class synopsis March 30, 2011

We began March 30^th’s class by talking about Kierkegaard’s second stage of life which is the ETHICAL. Going from the aesthetic to the ethical requires a big leap. This leap is characterized by two basic things: accepting moral standards and recognizing duty over pleasure. For Kierkegaard the ethical stage is an either or stage. By this, he means that you cannot behave aesthetically while also being ethical. We gave the example of the homeless man. For the aesthetic person a homeless man is whatever, they are not worried about him they just keep going with the flow as if nothing happened. We can take the same homeless man and have someone spit on him. If a person is truly aesthetic they will not care and keep on with their lives but as soon as that person recognizes that it is wrong to spit on a homeless man then he or she is making a judgment and therefore making the leap between the aesthetic and the ethical person. Being ethical is mainly about making judgments. Once you make a judgment you run the risk of indentifying with a belief. Then we identified heroes to be ethical human beings. Yes, they might always be heroes but they are missing out. They are so committed to duty that they sacrifice their very own pleasure or rewards. They recognize that the duty they perform is greater than their own happiness. Just like with the aesthetic stage the ethical stage has its difficulties. These difficulties are inability to obey the rules or laws (inability to be consistently oneself), one recognizes imperfection, and conflicts within LAW.

We then proceeded to talk about the last stage which is the RELIGIOUS stage. The religious stage makes the distinction of society (the universal) or God. This is when we talked about the dark knight. His actions are not universal; in fact, most people view him as a tyrant. But he is so committed to his duty that he puts it over everything. We also determined that decisions come from a purity of heart not because the ends will be rewarding. We do not make decisions based on ethical or based on following the law but we make decisions because our heart is pure and it will the one thing. A religious person is a fanatic of sorts. He or she will do things that are not necessarily universal and things that society does not agree with. Then we started talking about the leap of faith. We talked about this talking about examples like 2 people in love. When a couple is in love there is no reasonable reason to their love. They simply love each other. If it is love then it is absurd, it is something unjustifiable and a must. Another example is the person who believes in God. The belief in God is something that cannot be justified, mediated or quantified this makes it impossible for it to be universal. The leap of faith however has to compromise your identity it cannot just be that you believe that a desk is or is not there.

We ended the class by talking about the lovers’ example. When a boy loves a girl and the cant be together people in the different stages will react differently. The aesthetic person will keep going with their life it will not be a big deal for them that he cannot be with the one he loves. There will always be others. The ethical person would not give up on love but would be resigned to the fact that they cannot be together in this world or in this life. Finally, the religious person is the same as ethical but he would insist regardless of the absurdity that they would not be together in this life, in this world. The religious person would push and push for the relationship to happen.

what if...?

Descartes says that we are supposed to be rational beings, that we have to disconnect ourselves from our senses. I have tried to do that this week but it is harder than it seems. I have come to realize that we are very reliant on our senses for absolutely everything. We have become reliant and know only what we hear, see, feel, touch or smell; the worst part is that we accept it. We accept that our senses are right but what if they are not? What if what Descartes says is true? That God is just a great deceiver that he is tricking us into feeling, smelling, touching, or seeing. I honestly don’t know how that would affect everything what if something was just a big lie?

epicureanism and stoicism

After further thought I concluded that I am epicurean. Why? Well I believe that they had it right when they said that we should be like the happy unconcerned gods. If we live the present moment concerned about what can happen or might happen then we aren’t really enjoying it. We then become preoccupied with the stress and concerns instead of enjoying the present moment. However, I also agree with one thing that the stoics say. Life in my opinion is to be enjoyed at the present but the stoics were the ones that said that the future isn’t up to us and the past has already happened so we cannot do anything about it. This is definitely something I agree with due to the fact that we don’t know what the future will bring our way and I am a strong believer that we cannot live in the past.

Pursuit of Happiness

So, we have been talking about how the human end and desire is happiness. How “all desire eudaemania”. I was thinking however, on how Aristotle says that happiness depends on the pairing of desire and rational behavior. That reminded me of the movie Pursuit of Happiness. It reminded me on how he has the overwhelming desire to better himself and acts rationally upon that desire. I believe he does it for the right reasons (his improvement, and his sons well being), he acts in the right way, with the right feeling and at the right time. In other words, he finds the mean between acting in an extreme fashion and acting with a lack of interest towards the problem. Also, I began to think how many times I have acted irrationally in Aristotle’s eyes because I have given myself into desire without really being rational about my actions.

Never really in the same place

After class I found myself thinking a little bit more about what Heraclitus said about “into the same rivers we do and do not step.” It true. I found myself thinking about how we think we are in the same place but we really never are. Even if we try to do it is impossible to actually be in the exact same place that we were in the past, life is continuously changing and as people we grow with every second that goes by. That chain of thought led me to think that we sometimes take some things for granted and we don’t really appreciate the place we are in at the time we are in it.

It's a situational thing

I believe ethics to be particular to each person. According to the introduction to business book that I used last semester a pole taken showed that everyone thinks that in some cases it is ok to steal, lie, cheat, or kill. What happens then to ethics if this is true? Do we just ignore the fact that inside of all of us we believe that at some point it is ok to kill someone? Ethics then gets defined by the situation that we are put in. I ask you to take some time and think about the answer to this question: what would you do under certain circumstances? Would you kill? Would you steal? A lot of people would be surprised of their honest answers. I know I was when I was posed with this question last semester in my intro to business class.

Can we truly know someone?

Today in class we were presented with the example of a wife and a husband knowing each other. Can they ever know each other completely? Will they ever get each other completely? At first my answer was yes. Then I started to really think about it. I don’t believe that it is possible to know your wife or husband completely or anyone for that matter, not even your best friend. The reason I say this is because there is a quote I know that I believe to be very true. “The only constant in life is change.” How do I apply this to my life? Quite simply, you could ask anyone that has said to truly know me if they ever thought I would consider being a military man and they would say no without hesitation. However, things do change and about a month ago I started thinking about transferring to west point and becoming a marine. When I told my parents and friends their reaction was the same mouth wide open and silence spread across the room. This is a perfect example that things always change and it is impossible to truly know someone because as time goes by people change and they gain interest in different things.