"I feel I need to take a break from academia."
T 16 - Th 18 Unofficial Spring Break for our class: No Zooming this week, we can make up the dates (with a review session? -tba) at semester's end. "Asking students — and their instructors — to slog through another pandemic semester with no break at all could be detrimental to mental health, not to mention learning." Chronicle of Higher Education
In the Aristotelian sense, children cannot truly be happy because they lack the life experiences necessary to achieve success or eudaimonia. While Aristotle’s theory is based on the presupposition that true happiness or success requires a longer life full of experiences through which one can understand the value, children still require the appropriate upbringing to develop the “right” kind of character. Aristotle’s doctrine of Golden Mean certainly seems to imply true happiness and success comes from reaching total balance between the good and the bad; and when balanced with the acknowledgment of the darker side of humans, the need for a system of justice is clear. What I find interesting though, is that Aristotle’s view that one’s ultimate purpose in life is to seek eudaimonia, and through the freedom of choice we decide who and what we want to be, assumes other driving forces are not at work as well.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot to unpack in Aristotle’s lectures and writings, but one of the most interesting is that he believed in order for humans to come together and flourish or reach eudaimonia they must learn to co-exist with one another, everyone acting for the common good. While it seems simple, it is a foundational principle I think we could all learn from again today. On the same side of the coin, if only it were actually so simple. As time has gone on, we are all still in search of the ultimate happiness, the ultimate success. I cannot help but think, children may not be yet wise, but they are certainly filled with true happiness.
Chris Hall Section 7