Monday, January 25, 2010
Inquiry 1: "How should one live?"
The first part of this assignment was to thing about it. The way I went about it was thinking about how I personally live, then I asked myself if that is the way everyone should live. After thinking about it I couldn't come up with a straight forward answer because if everyone lived the way I did, there'd be no individuality in the world--but at least there'd be no crime since I'm a chicken! Anyways then I proceeded by posing the same question to my boyfriend: "How should one live?" He brought an interesting point to my attention, that there are many different variations of the question. Meaning one could live in many different ways. For example, one could live alone or with someone. One could live religiously or scientifically. Or one could live selflessly or selfishly. "Live" could be an outward interaction meaning or inward, again meaning it could mean how we live with ourselves or how with live or interact with others. My boyfriend also couldn't come up with a straight forward answer to the question. So next I talked to my mom. She said that a person should live happily, and true to themselves. But the problem with that is, what if one person thinks something is a bad thing, but it makes another happy. This is one of the many problems our world society faces today, because we don't think alike. A Klu Klux Klan member might be happy with having certain things their way, when in other peoples eyes it's wrong and unfair. Readings vary from one end of the spectrum to the other on how to live. Physiologist have one opinion on what is right, and a scientist's opinion may be completely opposite. In the end, there can be no definite answer to Plato's question because people from different backgrounds, and different beliefs will think in different ways on what is the right or wrong way to live. But the only thing that I really question is if there was a certain set of actions, beliefs etc.. on how to live, would individuality still be able to exist? If we all lived the same exact way how could it exist, because we would be so limited on how to live and express ourselves?
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3 comments:
I agree that the world would be an extremely boring place if we all lived our lives by the same set of guidelines. Individuality could maybe exist within those guidelines depending on how strict they are, but like you said, we would be limited.
I like how you elaborated on how we all think so differently - that there can be no definite answer; what makes one person happy may be frowned upon by others.
As Martha Nussbaum explains in her interview, "we need to rise above the details of our immdiate situation and create theories that have the power to cover many different times and places."
This is obviously much easier said than done, as I doubt anyone could ever come up with an ideal answer as to how to live ones life that is abstract enough to apply to everyone.
I found your post to be very interesting; interesting in the fact that you pointed out that there were several different ways that you can look at a simple question, "How should one live?". I didn't even think to actually analyze the question like this and realize that everyone's interpretation of the word 'live' would be so different. With this said, yes, I definitely agree with what you said about individuality and how for every situation this word can be construed with a totally different meaning.
Nussbaum touched on the idea of helping others. Does this make us better people? Should we live in such a manner? Again, based on the idea of individuality, one should help others and should live with the motive to do so if they feel that it is in their will. Basically that not everyone will have the same morals or feel the same way about helping others. There is no wrong answer!
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