Amidst the dynamic setting of 21st-century America, the question regarding the validity of the study of philosophy becomes one, and many, of the pertinent questions people should ask themselves. This paper focuses on how philosophical inquiry is still pertinent today by presenting the philosophy of thought and reason of the ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Through their position as opinion leaders, Plato and Aristotle offer a valuable avenue for addressing modern issues in ethics, politics, metaphysics, and epistemology. By comparing these philosophical notions to the three articles and one movie, the essay aims to highlight and further illustrate their significance and applicability to current modern-day issues and debates. The essay will also explain modern American life through the perspective of philosophical continuity.
The foundation of philosophical endurance begins with Socrates, a towering figure who championed expansive thinking through inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge. His famed Socratic method, characterized by relentless questioning and exposing false beliefs, fostered intellectual humility and a deeper understanding of reality. Through dialectic dialogue, however, Socrates facilitated self-examination where one could consider, reconsider, and even discard his/her beliefs and views, thus bringing about intellectual humility and an improved perception of reality. Plato, a follower of Socrates, added to the notion of forms expressing things, a concept he emphasized most. For Plato, the real world is not a simulacrum of the realm of forms that consist of concepts such as justice, beauty, and truth, which exist in the immutable world of abstract ideas. Human beings can attain knowledge, philosophical contemplation, and education in these forms, so their character formation is controlled. The other significant concept that Plato advanced in the book The Republic, which is his most excellent work, is that of the ideal state, which he proposes to be governed by philosopher-kings, those who possess wisdom and virtue. He combined these philosophical teachings with the theory of justice, thus aiming to create a society that grasps the supreme truth about goodness and acts accordingly.
Aristotle, another luminary of ancient philosophy, contributed significantly to various disciplines, including logic, metaphysics, ethics, and politics. His concept of the golden mean underscores the importance of moderation and balance in virtuous behavior, offering insights into human nature and moral conduct. Aristotle, however, explained the middle ground, or the golden mean, advocates for moderation and balance. Consequently, virtuous behavior is the mean between the extremes, which are vice. Moreover, he assumed that human nature is to actualize their distinctive skills by using their virtues in all the facets of life.Aristotle’s assertion about the golden mean, through which tolerance and balance are illustrated to moral conduct, speaks to the American life of today. While in a world mainly divided upon some particular views and their maximum executions, Aristotle’s principle of searching for a middle line dramatically contributes to the grand promotion of harmony and perseverance. Under current conditions in America, where rhetoric is sometimes very partisan and social tensions are always high, moderation and an adequately set balance are vital in ethical and political decision-making. The concept that the mean between the opposite virtues is the proper behavior, according to Aristotle, teaches people to be balanced in everything they do while still being guided by reason in making choices that count.
As with May the Best Man Lose, Dana Mackenzie’s central theme reviews voting methods and electoral reforms as people consider vote-counting procedures and some chances in the process (Mackenzie 5). While this theme touches upon philosophical questions, especially concerning ethics and political philosophy, it is not merely a philosophical inquiry. As the text expresses various approaches to voting, there are ethical queries about whether the voting techniques are equal, lead to proper syncopation, or with the democratic system itself. It makes one contemplate the rule and similar truism of those countries that its voters and political leaders are expected to hold in high respect. First, the idea of finding consensus, an idea of Arnold Urken, is very similar to the concept of Aristotle of creating the body of the polis with harmony and balance(Mackenzie 7). The ideal theory of the state and the needed moral virtues advanced by Aristotle, for instance, is how the historical events are philosophically analyzed and the ethical implications are examined. Moreover, these numbers tell people how relevant Aristotle’s political philosophy concepts are even in the present-day discussions surrounding voting systems and political reform. When people place these principles alongside more practical concerns such as governing and election, it unites people with a better spirit of understanding the ethical elements embedded in political decision-making and pursuing a just society (Stumpf and Fieser 93-95).
In How Much of Your Memory is True?By Kathleen McGowan, the main idea is focused on the fluidity of memory and how memories in the long term face constant manipulations and alteration(McGowan 1). These questions reflect epistemological and metaphysical baseline philosophies based on questions connected to the nature of knowledge, reality, and truth. The author’s delving into the memory domain is relevant to the philosophical dilemmas for questions like how accurate perception is and the foundations of knowledge concerning the world (McGowan 1). It poses dilemmas on the meanings and extent of truth and the involvement of subjective experiences and cognitive processes in people’s understanding of reality. The worth of this passage is that class-based topics concerning epistemology and metaphysics have been used repeatedly. Plato’s cave is the cornerstone that brings insight into the relationship between perception and reality. Classifying the reasoning of various ethical dilemmas, her study of metaphysics and the main essence that Aristotle called substance gives people meaning to lives and the structures that create perception. Discussing eternal sunshine from a philosophical approach is an effective way of gaining a deeper understanding of the intricacies of human memory and the philosophical implications of memory’s fragility. Such questions are therefore raised, requiring exploration of the credibility of people’s beliefs, the characteristics of truth, and the capacity of the views about the world to be distorted by personal biases and perceptions (Stumpf and Fieser 47-84).
The textbook’s central theme revolves around the philosophical theories that go in eternal lifts across time and space. Here, the fragments help with an in-depth analysis of the philosophical machines that developed in the ancient Greeks’ minds, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Philosophy subjects are numerous and extend as much as the categories of ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and political philosophy, to mention a few. By studying these basic ideas that were the contributions of many philosophers a long time ago, readers can acquire exciting answers to the crucial questions that forever puzzle philosophers worldwide. It is even more attractive to notice that the relevancy of these concepts is topical when one defects how their approaches to topics of contemporary life not only influenced the development of Western civilization but are highly regarded to date. The textbook becomes a precious tool to grasp the original nature of philosophical investigation and its continuous applicability to several facets of human life. This is a follow-up to in-class themes such as ancient Grecian philosophy, which has long-term implications for Western philosophy. Such as investigating Socrates’s affirmation of the role of perplexity and knowledge-seeking in philosophy. People base and define philosophy on critical thinking and restless inquiry. Plato’s theory of ideal forms puts forward the metaphysical ideas that still lie at the core of debating questions like the nature of existence and the pursuit of true essence. Not only that, Aristotle’s study of ethics and politics holds a clue to the ethical patterns and virtuous principles of human behavior and the fundamentals of good government through dealing with these basic notions, which help students understand that philosophy is something that nevertheless can be taken so seriously and as the pursuing ideas related to the ultimate issues of existence, knowledge, and morality.
In connection to the movie The Matrix, which was both directed and produced by the Wachowski siblings and featured Keanu Reeves as Neo, Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus, and Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity, covers a complex aspect of reality and perception(Superhero FXL). The movie shows the unimaginable locations of those trapped in machines that could not act independently and provides people with the only alternative to a simulated reality known as the Matrix. This, hence, is a bounce for the profound philosophical questioning of metaphysics and epistemology. The movie causes spectators to ponder the substance of objective truth and the reliability of their sensory systems that place people as humanity in constant doubt, which consists of philosophical queries about the οgical foundation of the universe and the possibilities of human cognition. Metaphysical inquiries, as the philosophical content in the movie, come from the questions about the nature of reality. It disturbs viewers as they debate whether the only real world is what they observe or whether there can be some other possible reality that is constructed. Thus, ontology and other philosophical considerations about the essence of nature and the hidden material of the world are related to the idea of multiple levels of part/whole relationships. As a double package, it also introduces the problem of how knowledge is acquired and how people can know what is true according to their perception. The challenge Neo faces in unveiling the true nature of reality is a handy tool for philosophical musing on whether or not sensory experience can ever bring about the type of knowledge sought after. The movie itself is educative, mainly by encouraging the viewers to critically analyze their knowledge and their concepts of what the world might be.
The Matrix discusses the textbook closely, especially the material about metaphysics and epistemology. Plato’s allegory serves as a meaningful background to portraying the characters’ search for life in the complicated discovery of reality and perception in the movie((Stumpf and Fieser 47-53). In this, the cave people are deprived of an actual reality. They only know shadows until one prisoner is freed, and he comes to know what is happening outside the cave. In the same way, the prisoner’s journey in Plato’s The Dream of Neo in the Matrix is picturesque as he finds the original reality and gains the wisdom of the False Matrix.
Moreover, even Descartes’ method of doubt offers some perspectives behind the skepticism and search for truth, which is figured out in the movie((Stumpf and Fieser 102). Therefore, Descartes was the first to question the accessibility of the outer world to understanding and preferred the mysticism of inner grounds. Neo’s identical skepticism about the existence of the Matrix reveals Descartes’s skepticism regarding external reality and his desire to establish a foundation of knowledge.
Following aside, The Matrix should be juxtaposed with a similar mind-bending determinacy, Inception, which was the creation of Christopher Nolan. On the one hand, “The Matrix” deals with the question of reality by employing a simulated world presented to us. Conversely, Inception argues more on the complexity of dreams and the possibility of manipulating perception. No matter what type of cinema, emotional, intellectual, or both, these films provoke the audience to examine the world of reality and the credibility of one’s perceptions and bear the thought-provoking questions that pry into the nature of existence and human awareness. With their mind-bending narrative and philosophical layers, both The Matrix and Inception provide people with a solid platform to wonder about humanity’s existence, perception, and essence, making people ponder the obscure mysteries of life and the idea of truth.
In short, this paper strived to justify the contemporary significance of philosophy with the help of ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. In Socrates’ dialogues, the unceasing interrogation of the interlocutors served as a stimulus for intellectual modesty and decision-making regarding the essence of problems. In contrast, the foundation for ethical and political discourse was created in Plato, where forms and ideal states were put to the fore. Aristotle’s concept of the golden mean strongly suggested that a moderate approach to virtue is the key. These old-time ideas were brought back to life by analyzing Dana Mackenzie’s May the Best Man Lose and Kathleen McGowan’s How Much of Your Memory is True. and the movie The Matrix. This phenomenon of interconnecting the philosophical ideas in the works of various artists was evident in different works studying themes of ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics, thus showing that the philosophers sensed and perceived the current situation through the centuries. In effect, the constant re-evaluation of the enduring philosophical elements occurring in antiquity alongside the examination of the contemporary cultural phenomena depicted in the paper unfolds the essential nature of philosophical thinking in valuing these issues amid the complexities of modern life.
Works Cited
Mackenzie, Dana. “May the Best Man Lose” DISCOVER Vol. 21 No. 11 November 2000
McGowan, Kathleen. “How Much of Your Memory is True?” DISCOVER August 03, 2009
Stumpf, Samuel & Fieser , James. Philosophy A Historical Survey with Essential Readings NINTH EDITION.University of Tennessee at Martin.January 22, 2014.ISBN-13978-0078119095
Superhero FXL.THE MATRIX Full Movie 2023: New World | Superhero FXL Action Movies 2023 in English (Game Movie).October 3, 2023.https://youtu.be/dKnJ3rDgX9I
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