Our group had Schopenhauer as our topic today and while not all of my group might agree with me he seemed to be kind of a pretentious snob. In doubt it describes parts of Schopenhauer's work Dialogue on religion. In it there are two characters Philalethes (P for short since I am a lazy college student) who is the voice of Philosophy and Demopheles (D see explanation for P) the voice of the people. In the dialogue there is a point were P is trying to convince D that people will eventually realize the fallibility of religion and D's reply is "You've no notion how stupid most people are" which makes me think that Schopenhauer (Which I don't want to shorten because it sounds cool) was a pretentious snob. However for a snob Schopenhauer made some really good points. One part I liked was where he pointed out the corruption than unfortunately seems to come hand in hand with organized religion. D in his pretentious way is arguing that religion is necessary because it guides the common people in life and is a comfort to them in suffering and death. To which P replies then why is it necessary for everyone to believe the same thing, why do the religions vie for dominance. Overall Schopenhauer was a very thought provoking philosopher even though he was a pretentious snob who I think underestimated humanity's intelligence (watch someone find a mistake in my grammar or spelling and throw it at me).Our factual question was:
Respectively Philalethes was the voice of what and Demopheles was the voice of what in Schopenhauer's Dialogue on Religion?
A. Philosophy & Religion
B. Philosophy & the People
C. Religion & the Pope
D. The Greeks & The Romans
And our Discussion question was:
If Immortality was a certainty how important would life on earth be?
My answer to the discussion question:
If immortality existed life would still be worth $5.37. Just kidding but while I would like to believe that we would have a little more reverence for the human life I really don't think we would. You can call me a pessimist but throughout history humans have continued to find more efficient ways to kill each other and other creatures. Wars would still occur, corporations would still contaminate ground water with toxic chemicals to save a buck, and the blood diamond industry would still exist all because we are a bunch of greedy bastards. But that's just my opinion maybe my group will be more cheery than me.
Sorry I'm not more cheerful than Zachary, but I agree with him. Generally humans are extremely greedy and will do whatever is necessary to get ahead of other people for their own self-serving interests. I think it honestly doesn't matter whether or not immortality is a certainty because no matter how much you explain to people and reason with them logically that all life is important here on earth, they're still going to do whatever the hell they want to. Even a lot of religious individuals who believe in ultimate consequences for their sins continue to sin anyway. It's simply human nature.
ReplyDeleteI believe if immortality were a certainty, life would be more chaotic. I believe that you should live your life any way you see fit, but I also believe that too many people live like they're invincible, like nothing can harm them. Some people view that we do live in a world of immortality, that there is an afterlife. A friend of mine that I grew up with past away last weekend and, once again, I've been reminded how mortal we are as humans on Earth and how I hope there is an immortality- an afterlife- that we have or that we can go to. Maybe I have a different view or maybe I'm letting my emotions of the past few days fog my rational thoughts. I guess it just depends on what you define as immortality as being. And I'm sorry for dumping this "baggage" on here.
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