I found Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues are very interesting and useful because I agree with him on most of them (not necessarily the order). For me, my top three virtues according from Franklin’s list is 1. Moderation, 2. Silence, 3. Resolution. Franklin defines moderation as to avoid extremes and that is what I always believe the right thing to do. I think no matter what I do I should always control myself from going to far or over react. Even with anger, I think people should control themselves from being extreme because that will bring them to the unwanted situation or even regret in the future. Second, Franklin defines silence as to avoid trifling conversation. I think what he means is similar to a Chinese proverb “diseases enter by the mouth; misfortunes issue from it.” This proverb means that don’t just say whatever you want, be aware of who is listening and what is the consequence. A “careless talk” can either hurt other people or put yourself in trouble. Lastly, it’s resolution. Franklin means to do what you resolve even you fail. I always believe to never give up is a good thing to do because the more you try, the more you gain from trying even though you fail, you still learn something from it.
Category Archives: Free post
Sapere Aude (Dare to be Wise)
This writing from Kant completely coincides with the core topic of this class. Immanuel Kant writes in “What is Enlightenment?”: “Have courage to make use of your own understanding! is thus the motto if enlightenment. ” Kant is pushing us to step out of our comfort zone and search for for new ideas and to stop relying on the orders of others.
In our class, we are essentially publicly challenging and making use of our reason by creating new theories in the way people should be taught. In the first reading we had in the class, Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar, the author tells us a story of how a teacher reproached him for telling her students that there are different ways of obtaining an education, rather than going to school. If we were to view this situation from the point of view of Immanuel Kant, Kant would say that what the teacher is doing is preventing the next generation from thinking for themselves, essentially telling them you have no other alternative. This is the type of thinking is what we are trying to combat in the theme of this course. To be enlightened doesn’t necessarily mean going through traditional schooling. Let us take Frederick Douglass as an example; Here we see a man, prevented from having a formal education, however, through his desire to learn, he was able to become a great and influential man and writer of the 19th century.
Knowledge=Freedom
Frederick Douglass is a slave in which he lacked education and knowledge. Nevertheless, even though he was a slave that did not stop him from learning how to read. Slavery prohibits people from improving themselves through education. Ms. Auld taught him the basics such as the alphabet. His learning process was stopped because of Mr. Auld. “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell….Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. If you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave” (Douglass, 6). Douglass realized that knowledge=freedom. “From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom” (Douglass, 6). “For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but freedom, and indeed the least harmful of anything that could even be called freedom: namely, freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters” (Douglass, 5) Douglass did whatever he could in order to learn more. He even became friends with the local little white boys on the street so they could teach him. He took any opportunity possible to learn how to read and write.
With all this new knowledge, it was helping him get closer to freedom. Knowledge doesn’t lead to freedom straight away but it helps strengthen one’s thoughts. The more knowledge that Douglass gained the more he realized how injustice and corrupted slavery was and that he should be viewed as a man rather than a slave. Slaves were not even considered as humans. “The thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart” (Douglass, 7). The more knowledge he obtained, the more he realized how inhumane being a slave was. He says that learning how to read “had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out.” This made him realize that the best way to get away from being a slave was to escape and become free. He eventually escaped and used the knowledge and experiences he gained to help others escape. This can be related back to the monster in Frankenstein. After the monster learns basic knowledge, he feels even more miserable about his situation because he knows what people were saying and what they thought about him.
Douglass story emphasizes that you can be enlightened if you are free to think and make decisions on your own and not be afraid of the decisions you make. Education isn’t an essential part of living however it does help with understanding experiences. Slaves were deprived from having an education because slaves weren’t considered to be humans. The essay written by Immanuel Kant was about enlightenment and what he thinks about it. He portrays enlightenment as using your own understanding and not being dependent on what most people think about something. Kant believes that in order for enlightenment to be accomplished there has to be freedom to make your own decisions and to think for yourself. It is essential to have the freedom to think and question every situation and knowledge.
There are many aspects that are necessary in making a thinking individual such as education, enlightenment and freedom. I believe that not having freedom doesn’t stop one from gaining knowledge or experience. It may restrict them from a lot of thinks but it doesn’t stop knowledge. Knowledge is gained through anything even common sense.
Freedom
In “What is Enlightenment?” by Immanuel Kant and The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, a concurring importance of freedom in one’s development being expressed heavily.
In answering the question “What is Enlightenment?”, Kant addresses “For this enlightenment, however, nothing is required but freedom, and indeed the least harmful of anything that could even be called freedom: namely, freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters” (par.5). He thinks reason is essential to reach enlightenment. According to Kant, an individual should be able to practice his reason freely to the public. He gives the example of “as a scholar, who by his writings speaks to the public in the strict sense, that is, the world”. For the society to reach enlightenment, our government should allow reason in the public sphere. I see this as freedom of speech like what we have today.
During Frederick Douglass’s life as a slave, freedom of speech is far from approachable. Slavery prevents people from improving themselves through education. I relate this to Karl Marx’s theory of species-being, the process of transforming inorganic matter to create things is the core identity of the human being. He works towards making himself free by expanding his horizons though self-education. He says “When I was sent of errands, I always took my book with me, and by going one part of my errand quickly, I found time to get a lesson before my return”(ch.7, par.4); “my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement”; (ch.7, par.8)“I used to spend the time in writing in the spaces left in Master Thomas’s copy-book, copying what he had written”(ch.7, par.8). His education gives him the strength of will to escape. He says that learning how to read “had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. It opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out.” The monster in Frankenstein has a similar encounter. After he learns letters, he feel even more miserable about his situation.
Knowledge is the Path to Freedom
After reading Frederick Douglass’ autobiographies, I admire him for all the hardwork he went through to obtain knowledge which eventually led to his freedom. Douglass had no knowledge, and obtained it through education and his experiences.
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in 1817 or 1818. Just like any other slave, he lacked education and knowledge. However his status as a slave did not stop him from asking his mistress, Sophia Auld, to teach him how to read. Mrs. Auld taught Douglass the ABC’s and to spell a few words. His learning process is interrupted by his master, Mr. Auld. His master said, “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell. A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master—to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. (Douglass 6).” Mr. Auld also said, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave” (Douglass 6). It is through the words of Mr. Auld that Douglass realized that he must seek knowledge to pursue freedom, “From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom” (Douglass 6). Douglass was enlightened. Mr Auld was right about what he said because Frederick Douglass wanted the “ell” since his mistress gave him the “inch.” Douglass made friends with little white boys on the street so they could teach him how to read in exchange for bread–“bread of knowledge” (Douglass 7). Douglass had also learned how to write at the Durgin and Bailey’s ship-yard. Douglass took any opportunity he could to learn how to read and write despite the method. Douglass being able to educate himself was the start to his freedom. This is his way of achieving enlightenment.
Knowledge doesn’t automatically lead to freedom, rather it awakens and sparks. The more knowledge Douglass obtained, “the thought of being a slave for life began to bear heavily upon my heart” (Douglass 7). Knowledge made him realize how injustice slavery was and that he should be viewed as a man rather than a slave. Hatred for his master also emerged in Douglass, “the more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers” (Douglass 7). As Douglass and his knowledge grew, so did his discontentment of Douglass slave status. This ultimately led to his decision to escape slavery and become free. Douglass successfully escaped and used his knowledge and experience to obtain freedom for all slaves.
Life is Our Dictionary
One particular point that I thought was interesting in An American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson was where he made the metaphor that “Life is our dictionary.” He then continued to state many more metaphors about basically how in life, we define everything we know through our experiences. The then concluded by saying, “ Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.”
What he means here is that learning from books and colleges are sort of a secondary, or back-up, source. All they do is merely copy the things you can experience by yourself in life.
I feel that Emerson also believes that the best way to learn in life is to learn through experiences instead of institution. He states that your experiences are what allow you to know how to live day-to-day. “Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day.” What he is saying here is that life’s experiences give us tools or guidelines on how to live.
I for the most part agree with Emerson because books are written by people who have put their experiences in writing. However, there may be a limit to how much of your experiences you are able to put into writing. Basically, books are reflections of other people’s experiences, but not to their full extent. Only the writer of the book understands the book the best.
So in order to really understand life and nature, you can’t read about other people’s limited experiences, but experience things on your own.
A never ending circle
Emerson had some very interesting ideas. There were a few that stood out. I analyzed them as to what I thought Emerson meant.
“Every day,the sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Everyday, men and women conversing, beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages. He must settle his value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of god, but always circular power returning into itself.”(pg1)
I found this quote to be very true. Different things happen everyday. The wind blows and pushes the hat off your head. There is something beyond us. It’s all a spectacle, “life is a play and we are all just characters in it”. (Shakespeare) He is saying that everything just continues, it’s infinite. All living things are born to die to be born again. We are the universe experiencing itself. Man himself is nature so he has to think about his place in nature. Just how nature grows, man grows as well. Man will forever be growing.
“The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar,is, the mind of the past,…The scholar of the first age received into him the world around… gave it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. It came into him, life; it went out from him truth. It came to him, short-lived actions; it went out from him, immortal thoughts…It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires.” (pg3)
Therefore stuff that has been said before, that they read and learned is influencing their own way of thinking. You know what has influenced by how important it seems to be to that person. Mary Shelley read a poem before she wrote Frankenstein. “Alone- alone-all-all-alone. Upon the wide , wide sea – And god will not take pity on My soul in agony!” (Frankenstein, xiii) It made quite an impression on her that it stuck while writing Frankenstein. With all the incidents in her life she was able to relate to the poem. She came to know it and then believe it. It’s how she truly felt because most of her books were about loneliness. People have beliefs because of their experiences. So whatever happens to them it shapes and molds their opinions to become their truth. Everyone has their own truths and inspirations.
Ralph
The relationship between books and school for Ralph Emerson is interesting because he does have respect for books and the knowledge that can be attained from it through study. But he is against relying on books, specifically religious doctrines. He during his speech at Harvard university spoke on the idea of nature and the importance of humans to directly interact with it, not live based on only christian doctrines, that he felt was traditional and a limited way of using our mind. Descartes journey was similar to Ralph Emerson story because both did get educated, Descartes went to high level of school and Ralph was in a ministry in Boston, both got there educations but left to go in search for there own truth, both had a internal quest to find answers there educational systems did not provide for them. There was a natural desire for truth which ties in Rousseau story of Emilie because he does believe books or education is important but it has to be introduced only when the child is able to take in information critically with no ones influence on them. Both touch on the idea of thinking for ones self or free thinking and coming to knowledge through your own trial and error which ties in John Locke idea that we learn trough our own experiences and associations with them.
Influenced Thinking
“In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.” (Emerson)
This statement is very interesting because it reminds me of Rousseau’s idea of children being born innocent without knowledge, but are influenced by the teachings of the people around them. He was saying that kids are taught what the elders teach them and what they see is what they think is right. So that can be related to this statement made my Emerson because he says a person can be influenced so much by society that he doesn’t even think anymore instead he thinks what the society thinks and he doesn’t have his own ideas or thinking anymore. When kids are born they don’t know anything, but as they grow they learn from people, what they see and their own experiences, but then again their thinking is highly influenced by their society so they really aren’t even really “thinking”. This also can be related to back to Bach’s idea because he says school isn’t important or necessary because of the system as it’s not able to measure the smartness of one person. The students who want to drop out are influenced by a society that has established that school is very important. So they thinking is influenced by society making them stay back in school and they are controlled in a way that they will only think how the schools or society wants them to think because of a very strong influence.
free post
After reading John Locke’s”experience “Rene Descartes’s”book of the world” and Jean Jacques Rousseau”book of nature”. I found that they were all disagree with school system.
Rene Descartes stated that school isn’t the only way of learning education, people should always get out of what can only see, go outside of school, have the freedom of gaining education of what they really need. Descartes believed that everything has an answer, but in order for him to believe the answer is to prove the answer by himself. And that is the reason Descartes didn’t believed in school systems, he did not like the way of school educate students, which is giving out an answer without proving it. Which i found it is similar to John Locke’s “experience”, John Locke believed everything that we learned from life are from experience. He states that, “children and idiots have not the least apprehension (Locke, page 2)” proving that knowledge isn’t something you’re born with. Locke also questions, “Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge?” and answers this stating, “in one word, from experience (Locke, page 5).”
On the other hand Rousseau more focus on nature and education, he believe that people can also learn education by teaching themselves, because as we growing up, we are learning little by little, from our parents, from our neighbor, from anyone that are around us, and eventually from ourselves.
According to their points of view, we should all stay home, teach ourselves, study on our own, go travel, learning things that only interested us, and don’t cares about grades, we don’t need school. But question, without grades, how can school determinant whether you are qualified for the certification or not? And without a certification how can look for a job? And now it comes to without a job how can you survive? How can the society be balance, if no one is willing to go to school and only learn what they interest? So in order to be succeed in the society today, maybe school isn’t the only of learning education, but definitely the best way of learning education.