What is the Purpose of Life Essay - 4196 Words

Theories on man’s development from a state of nature into politics and the present have all been an attempt to understand the purpose of life. After all, a look at what man was like before politics should give some sense of what his initial aims were. However, the ends of mankind have never been agreed upon, with ideas ranging from simple survival to complex interrelations of populations on a global scale. Perhaps the best way to define the ends of the individual would be that those ends must be found by the individual, thus making them different for every person. However, for a political individual, there is a larger interplay of forces. In a political society, it is possible for others to abridge your own personal pursuit of your own†¦show more content†¦No, Sirs, I bear witness to the better part of our nature, that noble disquiet which pursues and torments us, that desire to broaden our knowledge and develop our faculties. It is not to happiness alone, it is to se lf-development that our destiny calls us (Constant, 327). In the modern sense, a term exists to define this self-development: self-actualization. Self-actualization, then, includes happiness, work, accomplishment, profit, and all sorts of ideas that accumulated over the ages as necessary for the human – the ideas of such authors as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. However, reaching self-actualization requires all of these thinkers, and an engagement with the liberal tradition itself. As with so many things, these thoughts began in the classical era, with thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle. A deep discussion of these authors is far beyond the scope of this discussion, but a brief discussion of these thinkers is useful as a starting point. For example, Aristotle postulated four causes for any given thing: the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause, and the final cause. These cover the concept of a thing, the nature of it, and its interaction with the world. The final cause, then, is what is important here, as this is the purpose of the thing. What is the final cause of a humanShow MoreRelatedWhat Is The Purpose Of Life?1619 Words   |  7 PagesWhat Is The Purpose Of Life? Probably the MVP of questions, What is the purpose of life?, Has come across all of mankinds thought s some time or another and for each individual, it is plausible that they pondered this topic on numerous occasions throughout their life s. Many people find solace in their religions, others look to the ancients and the stars, while some, just trust in nature. Maybe within all of these outlooks, you can find truths about the meaning of life, but is the meaningRead MoreWhat Is The Purpose Of Life?1021 Words   |  5 PagesSophia Cazanas Cazanas 1 October 21, 2014 IDH1001 Professor Adam Gorelick Dharma What is the purpose of life? Does everyone have a set of moral codes? 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