Aristotele V Sartre
Does human nature really exist? Is there such thing as life purpose? And how is happiness achieved? These are some of the question that has been puzzling philosophers since the beginning of time. In this essay I am going to explain how the Greek philosopher Aristotle and the more contemporary French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre related to these questions. Let’s begin with discussing human nature. The concept itself is believed to have originated with Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Plato who first introduced the idea of ‘forms’ (by form they referred to the essences of all objects, the very thing that defines them, humans included, and without which the object in question would and could not be what it is) and linked that concept to human nature (nature being a form of the human). This pre-existing nature, based on predetermined qualities and characteristic which have always existed as forms or concepts independently of humans, were considered of higher, divine nature and responsible for leading and guiding humans to form their character and become the person they become. Aristotle believed that this nature was something that all men possessed already at the time of their birth and that would help them in life to follow their true path and purpose. Aristotle believed in fact in a grander scheme of things, in a universal plan of which humans are part of.
“Man is nothing else that what he makes of himself. Such is the first principle of existentialism.
… For we mean that man first exist, that is, that men first of all is the being who hurls himself towards a future and who is conscious of imagining himself as being in that future. Man is the start plan which is aware of itself, rather than a patch of moss, a piece of garbage, or a cauliflower; nothing exist prior to this plan; there is nothing in heaven; man will be what he will have planned to be. “ (Sartre)
“You are nothing else than your life. That does not imply that the artist will be
“Man is nothing else that what he makes of himself. Such is the first principle of existentialism.
… For we mean that man first exist, that is, that men first of all is the being who hurls himself towards a future and who is conscious of imagining himself as being in that future. Man is the start plan which is aware of itself, rather than a patch of moss, a piece of garbage, or a cauliflower; nothing exist prior to this plan; there is nothing in heaven; man will be what he will have planned to be. “ (Sartre)
“You are nothing else than your life. That does not imply that the artist will be