Philosophers Through the Ages

There are a wide variety of intriguing belief systems and philosophies within Sophie’s World, but several of them in particular stuck with me. The philosophies of Democritus, Descartes, Kant, and Freud were understandable, and I found them to be accurate and to go along with what I already believe in. There were a couple others, such as Plato and Berkeley, that I did not agree with. Regardless, I have found that after reading about each philosopher’s theories, I can either agree with them, or at least see where they are coming from in the case of most of them.

I was able to agree easily with Democritus, mostly because I know that what he hypothesized has been found to be true, for the most part. However, there were some facets of information about the earth that Democritus believed that I do not believe are true. A couple of these are the facts that Democritus was sure that atoms were indivisible and eternal. Modern science has determined that atoms are capable of being divided and God created the earth at some point, so the atoms that everything is made of couldn’t have existed before the earth was created. Not taking these differences into account, I do agree with Democritus that the world is made up of tiny particles of matter called atoms.

Descartes is an entirely different case than Democritus for me, mostly because I only agree with his very main goal, not necessarily what he believed was true about the world. Descartes’ thought about creating a new philosophical system that combined everything which had been learned in philosophy to date was fantastic, in my opinion. I also agree with Descartes that God exists, but after this point I do not agree with his points as much, if at all. It it hard for me to think that nothing in my environment is totally real, and I am just dreaming. Still, Descartes definitely had a brilliant idea when he wanted to create a system combining the theories created by philosophers before him.

Kant’s ideas about philosophy itself, not what he thought should be done with it, made sense to me. The idea that everyone may perceive the world differently seems very likely because, in my opinion, if we all perceived the world in the same way, we would all think very similarly, and there would not be much originality in the world. Freud also had an interesting thought about how humans act and make decisions. It seems practical to think that we make our decisions, at least some of them, based on what we feel or desire in our subconscious rather than by reasoning.

Plato and Berkeley each had ideas that I just could not agree with, mostly because they are simply so far out from what I envision reality to be. Plato’s thoughts about the world of ideas seem irrational to me, being as how God only created one world. I agreed with a few other aspects of Plato’s beliefs, but not his main focus. Berkeley also had very different ideas, in my opinion. As I mentioned earlier, I find it hard to think that reality is nothing but a different type of dream state, so I strongly disagreed with Berkeley.

After pondering everything that I have felt and believed to be true throughout all of Sophie’s World, I think that I probably reside in the middle of the rabbit’s fur. It has been somewhat of a struggle to open my mind to the different views of the philosophers, but I was able to, for most of them. I hope that I can continue to be aware of the world and keep asking insightful questions, just like Sophie learned to.

Unnecessarily Anxious

There are many situations in my life that I feel I am not capable of looking at clearly, and it was nice to see a clear example of that in Sophie’s World, with the red-tinted glasses experiment. The experiment was basically conducted to show Sophie what it is like to see the world from a different perspective, and give her a better understanding of Kant’s theory that there are certain conditions that prevent humans from experiencing the world clearly. There are many factors that I can think of in my own life that cause me to be incapable of perceiving my environment clearly, but one stands out above the others. My anxiety disorder often causes me to view situations differently, and then have highly escalated reactions in response.

Most students might procrastinate doing a certain difficult assignment, and just remember with annoyance that they still have to do it. For me, this is not the case. When I attempt to wait on doing an assignment for any period of time, I begin to think that I won’t be able to complete it in time and I cannot think of anything other than getting that assignment done, partly due to the huge knot in my stomach that tightens every time I think of a stressful assignment. In most cases, this can be helpful because I am pushed to do the assignment as soon as I can and then I don’t have to worry about it anymore. Unfortunately, it does not work so well when I find out that a friend is ahead of me on a project or has totally completed it before me. I become so anxious about getting to the point that they are, or farther, that I have difficulty focusing on anything else. If I think about how I feel logically, I know that feeling that way is totally irrational because I have plenty of time to complete the project if I continue on my own schedule. Regardless of this, I will normally continue to think about someone else being ahead of me, which could also be partly due to my competitiveness, until I give in and just finish the project, or do a colossal amount of it at once.

And of course, this anxiety spreads to situations outside of school as well. If I simply go to the movies with friends and I think that they talk to each other more than they do to me, I start believing that they don’t like me, or I have done something wrong to make them not want to talk to me. Once again, I know in my head that this feeling is totally ridiculous most often, but I cannot make it go away for a few day or sometimes until the next time that I can see those same friends again.

There are some small aspects of my anxiety that I am beginning to be capable of ignoring, so I hope 

that eventually I will be able to feel normally about most situations that currently stress me out. Until then, I 

will keep trying to know rationally how I should feel and hopefully stick to that feeling instead of seeing

things differently than almost everyone else.