PODCAST: – Can we live without others?
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This quote taken politicsis certainly most famous in Aristotle’s work, and perhaps even in philosophy as a whole.
“Man is a political animal by nature. “*
Politics, 1253 a 2-3
Aristotle supports the idea that life in society is the fundamental condition for a person to fully realize his nature.
Here we must listen politics in the Greek sense courteous, which means City. Man, therefore, for the ancient philosopher, is a social being, inclined by nature to live in the City, that is, in society.
How does this human characteristic manifest itself?
With language! And by word of mouth, because the sound is also present in other animals. It allows them to express and communicate their feelings, joys, pains.
But the man does not adhere to this strange expression. Only a thinking being can speak in the exact sense of the term, which the Greeks emphasized by the term the logos clever talk that mixes words and reason.
The fact of making a decision testifies to a completely human dimension. It is for man to distinguish good from evil, e.g. The speech provides an opportunity to challenge the values on which the society is based. this is the whole meaning of what Aristotle calls political activity.
Therefore, the political space is the place of common life where everyone can share their ideas of the Good, the Just and the Beautiful.
However, some may choose, sovereignly, to live apart from the world and cut off from this political community. What does Aristotle think? Perhaps that person can live in isolation, but he cannot “live well” like this.
“My loneliness does not only affect the understanding of things. It undermines the foundations of their existence. Moreover, I am attacked by doubts about the truth of the testimony of my senses. I know now that the ground upon which my two feet rest must not be shaken, that others of me shall walk upon it. Against an optical illusion, a mirage, a hallucination, a daydream, a fantasy, a delusion, a loss of hearing… the safest barrier is our brother, our neighbor, our friend, or our enemy, but someone—a great god, someone. “*
Friday or Pacific Limbo, 1969 (ed. folio p. 56-58)
These words of Michel Tournier, taken Friday or Pacific uncertaintytestify to how difficult it is for a person to live isolated from his relatives.
What is Robinson doing on his island until Friday? Well he is content to survive. And that’s why he tries to somehow fill his loneliness by imitating others, absentees, with gestures and thoughts, which very quickly become caricatures. Little by little, thanks to Friday, Robinson will learn how to act like a human again. And we, like Comrade Crusoe, learn that we cannot live without the other, because it is with him that we fully realize our humanity.
Source: Le Figaro
