Philosophy:

Angst: anxiety, apprehension, hipsters

Ennui: weariness with life, discontent
Apathy: careless, not engaged with life

Cynic: don’t trust others

Pessimist: don’t trust anything

Theory of Human Nature:

1.What is our place in the universe?
. What, if anything, is distinctive about us?
. What tends to go wrong in people’s lives?
4.What should we strive for?

Religions, science… answer these questions

Closed Theory:
- no possible evidence count against it
- reject criticism by attacking motivation
gives you security
- intellectual inertia (force of habit)
- dogma

- Why isn’t my life the way I want it to be?

What do I really want from life?
What’s the point of anything?

Criticisms:
intellectually dishonest
dismisses competitors
lazy (ad hominem)

====================
Confuscianism
====================
- Confucius:
- Spring/ Autumn Period (551 - 479 BCE)
- Right before the “Warring States”
- Zhou Dynasty
- Legalism:
- Make penalties extreme to discourage
- Make risks outweigh benefits
- make laws to cover all bases
- Confucius’ Criticisms of Legalism:
. Laws only change the superficial
- people are clever
. Laws have opposite effect than intent
- people become self-interested
. Laws will need to be interpreted
 - therefore ineffective
- Confucianism:
- use the past as a guide to the present

- Shang Dynasty:
- Heirarchy
- King
- Ministers
- People
- Universal Hierarchy
- Di/Shangdi
- Nature Powers
- Nature

Xia {Famine, Disease , Drought}

- Tian: Heaven / Master Blueprint
- equal to Di/Shangdi

Ming: mandate/decree
Tianming: mandate of heaven

Confucius: Tian has blueprint for every

relationship, not just the ruler-
subject interaction.
basic Human Relationships:

. Ruler- Subject
. Parent-Child
. Husband-Wife
. (older) sibling - younger
. (older) friend - younger
- the superior in the relationship
should be benevolent
- the inferior should be obedient

What makes us special?

- we are ethical animals
- we have responsibilities
- Tian determines the roles

Filial piety: respect for parents and taking

care of them
^ this is the most important responsibility according to Confucius

loyalty : loyalty to your roles, not necessarily to people

^ doing your best at whatever role you’re in
to do the best job in that role

“let the ruler be the ruler, a father a father, and a son a son”
^ these are rectifying names

what goes wrong?

People are disloyal / disloyal to Tian

Solution: Cultivate zhong (responsibility / loyalty)

Levels of moral cultivation:
. Junzi (gentleman)
- rectify the names for all
of your roles

. person of ren (humanity)

- junzi + helps people nearby to rectify their names
- cultivates zhong in others

. Sage-hood (sheng)
- always rectifying the your names, others nearby, and extending help to everyone in developing and
cultivating themselves

How to become a sage?

- practice, practice, practice
- study history
- follow social customs
- Confucian golden rule:
dont do unto others what you dont want done unto you
^ this develops empathy

Perhaps Confucianism leads to

a pre-cast role in society, though this doesn’t mean you cannot change from one role to another. If you are
bad at one role, it trickles out to society, which can be a bad thing.
- He didn’t actually write anything
His followers wrote it down

in The Analect

- Why does it work?

- Does education nurture what is
already present, or does it implant what is not there to begin with?

Mencius -
humans are naturally good
- children are spontaneously benevolent or altruistic
- examples might not always be irrefutable proof
- when we do good, we tend to feel good
- we are all born with 4 “seeds”
. compassion
. shame
. reverence for parents
. conscience

Xunzi -
- people are naturally selfish
- education forces in what is not natural
- we have an unlimited number of desires
- there is a limit to the stuff in the world
-”incipient tendencies”
. profit
. envy
. hatred
. desire

=========================
Bhagavud Gita
Mahabharata
=========================
- Arjuna is a prince
- his grandfather (the king) dies
- kingdom is split
- Arjuna’s father and uncle split the kingdom
- Arjuna’s uncle is not happy and wants more land
- he is given some
- he then wants more
- he is given that
- this goes on for a little while longer
- the story starts where Arjuna’s father finally says no
- the uncle brings an army to fight against his brother
- Arjuna is told to lead his father’s army
- everyone in the battle is essentially related
- Arjuna is looking over a hill and just has to give the order to strike
- he turns to talk with his charioteer Krishna
- he doesnt want to fight
- Krishna says “hey man, we are eternal, and death isn’t permanent”
- your body is in constant flux
- what makes you you?
- Krishna says “Atman” ( your spirit / soul )
- it is eternal and unchanging despite all the changes
- your body is not eternal
- Atman is your ultimate, unchanging, eternal self
- Hindu’s are henotheistic : there are many appearances of God (Brahman)
- just one thing is ultimate though
- you can have an experience of atman
- where one witnesses Brahman (the nature of reality)
- one can attain this through yoga

we are not all that special because everything with Atman is the same

what tends to go wrong in people’s lives?

- Katha Upanishad
- Nachiketas
- 20
- his dad has a really bad season
- needs to sacrifice something
- finds his worst animals to sacrifice
- Nach calls him out on it
- his dad says “just go die”
- sends him to Yama (god of death)
- he goes to seek him, and Yama isn’t home
- waits 3 days
- Yama grants him 3 “boons” (wishes)
. he wants his dad and him to make up
. wants to know a fire ritual
. wants to know what happens when you die
 - two paths in life
. pleasure
- the fool takes this path
- fleeting
- source is external
- cannot get to the “end”
- will always want more
- samsara (like a roller coaster)
. joy
- the wise man takes this one
- persistent
- source is internal (Atman)
- [moksha] : awakening (realization)

- the reason we aren’t happy with our lives:

- people are ignorant, and, thus, choose the path of pleasure
- they don’t know Atman
- they are caught up in thinking that they are their superficial selves
- [jiva]
- they are worried about dying
- they identify themselves with the things that change
- they chase things that are fleeting
- this causes grief and stress, anxiety, unpleasantness
- you begin to worry about others

Karma = action that has an effect

- there is no divine justice inherent in the system
- what you do now is defined by your past
 - this is mostly a cause-effect relationship
- physiological and psychological

The key to happiness and getting off the karma roller coaster
- yoga
- used to direct your jiva to have knowledge about
your Atman
- separate your superficial from your eternal
- hatha yoga: the stretching
- bhakti : devotional (Hari Krishna)

Advaita Vedanta
- Shankara
- the only real thing is Brahman
- unreal things (unicorns)
- there are things that can be unreal, yet exist
- earth, bodies, etc
- “imagine there is something in the corner of the room that
looks like a snake. really, it’s only a rope.”

maya: magic veil over Atman, then all you see is the ilusion
- puts you on the path of samsara

there’s only one Atman, (Brahman)

- the problem with your life is that you don’t realize that you’re dreaming
lila = playfulness
- anything that happens to your jiva is not real, so there’s nothing bad that
can actually happen to you

Ramanuja:
- Brahman = God w/ attributes
- perhaps the separate Hindu deities are the attributes of Brahman
Goal: to experience Brahman
- infinite, loving being
jiva is real = true self
- love is a two-entity relationship
- if all there is is Brahman, there could be no love
because there would be no second entity

Brahman separates things out from everything, like the curds

from the whey

“Let go, and Let God”: to truly experience Brahman, you need to stop
trying to influence reality and its course.

=======================
Buddhism
=======================
. Anitya: transience
. Dukkha: unsatisfying
. Anatman: not Atman, no evidence
- samskara: habits

skandhas (heap)
- processes that make us up
- material compositions

- sensations: “data in” : seeing, hearing.....

- perception: interpretation

- skamsara: habits (dispositions)

- consciousness: awareness

-------------------------------------------
what is special about humans?
--------------------------------------------
- not even consciousness!
- people are like Venn Diagrams

Siddharta Gotama
- Shakyamuni
- prophetic sage
 - supposed expand the kingdom

//--------------------------------------------------//
Test #14
- False
//--------------------------------------------------//

Third Noble Truth:

to eliminate the symptom: dukkha.
eliminate the cause: Trishna

-Fold Path
- Nirvana

Correct Knowledge
Motivation
Speech
Behaviour
Livelihood
Effort
Mindfulness
Concentration