Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer are
three well known philosophers.
Enlightenment, Individuality and Will are the topics of choice for these
three gentlemen. When you think of
enlightenment you think of wisdom (at least I do). When thinking of Individuality you think of
one person and their sense of importance.
When you think of Will you think of one’s ability to do something. These men take these concepts and give you an
interesting looking into their worlds.
Kant took the subject of
Enlightenment and the example of religion and tied them together for this
explanation. He compared enlightenment
to immaturity at the very beginning, “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his
self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is
the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another.” After talking about what his discussion was
about he went on to tell what he considered immaturity, “Laziness and cowardice
are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has
released them from alien guidance, nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong
immaturity.” After reading that sentence
I could not help but think of our reading of “The Allegory of the Cave” by Plato
and how he explained that fear (immaturity) could rule the way that we view the
world and learn. He later explained that
the people of the church request their pastors/presbyters/priests for guidance,
but they are also allowed to think on their own and do as they wish just as
long as they obey the laws.
Hegel was difficult only if you do
not like science or understand physics.
I have not had physics in five years so I was wrapping my head concepts
that I knew, but had not thought of in a very long time. He did a good job at explaining
individuality, but he also explained relationships and chemistry between two
individuals; friendships and male-female relationships. A way that he described relationships between
individuals was by using magnets to explain magnetism, “And precisely this is
magnetism, namely, that the same or indifferent will split apart and oppose
each other in the extreme, and the dissimilar or different will posit its
indifference. The differently named
poles have even been called friendly, and the similarly named poles have been
called hostile.” Basically what the
quote is explaining is that opposites attract.
He also explained that our individuality develops through
experience. As we develop as human
beings we learn from experiences and pull different characteristics from the
different people we are around to create ourselves. Hegel also talked of self-destruction when
being around people you do not get along with constantly by putting it this
way, “The individuality can be suspended by mechanical force; the friction,
which causes an initial or concluding self-destruction of the body to break
forth.” This quote had a lot of fluff in
it, but after you crossed out all the fluff the reading made so much more
sense, which is basically what I did throughout this paper. Hegel is very similar to Hume in his sense of
how we learn to be individuals.
Schopenhauer basically used a lot of
fluff in his writing. Honestly, I think
it would be safe to say that all of his writing was fluff. In section 18 he
basically said that the body and the will were the same and in section 19 he
basically said that we as individuals make up our will. A few quotes that say this are, “the body is
the condition of knowledge of my will. I cannot really imagine this will
without my body.”, “My body and my will are one.” and finally “Besides the will
and the representation, there is absolutely nothing known or conceivable for
us.” When reading Schopenhauer I could
not think of any philosopher in which I could relate him to.
As you can see these gentlemen seem
to know what they are talking about.
They take such simple concepts and broaden them for us to look deeper
into them. Some people would say they
only make them more complex, but in reality they are only showing us what we
choose not to grasp or what we cannot quite see on our own since we were each
brought up with a different sense of these words. By looking at these men’s perspective and
opinions of these words it can give you a sense of inferiority or
open-mindedness. Either way you feel
different after learning what you have learned.
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