Earlier this week in PHI 313 we were talking about Petrarch’s On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others. The main themes of the conversation were whether it is better to ‘be good’ or ‘be learned,’ and what it is that each of these mean. For some background Petrarch has been accused by four of his friends of being good but not being learned. Petrarch proceeds to defend being good and tries to parse out what it means to be learned, since he views himself as being learned and his friends do not.
For the purposes of this class it does not matter what Petrarch or his friends views are on the subjects, instead what matters is the question of is it better to spend your life accumulating knowledge or is it better to spend your life trying to discover what it means to be a good person and then proceeding to do whatever that means. Also how important is it for an individual to have oratory skills?
I personally find that the best life involves both being a good person and being knowledgeable. Without being a good person I would not have friends, which would greatly affect my quality of life. But without being knowledgeable it is difficult to have a career, or at least one that I would want. So what it comes down to, in my opinion, is which is more important to you, friends or money.
Does anyone come down strongly on one side or the other? And if so, for what reason?
I think that we should usually have some kind of balance between the two. I agree that we have to be good people in order to have friends, but in my situation I can't put keeping friends as a priority. So, I think my career would come before friends because I have a responsibility to take care of my family. Don't get me wrong, I cherish my friends, but I also realize that friends come and go throughout your life. You only end up keeping a few.
ReplyDeleteI would have to say it should be a balance between the too also. On the one hand, it's difficult to be a good person without knowing (or at least having an intelligent opinion of) what a good person should be. So yes, knowledge should be used for jobs, as Brandon pointed out, but there might also be moral knowledge, which is indispensable for living a moral life.
ReplyDeleteMairin, I think if I had to choose one or the other, it would be to be good. After all, by living the moral life, I assume one has either an opinion/knowledge of why they should. So maybe "learned or good" is a false dichotomy.