Personal Philosophy Paper
Our knowledge and how we gain it can be measured in many ways. Through their teachings, philosophers try to incorporate ideas such as whether the soul or body gives individuals more knowledge, why that is, and how it can be differentiated. On top of differentiating between the soul and the body and how that relates as an individual’s primary sources of knowledge, philosophers often try to establish how these two sources influence an individual’s determination of what qualities define a “good life.”
I believe that there are a number of ways in which people learn. For instance, there are visual learners (seeing), auditory learners (hearing), kinaesthetic learners (touching), and reflective/analytical learners (abstract). …show more content…
What makes a “good life” is possibly one of the biggest questions philosophers have tried to answer. This question, although it may never fully be answered, is often interrelated with the individual views of the philosopher. For example, Plato believed in the soul, therefore, in order to live a “good life,” he believed that an individual needed to be capable of intellectual reasoning. Through this intellectual reasoning, the individual would be able to distinguish between the false reality of life (the body and its senses) and the true reality of life
(the soul and its ability to reason). Once this distinction had been made, the individual would be able to escape the illusion of life and return to the World of Forms – a place where everything existed in its most perfect form – where they would then be truly capable of making moral, just, and rational decisions based on intellectual reasoning rather than emotions based on desires. Aristotle, on the other hand, believed in the body and its senses.
He felt that an individual achieved a “good life” when they strived for attaining …show more content…
When it comes to what way – the body or the soul – best describes my idea of a “good life,” I tend to find myself associating more with Aristotle and his philosophical views in achieving happiness. My reason for this belief is because I feel as though I try very hard to be in the moment, and make sure that all of my senses are involved with what is currently happening.
When I truly consider why I think this way, I feel it is primarily based around my knowledge, or lack thereof, in the afterlife. I cannot say whether or not there is something after we die, therefore, I would not want to feel as though I had wasted my time on Earth not experiencing everything I could to my fullest ability, especially if there is no afterlife. I believe that the here-and-now is the true reality of life, therefore, I try to completely focus on the time that I am currently in. I feel that if only half of my senses are involved then I am only half paying attention, and therefore I would not be making the most out of the time that I have been given. As I did before, I also find myself agreeing with some of Descartes’s theories.
Our knowledge and how we gain it can be measured in many ways. Through their teachings, philosophers try to incorporate ideas such as whether the soul or body gives individuals more knowledge, why that is, and how it can be differentiated. On top of differentiating between the soul and the body and how that relates as an individual’s primary sources of knowledge, philosophers often try to establish how these two sources influence an individual’s determination of what qualities define a “good life.”
I believe that there are a number of ways in which people learn. For instance, there are visual learners (seeing), auditory learners (hearing), kinaesthetic learners (touching), and reflective/analytical learners (abstract). …show more content…
What makes a “good life” is possibly one of the biggest questions philosophers have tried to answer. This question, although it may never fully be answered, is often interrelated with the individual views of the philosopher. For example, Plato believed in the soul, therefore, in order to live a “good life,” he believed that an individual needed to be capable of intellectual reasoning. Through this intellectual reasoning, the individual would be able to distinguish between the false reality of life (the body and its senses) and the true reality of life
(the soul and its ability to reason). Once this distinction had been made, the individual would be able to escape the illusion of life and return to the World of Forms – a place where everything existed in its most perfect form – where they would then be truly capable of making moral, just, and rational decisions based on intellectual reasoning rather than emotions based on desires. Aristotle, on the other hand, believed in the body and its senses.
He felt that an individual achieved a “good life” when they strived for attaining …show more content…
When it comes to what way – the body or the soul – best describes my idea of a “good life,” I tend to find myself associating more with Aristotle and his philosophical views in achieving happiness. My reason for this belief is because I feel as though I try very hard to be in the moment, and make sure that all of my senses are involved with what is currently happening.
When I truly consider why I think this way, I feel it is primarily based around my knowledge, or lack thereof, in the afterlife. I cannot say whether or not there is something after we die, therefore, I would not want to feel as though I had wasted my time on Earth not experiencing everything I could to my fullest ability, especially if there is no afterlife. I believe that the here-and-now is the true reality of life, therefore, I try to completely focus on the time that I am currently in. I feel that if only half of my senses are involved then I am only half paying attention, and therefore I would not be making the most out of the time that I have been given. As I did before, I also find myself agreeing with some of Descartes’s theories.