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How did Greek philosophy impact the world today
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If existence is inherently filled with suffering, what follows? For Schopenhauer, what follows is a life not worth living. Nietzsche disagrees. Although Nietzsche accepts that life is suffering, he does not accept Schopenhauer’s nihilistic conclusion. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche attempts to overcome Schopenhauer’s nihilism by appealing to the ancient Greeks. But before explaining the Greek’s response to the suffering, it is important to further explain Schopenhauer’s response. Schopenhauer argues that the source of suffering is what he calls the will or what is more commonly understood as desire. If we don’t get what we want, then we are in pain. If we do get what we want, then we become bored. Either way, we suffer. To end this suffering, Schopenhauer recommends denying the will. By living an ascetic life, one is no longer controlled by the will. Thus, one no longer suffers.
Nietzsche found Schopenhauer’s response to suffering unsatisfactory, so he turned to the Greeks. The Greeks were also aware of the inherent suffering of existence, yet they did not deny the will or acce...
Man 's thoughts of death and eventual oblivion is mainly concerned with “whose subject he would be in life or death,/ Which doom, by land or sea, would strike him down” (Lucretius, “Death,” 150). This idea of death in the mind of a stoic is a predetermined one. It something that cannot be changed. You will achieve your end as it is innately yours and cannot be swayed. While, in keeping with epicurean thought, Lucretius is urging us to realize that it does not matter which evils you face in life and by which doom you meet your end, as long as it was in pursuit of your highest good, happiness. Without life you can never have an potential that existence brings. Life entails hardship for man and “he must be there,/ Himself, to feel its evil, but since death/ Removes this chance, and by injunction stops/ All rioting of woes against our state” (Lucretius, “Death,” 151). This promise of serenity in death is the epicurean promise, and it reveals that death will be the point at which you come nearest to your ultimate and highest happiness, all of which would be utterly impossible without first living and experiencing the due evils of
In philosophy “Nihilism” is a position of radical skepticism. It is the belief that all values are baseless and nothing is known. The word “Nihilism” itself conveys a sense of abolishing or destroying (IEP). Nietzsche’s work and writings are mostly associated with nihilism in general, and moral nihilism especially. Moral nihilism questions the reality and the foundation of moral values. Nietzsche supported his view on morality by many arguments and discussions on the true nature of our inner self. Through my paper on Moral Nihilism, I will explain 5 major arguments and then try to construct a deductive argument for each, relying on Nietzsche’s book II “Daybreak”.
After reviewing the work of David Hume, the idea of a God existing in a world filled with so much pain and suffering is not so hard to understand. Humes’ work highlights some interesting points which allowed me to reach the conclusion that suffering is perhaps a part of God’s divine plan for humans. Our morals and values allow us to operate and live our daily lives in conjunction with a set of standards that help us to better understand our world around us and essentially allows us to better prepare for the potential life after life. For each and every day we get closer to our impending deaths and possibly closer to meeting the grand orchestrator of our universe.
It is easy to place the blame on fate or God when one is encumbered by suffering. It is much harder to find meaning in that pain, and harvest it into motivation to move forward and grow from the grief. It is imperative for one to understand one’s suffering as a gateway to new wisdom and development; for without suffering, people cannot find true value in happiness nor can they find actual meaning to their lives. In both Antigone and The Holy Bible there are a plethora of instances that give light to the quintessential role suffering plays in defining life across cultures. The Holy Bible and Sophocles’ Antigone both mirror the dichotomous reality in which society is situated, underlining the necessity of both joy and suffering in the world.
In order to understand Schopenhauer’s philosophy, one must understand the concept of the will. Schopenhauer seems to describe the will as a blind force of our feelings, our thoughts, and our perception. The only way we see the world is through the will. We are limited because we only see our representation of it through the will, not the actual reality, the thing in of itself. For this reason the world is will, our will, and it has desires. These desires are insatiable, so life becomes defined by suffering. Suffering, however, is only our representation. The world in of itself, aside from our representation, has no suffering. Schopenhauer says the only way to escape the will, which is suffering, is through knowledge and art. There is a distinction between ordinary knowledge and pure knowledge, however. Ordinary knowledge, according to Schopenhauer, was a result of the will. Pure knowledge is actual contemplation of the world in of itself without influence from the will. This can only be attained through art that is able to separate us from our perceptions of reality and reach a state of pure knowledge. In the Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche responds to this by agreeing with Schopenhauer’s philosophy in that art is the way to avoid suffering. He argues that the art capable of ending suffering is tragedy, which is a fusion of the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
Suffering arises early in the story and is a theme is a them that will preside over the entire text, valuable to the reader because of The Buddha’s first Noble Truth: human life is consists almost entirely of suffering. When the Buddha is just a baby, the relief from suffering he will provide is predicted. “Be steadfast, therefore, give up anxiety, be cheerful, for your clan will flourish without a doubt; The one born here as your son is the leader of those overcome by the suffering in the world” (B 1.33). The
Epicurus provides some great ideas towards what constitutes happiness and ‘the good life’ that can be applied to many facets of life, however I believe some aspects must be further contemplated to find a more infallible theory. The view that one can only feel pleasure in the absence of pain seems to be one that is very black and white and does not seem to take in the intricacies of modern society. Fundamentally, the pursuit of certain pleasures and the minimisation of pain would likely result in happiness, however a mild dosing of the contrary could also contribute to ‘happiness and the good life’.
Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (2006), Suffering [Online], Metaphysics Research Lab, Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pleasure/ [3 May 2008].
The Merriam – Webster Dictionary defines existentialism as a chiefly 20th century philosophical movement embracing diverse doctrines but centering on analysis of individual existence in an unfathomable universe and the plight of the individual who must assume ultimate responsibility for acts of free will without any certain knowledge of what is right or wrong or good or bad (Merriam, 2011). In other words, an existentialist believes that our natures are the natures we make for ourselves, the meaning of our existence is that we just exist and there may or may not be a meaning for the existence, and we have to individually decide what is right or wrong and good or bad for ourselves. No one can answer any of those things for us. A good example of existentialism is Woody Allen’s movie, Deconstructing Harry. A man is haunted by his past and his past has followed him into the present. He is a wreck not because of the things that happened to him, but because of the choices he made. He is consumed by regret and insecurity and he tries to find blame in his situation with someone other than himself, however he cannot (Barnes, 2011). Throughout the rest of this paper I will be discussing two of the most prominent existentialists, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
Arthur Schopenhauer’s meaning of life includes ideas that attempt to identify factors that constitute happiness. According to Schopenhauer, the three factors are what one is, what one has, and how one is regarded by others. ( Pigliucci, 2006 ) What one has and how one is regarded appear to be the two deciding factors that determine an individual’s happiness. Not much consideration is given to what one is. These ideas led to the philosophy that “personality is the greatest factor in happiness.” ( Pigliucci, 2006 ) Schopenhauer believed that personal attributes that are possessed need to be utilized to their maximum potential. The relationship between wealth and happiness is positively recognized by Schopenhauer however, once needs are meet, the relationship ceases to exist. Schopenhauer believes that our life existence is based on the fleeting present. ( The Meaning of Life, 2015 )
The driving concept behind Nietzsche’s ideas of how happiness can be achieved, who the ideal person is, and the definition of happiness is his view of reality as the Will to Power. The Will to Power is the idea that there is constant conflict in both culture and nature, and this conflict leads to individuals becoming dominant and therefore happy because of how much they have overcome. The Will to Power leads Nietzsche’s reality to be stratified and horizontal. This allows for the idea of carpe diem because the Will to Power repeats and there is nothing to look forward to because there is no God in his view and his view is highly individualistic. The key to happiness, in the Nietzschian view, is overcoming. The main obstacle to this reality
Moltmann attempts to articulate an enhanced theodicy from the customary one developed in the Hellenistic world that comprises of paradoxically speaking about “the sufferings of the God who cannot suffer.” According to Moltmann, the combination of Greek philosophy ‘apathy’ axiom and central gospel statements have only diminished the significance of the canon. His belief is that the only way to evade reducing this doctrine to abstract conjecture is by making the starting point of the Trinitarian thinking theologia salvifica; in other words, to commence with the incarnation and the cross, instead of with the promise of an unworldly reward (a natural theology).
However, I argue that for this salvation to be worth forgoing death it must break Schopenhauer's argument that life is a constantly negative. Nonexistence after death is eternal neutrality. The decision to forgo this eternal neutrality would have to mean that salvation from the will in life must be of higher value. Therefore, life during that period must be positive. For example, Schopenhauer argues that contemplating and appreciating art is an act free from will and desire. Therefore, since it gives some pleasure and does not stem from suffering it must be positive in value.
So, its real meaning here is “I prefer non-existence over existence”. This is in some sense begging the question and it is not always true: although some of us may still prefer the absence of pain over the presence of pain on the basis that it means never coming into existence, some of us, especially considering the pleasure we have enjoyed or will enjoy, may well hesitate to state so (and those who hesitate to state so might even include people who have experienced or will experience considerable pain). To put it in another way, considerations of the presence of pleasure have a role in people’s evaluation of pain, and more specifically, in connection with our intuition in the procreation asymmetry, if the life of a potential person (that is, a person who could exist but does not currently exist) would be foreseeably worth living, the presence of (prospective) pleasure may undermine the preferability of the absence of pain because otherwise this potential person would never be able to experience the pleasure. One important rationale behind this undermining effect of the presence of (prospective) pleasure is that if there’s only one way (i.e. coming into existence) to acquire some pleasure, and if the pain caused by coming into existence is not miserably unacceptable (e.g. dying of genetic disease in early childhood), then the pain may be considered a sort of necessary evil and no longer act as a moral reason against bringing this potential person into existence – thus, the potential person’s preference for the absence of pain is
Suffering can be defined as an experience of discomfort suffered by a person during his life. The New York Times published an article entitled what suffering does, by David Brooks (2014). In this article, Brooks explains how suffering plays an important role in our pursuit of happiness. He explains firstly that happiness is found through experiences and then, suffering can also be a motivation in our pursuit of happiness. In other words, suffering is a fearful but necessary gift to acquire happiness. This paper is related to motivation and emotion, two keys words to the pursuit of happiness (King, 2010).