The ancient philosophy was based on simplified understanding of the world and human nature. Ancient Greek philosophers were the pioneers in social aspects of human life study. Aristotle, one of the brightest minds of that time, has introduced the term “ethics”, a list of specified rules of behavior in human society. In terms of his study “Nicomachean Ethics” he has come up with the definition of friendship and its types. The main purpose of this paper is to consider friendship in social networks such as Facebook in the context of Aristotle’s philosophy and to determine whether the genuine good type of friendship is possible on Facebook.
Aristotle has distinguished three types of friendship based on “the object of love”. The first two types are friendship of utilities and friendship of pleasure. They are considered simulative lasting as long as the advantages of such friendships exist. The third type of friendship is represented by mutual sympathy based on similar virtues. Aristotle defines this friendship as the most enduring and complete. In our opinion, Facebook friendship is almost exclusively represented by the first two types.
It is a common case that the average user constantly communicates on Facebook with not more than 10 percent of his contacts. Hence, other 90 percent are just people who can become useful occasionally, or friends of utilities or pleasure. The remaining ten percent consist of:
- People from the same business network. We usually chat with these people to benefit in career.
- People we know from mutual social activities (hobbies, charity programs, courses etc.). This friendship is based on mutual hobbies and other activities and it dissolves when this activity comes to an end.
- People we are physically attracted to. This friendship is also based on pleasure and usually does not last long.
- Close friends, relatives and spouses. In most cases friendship with these people is truly complete according to Aristotle’s study. We communicate with them for no benefit for ourselves. However, social networks do not cause such friendship. These people became our friends not because of Facebook and if to stop the Facebook communication they will most likely remain our friends.
However, many people get new connections on Facebook in order to make friends. These people are seeking for pleasure of new connections. While real friendship can exist only when people of similar virtues care about each other, means of Facebook are not enough to create such strong social connection. Although such friendship can be originated on Facebook and grow into the real one.
All three kinds of friendship described by Aristotle can exist on Facebook. We established that genuine kind of friendship exists but Facebook does not determine this friendship; the social network is just one of its displays. However Facebook can be one of the means of the inception of genuine friendship.
Animal rights in modern society
Modern society is based on the principals of equality. During the twentieth century developed countries have accepted the equality of different races and sexes. This was considered as a leap towards humanism and equal society. Peter Singer in his study develops the idea of equality in respect of animals. The key aim of this paper is to consider his argument and present how this thesis can work in real life.
Peter Singer states that humanity should extend our principals of equality to other species. His paper has a number of strong arguments to support this theory. Singer compares the inequality of animal rights to racism, feminism and slavery. These discriminations are caused by the confidence in superiority of one group against the other. Peter Singer argues that a dog can be superior to imbecile person; a horse can be more intelligent than a recently born child. However, people will still treat these animals unequally. The author touches the problem of farm animals’ treatment, similar to the treatment of slaves in the times of British dominions. We inflict suffering on animals on factories “in order to have meat on the table at a price that people can afford”. Singer argues that eating animal flesh can be substituted by soy and high-protein vegetable products.
Clearly, the author presents his point of view from the perspective of humanism and equality. These principals hold the society together and help people co-exist. However, animals are not a part of our society in a common way; moreover they will probably never be one as animals do not have the ability to understand what a human society is. Singer does not consider that the evolution is the process of survival and suffering where equality and humanism don’t play key roles. Animals are our way of surviving. We eat them, we train them to assist us and we perform experiments on them that contribute science. Probably, we would not have survived if there had been no other animals except humans. Still, we would have also become extinct if we had not been killing animals and exploiting them for our own sake. People are suspicious and hostile to other species due to self-preservation instinct; and so are animals.
Evolution has made human race predators. From the ancient times our predecessors hunted mammoths for meat and pelt. Genetically human body can’t fully function without meat. Vegetable proteins are assimilated poorly and do not contain the required amino acids. Scientists advise not to feed children with vegetarian food while the body is growing and developing. There are other numerous disadvantages and negative effects of vegetarianism. So how can we treat animals equally if we still need their meat?
In my opinion, equality is a paradigm of our society which has nothing to do with animals as they are not a part of this society. If we begin to treat our animals as equal, we may lose the evolution race and become extinct. Besides, what is next to that? We can start treating trees as equal because trees are also living organisms. But if we stop eating organic food, then even vegetarians will have nothing to eat. We must treat animal world with respect and minimize our threat to it. However, we must remember that a lion that treats a lamb as equal will probably die from hunger.
Value of nonsentient nature
The nature is the source of existence on this planet. Our civilization tries to push nature aside, using its resources and ignoring the harm we cause. In the last fifty years the environmental movements have originated throughout the world aiming at preserving the natural environment and reducing the damage we bring. Hill in his study tries to understand what psychological aspects encourage people to treat nature with ignorance and disrespect. This paper provides the opinion on the arguments presented by Hill and considers whether they are true.
The Reagan’s saying “If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all” is one of the brightest examples of ignorance. Being a governor of California he grounded the necessity of redwood forests leveling in favor of lumber industry with this saying. Of course, everyone understands that sometimes we have to harm nature in order to benefit ourselves. And this does not mean we do not care about nature, it means we care about ourselves more. However, the words of Reagan clearly state that he has no appreciation of nature. Hill stresses that people like Reagan “fail to give weight to the survival and health of the plants themselves”. The author distinguishes three possible purposes of such treatment.
The first the reason of indifference to nonsentient nature can be explained by the lack of moral qualities and the inability to see consequences of own actions. A person with good virtues can either never say on public that one tree from the whole forest is enough to preserve, or has no imagination what importance the forest has as an ecosystem. Besides, the human nature tends to appreciate and protect whatever brings benefit to people and retains life.
People through own narrow-mindedness often forget about the importance of nature itself and lack humility. Modern society is concentrated on self-importance which is the second reason. Nowadays everything one can require is reachable within one’s neighborhood. People lose connection with nonsentient nature and forget they depend on natural resources more they can imagine. The author emphasizes that people should sometimes put aside self-importance and personal advantage for nature’s sake.
The last reason to consider is self-acceptance. The concept of self-acceptance intersects with self-importance. Human beings are products of nature. Nevertheless, we have created society, which laws differ from the laws of nature. Some people try not to identify themselves with nature, but only with society. In some way, people are afraid of nature and try to avoid it. However, a normal person can’t be disgusted by the beauty of the nature and replace it with something artificial.
In our opinion, the deep philosophical concepts presented in this work are extremely relevant to modern society. The conveniences we possess have alienated us from the nonsentient nature. We have to bring more nature in our lives in order to understand the value of our living and where it comes from. Humans as nature’s derivatives have to appreciate it as nature is the source of their being and prosperity.
