plato's arrow
by william watson
One of Plato’s main ideas in philosophy is trying to achieve eudaimonia, which is fulfillment. In the TV show Arrow, the main character Oliver Queen, becomes a vigilante to try to save his city from all the corrupt and bad things that are going on there. Therefore, Oliver Queen is seeking the fulfillment of saving his city. This is practically an impossible task because in most places, there will always be something bad going on. Throughout the running of the show, Oliver has put many bad people away in his city’s maximum security prison. Recently though, there was a huge prison break where most of the people that Oliver had put away escaped and were able to run around through the city again. This really made Oliver and the people that help him in his quest to save the city lose their feeling of fulfillment of saving the city. They had put so much of their time and effort into putting all of those bad people away only to have them all break out of prison and get back to the harm that they were doing before.
The city that Oliver Queen lives in is not like a stereotypical comic book city that is full of people with superpowers or people that can do things that other humans can’t. The writers of Arrow wanted the show to seem as realistic and relatable as possible to the viewers. The city that Oliver lives in, Starling City, could very well symbolize that societies that all of us live in today. There are bad people that try to do illegal things and Oliver tries his best to stop those who are bad and save those who could possibly be harmed by these people. This is all part of Oliver’s quest for fulfillment, which Plato would praise. Just like Murphy’s law states though, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Oliver’s quest for the feeling of fulfillment for saving the city is already a task that is almost impossible to complete due to the fact that there will more than likely always be something bad going on anywhere in the world. As stated before, in a recent episode, many of the people that Oliver had put in prison escaped, which made Oliver and his team lose the partial sense of fulfillment that they had. This shows that achieving eudaimonia is not an easy task. You can get the feeling that you are getting close to fulfillment, but right as you think you’ve started to make some serious progress towards achieving eudaimonia, something happens, causing you to lose that sense of partial fulfillment that you had. Plato’s definition of eudaimonia doesn’t really apply to small tasks though.
If you could achieve eudaimonia by just completing small, simple tasks, then there wouldn’t really be any point to eudaimonia being a big, central concept of Plato’s philosophy. Eudaimonia is more directed towards the feeling of fulfillment after completing some grand task, such as saving a city, like Oliver Queen. Oliver’s task of feeling fulfillment for saving the city is what Plato was meaning when he wanted people to achieve eudaimonia. He wanted people to only achieve eudaimonia after their contribution of a lot of their time and effort towards whatever task they chose. The task that you complete to achieve eudaimonia needs to be so grand that you become truly happy after you complete it.
Oliver Queen is a man who had a series of very unfortunate events happen in his life, so he does not show happiness or excitement that much, and when he does, it is only for a brief moment. Every time that Oliver and his team catch somebody though, there is a hint of joy that people can barely notice in him and that is because he is slowly getting closer to that fulfillment that he seeks. If Oliver ever achieves eudaimonia by completel saving his city, then should actually see happiness from him because that is what is supposed to happen once you reach that state of fulfillment that Plato talks about.
The city that Oliver Queen lives in is not like a stereotypical comic book city that is full of people with superpowers or people that can do things that other humans can’t. The writers of Arrow wanted the show to seem as realistic and relatable as possible to the viewers. The city that Oliver lives in, Starling City, could very well symbolize that societies that all of us live in today. There are bad people that try to do illegal things and Oliver tries his best to stop those who are bad and save those who could possibly be harmed by these people. This is all part of Oliver’s quest for fulfillment, which Plato would praise. Just like Murphy’s law states though, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
Oliver’s quest for the feeling of fulfillment for saving the city is already a task that is almost impossible to complete due to the fact that there will more than likely always be something bad going on anywhere in the world. As stated before, in a recent episode, many of the people that Oliver had put in prison escaped, which made Oliver and his team lose the partial sense of fulfillment that they had. This shows that achieving eudaimonia is not an easy task. You can get the feeling that you are getting close to fulfillment, but right as you think you’ve started to make some serious progress towards achieving eudaimonia, something happens, causing you to lose that sense of partial fulfillment that you had. Plato’s definition of eudaimonia doesn’t really apply to small tasks though.
If you could achieve eudaimonia by just completing small, simple tasks, then there wouldn’t really be any point to eudaimonia being a big, central concept of Plato’s philosophy. Eudaimonia is more directed towards the feeling of fulfillment after completing some grand task, such as saving a city, like Oliver Queen. Oliver’s task of feeling fulfillment for saving the city is what Plato was meaning when he wanted people to achieve eudaimonia. He wanted people to only achieve eudaimonia after their contribution of a lot of their time and effort towards whatever task they chose. The task that you complete to achieve eudaimonia needs to be so grand that you become truly happy after you complete it.
Oliver Queen is a man who had a series of very unfortunate events happen in his life, so he does not show happiness or excitement that much, and when he does, it is only for a brief moment. Every time that Oliver and his team catch somebody though, there is a hint of joy that people can barely notice in him and that is because he is slowly getting closer to that fulfillment that he seeks. If Oliver ever achieves eudaimonia by completel saving his city, then should actually see happiness from him because that is what is supposed to happen once you reach that state of fulfillment that Plato talks about.