(no subject)

Marilee amuses me, my shoulder hurts (the muscle is gone mad), and I discovered in Philosophy class today that I agree (and have been agreeing for some time) with two mutually exclusive arguments about morality. One, endorsed by Aristotle, is that people are naturally virtuous, and acquire a deeply felt satisfaction (he calls it 'eudaimonia') from behaving in accordance with these functions (and I, also, tend to think that the fewer distortions of a person's natural tendency has been inflicted upon them, the more likely they are to treat other people well, and that, if someone is naturally drawn to some behaviour, there is probably some merit to it). The other, endorsed by Kant (and derived at least partially from Christianity), is that people are naturally base - that doing good is a victory of reason over natural inclination, and that it might often, functioning properly, leave you miserable (and I have often supposed that it is a better thing to do something good even though the alternative has occurred to you, and tempted you, than if you do not even imagine there's a choice). I'll have to think about this; even from the brief experience of describing them here, I'm clearly not entirely happy with either of them.