If an infant at the early stages of his life is shown no sign whatsoever of resentment or hate, will he come to learn of these emotions? If happiness is not distinctly defined to him, what would his views on that concept be? If he isn’t shown the grief of death and our fragility as humans in dealing with it, would it be considered a warm welcome? It is difficult to argue against the nature of our feelings and their origins. It has vexed me to great depths on whether a human can adore pain and loathe satisfaction.
Euthyphro, talking to Socrates while the latter was tried for some sort of blasphemy, attempts to understand Socrates’ way of explaining why the “pious” concepts or principles are the way they are. His argument is based on the idea that the gods love them because they are indeed pious, not the other way around; in which they are pious because the gods love them. This presents a similar standpoint on the nature of our emotions. If we consider happiness an abstractly unambiguous entity, then it must be the same as Socrates’ argument. Things make us “happy” because that is the way they are; they do not make us “happy” simply because we love them.
Yet a paradox presents itself here, if that was indeed the case with happiness, hate and any other emotion that drives humanity, then why do we struggle to give them a concrete definition, rather than allowing every person discover a personal meaning through his own perspectives on life. It should come as no surprise when finding out that most of us in truth have no definition for any of these emotions. Some may view life as a combination of fear and love as the only two driving forces of humanity. Parmenides on the other hand, might beg to differ. His belief that “you could not recognize that which is not, nor could you mention it,” and he goes on to explain that “what can be said of and be thought of must be; for it can be, and nothing cannot.” In simpler terms, that which does not exist, cannot exist, it cannot be talked of nor thought of. By the same token, if we reside to our inability to define any of these terms, then their existence will perish.
So far, we have an unexplained and undefined feeling that is ambiguous according to every living person. How can that feeling or emotion exist upon us, with no basis or ground whatsoever? This proposes an idea that if we are able to define and “give existence” in a sense to one of these terms, love per say, then we will be able to have a world that is driven by two entities; that which is love, and that which isn’t. So long as we fail to define them, our image of the world will be blurred out.
The paradox doesn’t end yet, insofar as our definitions of these terms will limit our senses, and dull the creativity of our souls to feel freely. Perhaps the way to view life is abstractly, perhaps the non-existence of these concepts will provide us with a new insight into living with, if you will, “newly discovered” emotions.
