IT'S ALL ABOUT UNICORNS

  Illustration: Anne Geßner     According to the stoic conception, the human being is capable, not only of recognizing the divine world order through reason, but also aligning their actions to it. For stoics, it is good to live in conformity with destiny or nature, through which the world order can be seen. Therefore, the wise man must learn  to control his emotions in a detached way, in order to face the inevitability of his destiny like illness and death. This approach has been used until today as a relevant moral ideal through many Western ethical theories and studies.    There are things in our power and others which we can not control. In our power are things like opinions, instincts and aversion, simply put: everything which is our own work. On the contrary, there are things beyond our power like our body, possesions, prestige and social position, basically: everything which is not our own work. What is in our authority to control, can be prevented by nature. Contrarily, what is

   Illustration by Anne Geßner    As always, in August it was very warm. The only place where you could tolerate the heat, was at the seaside. There, between the dunes I felt the breeze touching my skin gently while I could hear voices of children playing on the beach. For days, I kept my mind busy asking myself what makes life a good one. But I wasn't able to find a satisfactory answer, so  I dediced to enjoy the rest of the day doing nothing but having a refreshment at the seafront. Suddently, something caught my attention when I saw the children building sand castles. The way they were playing, made me understand in the blink of an eye, what at first true happiness means. I could see how absorbed they were, ignoring time and surroundings. Thoughts about school didn't come up at that time. Only the sand castles mattered to them. Aristotle suggests that happiness at first can mean different things. To sick people, happiness means health, for poor people, wealth, for a father w

  The sun allows all visible things to flourish without becoming part of it. What does this statement mean? According to Plato the real nature of the existence is Eidos, viz. Idea while the material world is the latest and poorest expression of being. The universe is plenty of ideas, each of one is unique, eternal, unalterable and complete. All of them are made of spirit. As a result we can't accept the possibility of evil.  The concept of evil means not only a bad and violent behaviour aiming to destroy life in general but also corruption, decay and finally death. This general understanding of evil contradicts the platonic universe and therefore Platon rejects evil as an idea within the world of ideas. First, ideas are eternal. Assuming that evil exists means also that ideas could decay. Secondly the meaning of evil could imply that ideas participate in nature which is inconsistent with his theory of archetypes. According to Plato although nature can participate in the world of id