Cypher’s Choice
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Wolran Kim
Jan. 2012


The Good Life of Platonic idea is doing well in their part as a concept of work. The work is all the potential possibilities to realize, and the best thing is the best condition or most excellent state. We can have a good life when our souls do good jobs in their areas. Our soul is divided into three types: ability of desire, ability of emotion, and ability of rationality. We can live well only when these three parts play each of their roles. The ability of desire is about the emotional power of desire under the belly, the ability of emotion is about passion, rage, and courage in the chest, and the ability of rationality is about recognition of reasoning in the head. The ideal life is possible only when they work together in harmony and do not infringe their jobs.

Evil arises through the chaos and confusion of the soul when desire controls rationality. To prevent this, we need to moderate desire and regulate passion and reason. The good of soul will be achieved through the harmony of the various parts of the soul. So Plato said that the good is one. Plato’s good or righteousness is the ontological concept meaning integrity of beings beyond the ethical level. Beings who have souls can be exist perfectly only through the harmony of the souls.

Epicurus said that ‘wise men’ never try to escape from life and just want to have the most fun. The importance of the wise men consists only of the happiness of life, not the fear of death. Spinoza once said that free men think only about life without thinking about death. The Epicureans do not have any persistent ideas especially like those of Christianity, and their intentions are to create friendship, joy, and pleasure, coercion-free, with personal delivery, and with a philosophy of gentle serenity. But, just why did this idea not have aggressiveness that face to face confrontation has toward the times. There is nothing but “us” and “they” to them. They pursued wise men and self-sufficiency, and this stays in just the level of a private or small group.

Epicurus did not keep distinctions between sensory and a ration.
Zenon of stoicism divided philosophy as logica, physica, and ethica, and he compared logic to the egg shells or the fence, ethics as the whites or the fruit, and natural philosophy as the yolk or the earth and trees. Depending on nature is at the core of stoicism. Logic and natural philosophy were not separated for that stoic. Because nature is governed by providence for them, logic and language is eventually just represented as an idea from this providence. Epicurean’s universe is anti-mythology which is controlled by accidents, and Stoic’s universe is infused with divinity which is control by Logos.

The foundation of Stoic ethics was to determine the nature, especially to identify nature from human nature. As in stoic’s metaphor, we endow each role on the stage of the universe, and the key is realizing the human’s role in this world. The best thing is fulfilling their roles through maximizing the ability of rationalness. Stoic philosophers followed Socrates in emphasizing possibilities and uniformity of educational training about the virtues. They have seen that the virtues are possible to educate, and the Stoic’s strictness expressed that justice must be achieved even though the sky is falling. Seneca was active in the early Roman times, and the emperor wanted faith and religion, not thinking a philosophy. So Stoics came to a new philosophy as humans having warmth, affection, careful consideration, compassion, sorrow for the life, and abandonment.

True happiness comes only through freedom with moral responsibility. A very simple example, if I like chicken breasts, I will just be happy when I eat them without guilt because chicken breasts are not harmful to my health. But if I enjoy smoking and drinking, I won’t be just happy and would not feel comfortable other than the moment when I do that because they are toxic and harmful for my body. Beyond this personal level, relationships with others are likewise. A desire is separated into a desire to abandon and something must be met, and the yardsticks are moral responsibility and mental peace. In order to be happy, we need to know ourselves and also the community we belong to. The way to find happiness is different for each person, and we are going to make our own.