Our Soul and Virtue

On pg 35 the book says, "What good would it be to gain the whole world and lose my soul?" I don't think one should take this quote literally. I feel that when Jesus said "the whole world" he didn't really mean the world itself, but the materialistic world. I feel like he is saying, to what extent would we let our desires drive us? Would we be over taken by our desires that in the process we lose our morals? our souls? What good is it to gain earthly objects and to lose what you stand for, or what you believe in? I think that is the real question asked, because sometimes we do let our wants get the best of us that we forget where we come from. Sometimes our desires overpower us that we will do immoral things to gain our wants.
Another quote that struck me was the one that says "goodness leads to the highest happiness." I do agree with this, because to be constantly good can be a challenge. It reminds me of the first Q & A that we have asking whether or not contemporary Christians are up to the challenge of loving everyone. To constantly be good, especially when people are evil to you, is hard to do. When some one does wrong by us we are angry and are quick to want revenge. It is hard to do good by those who wronged us. I think goodness does reach the highest happiness because it is a challenge to constantly do good. So when you do good it makes your heart feel good and then in turn makes you happy.

Knowledge

I don't know, after our discussion in class I just cannot fathom the idea of people trying to answer these questions that can be deemed as unanswerable. The questions "Why do we exist?" "Where do we come from?" Are there people out there who dedicate their life to this and actually try to find the answer? The answer I believe is that people are necessarily going to believe what they believe. They may not want to expand on the "lower knowledge" they have to gain "higher knowledge" that is spoken about in Chapter 6. Can we actually generalize knowledge? Can we actually give one basic definition to knowledge? How do we actually measure knowledge? These are questions I have been wondering about because of the class we had on Monday. I do think it is wrong (maybe ignorant) to pretend you know the answer to something, when you have no clue about the subject at all.
Another thing that was brought up in class, evil is a result of ignorance. I don't know how I feel about that. I mean I understand that this could be the case, but it isn't all the time. Some people just have no conscience. They know what they are doing is morally wrong, however they just do it because it makes them feel better about themselves. They aren't ignorant so to speak, they are just evil and don't care. Some people do say to themselves hey I do know this is wrong but I don't care, I wouldn't call them ignorant. I would just say that they just don't have any self control and are slaves to their own selfish manner.

Just vs Injust.

I think we have all had an experience in which someone who is a malicious liar/thief gets ahead in life. We have seen them become such a popular person, because they hide who they really are around people. The person who always seem to do wrong things , always gets what they want out of life while the person who is living life in a just way gets nothing. It seems as if though life is easy when you are a two-faced backstabbing creep. However, you follow the rules and live your life helping people and you just seemed to get stepped on all the time. That same person who is getting ahead in life only looks out for themselves, not caring for the welfare of others yet people seem to love him/her. I never got this. I have seen it happen in my life over and over again, but then I realize I can sleep at night. The unjust person who is having life handed to him on a silver platter isn't happy inside. He is miserable, he needs to have people around him because the instant he is alone, he is reminded of his guilt and it starts to eat at him.
On page 49 it states, "Socrates develops his argument to the place where he concludes that the just person reaches the apex of human happiness, whereas the unjust person, exemplified in the tyrant, sinks to nadir of misery, using mock arithmetic, he concludes that the just person is 729 times happier than the unjust person." Even though the just person has to fight battles in order to get through life , and life comes hard to them, they have no guilt of being unjust which makes them not tormented like the unjust person. The just person is satisfied with themselves, the unjust person looks for way to expiate the guilt that he feels. Though things may be hard for the just person they are happier because they have a just soul and having a just soul and doing right in the eyes of God is the key thing in life.