I think both philosophies are ways of avoiding life. Epicureans believe that the purpose of life is to be as happy has possible and avoid all pain. While pleasure is definitely a good thing and a big part of life so is pain and to avoid pain is to avoid life. Stoics have a much more indifferent attitude towards life. While they aren't constantly trying to reach this unrealistic level of pleasure like epicureans, they are also trying to reach something unrealistic. They believe that after death they will reach some higher purpose or afterlife in which they will ultimately be happy, but because this doesn't exist in the real world to them, they live a very passive existence accepting everything as out of their control and therefore avoiding taking control of their own lives. To me both of these philosophies are a little bit unreasonable. I think the real way to live one's life is to experience it to the fullest and not live by the rules or guidelines of a specific philosophy. It is just as unnatural to avoid all pain as it is to live a passionless passive life in which all pain is accepted and viewed as uncontrollable. In life pain is going to occur and pleasure is going to occur and I think the best way to deal with it depends on each individual situation and not on a general philosophy.
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You say that to avoid pain is to avoid life. However, epicureans seek out pleasure (and, consequently, end up avoiding pain) and pleasure is just as much a part of life as pain is. Wouldn't epicureans be therefore seeking life? And not avoiding it?
ReplyDeleteAlso, stoics do believe in taking control of their own lives. They believe in taking control of whatever is in one's control, and in accepting their powerlessness in what's beyond it. Admittedly, defining what's in and out of one's control is difficult to do, and could lead to confusion about when passivity is acceptable.
Finally, you say that you think it's best to live one's life to the fullest while disregarding any specific philosophies. Well, guess what, you just partially defined your own philosophy. I say "partially" because you don't actually say what living life to the fullest entails; does it mean seeking long term pleasure, like in epicureanism? Does it mean overcoming adversity and achieving difficult things, like with stoicism? Do you see where I'm going with this?
Both philosophies try to describe how to live life to the fullest, so I'm not sure if it makes sense to say one should disregard them and live life to the fullest. The question isn't that you *should* live live to the fullest; the question is *how*?
Like Scy says, you clearly have a rule or philosophy on how to live your life: to the fullest. But to do this is not easy. There must be guidlines, even if they are as simple as "trust your instincts" or, as you state, look at each individual situation and decide from there.
ReplyDeleteWhat you're being asked to look at in this blog post, however, is the quality of the guidelines of these two philosophies. I think both agree you have to look at the situation your faced with and make decisions from there. But that's only a starting point. How best to handle a specific situation--say the death of your dog? How do you treat this event and still live life to the fullest?