Prompt Five

Where, O’Hare, Do I Stand On the Rabbit’s Fur?

             As André Gide once said, “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Alberto Knox, Sophie’s philosophy teacher, would argue that true philosophers are those dare to venture into the world of the unknown, away from the traditional beliefs accepted by society. Or, the only way to truly experience life is by incessantly attempting to climb to the tips of the rabbit’s fur. Before reading Sophie’s World, the topic of philosophy interested me, but I had never overtly considered the different ideas of each time period. However, as I slowly made my voyage through Gaarder’s impressive “philosophical project,” I found myself agreeing and criticizing the different beliefs I read about.

            One of the philosophies I agreed with was Aristotle’s “formal causes” and his opinion that our concepts of Plato’s “ideas” are made after we experience the object first. Like Aquinas, I associate Aristotle’s “formal cause” with God, which is why everything happens, and I concurred with Aristotle that the “idea” forms are really made of characteristics. Another philosophy I found both interesting and true was Darwin’s theory of evolution and its underlying mechanism, natural selection. It is no secret that, while I don’t believe humans originated from fish, evolution in a species does occur over prolonged periods of countless millennia. Natural selection, or the process of only the fittest are selected to adapt and endure, is also very real, hence the dinosaurs’ extinction. Lastly, I agree with Freud’s belief that there is an incessant struggle between an individual and his or her environment and that how we respond is not always governed by reason. As a potential prospect for the medical field, I know from personal experience that the human brain is a complex, fascinating, and outlandish organ that operates on more than just reason alone. For example, sometimes our reactions are based on instincts that do not require thought, such as “the fight or flight response.” However, there were also plenty of philosophies that I did not agree with.

            Directly opposite with Aristotle’s belief that concepts are formed after we experience them, Plato believed in the world of ideas, where all “idea” forms resided. This belief seems implausible to me because if everything resided in the world of ideas, then even the “idea” God would reside there. I don’t know the details about the origins of God’s existence, but I find it hard to believe He has an “idea” of himself in a world of ideas He didn’t create. Moreover, I did not agree with Socrates’ belief that there are some “eternal and absolute rules for what is right and wrong.” While this is true, in a way, there is a certain moral code and set of values society upholds, which can vary depending on your religion, location, and culture. For instance, things that we consider taboo in the United States of America may be practiced by native tribes in South America, or Christian values incorporated in society will not be the same as those in a society where Buddhism is the predominant belief system.

            Overall, I found the combination of various time periods, discoveries, cultures, and belief systems in Sophie’s World added up to a very interesting and thought-provoking read. Without this novel being a requirement for a grade, I’ll admit I probably would have never glanced twice if I saw it on a shelf at the bookstore or library. However, I appreciate this being a requirement because of all the new ideas and beliefs I have been introduced to over the course of my philosophical voyage. In comparison to my position on the rabbit’s fur prior to Gaarde’s philosophical project, I would now like to believe that I am more appreciative and aware of the world around me. After all, a true philosopher never ceases in his or her conquest to understand past the magician’s face and into the world outside of what is known.  

Prompt Four

A Kaleidoscope of Perspectives

            Kaleidoscopes are fascinating instruments comprised of a cylindrical body, mirrors, and multi-colored objects. As light reflects off these tiny mirrors, brilliant patterns appear and seem to move as the angles of light reflect differently. Like a kaleidoscope, a person’s worldly experience can be influenced by the angle of perspective they choose, willingly or unwillingly, to adopt. In the English language, this matter of perspective is known as “seeing life through rose-colored glasses.” If an individual has this outlook on life, they imagine the world around them as how they think it might or should be instead of how it actually is. In reality, it is not the world that has altered in the literal sense, but how the person perceives and interprets their surroundings.

            In the “Kant” chapter of Sophie’s World, Alberto applies this concept by having Sophie try on a pair of literal rose-colored glasses. After donning the glasses, Sophie still saw everything she saw before, but this time it was all in various hues of red. Everything was not truly red, however, but the way she perceived the world around her was restricted by the glasses she was wearing. Kant himself believed that two important factors were required for our complete perception of the world: “sensing” and “reason.” Like the empiricists, Kant concurred that sensations contribute to our knowledge of the world, but there also determining influences in our reason that affect how discern our world. Some of these influences can be experienced to a universal extent or on more personal level.

            On a universal scale, everyone, myself included, adopts a pair of red-tinted glasses as they mature and age. When we are little children, we perceive the world around us as a giant, uncharted territory that must be explored, and we are its conquistadors. This is because children are still innocent and do not understand certain concepts, such as that the world can be an awfully sinister and hazardous place. However, as children begin to mature and form their own opinions and beliefs with time, they start to regard the world around them in a different light. For example, while a five-year-old may squeal with delight at the sight of a rusty playground, a sixteen-year-old might be wary of catching tetanus or the possibility of falling through the weakened monkey bars. The reason the sixteen-year-old knows this is because they have either learned through experience or comprehend the dangers that are everywhere in life; the five-year-old, on the other hand, is akin to a clean canvas that has never experienced the beauty of paint, and therefore does not know the wiser. Thus, maturity is just one of many rose-colored glasses that assisting in shaping an individual’s standpoint on life.

              Although some pairs of rose-tinted glasses are relative to the majority of the population, some others can only be experienced by a select group of people personally. For instance, my personal glasses are my intense fear of driving. This stemmed from my sixteen-year-old cousin’s death, who was killed in a violet car crash roughly two years ago, with one of his friends at the wheel; it was just a couple of weeks before he got his own license. Ever since then, my perspective on driving has altered dramatically, especially when I have other people in the car. In fact, my fear was so bad at first that when the time came to get my license, I balked at the opportunity, opting to wait a little longer. I was determined that before I got my license, I would make sure to have extra experience driving to avoid a similar fate. Even now, I am still paranoid whenever I drive and sometimes I tense up because I get nervous about making a turn or crossing a busy intersection. Lastly, now when I hear about people being killed in a car accident, it affects me a lot more than it did before, especially since I know what my family and I went through.

            Briefly, every individual has a certain way he or she looks at the world around them. This experience of the world can be affected by a multitude of things, such as culture, sex, ethnicity, race, religion, or private conflicts and experiences. Either way, there is no right or wrong way to experience life, and everyone perceives the world from behind at least one or more pairs of rose-colored glasses at some point or another. With this said, the real question is how much do we let our glasses govern our perspective on life when we can choose to think differently? As Abe Lincoln once said, “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses."

            

Prompt Three

Faith Within Reason

                Imagine a complex algebra problem where the answer can be derived by more than one method of thought. One process might be shorter and simpler than the other, but the result should always be identical between the two.  This concept can be applied to faith and reason, each one a separate and distinct way to arrive at the same Christian verities. During the Middle Ages, however, ancient philosophies were viewed as a menace to the Christian belief system, the transcendent religion in Europe. Many of the renowned philosophical schools, such as Plato’s Academy in Athens, were subjugated under the Church and forbidden to continue their teachings. With this said, it was left to the medieval thinkers of this era to preserve and incorporate classical ideologies of reason and nature by harmonizing them with the Christian theology of this time.

            The first attempts to bridge the gulf between Christianity and Greek thought were made by St. Augustine. He “christianized” the ideas of Plato by paralleling them with the fundamental beliefs of Christianity. For instance, he appeased both parties by utilizing Plato’s world of ideas, but put a religious spin on it by claiming that before God created the world, the “idea” world was in his mind first. This shows that Augustine saw no significant dividing line between nonreligious philosophies and the Church’s doctrines; rather, he thought the two could coexist as to justify the other since reason could only explain so much of faith and vice versa. As a result of views, Augustine set the stage for the next big medieval philosopher.

            St. Thomas Aquinas, the other most renowned medieval philosopher, followed in his predecessor’s footsteps on the path to unifying faith and reason. However, while Augustine applied Christianity to Platonic ideas, Aquinas’ focal point was Aristotelian philosophies. He believed that while certain religious truths can only be approached through faith, there were other truths that can be attained through faith and our inborn sense of reason; Aquinas called these natural theological truths. Aquinas also utilized Aristotle’s idea of “formal causes” by applying it to God, who has made Himself known through the Christian Bible and our reason, or “theology of faith” and “natural theology.” Therefore, by christianzing him, Aquinas preserved Aristotle’s classical views and a small piece of the origins of philosophy.

            While the consequences of Aquinas’ and Augustine’s efforts were not observed instantaneously, they can be seen in the later Middle Ages. Due to the preservation and acceptance of ancient philosophies, universities founded in the Late Middle Ages continued the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. Also, when the Renaissance blazed through Europe a few centuries later, there was a push to return to the former glory of Rome and Greece. Without Aquinas and Augustine, the philosophies carved out during the Classical and Late Antiquity eras might not have lived to see this magnificent rebirth in European history. After all, philosophy was another area of interest that gained popularity during this time.

            All in all, the application of ancient philosophies to Christian doctrine in a time such as the Middle Ages is an incredible feat. In these changing times, anyone who spoke out against the Church, who governed daily life, was often convicted and executed for heresy. This makes Aquinas’ and Augustine’s determination to preserve the ideologies of the Greeks even more admirable. Also, by keeping the ideas of Plato and Aristotle   alive, these two philosophers greatest contribution was perhaps the education boom that would result centuries after their time. Finally, by bridging the gulf between religion and philosophy, faith and reason, old and new, the medieval philosophers facilitated the transition from classical philosophies to modern European thought.

Prompt Two

Battle of the Sexes

            As the saying goes, “Behind every strong man is an even stronger woman.” Everyone knows that women achieved the right to vote in America in the 1920s, finally earning their freedom. Before this period in time, however, women were viewed as their husband’s property if they were married. If not, they were under the direct supervision of their fathers until a marriage was arranged. Sadly, this practice has not been around for just a few hundred years, but for thousands of them. Even the brilliant Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle thought of women as inferior!

            In Gaarder’s Sophie’s World, he describes Aristotle’s unimpressive and narrow-minded view of females. According to the philosopher, women were nothing more than “unfinished man” and therefore “incomplete.” Adding insult in injury, he also states that women have no role in the reproductive process except to act as a facilitator. This was because he believed it was the male, and the male alone, that determined the genetics the child would display because they were the “sowers” of these qualities. Talk about a soul-crusher to the feminism movement, Aristotle.

            Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed and frustrated to read about Aristotle’s opinion of women. How could someone so ingenious be so incapable of recognizing the boundless potential in women? Even more shocking was Plato, Aristotle’s mentor, did believe that women were equals of men because they also had the capacity of thought and reason. He stated that women, like men, could rule and be great leaders as long as they were properly educated and trained. Hello, thank you, Plato! Out of the three major Greek philosophers, he was the only one that provided the most admirable views on women and defended their capabilities.

           Lastly, once again it is annoying that the majority of the philosophers in this novel are men. Twenty-first century women, myself included, expect to be regarded as men's equals, along with our entitlement to hold our own beliefs and opinions, that we forget we did not always have these privileges. This makes it especially infuriating that women were expected to be “good little house wives” and “raise bountiful hoards of children” back then. Furthermore, it is disappointing that all of the countless women throughout the millennia were never given a chance to express their ideas about the world around them because the men of that time deemed it pointless or inaccurate. Those men who once belittled females would be outraged to see how actively women partake in society these days!

Prompt One

The Curious Enigma of Identities and Origins

             Philosophers having been trying to answer questions like “Who am I?” and “Where did the world come from?” for millennia. Without people like these to ponder over the world we reside in, how would human civilization develop and advance? However, that does not make these questions any simpler to answer or provide any definite solutions to these enigmas. Depending on a wide range of cultural, political, religious, and scientific views, the responses to each query will vary from individual to individual. It is this beauty of uniqueness that contributes to the great minds behind philosophy and inquiry.

            To begin, my name is Jessica Fehd, and I am a sixteen-year-old native of Evansville, Indiana. This upcoming school year I will be a junior at North High School, where I will take a combination of AP and college-credit classes. The majority of my time is spent reading, writing, spending time with my family, and dreaming about the future. Personality-wise, I would describe myself as driven, independent, reliable, trustworthy, compassionate, and loyal to my friends and family. Yet, even though I could name off certain aspects about myself, I, like Sophie Amundsen, do not know how to answer the question of who Jessica Fehd is. In fact, if it was not for my father’s insistence, my name would be Alyssa. After reading Gaarder’s Sophie’s World, I often muse about who Alyssa Fehd would have been if she had been allowed to exist, and whether she would be anything like me, Jessica Fehd.  

            On the other hand, personal identity delves so much deeper than a name, a face, or a personality. For example, in some cultures the doctrines and traditions are the core of how the group expresses themselves. If “civilized” people saw the way aboriginal tribes lived in South Africa, we could call them barbarians, but for them their way of life is who they are. Even common groups like the Amish and Mormons are frowned upon because the predominant culture does not know how to comprehend or accept their strange practices. In addition, religious creeds sometimes define how people characterize their beliefs and opinions, and in some cases, determine their positions in certain political debacles that arise. One of the classic examples resides in the controversial topic of abortion, which walks a fine line between the moral jurisdiction of religion and the state’s responsibility to its people. Christians believe that conception begins at birth, but those who are educated in science argue that the baby is not a “baby” until a certain stage of the pregnancy. With this said, it is difficult to accept both the beliefs of religion and science because the two have been age-old rivals that constantly contradict each other.

            The debate between science and religion leads to the next question of “Where did the world come from?” Again, this is another controversial and heavily disputed topic that is as old as time. Since the publication of the Bible, Christianity has accepted that it was God who created the world in six days and declared the seventh as a day of rest. The complexity of the world around us, in everything we observe, attests to this idea that a supreme higher being had a master plan grander than any of us could ever imagine. Likewise, a popular scientific notion, known as the Big Bang Theory, contributes the world’s creation as the result oft a massive extraterrestrial explosion that formed the universe and our planet. However, it is difficult to place faith in a theory that depends on the premises of sheer luck that our planet was formed with just the right conditions for mankind to survive. Even if this explosion did occur, a being of the utmost highest understanding would have had to have caused this event in order to ensure the sustainability of life and the intricate processes that occur on this planet.

             Moreover, I believe that religion and science complement one another. In my view, religion provides the whys of how science exists, and science verifies the brilliance of a God who resides in the heavenly bodies. Admittedly, I, like Sophie, was baffled and confused by her revelation behind the existence of God himself. What she was saying about something coming from nothing makes sense, because if this did occur, it would defy the logic of reason and creation itself. Nevertheless, it seems equally impossible that something could have always existed. Perhaps this is both the beauty and madness behind the limited comprehension of human knowledge. Either way, it is a fascinating concept that will continue to baffle and amaze man.

           On behalf of Jostein Gaarder, I must give him credit for his bountiful ingenuity in the construction of this book. Without texts like this and the many great men before him, how would humans ever discover anything about themselves or the world around them? In a nutshell, philosophy is a combination of history, science, politics, and religion that forces man to confront the unknown and dare to dream bigger than men of lesser caliber. Therefore, such questions dealing with human identity and the origins of life will continue to be passed down, inspiring and enlightening one generation at a time.