Re: discussion, rather? -- please read

Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2004 15:33:02

woohoo, a reply. =)

true, maybe there are some virtue that i can't comprehend behind what i consider as happiness. it's just that i don't see how it fits aristotle's definition of what a virtue is.
speaking of religious influence, of course there is, since i am a catholic. but then again, what my religion considers virtuous is still not what aristotle considers virtuous. i think my objection is his definition of what a virtue is. the definition of virtue is unclear, even socrates himself finds it hard to define virtue. in a discussion with meno, socrates in the end concludes that "whoever has virtue gets it by divine dispensation, but we shall not understang the truth of the matter until... we try to discover what virtue is in and by itself." this is a quote from "protagoras and meno" by plato. ISBN 0140440682 if anyone is interested in reading. i would recommend this book, socrates' discussion of virtue with both meno and protagoras are awesome. with meno, socrates clearly shows his superiority and outclasses meno in every way possible, but his argument with protagoras is more evenly matched. my humanities teacher in ucsd, dr. michael caldwell, claims that the argument with protagoras is known to be socrates' most embarassing moment, since he basically got completely defeated because he made a logical contradiction, but managed to pull something out of his a** and outwitted protagoras in the end. ha ha.

on the notion of happiness, i was NOT saying that money is happiness. i agree completely that money is just a means to acheiving happiness. but what i'm trying to say is that happiness is unique to every individual. so if one person wants to define money as happiness, we have no right to say that he is wrong. he DIFFERS in the idea of happiness with us, but what determines that ours is right and his is wrong? i guess what i'm trying to defend is this: anything that one believes, as long as he has a reason for it, is TRUE FOR HIMSELF, and not anyone else. therefore we don't have a right to say "oh, defining money as happiness is wrong," since while it brings no happiness to some people, maybe to one person it does. i took a metaphysics class in ucsd two quarters ago and we studied bits and parts of the mind and body problem. one thing i still remembers is that our mind is unique to ourself. you can be sitting in a classroom looking like you're paying attention, but at the same time you might be thinking about the angels game. now since happiness is a state of mind, or at least i define it to be so, won't happiness be unique, just like one's mind? and if happiness is unique, then there is no point in arguing about what is the greatest happiness, since the greatest and pefect happiness differs for every single individual.

money does not constitute happiness to me, to you, and to maybe most people, but if there is one person who finds happiness in money, then happiness it is for him. if you give a person all the money in the world, it will still have value, (and i bet that person will really find happiness in it =)) but if you give all the money in the world to EVERYONE in the world, THEN it won't have anymore value. but even so, if a person truly finds happiness in money, regardless of the value, he will still be happy.