This week has been a pretty tough one for the
mind. I've never read or studied any philosophy, and especially not on a master
level. I've have prepared
myself by doing the Theme 1 Pre Reflection, which means that I have read
Kant's and Plato's texts over and over again and written a blog post
answering some questions about them. After the initial blog post we had a
lecture in the beginning of week 37 with a philosopher, which for me, actually
made everything worse. The lecture was in English and when you are trying to
learn something and understand it for the first time, doing it in another
language than your mother tongue makes it much more harder.
Thankfully the seminar yesterday was very informative for me. The same philosopher explained (this time in Swedish) once again what Kant and Plato means in their texts and we got to discuss our opinions about it. I can definitely say that I understand the two texts much more now, after the seminar.
Prior to the seminar I didn’t really understand that much about Kant’s text, which I found to be very abstract. But a lot became clearer during the seminar. For example: I didn’t really understand what Kant means when he says that “All bodies have extensions”, which our lecturer kept on talking about during the lection. During the seminar we discussed and he explained that it basically just means that something that is in the “room”, anything physically really, have extension. I think that is when I learned that philosophy doesn’t always have to be about abstract and really difficult meanings. It can sometimes be much more easy than that! Another phrase that I didn’t understand prior to the seminar was “Perception without conception is blind”. But we talked about it and the seminar leader had a really good example that he told us. He explained that for him, it is easy to understand if you think about when you, sometimes, wake up and you have absolutely NO CLUE where you are right now (in moment and time) and for example that your eyes can see a wall, but you don’t understand where you are anyway.
For me, this theme has been like an introduction to philosophy and I believe that my mind will open up more and more during the course. As an engineer I am taught to think in a certain way and to solve problems with the tools that I have acquired, so everything is very new in a sense that my mind is not used to thinking about problems and questions in a philosophical way. Time will tell!
Thankfully the seminar yesterday was very informative for me. The same philosopher explained (this time in Swedish) once again what Kant and Plato means in their texts and we got to discuss our opinions about it. I can definitely say that I understand the two texts much more now, after the seminar.
Prior to the seminar I didn’t really understand that much about Kant’s text, which I found to be very abstract. But a lot became clearer during the seminar. For example: I didn’t really understand what Kant means when he says that “All bodies have extensions”, which our lecturer kept on talking about during the lection. During the seminar we discussed and he explained that it basically just means that something that is in the “room”, anything physically really, have extension. I think that is when I learned that philosophy doesn’t always have to be about abstract and really difficult meanings. It can sometimes be much more easy than that! Another phrase that I didn’t understand prior to the seminar was “Perception without conception is blind”. But we talked about it and the seminar leader had a really good example that he told us. He explained that for him, it is easy to understand if you think about when you, sometimes, wake up and you have absolutely NO CLUE where you are right now (in moment and time) and for example that your eyes can see a wall, but you don’t understand where you are anyway.
For me, this theme has been like an introduction to philosophy and I believe that my mind will open up more and more during the course. As an engineer I am taught to think in a certain way and to solve problems with the tools that I have acquired, so everything is very new in a sense that my mind is not used to thinking about problems and questions in a philosophical way. Time will tell!
Hi Samuel!
SvaraRaderaI sat a long while just looking out in the thin air, trying to reflect upon what I had just read. It took some time and some re-reads before I could understand the texts a little. This is a totally (but very interesting!) new way of thinking for me, but I think it is pleasent to change the direction of thinking sometimes. Namely from the more scientific to the philosofic way of thinking, and it is a challenge ofc. I agree with you that it was kind of hard to learn and understand in English, so great that you still got to have the seminar in Swedish! It seems as you got some questionmarks erased during the seminar, and as I understood it, the explanation of "all bodies have extentions" comes from the explanation of what a priori is. A priori means the things you know independent of knowledge. So when Johan said "all bodies have extentions" he tried to explain the meaning of a priori, because you do not have to investigate that all bodies have extentions, you just know that a body has e.g. arms and legs and so on, and there is nothing really to investigate there. Great reflection and I also think that it is good to sometimes learn new ways of thinking, which can be hard and challenging ofcourse, but still fun :)
/Hannah