Hegel

History is like a river, always moving but constant in purpose: to move forward. It evolves and progresses through the unfolding of the universal, absolute spirit of the world: the Weltgeist. Just like a river, history also has a set path, and a destination where the spirit becomes conscious of itself.

History is driven by ideas and the desire of freedom. We achieve this through dialectic progression. My dialectic is made up of three aspects: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Through the presentation of an idea, negation of that idea, and a compromise based on two negating ideas, history is able to move forward, society is able to grow stronger and ideas are able to supplant themselves. Examples: Protestant Reformation (thesis: autocratic Catholic Church, antithesis: Reformation based on freedom of the believer, synthesis: two branches of Christianity combining authority and freedom in new ways).

Every society is manifesting the spirit of the world as it continues along history’s arch. The duty of society is to embody and abet in the unfolding of the idea of freedom and societies bring contributions to human culture that together make up the realization of the absolute spirit in history. Look at the ideas of Plato or Socrates and their emphasis on the freedom of the mind. Look at the inventions by Gutenberg, the art of Michelangelo, the myths of the Greeks as parts of living culture. Look at the rise of modern constitutional states with their emphasis on the rights and freedom of citizens—Hegel’s Prussia and the US.

The spirit synthesizes knowledge and the freedom of humanity is increasingly realized through our recognition of each other as free and equal. This is how history moves—in a beautiful, deterministic, flowing manner. The world spirit is the sum of “human utterances” and “human reflections.” In the world spirit we recognize ourselves, and we realize that we are part of something truly great.

Sisterhood

I wish we didn't feel the pain. I wish we didn't welcome it.

I wish we could let it go. I wish we wanted to.

I wish for questions. I wish for answers.

I wish to be a part. I wish to be a whole.

But most of all I wish to be heard, to be recognized in your eyes, my companion, my friend, my sister.

We wish but we do not ask.

Instead we search, hand in hand, for the parts, wholes, questions, answers, pain, happiness, and recognition of our existence.

We search. We seek. We long to understand.

But the beauty lies in the fact that we don't.

Love

I love our philosophy class.

I just love it.

Eighteen

Eighteen.

I am eighteen today.

What does that even mean?

I'd like to know.

I know it's a number.

What is a number?

It brings order.

What is order?

It is meaning.

What is meaning?

It is chaos.

What is chaos?

It is beauty.

What is beauty?

It is love.

What is love?

Love is life.

Eighteen years of life.

Quote of the Week

"Life's but a walking shadow." - William Shakespeare, Macbeth

I feel like I'm...

...slipping.

Blank White Page

How is the world represented in one blank white page? This is the question that left us as we exited class today. We had just done an activity on Hegelian philosophy about self-consciousness and consciousness, desire and intersubjectivity and mutual recognition.

So, how is the world manifested in one white page? Well, I think that the world is one white page in itself. It is there for humanity to paint, draw, sketch, scratch, and write upon. But why does it stay white? Why one white page? It's because history and humanity is a series of "heres" and "nows," and every here and every now gets its own white page. No two white pages will be the same, but they will all be beautiful. This is how we arrive at Hegel's Weltgeist--an arch of colorful history that has led us to this here and now. If we were to stack every colored page on top of one another we could have a vibrant display of human history. The top page, however, is always white.

But don't worry, I am coloring it as I write this.

Hegel and the Internet

I came into class today very confused about Hegelian's view of the subconscious, to be completely honest. I didn't know how to contextualize it, how to put it in a broader perspective so that I could successfully zoom out and say, "Yes, I understand now."

Today in class we attempted to crash the school network, at least that's what I thought Mr. Summers' initial plan was. But no. Instead we navigated the world of the interweb using philosophical triggers and through the exercise tried to arrive at a greater understanding of the "Geist."

Matthew T Grant put it brilliantly when he wrote, "Spirit (“Geist” or “Mind”) represented itself to itself in an unprecedented manner."

We are coming together through the world of the internet. In this invisible being, all of human history is connected, shared, and harbored. We are able to connect to others through social networking, e-mail, etc. We recognize other consciousnesses as they recognize our own. It is a world of connectedness and isolation, unity and disunity.

Hegel is still a bit foggy to me, but much clearer now than when I stepped into class.

Quote of the Week

"Nothing is worth more than this day." -Goethe

Finitude of the Human Condition

This is from the Nietzsche-Kierkegaard debate. The post is in favor of Kierkegaard.

The word fundamental is defined as being an essential part of something. The aspect of the human condition that is truly fundamental is its finitude. I define finitude not only as a limited life but a life that is cut off, alone, and shrouded in solitude. This finitude and realization of our aloneness leads to existential dread. Dread is defined as terror or apprehension toward something in the future. Humans are naturally anxious. We ask ourselves, do people care about us? Are we truly loved? Am I truly alone? What happens after I die?

Every human life will end. It is fundamental and it is unavoidable, but it is how we handle and question and contemplate this fundamental question that defines who we are in the scope of the human condition. This is done on an individual basis because fundamentally we are alone. We are individuals. An individual is defined as a single human being. So now the question is, how do we release ourselves from this suffocating dread of death, this all-consuming fear? Dread is a natural part of life, but there is a way to truly overcome this dread. Instead of fighting and trying to advance yourself in earthly life (this will eventually drive you insane...), release from existential dread comes through complete and utter surrender to a transcendent cause.

I know my time is limited. I am only here for a short while, so I want to contemplate the beyond, the incomprehensible, because I know someday everything that happened to me on Earth will be of trifling importance. By having faith in a greater cause, you begin to see your life in a broader context of salvation and eternal destiny as one with God. Faith fosters strength and love and companionship; it is a solution to the dread of finitude and isolation, the idea that you are alone on this Earth.

My Philosophy

I have always been afraid of stars. They sit there in the sky, radiating into the ashy, indigo abyss until their light reaches the furthest recesses of the universe. I am dwarfed, I am nothing. Stars terrify me; stars are beautiful to me. They represent that wonderfully terrifying transcendence of living, that pristine and fiery, wondrousness of existence. Stars beautify insignificance.

One night I lie on the soft turf of the stadium. My school is silhouetted in midnight’s darkness, my best friends are sprawled beside me. They are talking, probably about some calculus problem or critique we just read in class. I am merely here absorbing them, and then it happens. Looking up at the stars, I have a moment of all-seeing magnificence, of complete understanding. The stars have watched me watch them my entire life; they have watched me question and challenge them. Now they have given me my own philosophy.

I am insignificant. My life is eerily short, but I am so lucky to be at all. I read a poem in Spanish class by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer that stated, roughly translated, “this mortal life and the eternal one that touches me.” Eternity is alive; it touches me briefly, but its presence gives me purpose. One life is the equal of a grain spilling through the sands of time. We are nothing. But we are everything.

I am significant. Think of the factors that lead to a person’s existence—the magnificent coincidence of living. The Earth existed before I did, evolving in a dark universe, a rock that cooled to create nature and humans with reason and perception. Sometimes I feel that people underestimate the miracle of their own being. They are living. LIVING. We are all lotto winners in the cosmic shuffle of the most impossible odds. This is what gives me faith and fuses my steadfast belief in both science and spirit. I believe in the physical and holy wonder of the universe, and I always will.

My friends are all here with me, and with them I realize that I have a purpose on this Earth: love, learning, love of learning. I will spend the rest of my unbearably and wonderfully short life trying to fulfill this marvelous purpose. There are times when I feel a crushing fear of death, but then there are the instances of wonder, like lying on the field with the ones I love most, that without death would not have the same luminosity.

Last summer, as I stood inside the archaeological marvel of the passage tomb Newgrange in Ireland, I realized that history actually began with the stars. The tomb was built in accordance to celestial movement, and once a year, on the winter solstice, the sun rises and illuminates the passage. It’s a moment of life, of breathing history that reminds me that I really am part of a magnificent story. And I will never know its end. That’s the beauty of the story.

Don't Try to Comprehend

Today was our second day discussing Kierkegaard, and I feel his philosophy much more relatable than that of Nietzsche. Although both are existentialists, I can relate well to Kierkegaard's internal struggle and his fear and trembling. I feel that fear and anxiety are not things we should try to avoid and beat, but rather things that we need to understand. They are intrinsically part of what it means to be human. Oftentimes fear is irrational--we talked about paranoia in class a couple weeks ago. Kierkegaard's answer to fear is faith, another incomprehensible and sometimes irrational concept. But that is the beauty of faith. It is so beyond our understanding, it is putting all you have into something you don't need. The point of faith is that it is hard to comprehend, otherwise it wouldn't be faith at all.

Kierkegaard believed in God; Nietzsche did not. But Nietzsche (slipping into debate mode), don't you have a spirit? You have your soul, your being, your individuality. If you do not have faith in a greater power, at least have faith in that. And remember, that it is okay to be weak sometimes. It is okay to fear and tremble. It is okay to take refuge.

It is even okay to leap.

Descartes: Look Around

If I were arguing against Descartes, I would make the point that reason cannot be applicable without sense perception. When I reason mathematically, it is only because I have seen shapes (albeit in their imperfect forms) and perceived from that a mathematical proof. Nobody could have envisioned a triangle using only the mind; they must have seen it in nature.

When Descartes brought up that Galileo and Copernicus postulated celestial movements through pure reason alone, I would have said, how? How can only reason be at work in an external world? How can scientists only use reason? The answer is that they can't. Without the senses there is nothing to reason at all. Galileo went blind from looking at the sun. He used his senses and from there he used reason. Reason and the senses are both essential in perceiving and learning from the world. Descartes and Hume should not argue; rather they should collaborate, because the marriage of their ideas form a balanced view of life and the world around us.

Heraclitus vs Parmenides

Today was our class's first debate. We argued the problem of change in the context of two philosophers' views: Heraclitus and Parmenides. I argued for Parmenides. It was a great learning experience for me--the first time I had participated in a real debate. I had done seminars before, but never such an intense debate where I had to be so quick on my feet.

If I were Heraclitus, I would have targeted Parmenides on Darwin. Darwin's theory of evolution, published in his most famous work, On the Origin of Species, describes a theory of natural selection, of adaptation and descent. In the scientific world, this theory is widely believed to be true. Animals, humans, plants: we are all adapting. Single mutations in our genetics become widespread and will eventually affect the entire population, such as opposable thumbs. Can we live well without them? Not really. BAM--beneficial mutation. Heraclitus's view that everything changes is supported by Darwin's theory. Everything changes, everything evolves. It is so hard for me to see Parmenides's side of this argument.

How can things be permanent if everything I do is controlled by change?

Fear: the force that drives us

Today in class we talked about fear and the differences between the philosophy of Hume and Descartes. Descartes is a rationalist and Hume is an empiricist. We discussed the power of fear. Is it the strongest emotion? I don't think it is, but I think it is the second strongest.

As I said in class, I was always an anxious child, scared of fire, accidents, thunderstorms, and dying. And today those anxieties have declined a bit, but I still feel their presence. Today I am still afraid of dying, but not because I am scared of the unknown. I fear dying early before I can experience the entirety of the world and its people. Perhaps in this way I relate to Hume. I fear the loss of experience. Fear itself is an experience, a choking and icy permeating dread that fills you up until your limbs are heavy and restless. But fear is important. It drives us forward, protects us in many cases, and allows us to contextualize our lives. Fear, however, can be destructive if we cannot find a rationalizing line to draw. It can hurt us, drive us mad with irrational thoughts and catastrophic, unreasonable thinking.

Fear is powerful, but it is manageable. There must be a perfect balance between feeling and reason, a marriage of sensation and rationalism.

The Crushing, Liberating Silence

Today was really hard. Really hard. It wasn't just hard to find silence, but it was hard to welcome it. I did find peace of mind, but only for a fraction of the 18 minutes of quiet in class today. But I cannot recall those moments of quiet; I just know I had them. That's the beauty of it all. Quiet is attainable, but it is so profound that it is near impossible to remember. For this reason we need to make quiet not something we strive for momentarily, but something we live with, continuously and eternally.

I am very thankful for today's class. It brought me to many realizations. I live with tremendous pressure, but it is pressure put upon me by nobody else but myself. While sitting there among silence, my mind ran through my responsibilities: assignments, SAT, college applications, field hockey practice, extracurricular activities, extended essay. Then my mind ran through my fears: not getting in to my dream school, disappointing my teachers and parents, not being able to continuously learn and discover. These fears and responsibilities, coupled with a wrenching internal struggle, lead to my greatest, harshest dread: getting lost. Losing that purpose, that quiet scares me so much. Walking out of that class, I began to cry because I sensed that fear slowly and surely becoming manifest. It hasn't yet, but at times it is dangerously close.

During General's Period, I met Manon in the hall and she let me weep into her arms. She, along with my other six best friends, have kept me hopeful. They have found me, and with them by my side I know I can never be lost. I am, with them, part of a family based on true, wholehearted, beautiful love, respect, and dependence. We carry each others' burdens--and there are many--but together we are stronger, a unit, a team. When I write, they read. When I play a hockey game, they inquire about how I did. When I look sad, they are always there for me. When I accomplish something, they rejoice along with me. When I'm happy, they absorb my joy and augment it.

In a way the knowledge that I was in danger of losing myself was what caused the tears today. But it was also something else. It was the knowledge that there are people who care about me, who will be my companions as I run, skip, drag myself, cry, laugh, jump, and sing my way through.

After all, the mind is a person's greatest asset. Whether you choose for it to be a burden or a gift is the difference between a miserable and insightful existence.

Thank you, Mr. Summers. Today was invaluable.

Constructing the World

What I believe philosophy strives for most is unity. Some sort of unity of the mind and spirit. A unified understanding of purpose. A question of why?

Today in class we talked a lot about the concept of a "world." What exactly constitutes a world? For the most part we agreed with Kant's idea of das Ding an sich - the thing as perceived by oneself. Basically, most people thought that every person constructs their own world in their life and strive to build up their world. Everyone, through perception, has a uniquely different world. But there is something bigger--Hegel's Weltgeist. What if the world spirit is not the evolution of accumulated knowledge reaching a finality. What if the spirit of the world is every person's own life and own world, combined in a beautiful manifestation of humanity.

The human spirit and the human experience, coupled with the magnificence and splendor of nature, create the ultimate world spirit.

From Serenity to Reality

Today in class we went on a walk with earplugs in. This heightened my sense of sight; I walked slowly and absorbed all of my surroundings with eagerness. My partner and I pointed out objects of visual pleasure to us, such as trees and houses. We reached a small park and sat and lay in the grass while wearing a blindfold. The serenity was astounding. With no sense of sight or sound, I relied completely on my sense of touch. I even dozed off a bit.

When I returned to the conscious reality of day to day school life, I was immediately confronted with a panicked situation. Apparently, I had left my car keys in my car this morning, as one friend told me during Generals' Period. I started to, for lack of a better word, "freak out" and run around the school in a frenzy. They weren't in my car and my friend hadn't picked them up. My mind started racing with all the awful scenarios: Would someone steal the car--my parents' car?! Would I be stuck at school forever? What will my mom think? Would she trust me with such a responsibility again? I sprinted down to the office's Lost and Found...and there they were. Wonderful and silver. It was such a contrast to the beautiful peace of third period.

The unfortunate reality of life is reality. No matter how hard you try to create a peaceful, meditative space; life always comes back to panic you out of it.

Philosophy of a Writer

Today in class we had our second seminar on Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. We discussed the advantage of Albert writing a novel for his daughter instead of telling her the history of philosophy instead. I love novels, and clearly Hilde does too. Using a novel as a tool to learning about philosophy seems perfect to me, but the novel was very inconclusive (at least Hilde's version). Her book ends with Sophie and Alberto escaping the garden party. That's it. We, luckily, get to read about their time in the "real" world.

What if characters live on after we finish reading? Do Harry Potter, Jane Eyre, and Peter Pan stop "living" after the cover closes? What about the characters in my head, the ones I created? When I don't think about them, do they move, breathe, think? I really hope so. For me as a writer, I let my characters find me. I cannot create people; I encounter them. I absolutely adore the process of meeting these new people and slowly, through my interaction with them, discover who they truly are. This is why I love to write, and this is why I enjoyed the last part of Sophie's story. I believe Albert Knag knew that Sophie would escape the bounds of the novel. He knew Sophie was there that night at the bay. He knew because he believed in his characters. He believed that they had a mind of their own. His imagination took on an imagination.

Do not underestimate characters. They live longer than you do.

First Post

Hello all (aka Mr. Summers)--

I am really excited for this philosophy course this year. I will try to post as much as possible even though I love class discussions :)

Today we did a blindfold exercise. My partner, Jasmine, led me through the school, parking lot, and up the Oakgrove park hill. To be honest, it was truly terrifying, especially around stairs and on the street. To have my vision cut off in that way heightened my other senses; I hadn't truly appreciated my ability of sight until today. Guiding Jasmine second, I knew what she was going through, except I felt so awful for getting her feet wet at the stream!

Here's to a great, philosophical year!