Friday, August 2, 2013

Post #4: What You Kan and Kant See

Kennedy Moore

Mrs. Wilhelmus

AP English 8th period 

2 August 2013

It is sometimes difficult to agree with other perspectives on issues or agree that what you believe on a certain topic is incorrect. However, in the "Kant" chapter of Sophie's World, Sophie is forced to step outside of her box and is encouraged to engage in the thought that almost every opinion is logical in some way. The "red tinted glasses" experiment, although simple, caused Sophie (and me) to realize that there are so many ways to twist situations and every person in the world sees things in different ways; therefore, who am I or anyone else to assume or decide who is wrong or right?

Alberto Knox's idea of instructing Sophie to place red tinted glasses on affected me more than any idea in the book thus far, possibly because of the simplicity and genius of it. Through the glasses, Sophie viewed everything in the world in monochrome. This is a metaphor for how each person sees everything in a certain way, or color, including yourself, which I think was an important moment for Sophie. Acknowledging that your views on life and philosophy are not necessarily correct because no one knows what is "truly" right or wrong can be one of the most challenging ideas to grasp, at least it was for me. However, everyone's perspective, or color, of life cannot be changed, and this provides the variety and characteristics of every person on Earth. 
"What can we know about the world?" We can know as much about the world as we want to make ourselves believe, I think, but we will never truly know what is right because it is beyond human reason. This chapter introduced Kant's philosophy that we can never know what the world truly is or who we are and that we must rely on faith. This idea of perspective correlating to faith applied to my life because as a Christian I have found myself questioning my faith over and over again, ultimately always finding my way back to Christ in the end. Overall, life is how we choose to see it and I agree with Immanuel Kant's idea that if you have faith in how you see something and believe in your own perspective, others will too.

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