Hello, this translation is meant to be a short lecture on general philosophy meant to acquaint yourself with it in generals.
When we speak of philosophy, we must understand what it means. Firstly, philosophy is the love of knowledge, it can be thought of as Logic's Art.
No inate rules run throughout philosophy, just like art. Conventions are present though they are just that, "conventions".
They should be taken as seriously as an art teacher teaching art, understand that while it in itself is taught a certain way, the root of philosophy is unique to individuals.
With that said, lets move to getting to knowing the Ancients. Firstly, Aristotle.
Aristotle is known widely for his thoughts, throughout the ancient world and his contributions in ethics, biology, metaphysics, rhetoric, and general educated fields.
He was the tutor of Alexander the OG, and toured Persia with him.
Aristotle's works have primarily run throughout the form of "cheat-sheet" study guides, that were straight forward and intended for his students when he taught
He did write narratives, like Plato, though none have come through to us or have been found thus far.
He lived until 322 BCE, dying at 62.
Moving on to his works...
Arisotle in his Ethics talks about how: "One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.”
What does this mean? Well, let us deduce the facts.
"One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.”
Perhaps, this means that happiness does not come from your self but is derived from others. Happiness is a group effort.
Any other way of thinking is lunacy. How so? Let me explain with an analogy.
(meaning that part of something is not necessarily the same as its derivitee and we should'nt expect it as such. One swallow does not make a summer nor does one ato m make a star. It would be lunacy to think into that logic.
Yet, despite this. We all to often see people act throughout this logic. Just as how one person's opinion may be taken as the whole of the worlds, or one disaster rendering a disaster for everyone else.
This is simply not the case
Just as one atom makes no star, no thread can be considered a representative of a whole piece. And we as people all to often tread on threads throughout our logic, this is true regardless of them being positive or negative.
This is especially fitting for something like Ethics, where Aristotle is considering the person and how they act in accord to others.
To further my story, lets say there is a person who lives in denial of something; and so they cling onto something that will persevere themselves longer till they can come to an adequate time to deal with them.
They cling on to a false reality, also stated by Aristotle, elsewhere in his essay, and delute themselves into thinking that they are fine, despite themselves being fully aware of the situation around them.
They have made a world, so to speak, and a reality, to where they would be so easily decieved as to believe a single swallow makes up summer, or a fine wind- spring.
Their world is a fragile fraternity of thoughts and emotions. And for so long as they are able to consider a single stroke of wind spring, they can be considered to consider many other derivatives for what they aren't and confuse reality and fantasy. Just as somebody whose not sane.
(and perhaps this is only not realized by more people because the in- sane don't see eachother from what outsiders see them..)
Aristotle after the semi colon, "similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.” This hopefully reinforces the idea as happiness of a whole and NOT deception.
A person can consider themself happy, but just as someone can consider a fraction the same as a whole, we know that swivelling and penetrating logic still will not make a plank a boat, et c.
And that sometimes the true explainations come to the basic facts of life
Moving onto contemporary philosphers...
Friedrich Nietzche was a existential philosopher who is cited mostsly for his grim sight of the world. He died 1900 after going insane from traumatic brain injury, some sort of experimental medical treatment, etc.
Existentialism, which he considered himself to be part of, had no solid cornerstones or special place for people.
We were considered to be monkeys, on a wet rocky place that had developed large enough to gain a knowledge of our surroundings and are now in a slow pace in evolution where we realize where we are going, but painfully slow.
"big brain monkeys" is a good description
We have bested our evolutionary cousins to put them in zoo's and cheer and taunt at them. Behind glass walls our captees sit in a space dedicated for people to see them.
And on the other side of that is ourselves. Laughlessly taunting like them like apes, razelled with a crowd, just like them.
We have just been the ones who have come out on top.
Imagine if a chimpanzee did this to a gorilla, would we consider chimps to be sadists? It is a sad truth of our species that we do these things.
Not that we make others uncomfortable, but that we cant stop.
We ultimately act as we see other life forms do. It is part of us not to achknowlege that due to our biology we don't see ourselves beyond our emotions . And I can guarantee if we don't see it, other organisms or less likely to see it as well also.
"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."- Nietzche.
Nietzche Existentialism is focused on the hope of an individual.
That is, we will rather hope for something than nothing, and that hope will rather be a hope of nothing than not hope at all
To say it simply, we will rather cling to something that is paradoxically untrue regardless of its logical integrity.
The peculair case of lying to yourself is interesting, and is what he explores as well. (As does Existentialism too)
The main difference with Existentialism and Essentialism, is that Essentialism made the human, the corner stone. It can be seen that we all had purpose and that we all would play a greater part of something that was of greater essence. Be it a minor or major role.
Existenialism, is humans acting like humans, as we do.
Today's thought is mostly mixed with both schools of thought and is quite interesting how they blend together. We see many people going to party with the essentialist point of view(imo) due to how blissfully they live their lives then.
Some people may then get an existential crises when they're in their 30's and tread the existentialist way of think.
These two yin and yang's are both in our thought, irrespective of which they are they still provide a good space that we put a good deal of trust on our lives.
It is a true blessing that we are able to think in this way. Even though we are dumb and stupid at least we have been able to think to this
Thanks for reading