joelr
Well-Known Member
No that is philosophy.
Religion has supernatural deities who you must follow to get to a magical realm. That is also known as fiction and should remain out of school.
If you think it should be in school then in 2060 when Islam outnumbers Christianity we will switch to Islam in schools.
We don't know what happens after death so that is also fiction.
Examples that do not include a magical sky-king and a divinity. People discuss and come up with the best models, just as religious people do when they ignore stoning, subjugation of women, plunder, slavery, allow freedom of religion to others.
Stoic Ethics was not just another theoretical subject, but an eminently practical one. Indeed, especially for the later Stoics, ethics—understood as the study of how to live one’s life—was the point of doing philosophy. It was no easy task: Epictetus famously said (in Discourses III.24.30): “The philosopher’s lecture room is a hospital: you ought not to walk out of it in a state of pleasure, but in pain—for you are not in good condition when you arrive!” The starting point for Epictetus was the famous dichotomy of control, as expressed at the very beginning of the Enchiridion: “We are responsible for some things, while there are others for which we cannot be held responsible” (also translated as “Some things are up to us, other things are not up to us”).
Airstotle
b. Ethical Deliberation
Human action displays excellence only when it is undertaken voluntarily, that is, is chosen as the means to bring about a goal wished for by the agent. Excellence in general is thus best understood as a disposition to make correct choices (EN 1106b36–1107a2), where “choice” is understood as the product of deliberation or what “has been deliberated upon” (EN 1113a4). Deliberation is not about ends but about what contributes to an end already given by one of the three types of desire discussed above: appetite, thumos, or wish (EN 1112b11–12, 33–34).But if all excellent action must be chosen, how can actions undertaken in an instant, such as when one acts courageously, be excellent? Since such actions can be undertaken without the agent having undergone a prior process of conscious deliberation, which takes time, it seems that one must say that quick actions were hypothetically deliberated, that is, that they count as what one would have chosen to do had one had time to deliberate (Segvic 2008, 162–163).
c. Self and Others
Life will tend to go well for a person who has been habituated to the right kinds of pleasures and pains and who deliberates well about what to do. Unfortunately, this is not always sufficient for happiness. For although excellence might help one manage misfortunes well and avoid becoming miserable as their result, it is not reasonable to call someone struck with a major misfortune blessed or happy (EN 1100b33–1101a13). So there seems to be an element of luck in happiness: although bad luck cannot make one miserable, one must possess at least some external goods in order to be happy.One could also ruin things by acting in ignorance. When one fails to recognize a particular as what it is, one might bring about an end one never intended. For example, one might set off a loaded catapult through one’s ignorance of the fact that it was loaded. Such actions are involuntary. But there is a more fundamental kind of moral ignorance for which one can be blamed, which is not the cause of involuntary actions but of badness (EN 1110b25–1111a11). In the first case, one does what one does not want to do because of ignorance, so is not worthy of blame. In the second case, one does what one wants to do and is thus to be blamed for the action.
Given that badness is a form of ignorance about what one should do, it is reasonable to ask whether acting acratically, that is, doing what one does not want to do, just comes down to being ignorant. This is the teaching of Socrates, who, arguing against what appears to be the case, reduced acrasia to ignorance (EN 1145b25–27). Though Aristotle holds that acrasia is distinct from ignorance, he also thinks it is impossible for knowledge to be dragged around by the passions like a slave. Aristotle must, then, explain how being overcome by one’s passions is possible, when knowledge is stronger than the passions.
