Monday, October 22, 2018

Blog Post #7: What makes a good life




                   I find the way I live resembles the most to Plato's philosophy of a good life. According to Plato, to achieve "Eudaimonia" or fulfillment, a person should do the following: exploring oneself, having the right partner, understanding art.
                   By exploring oneself, Plato means using rational thoughts and introspection to discover one's qualities and values. I believe that finding the right values is crucial to a happy life because these values would dictate a person how to live their life. From a personal perspective, I believe three traits for a good value are that it is controllable, reality-based (non-superstitious), and socially constructive. For instance, a good value would be honesty, it is a value that improves society, non-superstitious, and one within one control. Living life based on these good values would result in happiness. On the other hand, valuing the wrong thing could lead to a destructive life. One example would be valuing popularity or caring too much about being liked by everyone, it is not within one's control and such values are factors to a terrible life. Bad values are common in "doxas" such as "fame is great", "money is key to happiness", etc. 
                   I also strongly agree with Plato's point of view on relationships. Plato believes the key to a strong relationship is finding the right partner that has good qualities and values which you lack. Being with this partner would in turn help to develop those missing values and thus, both partners would better each other. 
                   One point I would disagree with Plato is his censorship for his idea of a "reformed society". Plato believes exposure to his ideas of imperfections whether in art or poetry would cause corruption of a person, and therefore support censorship of such contents. For instance, Plato support that tales of gods and heroes should be censored because poets such as Homer and Hesiod would portray the characters to be immoral, or banning pieces of poetry and tales because a man should not be portrayed to cry, and grieve over the death of a friend. In my point of view, censorship is unnecessary because, through intuitions and education, people should be able to recognize goods and bads and not blindly follow what is presented to them.




Cite:
Plato's philosophy of a good life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDiyQub6vpw
Plato's censorship: http://www.stephenhicks.org/2012/01/21/plato-on-censoring-artists-a-summary/
Some of my points are from this book I've read (PG-13)
: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Subtle_Art_of_Not_Giving_a_F*ck

2 comments:

  1. Hi Khoi! I really like that you picked Plato's perspective on what it means to have a good life. I think that Plato's ideas and belief in eudaimonia was the most agreeable but as you stated, up to the point of censorship. I think that censorship was unnecessary regardless of the time period being now (the 21st century) or back in Plato's time (around 428 BCE). I also really like that you use your own life as an example and as a way to convey your opinion on what it means to have a good life. I think it is important that we have the right values. Having the right values that are considered "socially constructive" and "reality-based" ( I like these words you used) can really make your break how you live your life. The wrong values often upset not just the people around you, but also yourself. These negative values have a greater impact than most people realize.. Especially when their primary focus is something so simple-minded as popularity.

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    Replies
    1. A lot of my points are from this book I read. You should check it out, good read.
      https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-subtle-art-of-not-giving-a-f-ck-mark-manson/1123517507#/

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