do you think that Caesar was happy?

if not, why?
If so, what does that say about morality of happiness?

What are morals for except means to get happy?

What does it matter what we think of another mans state of wellbeing? He was apparently a man of wants as his desire for glory being the motivation for his weeping before a statue of Alaxander the Great?

Yes, he was very ambitious and could not resign to a life without world-changing success.
And then he succeeded at attaining that success.

Was this a moral man?

I think we may define morals in terms of self-worth.

From what ive heard he was neither a terrible tyrant or a virtuous man.

Which Caesar are you talking about? Caesar was a title as well as a name.

Beyond that, who really cares whether or not a ruler of the Roman Empire was ‘happy?’ Does that have any relevance to how history transpired? Would the world be different had the Caesars not been? I think you need to ‘flesh out’ your OP a bit more. Thank you.

What relevance does how history transpired have to the OP? He didn’t ask how history transpired. He asked if you think Caesar was happy.

Well, happiness hasn’t exactly been defined yet; nor is it known whether the way that happiness would be defined now would even be a concept during Caesar’s time. Think of it this way. He was a man of his times; a military and political leader… and ultimately the ruler of the entire known world. He got what he wanted and achieved his goals; then he was betrayed and assassinated. The bigger question is: was the assassination worth it for the perpetrators? Were they “happy”?

Why is that the bigger question?

I imagine most of them were to some degree, though it is plausible that they were as suffering of irritation as any other. I might think that if they had been more Buddhist things would have been better…

Happiness isn’t a modern age pyschological term it’s an emotion thats relavent through all of human history.

It’s not as though it’s been consistently defined throughout all of human history.

THIS ARTICLE IS RELEVANT TO THIS THREAD IN GENERAL, but specifically to Stoic’s post as well: see #5

That doesn’t answer my question about which Caesar we supposed to be discussing: in Roman history there were many. I asked FC which Caesar he meant–a perfectly legitimate question before any answer to his op can be given. If he meant Julius Caesar, that’s fine. But what’s he trying to ask? Was Julius Caesar ‘happy’ when Cleopatra came to him wrapped in a rug? Was he happy during his affair with her? Was he happy when he was victorious in battle? Was he happy when he was declared “dictator in perpetuity?” Was he happy when Crassus died?

Or does FC want to talk about the ‘feeling’ of happiness, in general?

And, please, let FC answer–it’s his topic, after all.

“But get this – when doing a study of vacationers, the happiest people were the ones in the weeks leading up to a vacation. It was all about anticipation. Again, it looks like our brain rewards us more for working toward a goal than for actually arriving there.”
That shows that one can hype themselves up into a feeling of happiness, thus through methods like those practiced in Buddhisim one can achieve happiness, or better yet one can choose to associate happiness to things that will be more conducive to producing more happiness and also feel happy when they are working hard to achieve some goal.(of course I would suggest that ones goal include insuring the future of their children to be, and to be ‘good’) What it seems to show to me is that reality is about the journey not the end of the journey… heaven could just be the start of the next journey if such exists.

I don’t know why you posted this at all, this response is just nonsense. I know i didn’t answer your question about which Caesar, I agree that it’s a reasonable question, I never said otherwise and that’s precisely why i didn’t quote that part in my response. It’s fine that you asked that.

By sarcastically saying that it’s my topic, you really only show your own hypocrisy: you’re the only one who came here and tried to change the subject from Caesar’s happiness to some completely random other topic about “how history transpired.” I have no clue why you did that. Nobody is talking about how history transpired here and you come and say that that’s what we should be talking about. Why should we talk about that? Why can’t mrCross talk about Caesar’s happiness?

If you want to come in here and say that OP’s topic is not worth talking about, tell us why. Tell us why we should be talking about how history transpired instead of this.

Of course it matters if a ruler is happy! In the first place, it says a lot about the nature of his rule, and of rule in general. Secondly, a rulers happiness says a lot about his morality. That is interesting because a person is never an objective fact, always subject of affections and sentiments.

Caesar was Julius’ personal nickname. After he became Rome’s first solitary ruler, the name Caesar was adopted as a term to denote Roman rulership. Later it has been used as Kaiser and Czar, the German and Russian terms for ruler of an empire.

I personally think that Caesar enjoyed a happiness so great few of us can imagine, and that the consequence of his murder was a small thing compared to his cumulative experience. But at the same time it is clear that he can be seen as a genocidal maniac, slaughtering entire tribes of hundreds of thousands.

That is the question I’m asking as well - do you think that a mass murdering tyrant can also be seen as a virtuous man? The answer is of course yes, because we do, as a culture, admire Caesar. I would say that we need to revise our ideas on the morality of violence to account for these things, in order to be able to deal with the concept of inflicting suffering more intelligently.

And not make claims like “the world is evil because I am in such pain”, or “God cannot exist because if he did he would not allow suffering.” What the hell is that, really? Who ever said God opposes suffering? The Bible makes it quite clear that the entity it describes greatly values suffering and never shuns to impose it on his loved ones.

Sorry to derail now to religion, this was only an example of how the fear of suffering obscures our view of our real moral principles, which, as I believe, favor violence if it is for a cause we admire.

FC…

I think that you are sort of right or probably right in your thought line but to say that is is just “suffering” caused is one thing, but in reality it is temporary “suffering”…but then it isn’t really suffering as in pain at least not necessarily, it is more like having to work to get the goal… things don’t come free… if one sees that the doing is valuable regardless of what one must sacrifice of the self, be that time, effort, etc, then it should not really be seen as suffering, or negatively “sacrifice” it is more like giving and receiving, putting forth to get back. In other words if to help humanity survive and be happy for a really long time, it is worth having to work for that and pay for it by having to give away parts of what is had… But what comes in is the capacity for one to justifiably decide whether another sacrifices them self for the cause for the one person… And if it may actually be better to keep people alive almost always, which is what i think …IDK

Yes I understand what you mean, like Bertrand Russels famous quote “No one can sit next too a dieing child and believe God’” as if the invincibility of children is a condition for the existance of god.

Im not sure if Caeser would be considered genocidal, to be honest I haven’t researched much about him.

Indeed. What an idiot!

Well I read some about him and he didn’t shun to erase whole tribes and these tribes were fairly vast.

In Caesars time there weren’t really concepts such as “people” , you had either citizens or barbarians. Barbarians were uncivilized, not Roman, thus worth nothing in comparison to a citizen, let alone the whole glory of Rome! Happiness simply doesn’t rely on humanistic morality. Which brings me to FJs question:

He must have been exhilirated by most of that I cannot imagine anything else at least. Wouldn’t you?

No, happiness in real life, like you say. I imagine that he has had lots of very happy moments, more then most of us, more than me likely. I want to talk about the happiness of tyrants, people who do thing that we consider morally wrong.

Or would Caesar have secretly suffered immensely and maybe he was glad to be killed?

I didn’t mean to necessarily say happiness in the way i think you are thinking about it so much as satisfaction or accomplishment of what is best, happiness is pretty much just a feeling that follows that , it is to say happiness like to say “I drove my 4 wheels to work”, rather than to say “i drove my car to work”…maybe…