Quote:
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Originally Posted by Neo
I believe you can arrive at some answers if you bring physics into the mix. But the point of philosophy is to stretch your mind and get you to examine why you believe the things that you do.
Whether or not psychology is a true science is debatable. Some colleges have psychology under liberal arts instead of natural science. But there are no absolute certainties in any field. We may be 99.9% sure about something but the true scientist always leaves room for question.
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*strokes chin*
Too true.
Are there any 100% true facts, or just 99.9% true theories?
My language arts class recently took a look at a quote taken from Antigone, written by Sophocles. The quote reads: "A good man tries to repair the evil, the only crime is pride". We had to write an essay exploring the truthfulness of that quote.
I actually disagreed with Sophocles. Pride is NOT the only crime. Most people, when reading the words of an ancient philosopher, or anyone ancient actually, seem to believe them immediatly. Ancient or not, he was just a man, and him being a memory now doesnt change anything. The only way it would be true would be if he said "pride is a crime."
Pride is humanity’s ultimate double edged sword. Where would we be without pride? We take pride in ourselves, pride in our brethren, and pride in our homelands. It gives us the strength to stand up for what we believe in, and what makes us get up again if we’ve been kicked down. You can take everything away from a man: his freedom, his family, and his possessions…but you cannot take his pride. On the other hand, pride is probably the root of most every great problem in the world. It’s when we have so much pride that we remain ignorant that it actually becomes a deadly sin. Someone who will not admit their pretense when they are blatantly proven wrong is indeed guilty of a crime. As humans we are imperfect by nature, and we all support some sort of flaw. It is the pride in our opinions that make us unique and give us a reason to live; it is the pride in incorrect facts that should be punishable. We should take pride in ourselves, in all of our glorious imperfection, not in our abilities.
However, the wise Teiresias seems to have made a slight miscalculation in his well thought out prose. He did not state that pride was a crime; he stated that it was the only crime. Teiresias states that a good man will repair the evil once he realizes his course is wrong, but what if his evil course is not repairable? What if a person commits a murder in a blind act of passion? If later the person admits he was wrong and cleanses himself of his pride, does this make him a good man? No matter how much we shun our pride, we cannot give life to the dead.
Aside from this, another standpoint can be taken. What if a person is killed in an act of war or is given the death penalty. Does the man responsible for the loss of the life feel that he has committed a crime? And to make the moral and ethical paradox even worse, it was pride that drove the man to commit the murder. If the life was taken in a war, it was pride in one’s nation that drove the man to kill. If the life was taken in an electric chair, it was pride in one’s opinion that corporeal punishment is true justice that drove him to kill.
“Romeo and Juliet”, an Elizabethan play by William Shakespeare is a perfect example of how pride actually resulted in death, yet it also shows us that pride cannot be the only crime. In the play two noble families, the Capulets and the Montagues, are at a constant feud with each other. Their hatred of each other and their passionate pride are driven so intently that they will not concede to each other to allow two of their children to be married, although they both love each other deeply. In the end, Romeo and Juliet, the two star crossed lovers, kill themselves in a hopeless act of suicidal passion. It was only after this that the two families put away their pride and were united. In the end they recognized that their course was wrong, but even though they discontinued being proud, they could not bring back their dead children. Was pride the only crime in this tragedy? They may have admitted that their course was wrong, but they are still guilty of condoning the hatred and not letting their children be happy.
And what can be said of Juliet? Suicide is considered a sin by nearly everyone, and wrong by everyone. How does one propose Juliet repair her evil?
There are many implications within Teiresias’s philosophy. If a person is too stubborn to admit they are wrong when proven so, then they are guilty of a crime of pride, but if they will not admit they are wrong about a belief or opinion that someone else believes is “evil”, than they are guilty of nothing but having a strong morale code. Teiresias’s quote may sound wise and truthful at first glance, but it has far too many exceptions and contradictions to be accepted as a philosophy to live by. Pride to too important to the existence of humans to call it a crime.