Decision and Action

Aristotle has a lot to say about decision and action. Primary to his discussion is that decision is essential to virtue. Important to my own life, I find that action is where things truly happen. My experiences in life have shown me that good thoughts are fine, but unless acted upon, they only exist in the mind. By taking actions to create an existence in the world, I find that life is fulfilled in the delivery of the actions one takes. Regarding this insight, one of the most powerful passages I have read in Nicomachean Ethics is as follows:

The remaining possibility then is some sort of action of the [part of the soul] that has reason. One [part] of it has reason as obeying reason; the other has it as itself having reason and thinking. Moreover, life is spoken of in two ways [as capacity and as activity], and we must take [a human being’s special function to be] life as activity, since this seems to be called life more fully. We have found, then, that the human function is activity of the soul in accord with reason or requiring reason. (Aristotle, ed. Irwin, 1999, p. 8-9)

I Love Athena!

And Athena, eyes flashing in the dark: “Let it go, Odysseus. Some people trust their puny human friends more than you trust me. And here I am, a goddess, protecting you in all your trials. To put it plainly, even if there were fifty squadrons of armed men all around us, doing their mortal best to kill us, you would still be able to run off their cattle! Now get some sleep. Staying up all night will only sap your strength. All your troubles, Odysseus, will soon be over.”
(Homer, translated by Lombardo, 2000, p.310)

Even the dog likes Thanksgiving

Maybe this is cheating since it is last year's photo, but I love how much the dog likes turkey!

A random thought/idea

I had an idea for a course to develop down the road:

The Paul/Odysseus comparison could be a theme! I was listening to Andrew Ford recently (same CD series as Michael Sugrue) and he is speaking of Exodus and the alignment of Moses and Oedipus:

Moses raised by Pharaoh’s daughter; Oedipus by shepherds in similar fashion.
1) They both have obstacles (Pharaoh/Sphinx).
2) They both return (Promised Land/ Thebes).
3) They both have unknown graves and mysterious deaths.
4) They have similar communities (Religious/political).


It can fulfill a "two perspective" requirement…The Bible and Greek Literature! (This could be a whole class since the Bible is so immense in its own right…maybe it has been done already.)

Other comparison ideas are welcome!

Gobble Gobble

It is Thanksgiving week. The house is getting clean and the shopping is getting done. The Neblung gang appears tomorrow for 3-4 days of hanging out, watching movies, playing games, eating, and shopping. We have 17 people sleep here--I am still in disbeleif that it happens every year--now in the 7th year. The sleeping here is not as big of a problem as taking showers with one hot water heater. It all seems to work out though!

I wonder what others do for Thanksgiving?

SN by SBC

Social networking (SN) is the topic of interst with my friend Stephen B Carman (SBC) these days. (http://snitwp.blogspot.com)
I have been fascinated with the questions du jour on how we use the web space to communicate, relate, and most recently how friendships take shape.

He asked me an interesting question today: Would Aristotle have had a blog?

I wonder....

Happy meal days

I had a headache this afternoon. I wonder if it was the meeting that would not end that gave it to me. Or maybe it was the technical issues that I could not fix for a customer. Or maybe it was the plethora of email I came back to after one day off. Whatever the case, a McDonald's Happy meal (cheeseburger no onions) was the analgesic of choice.

What do you take for a headache?