• KombatWombat@lemmy.world
    cake
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    17 hours ago

    We read portions of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics in Ethics 101, and I felt this way about everything we went through. Yes, demonstrating admirable traits will lead to a virtuous life. That’s almost true by definition. Oh, but you still might not achieve a happy life even if you’re a good person? Well, that’s because you also need to be lucky! Oh, and generosity is apparently 2 different virtues for some reason.

    I’m sure he had other works, but reading his “insights” made me wonder how this could be the guy everyone wouldn’t shut up about. We also studied the stoics, epicurians, nihilism and existentialism, Kantian ethics, consequentialism, the role of divinity, and probably other topics I can’t remember. Literally all of them were much more interesting than Aristotle’s eudaimonia ramblings, so I was quite annoyed that he took up almost half the class and made everything else rushed.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      16 hours ago

      Aristotle also believed that women were defective men, that some people are naturally destined to be slaves, and rejected atomic theory.

      I feel like you can change this absolutely imbecilic image to “the hole left by everyone just accepted Aristotle’s idea that you can just think everything from first principles and don’t have to do any experimentation” and it’d actually be somewhat accurate.

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        14 hours ago

        okay. the renaissance seems to begin right around the time a dude in turkey invented a steam engine to rotate kebab.

        coincidence? who cares. kebab.

          • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            4 hours ago

            we need to add a mod to Civ that lets you research steam powered kebab, it is a wonder and gives +70 billion science points but you are unable to invest in science for 450 years after researching it. i don’t know how science in Civ works but this makes sense.