Recommended: Plato and Aristotle's ethics
In the epic poem The Iliad, armies and individuals on both sides of the Trojan War are compared to animals through a figure of speech called, simile. The similes reveal qualities about the nature of honor and leadership. Through out the epic, both Gods and mortals have made decisions in battle that are considered honorable or dishonorable. While the narrator does not directly say an action is honorable or dishonorable, it is implied through simile that an action is to be viewed a certain way.
When it comes to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, I believe that he has found a common thread in humanity in the fact that humans strive for the moderate in living virtuously. However, I would argue that the thread is varied enough to have no true worth in discerning the aspects of humanity. People have too different moralities and goals. Because Aristotle allows for these “local variations”, as Martha Nussbaum later terms in her defense of Aristotle, he is acknowledging that there cannot be an overarching analysis of humanity.
Plato breaks the justification of knowledge down into two types of realms that show what can be known by reason and what can be known by the five senses. These realms, then divided into two other unequal parts based on their clarity and truthfulness, make up what is known as The Divided Line. By understanding The Divided Line we can fully grasp the differences between the perceptual, also known as becoming, realm and the conceptual, also known as being, realm. The perceptual realm is the opinions and beliefs of people or it can be known as the visible realm.
In The Odyssey, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Jane Eyre, there is a universal theme of justice, morality, nobility, and virtue. With reading all three texts, many questions, some unanswerable, can be posed: Is revenge justice? Is justice revenge? Does justice exist? What differentiates a nobleman from an ignoble one?
Book X of The Republic can be viewed as a parody because Socrates is critical towards poets for creating images but he is guilty of doing the same. He bans the poets from the city for their ability to create images, but he too is guilty of creating images with his depictions of healthy cities, feverish cities, the myth of metals, his allegory of the cave, and countless other examples he uses to support his argument of what justice is. The reason Socrates dislikes poets is that they have no knowledge and are just observers who imitate images (Plato 285) and when they do imitate, they imitate the worse parts of the soul and are corruptive (289). Socrates is much more receptive towards philosophers like himself because they possess knowledge and
To Plato, this bottom part is the most problematic aspect of being human, and all lower pleasures such as sex and hunger fall under this category. The top two parts of the soul partake in moderating and even suppressing the appetitive component, a practice that reflects an individual’s judgement or logos. In The Republic, Plato contrives to dissuade the masses from pursuing the lower pleasures of the human soul and rather encourages the pursuit of truth and ideals (called
Aristotle believed that you could only punish the autonomous acts of humans. However, Nietzsche believes that the punishment is not to make people better, but rather it is to take pleasure in other people’s pain as a form of compensation for a debt that is owed. In Sections Six and Seven, Nietzsche turns his attention to the festivity of violence and punishment. Nietzsche explains that cruelty was mixed into the joys of everyday life, and that “one could not imagine royal marriages and folk festivals in the
In the Aristotelean treatise known as Rhetoric, Aristotle asserts that feelings of anger or passion "are due all acts of revenge... no one grows angry with a person on whom there is no prospect of taking vengeance" (Aristotle 15). This in itself is significant; it suggests that the very idea of one gaining recompense for a personal injustice has continued to remain a viable route to justice, regardless of any one time period in human history. Interestingly, the theme of retribution goes back as far as Hammurabi's Code around 1750 BC, or even to the Biblical myth of Cain and Abel. Therefore, one must raise of why revenge continues to have a leading presence in the social and artistic aspects of both the ancient and contemporary times.
Through Socrates’s description of the life of the tyrant, Plato makes clear the apparent angst within the tyrannical soul and its direct correspondence to justice. Through describing tyrants as “unjust as they can be” (Book IX: 576b) as well as “the most wretched” (Book IX: 576c), Socrates is able to prove that “the man who turns out the worst” will “also turn out the most wretched” (Book IX: 576b). This defies Glaucon’s case that justice is valuable solely for its
Myths were used to both define, unify and to divide Roman society. Mythical knowledge, and in particular Greek mythology, was the cultural currency in even in the remotest parts of the Roman world, resulting in higher social status. Cameron (2010, p.201) argues that ‘Aristotle claimed that even the best known myths were known only to a few’ members of society but that everyone knew the outlines of myths. Myths were everywhere in society from coins, statues, wall paintings and mosaics but there was no defining narrative of any of the myths.
In The Republic, Plato writes about his thoughts on good, justice, and how we can achieve it. He starts off by stating that for human happiness and to live the best life philosopher-kings are needed. Not everyone can become a philosopher; certain people simply are non-philosophers also called lovers of sights and sounds. Plato makes the distinction between lovers of wisdom(philosophers) and lovers of sights and sounds clear using beauty as an example. Non-philosophers see ''fine tones and colours and forms and all the artificial products that are made out of them''(476b) but are unable to see or to understand absolute beauty.
For instance, I may want to eat a piece of cake, but the rational part of my psyche stops me from eating the cake because I do not want to gain weight. In other words, I like to think of the rational part of the soul as the frontal lobe of the brain—if the person is healthy and in balance, then the frontal lobe regulates decision-making. This is analogous to the controlling role of the rational part of the psyche. Socrates suggests that the rational part of the soul can convince, if the parts of a person’s soul are balanced, the other sections to behave a certain way. Although rational normally governs a being, this part can be in conflict—like in the example of wanting to eat the
Motivated by their hatred and their destructive desires such as revenge, hate, and envy they sought to create mayhem. Although one might argue the importance of good and evil, in this context goodness is arbitrary, one must examine their
Humour as a powerful tool to change things: the status of women in yesterday’s and today’s satire. Since Aristophanes’ comedies, satire has been aiming at criticizing the injustices of the authorities as well as the moral wrongness of society. By the wise use of wit and humour, satire castigat ridendo mores, a Latin phrase coined by the 17th century French scholar Jean de Santeul. The meaning of the sentence is that one can change customs of society s/he is living in by laughing at them.
On why diversion is about force, control and the parity of mind and feelings In old times, cleverness or comic was entirely controlled. In spots like Greece and Egypt, jokes were even taboo in social circumstances. Considering the verging on forbidden nature of cleverness, it's not really astonishing that silliness never gotten specific consideration from antiquated researchers. Plato was loath to silliness as jokes and mockery were not energized and men and ladies were relied upon to be not kidding as opposed to pointless about all issues. Some old researchers went to the degree to contend that funniness could prompt mockery, affront, indecent or unpredictable talk lastly outrage, hatred and significantly kill.
