Blog Assignment #1

The list of books I read this summer includes: Jane Ere, by Charlotte Bronte; Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte; The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje; and House and Philosophy: Everybody Lies, by Henry Jacoby.
One particular book that made a tremendous impression on me was Henry Jacoby's compilation of House and Philosophy. The book includes a series of articles that delve deep into the complex and challenging personality of Dr. Gregory House, from the television series House. The articles analyze the misanthropic genius and his seemingly crude and outrageous behavior and discover aspects to his personality that are part Sherlock Holmes, part Socratic philosopher, part Nietzschean superman, and part Taoist rhetorician. The book deals with themes like whether humans are naturally selfish, base beings that crawl around Earth in meaningless existence and if being nice is truly overrated. One of the articles House and the Meaning of Life made a particular impression on me; the work examined a clash of philosophies and the problems that arise with each one. House struggles with a patient, Eve, who is trying to accept the fact that she has recently been raped. She takes solace in her belief that there is an afterlife where all good and bad actions are rewarded and punished accordingly. This way, she feels that everything happens for a reason, and that something good will come out of this seemingly hopeless situation. House, on the other hand, does not believe in this eternity--he argues that a person's actions here are all that matters. Eve feels that if House's version of reality is true, then nothing matters because there are no ultimate consequences. I found the different perspectives on how one can lead a meaningful life interesting: one can argue that if a person is doing something that is meanigful to him and feels good, then that person can be leading a meaningful life. On the other hand, a person may be getting what he wants, but these things may be trivial, unreasonable, or even malevolent. In that case, one may argue that because one does not produce a positive effect on the rest of the world, then one is not leading a truly meaningful life. But if that argument were taken as true, then a good doctor who saves lives on a daily basis and constantly helps others but who feels miserable and unsatisfied with his life would be taken as a meaningful existence because of his accomplishments, even if it does not feel that way to him. The question remains whether a life can be viewed as meaningful subjectively because it feels that way to the person or objectively because of the good that he produces in the world. The even bigger question is how we can lead a life that consists of meaning in both of these senses. According to Socrates, the father of Western philosophy, "The unexamined life is not worth living." The philosopher was condemned to death for questioning others and exposing their ignorance, but he claims he would rather die than give up his way of life. In his opinion, a truly meaningful life is one where a person uses intellectual curiosity to question existing norms to seek the truth. In this way, a person can realize his potential as a human being. In my opinion, House lives a meaningful life because on one hand, he brings about desirable consequences in his job as a doctor while on the other hand the nature of solving the puzzle of the case brings to him satisfaction. Although it is not the "saving lives" aspect of his job that brings him meaning, he manages to find a different sense of fulfillment while at the same time helping others.