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.