you saying that it is only limited to that? Because I would disagree with that kind of reasoning. Don't forget what Freud said about men wanting to experience the love and safety they received from their mothers when they were children, and so they seek women with similar physical traces and with a "good" character. I'm not sure how those men who didn't have a mother determine what's good for them, but I'm sure they too have a picture of what they wanted as a "good mother". Also, the good character of a man that one might find in a homo-erotic relationship can also exist in a hetero relationship. I mean, women can also have attractive characteristics - not just men. I'm not sure where Plato stood on that. The Ancient (Ionian) Greeks - by some declared as the greatest holders of civilization - had a low opinion of women, yet, I believe the first woman philosopher studied at Plato's Academy. Regardless of that, you can be sure that Plato was biased towards women and his opinions should be taken with a grain of salt.
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 18:02:31 GMT -5
Xpo FERENS(1/27/06 11:00 pm) Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.There is much that is reflective of God's nature in all of the extensions of heterosexual nature. Thats just it, you have to find the Platonism in it all. Plato's idea about homo-intellectual relationships is merely the prerequisite to further ascendence on the Platonic love scale. Don't forget what Freud said about men wanting to experience the love and safety they received from their mothers when they were children, and so they seek women with similar physical traces and with a "good" character. I'm not sure how those men who didn't have a mother determine what's good for them, but I'm sure they too have a picture of what they wanted as a "good mother". I think its best that we do forget what Freud had to say. I really don't see what Freud has to do with Plato. What lies behind the above is actually quite dubious. See some more of what this psycho had to say: "Defecation affords the first occasion on which the child must decide between a narcissistic and an object-loving attitude. He either parts obediently with his feces, sacrificing them to his love, or else he retains them for the purposes of auto-erotic satisfaction.""The anal phase is arrested and pre-genital. The excrement is synonymous with the penis, a means of procreation. Defecation becomes the child's most valuable gift, to be given or withheld."How did he know! Little Heinrich is playing with his ka-ka because he wants to mold it into a penis so he can have sex with his mommy! Regardless of that, you can be sure that Plato was biased towards women and his opinions should be taken with a grain of salt. On the contrary, Plato's opinions should be taken as a breath of fresh air, while Freud should be taken as the stale old fart that he is.
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 18:04:41 GMT -5
Anittas (1/28/06 12:28 am) Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.I really don't see what Freud has to do with Plato. We're not discussing Plato - we're discussing love between partners and we're using the arguments of prominent thinkers to serve our own arguments. "Defecation affords the first occasion on which the child must decide between a narcissistic and an object-loving attitude. He either parts obediently with his feces, sacrificing them to his love, or else he retains them for the purposes of auto-erotic satisfaction."
"The anal phase is arrested and pre-genital. The excrement is synonymous with the penis, a means of procreation. Defecation becomes the child's most valuable gift, to be given or withheld." I know that what he said about defecation is often true. to mold it into a penis so he can have sex with his mommy! You missed my entire point. It has nothing to do with wanting to have sex with your mother. Never mind, dude...
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 18:08:14 GMT -5
AAdmin (1/28/06 3:01 am) Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion. I will restate again that I am of the firm opinion that love is not sex based in any manner whatsoever. As I stated before love (any form of love) primarily rests on affection, respect and trust. I believe that if any one of these three elements are lacking that love can not be fully realized thus can not be materialized. Thus when it is stated that in ancient Greece that the true love can only exist between two (close) males I fail to see the sexual part in such statement. Lets regard ancient Greece for what it was. It was a male dominated society where women was little more then a property of a male. Thus anything that is regarded as a property can not be respected (as it is taken for granted) - at least not fully and thus not enough to actually feel love towards such subject. As the element of respect is not present the love is lacking on of the essential three elements. Further more as these three elements are interconnected that something that is regarded as property can neither contain the element of trust. Reason is that anything that is regarded as a property can not be fully trusted as such subject is akin of a status of a slave thus forced in such contract (and not of its free will). Thus in ancient Greece women were regarded little more then property which would prevent males who 'owned' them for feeling true love towards such subjects for the reasons I stated above. Now, considering that ancient Greece was a male dominated society it is reasonable to assume that it would be males who were recording its history and that such history would be written from a males point of view. Now such males would not surely regard the local females a as their equal and thus would surely not feel the same dose of respect for them as they would towards other males. As the respect element was lacking so was the crucial element for materialization of love between male and female. Now the only alternative to possibly finding any possibility of love is to analyze the relationship between males of the time. If you would have two males which were raised together as children surely the bond between them would become brotherly-like and where elements of affection, respect and trust would certainly exist as they would between any two brothers who are maintaining a healthy brotherly relationship. I fail to see how anyone would confuse this (unless it is someone who is unaware of very emotion driven Balkan culture as it was then as it is now) type of relationship with one whose primary basis is centered on sex. Also sex between two individuals doesn't help maintain all the elements that make love. Again such elements are affection, respect and trust. Sex between individuals will perhaps upgrade the affection level between them (but such is of rather fake value as it is primarily sex based and thus highly conditional - something true attraction, or for that matter true love also, can never be). Sex between individuals will surely not increase the respect part between them. In fact if anything it will likely decrease it. Lets use as an example when a guy is dating a girl. Average girl will be of the opinion that is she has sex with an individual in an early stage of them knowing each other that such guy will surely lose respect for her as a result. Thus you a direct connection between sex and respect or having sex leads to decreased respect. Last element is trust. A person an individual is having sex with is a person such person would more likely regard (perhaps subconsciously) as his property then his equal. One that is regarded as equal is to be trusted while property is not to be trusted in the hands of another since it can change owners thus negatively affecting the initial owner (in a same manner a women might regard 'her' man, emphasis on word 'her' as it primarily relates to ownership). Thus since there is no respect it is unrealistic to expect trust. Therefore we can see that love can not be based on sex. We can also see that what was written in regards to ancient Greece about true love can only exist between men can not possibly mean that such men are having sex as westerners are suggesting (do to lack of understanding of the true meaning of the word 'love' and do to lack of understanding of behavior patterns as exhibited in Balkans where males can indeed act brotherly without any hint of sexuality). ------------ Quote: I don't know what kind of love turns into hate, and then back to love. I can only think of teenage dramas where this sort of things happen, tho we all know that it's not genuine love. Perhaps you meant something else. Perhaps you were talking about the state-of-mind: that we sometimes have love on our mind when we feel good, or, when we feel loved; and that sometimes we have hate, grief, frustration, on our mind when we feel unloved, lonely, etc. Is that what you meant? In emotionally highly charged situations such events can easily occur (without any sexuality involved whatsoever). Of course the younger the person the higher the likelihood of such event occurring as opposed the older and more levelheaded person. Easy example is lets say there are two brothers and one is told by an outsider that one of the brothers planning to make a move against the other brother that would not be beneficial for the first brother. Lets say that he was told that the brother is trying to cheat the other brother in the inherited property that both have received from their parents. If a brother is impulsive (as many Balkanians are) the love can easily turn to first mistrust and finally hate (if the story is repeated by another person). Say that the two brothers have an argument and cease to talking to each other as a result. Some time passes by and truth comes to surface that what the brother was told was a lie and it has been proven to be a lie. The brother that believed it will now feel guilty while his love will be fully restored and hate will disappear. There is countless examples. Easy example is a young daughter that is angry at the parent that she is unable to accompany her girlfriend to say a movie theater. Say that such girl was really looking forward to this and she informed her mother days in advance that she plans doing this and mother agrees. But in the mean time her mother receives her school report card and gets angry and tells her that she can not go. Now daughter might feel betrayed and feel hate (although this time of clear temporary value). Such hate will surely disappear and convert back to love in no time or instantly if the mother changes her mind and still allows her to join her girlfriend. ----------- In regards to Freud (or rather Fraud) I will state that his name barely has any bearing on the topic at hand and that his theories are dubious at best. The reality is that his theories are not telling us as much about other people are they are saying about his true persona. Any given individual will analyze and understand the world through his own perspective first and if he is lucky he might expand from there and eliminate illogical from the logical - something I am afraid Freud was not capable of doing. Freud was basically at the dead end from the start without realizing it as he was analyzing something that was caused by human emotions. Human emotion's are something so volatile that it is very hard to predict the course of events it might occur if they are the course on individual basis and much less predictable by attempting to group people and regard them as a unit.
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 18:09:24 GMT -5
ARIUSforus (1/28/06 3:40 am)
Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.
Aadmin,
Great post. Very interesting. The concept that "happiness would have to be tied to functions specific of only man" is really one of those things, which make sense once someone mentions it to you. Below, I am quoting from your summary of Aristotle's work and that explains it all. Simple amazing. It makes much sense though.
"For Aristotle happiness could not be found only in pleasure, fame or honor since neither one of those are self-sustaining but dependent on other influences. For him happiness would have to be tied to functions specific of only man.
To find this out Aristotle analyzed the three functions of a soul and focused on one that is specific to only a man or human beings. This eliminated nutritive or vegetative soul (shared with animals and plants) and it also eliminated perceptive or sensitive soul (shared with animals).
The only one left was the rational (responsible for thinking and reasoning) soul which is to be found in humans only."
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 18:10:20 GMT -5
Kartadolofonos (1/28/06 3:57 am)
Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.
Happiness depends upon ourselves Aristotle.....
Religion | Silence | Stupidity | Success | Truth | Victory | Virtue | War | Wisdom
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 18:12:06 GMT -5
Anittas (1/28/06 7:05 am)
Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.
Aadmin, what you described there was not hate; it was anger towards a person. You can still love a person and be angry or furious at them. The status of love doesn't need to change. Don't dismiss Freud's theories just because he wasn't Greek. Have you actually read his work? Freud was giving the answer to a piece of the puzzle, just like Plato and Schopenhauer did. The puzzle is still not complete.
I didn't say that sex equals love, even if it works as a good way to express love. What I was talking about was partnership love, which is also love, but on a different level. As you probably have understood by now, we managed to distinguish several types of love:
1. Unconditional love - from a parent to a child. There's not much to argue about - you (usually) love your offspring.
2. The love a man feels towards his woman; or vice-versa, because:
2.1 He finds her attractive, ie, he wants her to have his child (consciously or unconsciously) - as in, he sees his children in her - theory presented by Plato and Freud;
2.2 He finds her character to be attractive and makes him "complete" - theory presented by Schopenhauer;
2.3 He identifies her traces in both her physic and character as loveable, because they remind him of his mother. This has nothing to do with sex and it doesn't deal only with your parents. The theory suggests that in our early years, we record the physical traces of the people who have been kind to us and relate that to "good". It usually is a mother in the case of a boy and a father in the case of a girl - but it could very well be others.
When it comes to theory 2.1, it is argued that most people would choose a partner that could complete their weakness. If someone is very tall, they might fall for a short person; if someone doesn't weight much, they might fall for someone who has a good weight. It can get more complicated and when it comes to women, it might also have to do with their period - sometimes they find men who look more gentle and take that as they are suitable to be good fathers; and sometimes they find men with more masculine face features as attractive - when they feel they need to feel safe, etc.
All of this goes under the rules of attraction and Aadmin, don't dismiss them, because these pitty rules of attraction - this emotional state that you find silly - is what makes the world go around and it's what leads to the most popular love on the planet.
Plato was trying to argue that a man can only love a women because of the rules of attraction and not because of what she is as a person. He argued that only a man can love a man (non-sexually, if you will), because the love would be genuine.
However, as others have argued, such as Schopenhauer, women can also be loved for what they are, and not just for their attractiveness and for being the mother of the man's children while Freud added another theory - without dismissing the other possibilities - because they're all true; and said that we relate love to the people we identify as good -- and we identify those people from the first impression while we received when we were small.
Okay, so what's the problem? I don't see any problem.
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Post by Emperor AAdmin on Dec 29, 2007 18:14:14 GMT -5
Xpo FERENS(1/28/06 6:07 pm) Re: Topic on Virtue and Happiness. Give your opinion.The problem is that your twisting Plato quite a bit to suit your opinions. It is not until we come to Plato that we find descriptions of something like what we mean by romantic love spoken of with approval, yet the differences are still greater than the resemblances. In the first place it is assumed that this kind of love is only possible in a homosexual relation; and in the second, it is only approved of as the necessary first stage in the growth of the soul. The ultimate good is the love of the impersonal as universal good; the best thing that could happen to a man would be that he should fall in love with the Good immediately, but owing to the fact that his soul is entangled in matter and time, he can only get there by degrees; first he falls in love with a beautiful individual, then he can progress to love of beauty in general, then to love of justice, and so on. If erotic passion can or ought to be transformed in this way, then it was sound psychological insight on Plato's part and not simply the cultural pattern of erotic life in Greece that made him exclude the heterosexual relation, for the latter leads beyond itself, not to the universal, but to more individuals, namely the love of and responsibility for a family, whereas, in the homosexual case, since the relation of itself leads nowhere, the love which it has aroused is free to develop in any direction the lovers choose, and that direction should be towards wisdom which, once acquired, will enable them to teach human beings procreated in the normal way how to become a good society. For love is to be judged by its social and political value. Marriage provides the raw material, the masculine eros the desire and knowledge to mold that material into its proper form. Each time you mention Plato, it is in a way that doesn't reflect his true philosophy. And the way you present Freud in a fashion as if to be consistent with Plato's genius is just disagreeable. Its not that he wasn't Greek, its for the reasons that we gave that we think its best to leave Freud's twisted ideas out of a sane and reasoned discussion. I know it might be difficult, but as Huntington Cairns said, "To understand Plato is to be educated."
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