Who Knows What is Right?

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Who Knows What is Right?

Everyday humans are flooded with emotions, desires and thoughts, which are often in conflict. In order to understand and realize their roles in our lives we turn to the works of philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, who pay particular attention to human flourishing. Through their works and discussions we are led towards a path that will help us examine our human nature and all its aspects and capabilities. One discussion that has interested humans for some time is the role of emotions in our lives; what can we learn from them? When should we express them? How should we react to them? It is these questions that have led us to Plato and Aristotle who have both reflected on the role of emotions and even come to some conclusions on their importance and roles.

In "The Republic" Plato recognized that emotion and desire are both aspects of the soul, which are in conflict with the most important aspect of the soul, reason. When our emotions interfere with our ability to reason, it can not be expected for us to flourish. In order for humans to flourish we must understand the role emotions should play and their impact on us. If our emotions become to strong and we display them to greatly we will only hinder what is important and will not be able to have justice within our souls. However, he feels strongly that without proper understanding of our emotions, no matter what our natures are we will not flourish. (P 54). Strong showing of emotion is at no time appropriate and we should instead be turned off by such displays.

Our emotions constrain us and will not allow us to flourish if we do not correctly train them through education, whose goal should be to teach us what, should be pleasurable and wha...

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...s and ideals we discover in life. However, this is also something Plato disagrees with, because it would refer to popular culture as an expression of emotions and desires.

Emotion, in my mind, is such an important aspect to flourishing that it is hard for me to digest and completely understand where philosophers like Plato and Aristotle are coming from when they seem to dismiss emotion as unimportant. While I understand experiencing the perfect emotion as appropriate for the situation is an ideal situation, I do not agree with the philosophers' belief that they can discuss and conclude what is the right emotion. Aristotle does discuss that emotion is not calculable, that for each situation the correct emotion varies. However, I believe that belief should include variance for the individual, who has their own set of ideals, not necessarily just society's ideals.

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