What do you mean by ‘ambition'? How is it different from success? Is ambition a good ethical value? Comment?
Answers
Ambition derives from the Latin ambitio, ‘a going around (to solicit votes)’, and, by extension, ‘a striving for honour, recognition, and preferment’. It can be defined as a striving for some kind of achievement or distinction, and involves, first, the desire for achievement, and, second, the motivation and determination to strive for its attainment even in the face of adversity and failure. To be ambitious is to achieve first and foremost not for the sake of achievement itself (which is to be high-reaching) but for the sake of distinguishing ourselves from other people. Were we the last person on earth, to be ambitious would make little or no sense.There are a number of variant concepts or definitions of ambition. For instance, in his Ethics, Spinoza remarks that ‘everyone endeavours as much as possible to make others love what he loves, and to hate what he hates’:
This effort to make everyone approve what we love or hate is in truth ambition, and so we see that each person by nature desires that other persons should live according to his way of thinking...
Ambition is often confused with aspiration. Unlike mere aspiration, which has a particular goal for object, ambition is a trait or disposition, and, as such, is persistent and pervasive. A person cannot alter his ambition any more than he can alter any other character trait: having achieved one goal, the truly ambitious person soon formulates another for which to keep on striving.
Ambition is often spoken of in the same breath as hope, as in ‘hopes and ambitions’. Hope is the desire for something to happen combined with an anticipation of it happening. In contrast, ambition is the desire for achievement or distinction combined with the willingness to strive for its achievement. Generally speaking, ambition is more self-referential and more self-reliant than hope. The opposite of hope is fear, hopelessness, or despair; the opposite of ambition is simply lack of ambition, which is not in itself a negative state.
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