The seminar just went over in examined detail what we went through when we read chapters 1 to 9 from our Bertrand Russell book. Indeed, I am one of the 25 students that did buy the book and read what was assigned.
Interesting as it may be I'm not a big fan of everything we went through in the seminar or perhaps the way some key figures were approached. I might have misinterpreted the lecturer but Aristotle was very undermined and underrated, we are talking about the genius student of Plato. Guilty of such phrases as "He who has overcome his fears will truly be free" ...something that once was only spoken by Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha). Master of the rhetoric and a great role model to myself due to his political inclination "Man is by nature a political animal".
It seems that the lectures take us to the very essence of interpretation itself where the content is not the prime subject but the vessel of the content itself aka The Philosopher in matter.
I feel very inclined towards exposing an alternative to the image that was portrait of him by our lecturers who seem more eager in worshipping the confused and paranoid Rene Descartes who of course was not fond of the great Aristotle either.
On the other hand I find it appealing to hear from those who are here to educate me, ideas that don't correlate with my own, this is an excellent example that the personal quest for truth is but personal and entirely in solitude since even those who are there to guide you must sometimes mislead you.
Nevertheless I am very happy with my first seminar. However I must add that Rene Descartes was just crazy and he came to the same conclusion as Socrates came two millennia before him which is that we simply know nothing, for it was Descartes who believed that as long as a theory can be created to question your idea of truth then you will never know for certain, leading to the conclusion that nothing is certain unless you find no one creative enough to create a theory that will question your truth.
Furthermore his argument towards existing through the thought, which is 'we think therefore we exist' is nothing but superficial and empirically questionable since it is possible to experience through the act of no mind. If we follow the law (which in Journalism has great relevance) that once we experience we will be able to interpret, thus believe we know, proving that we exist.
Correcting Mr Descartes 500 years too late. "We experience, therefore we exist"
Somebody should have introduced him to meditation, the connection between soul, mind and body where mind becomes dormant and the soul can experience on its own.
Redundancy and discovering what was once discovered is something we human beings have been perpetuating through history. The Dark Ages was like pressing the 'reset' button from our historical database and once we reached the 17th century we celebrate Descartes modernity of thought but we forget that once, before our memory was erased there was a greek philosopher that preached the same ideas, perhaps even with more eloquence.
A lesson of Irony, both Socrates and Descartes died because of their beliefs, were Descartes was fond of sleeping and the Queen of Sweden (his boss) was not. Honorable death. Socrates on the other hand decided to accept his punishment by the law and solemnly drunk the poison that killed him minutes after. [The Last Days of Socrates by Plato - Excellent book]
I look forward to the next seminar.
Let the foul language and the cartoons fool you not! There is a lot of important information in this video
very good notes = but please stick closer to the set reading. It is not the case that Nrian or myself are attacking Aristotle - we are not advocates of any of them - but instead pointing up the argument that Russell makes that Descartes overturned the Aristotlean system and that the renaissance and enlightenment required a break with the dogmatic version of aristotle received from the middle ages - so modern astronomy required heliocentricism and the overturning of aristotlean (Ptolemaic) astronomy. In the same way Aristotle's epistemology had to be overturned, and Descartes started this process. The cogito has been criticiswed and overturned by modern philosophers and - more importantly - scientidic linguists and neuro-biologists. We will come to that at a later point in the course. But descartes does not invalidate the contribution made by aristotle anymore than Beethoven invalidated Mozart - rather one builds upon the other, or diverges from a common starting point.
ReplyDeleteGood that you are engaged in these debates however. As a politics student you might also be very interested in machiavelli - maybe do a further blog pot on machiavelli.
It is inspiring to know that you follow the Socratic way of teaching such as 'corrupting young people's minds' let us hope that this will not bring you the same fate as Socrates or else I can understand perfectly why some lecturers might decide to preach against his ideals.
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