Foundation questforinnerselffinal
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This document discusses Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia and how it relates to living a good life. It defines eudaimonia as a combination of human flourishing, happiness, and success achieved through virtuous activity and rational thought within a community. The document then describes the author's experience attempting to sail around the world alone in pursuit of eudaimonia, and how he ultimately failed due to isolation, lack of intellectual stimulation, and confusion of pleasure with virtue.
Foundation questforinnerselffinal
- 2. What Is This Sailor Looking For?
- 3. The Quest For Inner Self What Does it Mean?A Presentation by Christian Allaire
- 5. Why Is Aristotle Relevant?
- 8. He developed a compelling concept of happiness
- 9. Aristotle Helps us answer crucial questions such asWhat does it mean to lead a good life?
- 10. What is personal excellence, and how do I achieve it?
- 11. To what extent does personal happiness entail a relationship with a community of others?
- 12. What is true happiness?
- 13. To the Greeks true happiness isEudaimoniaEudaimonia is a combination of
- 15. Happiness
- 16. SuccessPutting It TogetherEudaimonias aim Is
- 18. Goal Oriented ElementsEudaimonia is not a theory aimed at understanding, but a philosophy of action.
- 19. Oriented toward the flourishing of the individual
- 20. Jeffersons pursuit of happiness flows directly form Aristotle
- 21. All activity has a goal, purpose in mind, an end point Every action and choice, seem to aim at some good; the good therefore, has been well defined as that at which all things aim (1094a).Aristotle
- 22. Virtuous ActivityVirtue is learned as Aristotle says Seeing Aright
- 23. Virtuous activity in accordance with reason
- 24. Activities that will be useful in life. Distinction between the pleasant, the useful and the noble
- 25. Cultivation of good habits
- 26. Virtue is the disposition to do the right thing
- 27. Virtuous activity lies within the mean between two extremes
- 28. Examples would be justice, self restraint and courageAbility to ReasonAristotle places everything into a hierarchy
- 29. An oxes salient characteristic is its strength. This what defines its oxeness
- 30. A domestic dogs highest purpose is to love its owner. Its highest good
- 31. A humans chief good is the ability for rational thought
- 32. Our ability to reason is our humanessExcellenceIn the Greek is called Arete
- 33. Relative to the individual
- 34. Disposition of striving toward ones maximum capability
- 35. Thus our aim is to fulfill our highest order human capabilities
- 36. The young are not capable of excellence, occurs around midlife
- 37. Why? Desire ManagementAll animals have appetites manifested as desire
- 38. Bulls smell cows in heat and are driven by the biological urge to mount
- 39. Humans share these beastly tendencies tempered by reason
- 40. The trick is to desire the right things refined over a long period of time
- 41. Thus both sides of our nature needs to be developed
- 44. This can only occur after years of good habits
- 45. A Life Long Dream Gone Awry
- 46. The SituationIn 2005 I read a book on Aristotles ethics that changed the course of my life
- 47. Id lost the fire in my belly for my Coast Guard career
- 48. It became clear to me that I was not living the pillars of eudaimonia
- 49. I decided to retire at age 40 and follow a life long dream to.To Sail Around the World
- 50. Well I Didnt Make ItBut I did cover over 5000 nautical miles in almost three years
- 51. I did not give up easily
- 52. So What Happened?After the first year the initial excitement was quickly fading
- 53. By year two my low grade anxiety at my slow progress had not abated
- 54. Plus there was a girl involved. That will scramble any sailors brain
- 55. To ease my suffering I took a job as a Charter Boat Captain in the Virgin Islands for awhile
- 56. I then continued to sail the Eastern Caribbean south to Grenada
- 57. By the end of the 2009 hurricane season Id decided Id had enough
- 58. I re-crossed the Caribbean Sea to Florida and trucked my boat to San RafaelWhere I Went Wrong?Confused pleasure with the useful and the noble
- 59. Was not developing my highest potential. Why?
- 60. Sailing was no longer a challenge. I had mastered the art over many years in the Coast Guard.
- 61. Intellectual Stagnation. I had cut myself off from the tools and institutions of society that I require to flourish
- 62. Thus I could not achieve excellence impacting my happiness
- 63. I did not have an end point or goal in mind other than to sail around the world. Why do that? I still cant answer that question.But the number one reason I lost my way was because of ISOLATION
- 64. Eudaimonia is all about the individual flourishing, but NOT for selfish reasons.
- 65. To truly be happy a person must flourish within a community of others
- 66. A gathering of losers will produce poor results
- 67. A gathering of flourishing individuals will produce outstanding results
- 68. Thus my isolation from friends and family deeply impacted my ability to live eudaimoniaSO TO FIND YOUR INNER SELF I HIGHTLY RECOMMEND CROSSING AN OCEAN ALL ALONE. YOU WILL QUICKLY FIND WHAT YOUR MADE OF
- 70. Questions?
- 71. Works CitedAristotle, H Rackham. The Nicomachean Ethics. The Loeb classical library. London: W. Heinemann, 1926. Print.Kraut, Richard, "Aristotle's Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta(ed.), O'Toole, James. Creating the Good Life: Applying Aristotle's Wisdom to Find Meaning and Happiness. Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, 2005. Rand, Ayn, and Harry Binswanger. The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z. New York, N.Y.: Meridian, 1986.
Editor's Notes
- I have a fair amount of material to cover, so Im going to move right along
- Aristotle was a Greek philosopherA Student of Plato and mentor to Alexander The Great
- Nicomachean Ethics is a compilation of his lecture notes
- Nicomachean Ethics is a compilation of his lecture notes
- From here on out I will use all these terms to mean interchangbly to mean edudaimonia
- Goal Oriented vs Straight theory of understanding
- Anathema to AltruismVia John Locke, Contained in the Declaration of Independence
- Maslows hierarchy
- It is to be noted that all these elements are highly interconnectedNow shifting gears
- All Alone!
- Here is a graphic of my voyage starting from Newport Rhode Island in 2007