Plato happiness. Happiness at 10 2022-12-12

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Plato, one of the most influential philosophers in Western philosophy, had a unique view of happiness. According to Plato, happiness is not something that can be pursued or obtained through external means, such as wealth or pleasure. Instead, he believed that happiness is something that can only be achieved by living a virtuous life and fulfilling one's potential.

In Plato's philosophy, the concept of happiness is closely tied to the concept of the good life. In his dialogues, Plato often presents the idea that the good life is one in which a person's soul is harmoniously aligned with the eternal and universal Forms, or Ideas. These Forms, which Plato believed were the ultimate source of reality and knowledge, represent the perfect and eternal embodiment of concepts such as justice, beauty, and goodness.

For Plato, the good life is one in which a person's soul is able to contemplate and understand the eternal Forms, and this contemplation leads to true happiness. In contrast, a life focused on external pleasures or material goods is ultimately shallow and unfulfilling, and will not bring true happiness.

Plato believed that achieving happiness required living a virtuous life and following the path of wisdom. This meant living in accordance with reason and following a moral code that promoted the common good. Plato argued that living a virtuous life would lead to happiness because it would allow a person's soul to be in harmony with the eternal Forms, and this alignment would bring inner peace and fulfillment.

In addition to living a virtuous life, Plato believed that happiness also required the cultivation of certain virtues or qualities. These included wisdom, courage, justice, and moderation. For Plato, these virtues were essential because they helped a person to live a balanced and harmonious life, and to make wise and moral decisions.

In conclusion, Plato's view of happiness is significantly different from the more superficial and materialistic views that are often promoted in modern society. According to Plato, happiness is not something that can be pursued or obtained through external means, but rather it is something that is achieved by living a virtuous life and fulfilling one's potential. This requires the cultivation of certain virtues and a focus on the eternal Forms, which represent the perfect embodiment of concepts such as justice, beauty, and goodness.

Happiness In Plato's The Republic

plato happiness

This, in turn, is determined, at least in part, by the values and standards of the society we live in. I would love to hear your thoughts on this fascinating topic! He argues that one should not be afraid; if one is just, they will have a good afterlife. Does it make sense to think about the soul as having different parts? But such objects are not—at least not obviously—natural entities. I assume, I said, that the tyrant is in the third place from the oligarch; the democrat was in the middle? But Mill shows little interest in principled or absolute modal distinctions between necessary and contingent truths. Depending on the quality of each soul, the quality of the beauty pursued will also determine the cycle of reincarnations that is in store for each soul after death 248c—249c.

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Plato's Republic

plato happiness

To the second question, Mill holds that where we do gain genuinely new knowledge—in cases of mathematics and geometry, for instance—we must, at some level, be reasoning inductively. By this he is a person…. And the theories with which they are laden, of course, will vary with social setting. By the dog of Egypt, he will! What did Plato say about politics? Happiness, most will admit, is at least one of the things which is desirable Donner 1991: 31. That Mill holds that even mathematics is founded upon inductive reasoning is perhaps most interesting because it demonstrates the radical and thoroughgoing nature of his empiricism.

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Epicurus And His View On Happiness

plato happiness

True to his philosophy, Epicurus claimed to spend the last few days of life in pleasure, despite all the physical pain he was in. Rather, Plato is concerned with ascertaining all of the following: 1 the most important concepts used to identify and differentiate objects in the way necessary for dialectical procedure; 2 the numbers and proportions needed to understand numerical relations and harmonic structures of all sorts; and 3 the capacity of the soul to perform and comprehend harmoniously coordinated motions. Reprinted in Wagner 2001, 203—237. Whilst everyone feels such emotions at times, holding onto feelings of sadness and disappointment can really weigh a person down and prevent them from feeling happy and content. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 498 — 529. There is yet another activity few people engage in which is required to live a truly happy life, according to Aristotle: intellectual contemplation. Book Six In Book Six, Socrates tries to convince the others that philosophers are wise and just in that they search for the truth as a way of life.

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Plato's Argument for Rule by Philosopher Kings

plato happiness

An act is wrong, therefore, if it would be productive to overall utility to blame an individual for performing that act—or, under a rule-focused interpretation, if it would be productive to overall utility for there to exist a rule to the effect that individuals performing actions of that sort were subject to blame. Every instant of our lives helps to rivet this association, and we never have had a single experience tending to disjoin it. This research found that many personality factors — extraversion, neuroticism — as well as 15 Ways to Create Happy Moments in Life We can, to a certain extent, determine how happy we feel. Some people do what is right for the wrong reasons. It depends in particular on whether, as a matter of fact, the actions that we would pre-theoretically deem good sustain a coherent set of psychological commitments and those that we would pre-theoretically deem bad are inconsistent with a coherent set of psychological commitments. Less often noted is how optimistic Socrates is about the results of a sufficiently careful education.


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Happiness at 10

plato happiness

There are some laboratory experiments, however, that from a multi-factor utilitarian perspective may be permitted. And the oligarch is third from the royal; since we count as one royal and aristocratical? And whatever that standard is, there can be but one. The true philosopher or "lover of wisdom" is one who loves "the truth in each thing", as opposed to those who only love the things themselves. Having someone help you is not a sign of weakness. While there are different kinds of friendship, the highest is one that is based on virtue arête. There have been a few attempts to change the legal status of some nonhuman animals from property to persons. It is therefore just as important to hear counterarguments to the truth as its re-articulation.

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The Philosophy of Happiness in Life (+ Aristotle's View)

plato happiness

His engagement with the question of how society and its institutions ought to be organized is of course guided by an abstract commitment to general happiness as the measure of the success of all human practice—but it is also deeply attentive to the concrete possibilities and dangers of the newly emerging democratic era, and how they relate to this overarching goal Skorupski 2006. Hint: think about what happens on a committee when everyone tries to have equal control. When there is a conflict of interests, crucial interests will always override important interests, important interests will always override replaceable interests, etc. What a wonderful calculation! When I recall a memory, for instance, the sensation is of a memory which has as part of its content that it is my memory. When we determine whether we should take a particular desire as a reason to act we are engaging in a further level of reflection, a level that requires an endorseable description of ourselves. Ultimately, however, the quality of any given pleasure must itself be a substantive question, to be addressed by ongoing experimentation and comparison of the preferences of competent judges—those who have experienced, and appreciated, the sorts of pleasure being compared. If, for example, you are ruled by spirit, then your reason conceives of your good in terms of what is honorable.

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Socrates

plato happiness

He explicitly emphasizes that a virtuous person makes himself a unity 443c—e and insists that a city is made good by being made a unity 462a—b. As the same is true of … animals … they too must be viewed as the experiencing subjects of a life, with inherent value of their own. Mill recognises, however, that not all desiderata besides happiness are desired merely as means. Book Seven In Book Seven, the cave analogy is given in which Socrates defines the importance of education as the means by which the soul is re-routed away from pure desire. So the Republic contributes to political philosophy in two main ways.

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Aristotle vs Plato

plato happiness

Wisdom and good judgment are based upon knowledge. Gill 1985, Kamtekar 1998, and Scott 1999. But it does not even do that, since Socrates is very far from portraying the best soul in the least favorable circumstances and the worst soul in the most favorable circumstances. Socrates needs further argument in any case if he wants to convince those of us in imperfect circumstances like Glaucon and Adeimantus to pursue the philosophical life of perfect justice. In 1865, he was elected as the Member of Parliament for Westminster for the Liberal Party. So, if the only options available in order to save the life of one morally considerable being is to cause harm, but not death, to another morally considerable being, then according to a utilitarian position, causing this harm may be morally justifiable.

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Plato’s Ethics: An Overview (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

plato happiness

The job, Mill noted, provided the stability of income needed for an author without independent means, and was not so taxing as to prevent him exerting the majority of his time and mental energy on his philosophical pursuits. Plato defined a philosopher firstly as its eponymous occupation: wisdom-lover. One should also reject fame and public success to become happy as self sufficiency is believed to provide happiness. This is enough to prompt more questions, for Socrates wants to know what justice is. Similarly, there are no real objects corresponding to the definitions of geometry System, VII: 225.

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Plato's Views on Happiness

plato happiness

That two plus one is equal to three is not a definition of the word three; a statement that mankind have agreed to use the name three as a sign exactly equivalent to two and one; to call by the former name whatever is called by the other more clumsy name. As Elizabeth Anderson has written: Moral considerability is not an intrinsic property of any creature, nor is it supervenient on only its intrinsic properties, such as its capacities. Utilitarianism, X: 211 The claim that it would be rational to sacrifice any amount of a lower pleasure for a minuscule amount of a higher pleasure, though, seems too implausible to attribute to Mill—and in the passage cited, he only registers a sufficient condition for considering one pleasure of a higher quality to another, and not a necessary condition Saunders 2011; Miller 2010: 58. Book Eight The conversation in this part of the book revolves around the four types of government, which are tyranny, which is driven by unlawfulness; oligarchy, which is driven by the required pursuits of man; democracy, which is predicated by the unneeded desires of man; and timocracy, which is associated with honor. Among Islamic scholars, Aristotle is "the First Teacher," and many of his recovered works may have been lost if not for Arabic translations of the original Greek treatises. Because of this principle, Socrates insists that one soul cannot be the subject of opposing attitudes unless one of three conditions is met. Aristotle situates ethics within the discussion of the best constitution.

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