Cicero

It was my birthday yesterday, so I took the day off work. I read the excerpt from Henry Miller's The Colossus of Marousi over my birthday breakfast at Cafe Ballino in Brunswick; Eggs Montreal (poached eggs - perfect runniness, smoked salmon, hollandaise sauce). I wandered up to A Minor Place for another coffee, then dropped into the Miramar Nut Shop on the way home, picking up an assortment of Middle Eastern treats. I arrived home before noon, and contemplated my productive morning, preemptively priding myself on how much I would achieve that day. And then I hit the Cicero Wall - a series of badly translated passages from On Goals. Oh how I struggled. When I checked in on the PHI110 discussion group, I discovered that other students were also struggling through this translation. By the end of the day, I managed to collate my interpretations and post them to the group;

Animals are born with innate, instinctual drives, which are rooted in self-preservation. Thus, when a baby is born, it begins to breathe immediately. The breathing has nothing to do with seeking pleasure or avoiding pain, it's simply a survival mechanism. These instincts are natural, they occur without forethought; our bodies are programmed to to act in such ways. Cicero believed that whilst these instincts were natural, and therefore 'good', there was a higher calling for humans. Through reasoning, humans achieve wisdom, which brings the realisation of what is 'honourable'. A virtuous lifestyle doesn't necessarily involve achieving the honourable, but does involves the pursuit of the honourable. In other words; it is more important to strive to do the right thing than it is to actually do the right thing. As we grow wiser, our ability to discern between 'right' and 'wrong' is refined, and we grow less dependent on those base instincts which once governed our lives. But Cicero sees a connection between the refined wisdom and the base instincts; the instincts facilitate our journey to wisdom - just as a person might introduce two people at a party, instincts act as a connection between a person and wisdom.

I also managed to squeeze in a chicken panini and Moroccan mint tea at Sugardough for lunch.