ThE title of this chapter says "do what you please", but this is very difficult to do. Why? just because those actions should be done always taking into account the consequences that they would bring. In some situations, we act according to commandments or customs that are not always the best ones to follow, so in this kind of situations we have to realize that we can choose not to obey or to keep doing what they say.
We have "something" that comes to play here which is "freedom"; we are free when we take a decision (to follow what commandments and/or customs say or not to follow them), and we know that we have to respond for the consequences that they may cause. Savater says that freedom is a concept concerned by ethics, naturally.
Another thing that can be met in this chapter is the fact that there is no "universal rules" to determine that a person is "good". We say that a tool is good when it is useful to do something, but when are we "good" persons? aren´t we "good" when we don´t hurt anybody when we want to achieve something? what about those who help others without any kind of self-benefice? Yes, we are good persons in those situations among others, but the problem is that there are a lot of actions that we perfom which make us be good, so that we can´t make a list saying which are the conditions that people must fill so as to be "good".
7 comments:
New questions for you, Laura!
1) Would you say you are "a good person"? Why (not)? What makes you so?
2) Have you ever met "a bad person"?
3) You've chosen a very powerful picture to go with your entry. What does it tell you???
The idea of taking possible consequences into account when making choices certainly makes sense to me. Quite often, weighingthe costs has helped me realise I don't actually want the "benefits" of a given option... Have you ever had a similar experience? Please post about it!
Gladys
PS: you may want to discuss these questions in a new entry. If so, please link this comment to it! ;-)
hi everyone! What a picture Lau! I guess it really summurize this idea of freedom and choices...
i can ensure that you are not aware of at to what extend I identified myself with that picture... and of course I will keep on reflecting...
Thanks a lot....
LOL
Yoha
I think that what may make me a good person is the fact that I live my life trying to help those persons who need it, and taking care of those I love, and making things in order to make them happy. I think that this ideas and actions may make me a good person.
I don`t know if I have ever met a good person , but I know that I met people who had hurted me and also others.
Talking about the picture, I think that it tells me that we have to be very carefull about the decisions we take and the freedom we have to do so.
I think that I can say that I´m a good person because I try to do things that help others to live better. I´m not looking for making somebody anything bad, I just live my live, helping others who needed, taking care of those who I love,I try to make this world better just by doing those little acts. I don´t really know if I had met "a bad person", but I did knew people who hurt me and who weren´t pleasant to know at all.
In my opinion, the picture I had chosen is quite descriptive of the chapter we are talking about. When we decide to do something we have to be aware of the consequences that those actions will bring, so that we should think carefully about the reasons and the consequences of what we want really do and not just to do something without taking that into account. In this situation, I think that we are in some kind of "danger" of making something bad which would hurt us.
I do like your definition of "a good person", Lau. Yet, did you know that Immanuel Kant stated that if you helped those you love out of pleasure then you're not doing any good? We'll be discussing this later in the course! ;-)
You suggest "bad people" might be those who hurt others... In your view, is it possible to live life without hurting anyone? (this question has had different answers across cultures, you know!)
Would you accept a picture of someone walking on a bed of roses as a representation of making choices? It strikes me that we all tend to associate choices with danger...
Love,
Gladys
PS: feel free to ignore all my questions if you feel I'm too inquisitive!
Sorry for the incident with my previous comment! :( but I've wanted to correct something that may led you to misunderstand what I was trying to say...
So here it goes again..
Hi.!
What an interesting post!
And regarding the picture you've chosen Lau, let me tell you that we can "hear" it saying many things to us regarding this difficult issue of taking decisions. As I always say: we are not only taking a decision but also accepting the consequences it brings... but now, the problem arise when we take a decision on the spot and we end up facing unpredicted consequences...
However, I agree with Gladys when she says that we generally tend to associate choices with danger and it's not always like that, at least for me...
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