Canadian Politics \"Why Should I

Canadian Politics

"Why should I buy expensive art when I can make my own."

Hobbes was, more than anything, self-focused. When one first reads Hobbes, t is easy to think that Hobbes essentially believed that all human beings are selfish, that they basically are motivated by their own self-interest. In the case of buying expensive art vs. making one's own art, there is a bit of egoism in the statement. Some expensive art may not be very good, but some expensive art is expensive because it is very good or done by a master artist. For one to think that he can just make his own equally good art as that of a master artist without having any training is a bit delusional, but Hobbes believed that people are mainly self-interested and so why would the self-interested person pay good money for art that he believed he could make himself? He wouldn't.

"The remembrance of youth is a sigh."

Nietzsche thought that a person lives the best if they do not reflect upon their own existence. Many go about their lives wishing for the days when they were younger, but this can make one miserable, in Nietzsche's view. "The remembrance of youth is a sigh" means that one can look back on it and sigh, not giving it any more contemplation than it deserves, because to do that is to make oneself unhappy. While Nietzsche said that people should not reflect on their own existence, which is a bit different than reflecting upon one's youth in theory, still, one can see that to reflect upon youth is to pay attention to the fact that one is getting older, which brings them to issues with their own mortality (i.e., existence). If one can just sigh in thinking of days long past rather than contemplate them as days that are gone forever, one will be happier.

3. God has two dwellings: one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart.

St. Augustine distinguished between the sky and heaven and he believed that God lived in a heavenly paradise (i.e., heaven). He also believed that God was all around human beings and humans were lucky to live in a world where God was. God is wherever humans are, which can lead to the belief that where the human soul or heart is, then God will be there too. Heaven is the City of God, according to St. Augustine, but we can have access to God here on Earth through his Son, Jesus Christ. One must be meek and be thankful for Christ's sacrifice if God is to live within them and if they are to go on to the City of God after their death.

4. Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.

Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." If one is no longer thinking, it means that they are no longer here. Man has always been and forever will be afraid of not being anymore, afraid of not being able to think and exist and he once was able. Pancho Villa said, "Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." By having someone else say something that you have said after you are no more is a way of still being around and takes the fear out of death.

Plato, on the other hand, said: "Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something." This can be applied in one of two ways to the above quote. The wise men has not said everything that he has to say and thus needs someone to say it for him; or, the man is a fool because he has to say something.