Muse, Tell Me How He Wandered and Was Lost

"Time heals all wounds" is so oversimplified, it fails to even be accurate. Time isn't the relevant element in healing. The Stoics are correct in asserting that is not in the events themselves, but how we perceive events, that we can shape their effect on us.

Time only allows for new experiences which will ultimately impact our perception of events, and allow us to find clarity or closure or a new way of viewing circumstances which we call "healing."

I think it was Kierkegaard who said something to the effect of "happiness is just a level of despair that we are willing to accept." I think he was wrong. I believe in sublime happiness, which often includes not an acceptance of despair, but a sense of gratitude or growth that periods of despair or what may once seem like unfortunate events can bring.

So my advice for the heartbroken is this: live.

Live. Add new experiences, focus most on those which tend to impact you most profoundly, whether through meeting new people or spending time and engaging in activities with those you already know, learn new things, expose yourself to new philosophies, find new faith, read books and watch films which will draw you in and find meaning in the journey of the characters, re-discover yourself, the beauty of nature, or in the energy of a city, whatever it may be - just live.

The heartbreak you feel today is based on all that has happened to you until today - all of your compiled experiences at the present moment. To change perception, one must change oneself, through experience and new understanding, and yes, this often takes time. Your heartbreak will become strength and enlightenment. The faster you can change your perception of events, the faster you will not be bothered by them.

"Take courage, my heart: you have been through worse than this. Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this."

- Homer, the Odyssey 

Philosophical Inventory

Socrates with a disciple and Diotima, Franc Kavčič, 1810, National Gallery of Slovenia

Philosophy, from the Greek philo (love) and sophia (wisdom), the inquiry into the nature of things through logical reasoning and moral self-reasoning vice empirical methodology, encompasses academic disciplines of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and axiology (ethics and aesthetics).

The evaluation of these disciplines are the elements which form a Philosophical Inventory, or foundation upon which ideology is established, and the beneficial practice of periodic assertion of theory assists in either refining or re-formulating world view as relentless, continuing pursuit of knowledge is by definition, practice of philosophy.

Metaphysical - What is real?

Epistemological - What is true?

Ethical - How should we live?

Aesthetic - What is beauty?

Studying the significant historical events, scientific discoveries, and movements in art concurrent with the rise of varying philosophies indicates the complex and convoluted relationship of evolution of human wisdom and its impact upon civilization. Study of one field without understanding its context in relation to the others would be futile and in evaluation of theory performed in answering the questions posed in a philosophical inventory, one would need to consider context when making arguments.

From the Archives: My First Philosophical Inventory (3rd Year Undergraduate)

On the first day of class, my professor handed out a syllabus and these four questions, to which we were expected to respond to the best of our ability. It was the first of many inventories we would complete throughout the course of study as our young minds were made familiar with the differing philosophical theories as laid out in the works of the masters as well as the study of logic and rhetoric.

As we worked through the syllabus and Arguments and Their Evaluation, some students would find a radical shift in their views, and some would find their positions bolstered with their ability to argue the validity of those positions improved.
Although I cringe at my lack of cogency and structure in arguing my ill-defined philosophy in my maiden inventory now, my actual views have not changed inordinately and I plan on completing (and posting) a current inventory in the coming weeks which will hopefully show vast improvement in my ability to argue position.

What is real? What is truly real can never be understood because perception is relative and reality is unchanging, indestructible, and impossible for the human eye to observe without altering the very nature of existence or the human mind to comprehend.

How can we know? We can only know what we perceive and experience. We may accept unperceived truths based upon faith, but doubt in faith will always exist.

How should we live? We should strive to live a good life benefiting both individual and society. We should understand our existence relative to that of others, our identity and purpose within groups, and that consequences of our actions will extend beyond the self.

What is beauty? Beauty in its natural state can serve as inspiration to live a good life. Only true beauty is not that which is perceived, but occurs in a natural state and is enduring.

From the Archives: Alasdair MacIntyre The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life, and the Concept of a Tradition

Aristotle with the Bust of Homer, Rembrandt, 1653, Metropolitan Museum of Art

I'm revising notes and essays from University Humanities courses as I've forgotten a lot of what I have learned and I find value in periodic philosophical inventory as experience tends to evolve perception, especially that which exists when one is 19 or 20 years old. Although I hold a degree in Computer Information Systems, my love has always resided with Philosophy and History and I supplemented my less than stellar marks in Computer Programming courses with those from these fields.

From the Archives (4th year Undergrad): A Summary of a chapter from Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue

Alasdair MacIntyre was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1929. While attending Queen Mary College, the University of Manchester, and Oxford University, he encountered Marxist philosophy to which he initially subscribed before ultimately rejecting it and all other theories of modern Liberal Individualism in favor of classical Aristotelian Ethics. Raised Protestant, MacIntyre converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1980s and adopted the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.

The Virtues, the Unity of Human Life and the Concept of a Tradition (pdf)

MacIntyre disagrees with both the modern Atomistic and Existential Philosophies that human life is “broken into a variety of segments, each with its own norms and models of behavior,” or that “human life is composed of discrete actions which lead nowhere, which have no order.” Instead MacIntyre believes that human life is a narrative, subject to temporal status and relativity to those other “narrative co-authors” we encounter.

First, MacIntyre states that all actions and behavior are products of their intentions, which “need to be ordered both casually and temporally and both orderings will make references to settings, references already made obliquely by elementary terms” and also in “reference to their role in the history of the setting or settings to which they belong.” MacIntyre is asserting that all actions are definable by their primary and secondary goals, and their place on the timeline of settings of which they are a part.

Next MacIntyre discusses his ideas of actions that are “unintelligible,” or actions which occur naturally. Intelligible actions create a sort of human life narrative, in which every conversation, every mutatis mundi, is a chapter in the dramatic story we both write for ourselves and in which we become actors. Our narratives have beginnings, middles, and ends, and overlap into subplots intertwining with the narratives of many others. “Someone may discover that he is a character in a number of narratives simultaneously, some embedded in others.” MacIntyre also states that our role in each narrative may be constrained by entering into a plot we did not design for ourselves but are none the less a part….“each of us being a main character in his own drama plays a subordinate part in the drama of others, and each drama constrains the other.” MacIntyre also believes we are not exempt from the history of our identities. “The characters of course never start literally ab initio; they plunge in media res, the beginnings of their story already made from them by what and who has gone before.” We are shaped by every chapter in the history of our identity which has occurred until the present.

MacIntyre disagrees with many other philosophers. Marx, he states, believes that man’s actions are predictable, but in a dramatic narrative, MacIntyre argues that humans will act for the future – the form of telos – and because of this, we never know what will happen next. Sartre believes human actions are existential, having no order and lead nowhere. In contrast, MacIntyre believes that all of our actions are interconnected via personal narrative. MacIntyre also argues against Kant’s Categorical Imperative because he asserts “when men and women identify what are in fact their partial and particular causes too easily and too completely with the cause of some universal principle, they usually behave worse than they would otherwise do.” MacIntyre believes that a universal principle would pull people away from their moral identities and membership in a community of personal narratives.

MacIntyre defines virtues as dispositions which make for success in many situations; dispositions which create success in only one or a few situations, he claims “are professional skills professionally developed in those situations where that can be effective. “Virtue,” he states, “is intelligible only as a characteristic of unitary life.” Human life is a quest – or a compilation of our goals and the hardships endured while attempting to achieve them – and virtues are dispositions which will help us on our quest for life. “The good life,” he argues, “is the life spent in seeking the good life for man.” MacIntyre endorses Aritsotle’s virtues and adds the virtue of “having an adequate sense of traditions to which one belongs or which confront one.” The breakdown of society is caused by the lack of exercising virtue. Because of Individualism, MacIntyre concludes virtue has transformed.

MacIntyre believes that ethics and morality cannot be based upon Kantian Universal Maxims and Categorical Imperatives because of the unique set of inter-weaving personal narratives we encounter and utilizes a classical view of virtue to illustrate his ethical belief.