Our group discussed Aristotle. He was a Greek philosopher, student of Plato, and teacher of Alexander the Great. Aristotle's main philosophy was living life virtuously. Keep in mind virtue to the Greeks meant "excellence." He believed that a life should strive for excellence and be filled with friends, participation in the community, and having an active life.
Our questions were:
Aristotle most disagreed with Plato's theory of Forms.
True/False. (True)
How do the Greeks ideas of virtue differ from our's today?
Virtue to society today runs more along the lines of morality. Some of us had trouble understanding the blind eye Greeks turned to morality. Aristotle taught that happiness was not the same as pleasure, and we should strive for happiness because pleasure to one can hurt another. At the same time though he lived in a society that had slavery, and seemed okay with it. Like Plato's Allegory of the Cave, the Greeks didn't know anything but slavery. Their gods were also not the most moral of beings, and Aristotle believed that gods paid no attention to the actions of people on Earth. That's why I believe morality did not have any meaning in the Greeks sense of virtue.
Our views of virtue certainly do not differ from those of Aristotle's school of philosophy. However, we consider morality to be an important facet of virtue, which Aristotle seemed to gloss over. Aristotle ignored the most heinous institution of slavery in his creation of virtues. This was most likely a result of being a member of the upper class that benefited the most from slavery. Therefore, he was reluctant to create a moral code that denounced the institution of slavery.
ReplyDelete“A virtue, according to Aristotle, is a concrete aspect of individual character, not an abstraction or an ideal detached from the people who exemplify it.” This, to me, is an interesting concept. If I, as an individual, inherently possess certain virtues and lack others, what should I strive for? Aristotle rejected Plato’s theory of Forms which strives for an unreachable perfection. In application, then, what is the difference between the views? To fall back on the metaphor used in class: According to the Theory of Forms, there is a perfect cup of coffee that I should strive for, but I will never drink. In Aristotle’s view, I have my cup of coffee that I’ve had from the beginning. It will never get any better or any worse because it is my unchanging cup. It seems, either way, that my palate for have to settle for a subpar beverage forever with no real hope of something delicious .
ReplyDeleteIts seems weird to me that of all the things philosophers questioned, they never questioned morality or slavery. Maybe that is because philosophy is not a religion.
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