Tuesday, September 6, 2011

The path to good

It seems Aristotle has successfully encircled the majority of our class with a confusing notion about the nature of what is Good. While explaining his beliefs on attaining the supreme good, he branches into other, distinct areas of human society in which one can also follow to find different types of good. One question that kept popping into my head in class was, 'Why make understanding good so difficult???

When I made my schema for the last PE, I drew a rather unconventional timeline of sorts which mapped out my perception of how Aristotle was instructing or rather leading us to the answer of the supreme good. At the very root of my line was the "Desire for Happiness." I did this because to my understanding, humans often chase and succeed in whatever makes them happy. Also, the desire for happiness is not universal. This creates an immediate line between the happiness of one human to another. After this followed 3 or 4 different branches, including politics, composition, and pleasure. Depending on what drives an individual, they will pursue whatever it is in these branches they think will make them happy.

Of course, each branch had a dozen different lines branching off. However I left them unlabeled to symbolize the enormous spectrum of opportunities our world has to offer. One cannot pursue Good without knowing the evils, the mundane, or even the good of others. Our journeys must be filled with what the world gives us, and we must make what we can from them.

At the bottom of my sheet was a dot to signify the "Supreme Good." No lines had reached it. To me the notion of Supreme Good is much too difficult to understand. Every individual, no matter which tier of society they reside in, experiences moments of doubt or darkness. Supreme Good then, is best served as a beacon by which we can choose to reflect or simply ignore. Just because the idea exists does not mean it has been physically manifested.

And so my brain has been successfully taken around the thought coaster, just I'm sure it has to you, my classmates. After our discussions and plotting out this philosophy of good, my instinct tells me that first of all, "good" is a term that has infinite definitions, and second, that Aristotle is creating options for us to chew on, rather than laying out a step by step process to achieve ultimate goodness. We can all be good, and we can all find happiness. But what good we do depends on what makes us happy - what drives us to do the good thing. Goodness can be driven by happiness for the welfare of all man, such as politics. Goodness can also exist in personal happiness.
It's everywhere, which is why grasping it isn't so easy.

One thing is for sure: after our first two mind jumbling discussions, we haven't all strangled one another out of frustration. That, is definitely a good thing.

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