The question of which type of friendship, meaning female or male, is better was posed in class the other day. I do not think that either one is more important or of better value than the other. I think that each different friendship, either male or female, we have is different than another, not better or worse. You might tell one friend, male or female, something but not the other, not because the friendship is better, but because it is different and you know that person, male or female, will understand what you are saying. All friendships are different, and that is because all people are different. So in order for one friendship to be "better" than another, one might think that that implies that one friend is "better" than another, and I do not believe that any person is better than anyone else, just different. Therefore, no friendship, male, female or mixed, is better than another.

Second essay assignment

The second essay assignment is available on Blackboard.

Being a Christian

Reading your essays had made me do a lot of thinking about happiness, which I hope to be able to write something about. However, in the meantime it has posed a question I in turn want to pose to you. 

The question is: can you be a Christian if you do not understand the depths of human suffering?  

Now by Christian I mean specifically someone who clings to the teachings of Christ, not merely someone who reads and "follows" the Bible (for the latter can do many "Christian" things that contradict the teachings of Christ). 

My question is not if understanding the depths of human suffering is a sufficient condition for being a Christian, but only if it is a necessary condition. 

Secondly, my question assumes that you can understand things without living them, for if lived experience were the condition for understanding, this might mean that everyone understands all of their own experience (and that is clearly false). 

As we discussed in class today, we have almost this moral obligation to treat everyone equally. I however, find that very hard to accomplish because every person is different. Not only is everyone different, but you have a different relationship with each individual person. I think it is hard to treat everyone the same, but that doesn't mean we can treat people badly. I think we have to recognize that everyone has human dignity and needs to be treated with respect. You can treat all people with respect even if you don't treat them the same.

Schadenfreude

While we were talking about the various definitions friendship and how sometimes we have friends for our benefit versus wishing goodwill on another, I instantly thought of a term I once heard. There is a German word called "Schadenfruede" which means the "satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune." Maybe you fail a test but then feel better when your friend fails as well, or it is your friend that trips on their own feet and not you. I believe it ties in to what Aristotle and Colin were saying in class that we do not wish the greatest good on our friends (i.e. becoming a God) since then we would no longer benefit from there friendship. I was wondering if anyone else has a comment about this idea of schadenfruede in which we do not actually want complete success for our friends better than ourselves, and how would Aristotle handle this type of situation?

I thought it was interesting how we were comparing long distance friendships those that are more convenient.  Do you think that it is necessary for whatever attribute formed the friend to be constant to maintain the friendship?  For example, would you still have to see or maintain contact all the time with a good that you saw everyday at school in order to maintain that friendship.  Or if one of your friends from a high school sport team you hadn't seen in a while stopped playing that sport, would you still be able to be friends.  Are common values, activities, et cetera crucial to maintain a successful friendship?

Relationships and Friendships

Personally, all I think about while discussing Aristotle's views on friendship is how he is mainly just describing relationships in my opinion. This had me thinking-is there really a difference between relationships and friendships? Because I have many relationships with people that I would categorize more as being casual and less habitual than those that I consider friendships. What I would define as having a true friendship is someone who I trust and spend a lot of time with and share the same values with. Aristotle thinks the three forms of friendship include all three: by utility, by pleasure, and be goodness. The friendship I described is most like the friendship by goodness that Aristotle describes. At the end of class, someone asked the question of whether the only friendships that fail are those of utility and pleasure. I think that most the time this is probably true but it certainly not mean that friendships by goodness cannot fail at all-they just usually fail and then later get repaired.

The Stone: The Reign of ‘Terror’ http://t.co/tXHkeIdwKJ via @nytopinionator

— Ashley U. V. (@ProfVaught) October 20, 2014

Positive and negative freedom and nihilism

I have alway thought of nihilism as a type of choosing in which all options are equally valid, ... which would mean that nihilism is a form of negative freedom.  And yet it has also seemed to me that there must be some distinction between nihilism and negative freedom.

Negative freedom is the concept sustaining basic libertarianism, in which all human action is promoted insofar as it does not interfere with others, but libertarianism does not mean all choices are equal.  In fact, it merely establishes that law should work to protect all action, while society will approve or disapprove of human actions (and by the latter, distinguish values).  It seems a good model for comprehending historical change.

And yet, positive freedom implies a correct path, action, idea, against which our approximation is a measure of our freedom.  Who clings more closely to the idea, is more free.  The most prudent person  is the most free person.

Whereas, nihilism seems to impair choice, such that the action of choosing is pointless.  In that respect, it would be separate from negative freedom?  Negative freedom celebrates choice, without affirming any particular choice over another?

I had one question after last friday's class on freedom.  We heard the argument that we do not have physical freedom because our actions are merely based on what causes them.  Thus, our lives are merely the effects we act out based on the causes from the environment.  My question was if this simplification of life would be detrimental to this argument, in that one of anything does not exist in nature.  I think we talked about this when we discussed trying out one's new sword.  If you break down an atom, there are sub atomic particles.  So if this idea holds true, would that counter attack professor Vaught's argument on physical freedom?  Having one action being caused by one external stimulus from our environment?

Confused about nihilism ...

After today's discussion I am still a bit confused about Nihilism. According to Nihilism one cannot believe in anything, but if you are a nihilist aren't you believing in Nihilism itself ?Therefore, I find it hard to believe that true nihilists exist and I believe that true Nihilism is unattainable. I was curious to see if anyone had any substantial examples, or had any other opinions on this.

Capitalism and Freedom

On page 32 of Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman says that "Every act of government intervention limits the areas of individual freedom directly and threatens the preservation of freedom indirectly..." Since we didn't get to cover this today in class, I was curious to see what everyone thought of this quote. Would we be better off without government? Where would we be without government?
   - Amanda Alcamo

Augustine and what is eternal

"On the Free Choice of Will" discusses the concern with evil and the possibility that evil must be something that is learned. Can everything be learned? Augustine says that this obviously is not true because evil is not a thing, and is instead the absence of a thing. There is nothing to learn because there is an absence of reason. If everything could be learned then things like desire could be learned, which is a natural thing. We desire things that can be taken away from us. Desire is not a material thing so can it be taken away from us? What can you get that you cannot lose? There are still things that you could lose that are not material, like trust, as we talked about in class. But things that do not change and things that are categorized as being "eternal" stay the same even if they have different symbols, like numbers (reference in class). There is no real difference between objects in a way because how can you categorize things when there are so many exceptions, like what is eternal and what is not and what is material and what is not. Is there any way we can say something is truly "eternal?"