People Over 65 Should Be Prohibited From Having Major Medical Treatment

Belief System: Epicurean vs. Stoic

People over 65 should be prohibited from having major medical treatment such as open - heart surgery. Health care efforts would be better directed toward preventative care for children. From this standpoint this work intends to examine the belief of the Stoic and of the Epicurean and finally to form a personal opinion and state the same.

Stoicism is a term derived from the Greek "stoa" which refers to the columns or "colonnade" such as one sees in the replicas of Grecian architecture or on the front of colonial style homes. Zeno, a teacher taught his followers in the "stoa poikile" in Athens and the name stoics was applied to this group. Followers were inclusive of Marcus Aureoles, Seneca and Epictetus.

Stoic Belief

The thinking or logic of the "Stoic" was the same as that of Aristotle but with a different twist adding that:

"The mind is a blank slate, upon which impressions are inscribed.'

Stoic physics claims that "nothing incorporeal exists." This materialistic view is cohesive with the doctrine of the stoic. Plato understood the substance contained within the knowledge in thought and ascribed value to that knowledge. However, the stoic places value in sensations experienced on a physical level stated that reality is matter.

Believing that "All things, even the soul, and that even God himself, are only material and nothing more." The stoics basis for this belief was upon the following two considerations:

* It is demanded by the unity of the world, the world is one and must obey the principle of one - monism.

* God and the world are pair acting and reacting upon one another

The fire logos is the primordial type of being from which all things are composed was adopted from Heraclitus by the Stoics who stated that the primal fire is God. So as is God the primordial fire then the human soul is too fire. God is to the world as the soul is to the body of a human. The soul comes from the divine fire permeating and penetrating the body completely and according to the Stoic belief "the soul-fire permeates the whole body, and God, the primordial fire, permeates the entire world. "

Materialism set aside Stoics hold to the belief that God to be "absolute reason."

Following the thinking that the divine fire is an element based in rationality of thinking. The Stoic belief is that all things will return to the primal fire, and at some future time God will transmute himself into the physical world again. This materialistic view doesn't see progress for either God or mankind but sees the physical human condition perpetuating forevermore with no changes but only an ever- continuing cycle. Ethical beliefs of the Stoic finds its' basis in two governing laws of physics. The first, that the universe is governed by absolute law, which admits of no exceptions. The second ethical teaching is that the essential nature of the human being is reason.

II. Epicurean Belief:

The general philosophy of the Epicurean, as taken from the translation of Nicholas White is simply this:

"Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well"

III. The Stoic & The Epicurean

The Stoic holds the belief that the ever-perpetuating cycle takes care of itself and that is basically the belief of the Epicurean as well. The philosophy of "going with the flow" of "swimming with instead of against the current" is the theme running throughout the discourse examined.

Conclusion:

It is the personally held belief of this writer that God bestowed upon mankind intellect, cognizance and above all things the ability to reason. With the use of those attributes reflected in the decisions of mankind, whether in relation to sickness or any other category of thought true reason leads the individual to that which provides for the longest life characterized by "quality of life."