Aristotle V Sartre Essay Example

as being in that future.

Man is the start plan which is aware of itself, rather than a patch of moss, a piece of garbage, or a cauliflower; nothing exist prior to this plan; there is nothing in heaven; man will be what he will have planned to be. (Sartre) “You are nothing else than your life. That does not imply that the artist will be judged soley on the basis of his work of art; a thousand other things will contribute towards summing him up. What we mean is that a man is nothing more than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organization, the ensemble of the relationships which make up these undertakings. “ (Sartre) Sartre, on the other end, who famously said ‘Existence precede essence’ did not believe in human nature.

He in fact sustained that all humans exists before being defined by any concept and that essence that Aristotle calls human nature, is no more than the result of what a men makes of himself during his life. For Sartre man is conscious and aware of himself and therefore responsible for his future which he can imagine and shape. Man in this sense is the ultimate law maker. And since according to Sartre there is no human nature or divinity to define what morality is, it is down to the individual to work that out. So ultimately morality in men’s responsibility.

Aristotle, believed that humans are rational animals and that reason was what would ultimately give them the opportunity to lead a happy life. It is through those possibilities and qualities in fact that human are meant to develop to their

full potentiality and achieve the highest of their reasoning potential and therefore happiness. Aristotele believed in fact that the humans as the whole universe have a purpose and everything is part of a bigger plan or scheme which was originated and set in motion by an original being (of divine nature). He supports in fact the argument that everything has a cause.

So in that sense if I am for example sitting here writing an essay it is because it was assigned to me as part of my philosophy course which was designed by the professor who had to do so as part of his job and so on . What he makes very clear is that this chain as long as it can be, cannot be infinite and at some stage will end up back at the origin, the beginning where the entity he refers to as "Unmoved Mover". This Unmoved Mover, is what Aristotle sees as God, the ultimate source and cause of all universe. A God which is immaterial, infinite, eternal and the essence of all forms.

The beginning of all causes (hence the ‘Unmoved’ reference). And although some of his view were later on shared by some on the major monotheistic religions such a Christianity and Judaism, he did not believe that God was involved with the affairs of humans but was merely an observer of creation and therefore of itself. “But virtue, like Nature itself, is more accurate and better than any art; virtue therefore will aim at the mean; - I speak of moral virtue, as it’s moral virtue which is concerned with emotions and actions, and it is these which

admit of excess and deficiency and the mean.

Thus it is possible to go too far, or not go far enough, in respect of fear, courage, desire, anger, pity and pleasure and pain generally, and the excess and the deficiency are alike wrong; but to experience these emotions at the right times and on the right occasions and towards the right person and for the right causes and in the right manner is the mean of the supreme good, which is characteristic of virtue. ” (Aristotle) “Genuine happiness lies in action that leads to virtue, since this alone provides true value and not just amusement. (Aristotle) “… we always desire happiness for its own sake and never as a means to something else, whereas we desire honor, pleasure, intellect and every virtue, partly for their own sakes (for we should desire them independently of what might result from them)but partly also as means to happiness, because we suppose they will prove the instrument of happiness. Happiness, on the other end, nobody desires for the sake of these things nor indeed as a mean to anything else at all.

If we define the function of Man as a kind of life, and this life as an activity of the soul, or a course of action in comformity with reason, if the function of a good man is such activity or action of a good and noble kind, and if everything is successfully performed when it is performed in accordance with its proper excellence, it follows that the good of Man is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue or, if there are more than one, in

accordance with the best and most complete virtue”. (Aristotele) So what about happiness? As I already briefly mentioned above, to Aristotele’s happiness can be seen in two different ways.

Happiness as pleasure or the ultimate happiness derived by living a fulfilling, satisfying life, achieved by humans through their conduct and behavior. To him in fact if people keep asking themselves why we do everything we do, we would ultimately be lead to our path and ultimate goals. The key to achieve this, according to Aristotle is balance. As mentioned already, he considered humans as rational animals which means they have emotions and feeling. These emotions have extremes (deficiency and excess) and what life is about is finding a balance between these two opposite poles and acting virtuous to ultimately becoming a virtuous being.

A happy person in Aristotle’s view is someone who has all of his emotions in check and has fulfilled the capacity he has to become a moral creature. The entire person is in fact supposed to develop morally and since everyone is different in regard to emotions and how they are affected by them, one has to make their best with the tools that they have been given and therefore morality feels different to different people. “I am creating a certain image of man of my own choosing. In choosing myself I choose man. This helps us understand what the actual content is of such rather grandliquent words as anguish, forlornness and despair.

The existentialist, says at once that man is anguish. What that means is this: the man who involves himself and who realizes that he is not only the person he chooses to

be, but also a law maker who is, choosing all of mankind as well as himself, cannot escape the feeling of his total and deep responsibility. …When we speak of forlornness, we mean only that God does not exist and that we have to face the consequences of this. The existentialist thinks is very distressing that God does not exist because all possibilities of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him. As for despair, the term has a very simple meaning.

It means that we shall confine ourselves to reckoning only with what depends upon our will, or on the ensamble of probabilities which make our actions possible. “ (Sartre) Sartre’s view once again is different than Aristotle on these last few points. To Sartre’s we are completely free beings and our free will is proven by the fact that we are constantly making choices without being influenced by a conscious or having to follow a plan or destiny. To him even past choices do not affect our future because we are always at any point able to make new choices and act upon them and therefore affect our own lives.

Obviously with this freedom comes great responsibilities and the realizisation that god and his plan do not exist, according to the philosopher is also cause, as he describes it of forlornness, anguish, and despair. Such an independent existence would in fact imply for us humans, a lack of set morality (as mentioned before he believed that we make up morality) and values and complete ownership of everything that life brings us. A life with no motifs aside the one we create for

ourselves. “Moral irtue, on the other end is the outcome of habit… From this fact is clear that that no moral virtue is imprinted in us by nature ; a law of nature cannot be altered by habituation… Nature gives us the capacity of received them, as in the case of all the arts, but it is by doing what we ought to do when we have learnt the arts that we learn the arts themselves.

We become for example builders by building and harpist by playing the harp. Similarly it is by doing just acts that we become just, by doing temperate acts that we become temperate, by doing corageus acts that we become courageous…. (Aristotele) One believe that I guess the two philosophers shared is the notion that what we do ultimately define us. That is it through actions that we shape our lives. Obviously in Aristotle’s case he believed that this shaping process was part of a predefined plan and our human nature was always there to remind us of the right direction to follow, while in Sartre such idea did not existed at all. Personally I can see both philosopher’s point of view and the base for their arguments although I must admit that my views are closer to those of Aristotle than Sartre.

I appreciate how Sartre gives humans total responsibility for their choices, in a way I do believe that we are responsible for our own life and therefore cannot blame outside events or people for any outcome but at the same time I can’t help but agree with Aristotle that there is something such as human nature and a divine

plan. I share the believe that there is an observer out there, a something of infinite divine nature that started it all and now it’s watching us evolving and spiritually maturing till we finally complete and everything about us resemble that divine nature. I think that’s our purpose and always has been.

If Sartre’s philosophy was to be proven correct, that there is no purpose, our lives on this earth would have very little sense and in a universe where everything seems to be so cleverly interconnected how would be able to explain the reason or need for our existence? I can honestly see why then human would struggle with this notion, since if my life as no purpose, if I am here just for the sake of just dyeing one day then I would question the point of living at all. What would be the point of striving to better ourselves? To help others? To even seek philosophical answers? I believe there would be very little point at all.