Charles Hanselman
Final Exam (Take home)
Philosophy 101
Fall 2005
Sections 004
Topic 1
The idea of pleasure is a hard idea to pin down. It is always changing from one mind to the next and one generation to the next as well. Many people have tried to understand the true meaning of pleasure; they have anaylzed it, they have completely destroyed it. They blame it for their great succuesses and for their horrible failures. Two great minds both disscussed pleasure. Plato and Aristotle each had their own idea of pleasure.
Plato, the man behind the great work of Socrates(in writing about his teachings), uses Socrates constant search for the meaning of justice and to explain pleasure. He does not make it clear at first how a man is meant to have pleasure and is not become a tyrant or an un-just person. He explains how we all have desires that are not quite the most clean in nature but for most this only show themselves in dreams. Only the tyrant would let these pleasures come out in the light of day. At first, it seemed as if pleasure would be a bad thing, but then Plato explains that only a philosopher would be able to have a kind of just pleasure. Having experienced all other forms of pleasure and having the right kind of soul to not fall into the realm of lustful disire such as the tyrant would. To Plato, in my opinion, pleasure is something humans need but in moderation and with a good mind.
Aristotle is another great mind of the past. His view on pleasure consists of the three part idea - that is you can have to much, just enough, or you can have too little. This falls in with pleasure. Pleasure to Aristotle is an activity that completes itself. It is not a bad thing that only evil men take part in. He thinks that pleasure is not bad in moderation because it does not hurt people. Pleasure become bad when too little of it leads to a hurtful soul, or possibly a secretly lust-full soul, with too much desire. Also pleasure becomes bad when too much of it is taken, as a man would become a lust-filled animal if he took part in pleasure. Pleasure must fall into the median of the scale of life.
Plato and Aristotle both men of great intelligence. Plato takes the view that only a just man can have a kind of true pleasure that is not going to lead you down the path of an un-just life. On the other hand, Aristotle states that such would only happen when pleasure is taken in excess, but a moderate person could indulge in pleausure and not become what Plato calls the Tyrant.
Topic 2
Human beings exist. They, however, do not exist without a meaning. They crawled their ways up from the bottoms of the food chain to the top faster then any other animal on this planet. With a sort of drive behind their actions, they created everything they would need. Humans have a place on this earth, a function. Aristotle talks about this and gives his opinion on the subject. Human beings fuctions is not a easy idea to pin down.
Aristotle lays out that all organisms have “inbuilt“ functions and goals. He tells how the function and goal of humans and all organisms is to find the ulitimate end or Eudaimonia. This function is to find the ulitmate end. With the ideas of Theoria and Phroneisis it is not hard to see that Aristotle believes that how we behave will allow us to either achive this ulitmate goal or not, hense our function.
This function of which Aristotle speaks of, is something obtainable. It consists of the natural driving forces behind human nature. The goal of man, Eudaimonia consists of taking the steps nessary to hit the true end point. Arisotle tells of what makes a human life fulfilling and happy, reasons and actions, with actions being energeia.
Aristotle tells us how these functions that human beings must fulfill in order to reach Eudaimania. They are merely the act of going through life seeking happiness. Not searching for more and more so that one can understand and know everything, but to reach that end and to have reasons for what you do. These actions become what is our functions. The idea of a hidden human function has been thought over for many, many years with what some may call a lack of progress. The existance of a function is more or less a good way of saying that without good moral virture or without living a good life style, one will never reach that point of the ulimate end and one will never be happy. Happiness is the goal that all humans beings strive for, even if they do not admit it.
Topic 3
In the past there have been many great philsophers. However two of them that had such radical idea in their own time were, Plato and Nietzsche. They both had different philsophies on life, and pretty much everything that people of different times would. Plato of course being the mastermind behind all the written works of Socrates, devoloped the Theory of Forms. Nietzsche probably would not have agreaed wtih Plato’s theory.
Plato’s theory of forms, a genius idea if you believe that he was a genius, has to do with catorgizing object. The theory also has to do with grouping those object by their basic phycial discription. This meaning also that if something is Pretty, it belongs into the group of pretty, or the form of pretty. Plato’s Theory of Forms is hard to grasp, unless your mind-altering drug. The theory itself was created in another time, to explain things for that time.
Nietzsche, might challange the Theory of Forms, based on his belief that Philosphers do not really think out side of the time they exsist in, or the time they create their theory to explain. That being, Nietzsche might say that Plato, did not factor into his theory the exponenctial growth in scitenfic knowlage, or the growth of knowlage about metaphyicall things brought on by the philoshers after Plato. Another reason that Nietzsche might not agree with the Theory of Forms, is that of Dogmatism on Platos part. The theory makes many asumptions that Plato assumes that everyone will take as matter of fact.
With all of this Nietzsche could completly reject Plato‘s Theory of Forms. Plato’s Theory as an attempt to make everything easyier to understand by classifing things into groups that should not be classified together. But after all Nietzsche was his own person with his own beliefs in life and dealing with his own Philosophy on everything. Nietzsche had many reasons to not agree with other philosophers. He was right to think this, being that many philosphers were to conceded to even think that they might be wrong, or that their theorys are skewed to the way everything really is.
