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JA4. Learning Journal 4

Statement

Hopefully, this week has sowed some seeds of interest in how you have formed your worldview about the importance of family and society. Having a baseline from which to start is often the best way to ask yourself questions you have never thought of before and maybe even learn something about yourself.

For this week’s journal, please share what the most interesting part (lesson/discussion) this week was to you. How did that reading, or experience of thinking about it, change your worldview? Please explain how you thought before, and how the new viewpoint changed that old thinking into something new.

Answer

The most interesting part of this week was the discussion about the structure of family and society; I give special value to the family and I always heard about the utopian city suggested by Plato as the ideal city; I did not read “The Republic” book but I have special admire to Plato and Aristotle, however St. Thomas Aquinas was new to me.

My previous view is that in the ideal city, the family is the most important unit; our traditional structure of the family consists of a mother, father and children, along with other close families such as uncles cousins, etc. And the needs and prosperity of the family take precedence over everything else; however, I understood the ideal city differently.

Plato views the family as not needed, as all children belong to the state and should be raised in state facilities; rulers can decide on couples and those couples should mate for a short period to produce good citizens and then hand them to the state and never see them again; no one should claim children as their own, and every child is the child of every citizen (Rosenberg, 2023). Plato also sees that society should be divided into three classes: the rulers, the guardians, and the workers; the rulers are philosophers and kings; the guardians are soldiers and the workers are the rest of the citizens such as farmers and craftsmen (Brown, 2017).

Aristotle views the family as the basic unit, but its role is only to provide for the man’s needs such as shelter, food, and reproduction (TheTruthsAboutLife, 2020). He also divides society into three classes: rich, middle, and poor; he sees the ideal society where the middle class forms the majority of the population (Yezzi, 2020).

St. Thomas Aquinas’s views that are affected by Christianity seem the closest thing to me; he sees the family as a unit protected by the sacred contract of marriage. He sees God as the ultimate ruler of society, and all members of society should work for the common good that was implemented by God (UTM, 2024).

My views have changed as I don’t see the views of Plato and Aristotle as practical, useful, or even good; I don’t see the utopian city suggested by Plato as the ideal city anymore. Dividing society into classes was also surprising to me as I always thought that equality was the key to the ideal city. The role of women in the family and society was also surprising, but I think this was the universal view of women in that era.

To conclude, Plato, Aristotle, and St, Thomas have good views on other parts of life; but when it comes to family I don’t think that any of them have views that fit modern society; I reached this conclusion after reading this week’s material, as I always thought that these great philosophers were always ahead of their time, but I think it still useful to read their views and understand the reasoning behind them.

Word count: 501

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