Today, in the West, people think that atheism leads to an existential crisis of meaning. But in ancient Greece, people believed in creator gods, and yet had to find their own sense of purpose exactly the same as an atheist.
We assume that the religious person has a purpose given by God. But Zeus would have said that the purpose of humans was to produce beautiful young women for him to have sex with. Ares would have said their purpose was to kill each other. Bacchus would have said it was to party. And so on. The gods ignored humans, had trivial purposes for them, or even hostile intent towards them.
Every believing Greek had to find their own meaning in life; often based on a sense of community. This meaning, or lack thereof, bore no relation to whether they believed in the gods or not.
Anna wrote:
Maybe it will make it easier but they didn’t really work at it. By having this alledged surgery will it make then more or less prone to believe in the quick fix or the long term discipline of working at it?
The reason for practicing discipline is to be able to solve problems. It would not be rational to avoid a quick solution to your life’s biggest problem, in order to gain experience that might possibly be useful in solving smaller problems later on.
In ancient Greece philosophy was not only a discipline for academics, but a way of life. Here is a quote from Hadot who wrote a book called “Philosophy as a Way of Life”:
“All schools agree that man, before his philosophical conversion, is in a state of unhappy disquiet. Consumed by worries, torn by passions, he does not live a genuine life, nor is he truly himself. All schools also agree that man can be delivered from this state.”
In Greek there is a word “eudimonia” which means a life which is generally happy and free from anxiety. The Greek schools of philosophy claimed that this state could be reached by living in accordance with their doctrines.
What makes these philosophies attractive to us today is that they provide a way of living that doesn’t claim to be revealed by gods but was invented by humans. An advantage of this is that we are able to hold a personal opinion about what parts of the philosophy are useful today.
Each promises eudimonia but provide different ideas about how to obtain it. I don’t there can be perfect philosophy but I think a lot of happiness and freedom from existential anxiety can be achieved by choosing as a guide to life a ‘good enough’ philosophy.
Today, in the West, people think that atheism leads to an existential crisis of meaning. But in ancient Greece, people believed in creator gods, and yet had to find their own sense of purpose exactly the same as an atheist.
We assume that the religious person has a purpose given by God. But Zeus would have said that the purpose of humans was to produce beautiful young women for him to have sex with. Ares would have said their purpose was to kill each other. Bacchus would have said it was to party. And so on. The gods ignored humans, had trivial purposes for them, or even hostile intent towards them.
Every believing Greek had to find their own meaning in life; often based on a sense of community. This meaning, or lack thereof, bore no relation to whether they believed in the gods or not.
Anna wrote:
The reason for practicing discipline is to be able to solve problems. It would not be rational to avoid a quick solution to your life’s biggest problem, in order to gain experience that might possibly be useful in solving smaller problems later on.
In ancient Greece philosophy was not only a discipline for academics, but a way of life. Here is a quote from Hadot who wrote a book called “Philosophy as a Way of Life”:
“All schools agree that man, before his philosophical conversion, is in a state of unhappy disquiet. Consumed by worries, torn by passions, he does not live a genuine life, nor is he truly himself. All schools also agree that man can be delivered from this state.”
In Greek there is a word “eudimonia” which means a life which is generally happy and free from anxiety. The Greek schools of philosophy claimed that this state could be reached by living in accordance with their doctrines.
What makes these philosophies attractive to us today is that they provide a way of living that doesn’t claim to be revealed by gods but was invented by humans. An advantage of this is that we are able to hold a personal opinion about what parts of the philosophy are useful today.
If you are interested you should check out:
*Stoicism
*Epicureanism
*Aristotle’s Nicomachian Ethics
Each promises eudimonia but provide different ideas about how to obtain it. I don’t there can be perfect philosophy but I think a lot of happiness and freedom from existential anxiety can be achieved by choosing as a guide to life a ‘good enough’ philosophy.