Paper Topic:

Compare and Contrast two Greek Philosophers

Ideas About What It Means to Lead a Good Life

2004

Ideas About What It Means to Lead a Good Life

The questions about leading a good or an evil life were raised by many philosophers during many centuries . The ethics which they have suggested in very different because every person has a different point of view on what is good and what is bad . On one hand , why should not a person care only about himself , satisfy all of the desires , do whatever he wants to do , trust only his bodily

appetites ? Isn 't this the highest good to take a great care of yourself and do anything your organism asks you to do Isn 't that the greatest satisfaction in the world ? On the other hand isn 't it the greatest good in the world when you live for other people consider their needs , help them and see how happy they become after you helped them , work for the benefit of your state and bring lots of prosperity to the nation ? These questions have been answered in different ways by philosophers . Plato and Aristotle made a large progress in the studies of ethics . Plato focuses his analysis of ethics on the tripartite soul and its components . Aristotle looks at the highest virtue of a person through the prism of how well the person fulfills what his nature aims at

Long before Plato , Socrates said that virtue was knowledge . However Plato goes far beyond him in his analysis of what it means to lead a good life . This issue of virtue is much more complicated than being knowledgeable in different areas and knowing what is good and what is bad . Despite the views of Socrates who considered that as long as a person knows what is good and what is bad , he will always choose the good and lead a good life . Plato realizes that a person might not lead a good life even if he knows about good . Plato thinks that a person might still choose pleasure of his own instead of being harmonious with his nature . According to Plato , pleasure is not the highest good for humans A person cannot trust his bodily appetites and satisfy every desire which they create in him . It 's even dangerous to put your own pleasure as the goal of your life because it will destroy you at last . In order to explain why it 's necessary to fight with your desires and not put pleasure as the goal in life , Plato marks that the highest good for anything , human or non-human , consists of fulfilling his own nature , in living up to its own for of essence . Moral ideas do not consist in going against nature , but rather in fulfilling my nature , in realizing my capacities and powers as a human being (T . Z . Lavine ,

.54 . In Book IV (443-44 ) Plato devotes lots of attention to the tripartite character of human soul . As Plato 's views show , the soul of...

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