Friday, September 19, 2014
Feelings or Nah?
Wednesday and today we discussed the school of Epicureism which is based off Hedonism the thought that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. While Epicurus argued that emotions would cloud judgments in that people would be so over-run by emotion that they would not be able to function properly and have virtue(as far as maintaining a will in accord with nature), Lucretius argued that the main point of life was to be lived happily and in tranquility, meaning minimum pain and maximum pleasure. I agree more with Lucretius than Epicurus because emotions are needed to help people live happily. How would you know you were happy or pain free if you've never experienced pain or sadness? Although I understand Epicurus' point about not allowing the emotions you feel to take control of your reason and cause you to act in ways that are only explained as "of passion"(ex. crimes of passion), I think that your emotions help shape your tranquility. If we lived in a world where people did not act on their emotions it would be very boring. What would the people that are in love and spontaneously get married do if they did not act on their emotions? They would not get married and may become bitter or change. Although some emotions are painful they help shape our human experience, Without the emotions, good or bad, we wouldn't be living the most full life as we possible could. Emotions help us to feel what we may not be able to say in words or rationalize/reason. Without them, how are we any different from robots?
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I agree with you on this Blaire. Without emotions our world wouldn't be worth living. To go through life not feeling anything would totally ruin all the joys that life has to offer. Just because we have emotions does not mean that we let them control our every decision.
ReplyDeleteBlaire, I agree with you on the fact that emotions can be painful and with that, we learn from experience. As humans, we can't help but to feel. Honestly, marriage is not all about emotions. Most people marry for financial stability. In different countries, they marry to keep the wealth of the family growing from generation to generation. It has little to do with love or emotions. Emotions do help us express many things, I agree, but sometimes it's better to take them out of the equation to better rationalize. What we always feel isn't always as important to others as it is to us.
ReplyDeleteI believe that happiness and pleasure is something that we should all strive for however I also believe that pain plays an important role in our happiness. If pain didn't exist, how would we know that we were happy? I found an interesting scene from south park that can best explain this type of sadness. It is a scene where a young boy gets dumped but instead of hating life he realizes that in life there are things that are going to make us sad but its these things that allow us to be happy to begin with. We have to take the good with the bad.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN6ZgBJOTO4
Emotions are what makes us human. If all humans could feel was happiness it would not be happiness anymore. It would just be our natural state. To be happy one must go through the hardships of life to truly value it. Seeking to live in a world with just rationality takes the spark and fun out of life. We're supposed to feel pain, its what keeps us real.
ReplyDeleteI believe in mostly everything you said. But when you asked the question, would we be no different than robots, I believe we would. Robots feel nothing, no pain, pleasure, happiness, fear, nothing. We Sound want emotions cause that shows we are human and not mechanical.
ReplyDeletethank you all for your comments
ReplyDelete:)