Aristotle on Happiness & Human Purpose
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ส.ค. 2022
- Peter Adamson discusses Aristotle on happiness and his famous function argument. This is from an episode of Peter Adamson's podcast, the History of Philosophy without any Gaps, back in 2011. The podcast can be found here: historyofphilosophy.net
#philosophy #aristotle #ethics
ive been listening to this channel for probably half a decade now
Great presentation containing very persuasive arguments.
Thank you ...
When one makes a food if s/he appoints a name to that food then it has a receipt.
3:00+ yes he nails it brilliant facts
This is lifted from Peter Adamson’s podcast. Did you get his permission first? No citation afforded. Plagiarism overdose?
Peter here! They didn't ask me but they say it is taken from the podcast in the video description (at least now they do, not sure if that was there when you saw the video). So no problem from my point of view.
It is immaterial who said it first. It is the lesson I receive and lead me to better life, and make me a right thinking person, which is important.
I'm not keen on 'reason' it has cold calculating connotations. I much prefer 'intelligence' it seems much broader in reach. Those questionaires the governments send out to even infant school childeren asking "how happy are you" are ridiculous.
_no, they usually ask how depressed are you_
Cold calculation is mans basic method of survival. Mysticism is an icepick to thbe brain. Intelligence is the measure of reasoning ability.
first comment
I believe that human society is like a race. People are born athletes participating in a race, not physical but intellectual. Human life is just like a marathon race. Physical marathon race has a finishing line whereas intellectual marathon race will never end. Instead, human life has a direction or goal, and the goal is called “Control...”. In this world, anything other than human is a thing (including animals). The ultimate desire for human is to exercise the greatest possible control over the other human and things around him. Control on human is “power”, and control on things is “wealth”. Power is measured by positions and ranks whereas wealth is measured by money terms. With the control on human comes indirectly some control on things, such as politicians using their power to gain materialistic benefits. Likewise, with the control over things comes indirectly some control over human, such as rich people hiring other people to work for and serve them. Politicians also have direct control over things, such as government-owned enterprises and assets. Nevertheless, this kind of control is not absolute and politicians cannot blatantly take the things under control as their own assets. On the contrary, the assets of a capitalist are entirely privately owned and the capitalist has absolute control over them. The study of how people control one another in order to gain indirect control over things is called politics. The study of how people make use of the control over things to indirectly control other people is called economics.
American psychologist Abraham Maslow says that there are seven levels of human need, namely, (1) food, water, (2) safety, (3) belongingness, love, (4) esteem, (5) curiosity, (6) beauty, symmetry, and (7) self-actualization. Only after man's lower level of needs have been satisfied, will he recognize the need at the next higher level. Maslow believes that the highest desire of man is to “self-actualize”. In my opinion, though, the meaning of self-actualization is not clear enough. Instead, I believe that the ultimate goal for human existence is to control everything that exists, meaning the entire universe. Things will become “beautiful” after they are controlled. For example, people think that today’s life is more beautiful than yesterday's because they have greater control over life today than they had yesterday. Otherwise, they would not say so. Curiosity is only a means to achieve the end, that is, control. One has to understand a thing before controlling it. Only when the structure of atom is understood can atomic power be controlled. As a result of the natural course of evolution, human beings have only two eyes and ten fingers. By the same token, the human desire to control and be curious is the result of evolution that has been going on for millions of years. Those ape-men that lacked the desire to know and control had died out long time ago. The so-called esteem in real terms is the desire to do well in everything and outperform others. People compete and compare with one another to see who can control more. This is the primary motivation force behind human social development. Social animals are “social” and live together because they are linked by a common force. The force that links the Earth and the Moon is called gravity, and the force that links social animals together is belongingness and love, an inherited instinct of social animals. Adults do not have to teach kids to make friends with other kids because it is in their instinct. Without friends, people will feel lonely. Among social animals, there is mutual attraction (belongingness and love) as well as repelling force (hatred) in competition for control. In other words, people co-operate and compete with one another. Co-operation increases the chance of survival for people as a group while competition and selfishness increase the chance of survival for individuals. Both forces are necessary and are results of the natural course of evolution over the years. Sometimes, though, competition can also increase the chance of survival for a group. A typical example would be two male deer competing for a herd of female deer. In the end, only the stronger male deer has the chance of mating therefore their offspring will have a better chance of survival.
In common words, the goal of human existence is to scramble for power and wealth. Human society is just a stage for race, or competition. To the losers, competition is very cruel. Competition causes a lot of stress, not everyone likes competition. If you give up, others, including your parents, will look down on you, and tell you that you are useless. Therefore, every one of us born in this society is forced to take part in the competition. Why is human society a stage for competition? Because human beings have needs. The first need is oxygen, and then the needs for food, water, clothes, housing and transportation are followed. All these things are not free, have limited supply, except oxygen. Nobody can survive without food, water, clothes and house, so, people feel unsafe, and then they desire for all these. This desire is limitless. Even if someone has gathered enough wealth for the rest of his life, he still wants to collect more for his children, even his grandchildren. The result of limited resources plus limitless desires is competition.
There are people in this world, such as monks and missionaries, who may not appear greedy and lack the desire to control other people and things. It is only because these people believe in an afterlife. They sacrifice the present life for the sake of the future life in heaven. What is heaven? In my view, it is the place with indefinite control. Therefore, these people still want control in the end. They want to control their life to come because they believe in it. People that have more control over other people are called politicians. People that have more control over things are called capitalists and people that have more control over knowledge are called scientists. All these people are the forerunners at the intellectual marathon race.