Four Questions

What do we know and what do we believe?
Examples of things things that we know are that the sky is blue, that we breathe air and that someday we are going to die. Examples of things we can only believe are the existance of God, life on other planets and the existance of multiple universes.
The factors that may influence a person's philosophy of life are environment, upbringing and time period. Environment and upbringning are considered nature vs nurture. The environment a person is born in will affect their philosophy yet if you teach them since they are young you are upbringing them with said philosophy. Time period is also influential, people do not think the same way they did two hundred years ago.
We are born with a conscience but we don't really know how to use it. As we gain experience and we are taught right from wrong our conscience develops and grows.
The importance of values depends completely on the situation that one is in. We are taught since we are young to be honest but if lying could save a person's life we would value that persons life more than honesty. This also brings the fact that some values ar more important than others by nature.

Essay 3 Plato and Aristotle

      Plato and Aristotle's views are one of the first binary opposites known to us. Their views on mankind and the world were completely different. Plato was more focused on the spiritual world and Aristotle was more focused on real world. Their thoughts and beliefs appeal to different people and even different time periods. Without these two great philosophers the world wouldn’t be the same as it is today.

       Plato did not trust his senses. He believed that this world was nothing but an illusion. According to the allegory of the cave, we are all chained to the wall of the cave forced to stare at mere shadows. When we manage to emerge from the cave we are blinded, then we’re in awe and wonder. Our world is the world of shadows. Our senses don’t perceive much so in order to see the real world we must venture from the world of shadows and illusion out to reality. He also believed in the world of ideas. Plato said that the soul lived in the world of ideas and then picked a body to go in. This means that we already know everything we just don’t remember it and once we recognize it again, we remember the knowledge. An example can be a horse. We have seen countless horses and they are all different but there is something that makes a horse a horse no matter what. Plato’s explanation was that we already know what a horse is so no matter how different the horses we see are we will always recognize it’s a horse. Finally Plato’s thoughts on women were that they should have the opportunity to be educated equally to men.

       Aristotle on the other hand was the complete opposite. He focused on the real world and in nature. He trusted his senses and even did fieldwork to make observations about the different purposes of nature. He observed and experimented mare than he reasoned or wondered. He founded the science of logic which was based on the natural laws of the world. An example is, “All humans are mortal, I am a human, therefore I am mortal.” He also said that everything in nature had a purpose and a category. According to him there is nothing in the world without a category. Instead of believing in the world of ideas, he believed that humans learned from experience. If person sees a horse, and then another and then another, then the person will understand that that is what a horse looks like. Aristotle also believed in the golden mean which was pretty much about having a balanced life. An excess of something or a lack of something leads to unhappiness. His views on women were also opposite to Plato’s. He saw women as incomplete men and as lesser human beings.

       Both Plato and Aristotle have made valid points that make you think of your view on the world. There are some consequences to their belief systems though. Beginning with Plato, believing that this world isn’t more than an illusion could lead some people to become indifferent about life. Why would life on earth matter if there is a better world full of wonderful things that we may or may not go to when we leave earth? There are also some consequences to Aristotle’s point of view. If we live for ourselves then do we have a purpose other than finding the golden mean?  Is nature the only thing that can give us answers and a purpose?

       Even though these two minds were different, they were both hugely influential. Even today there are debates about the viewpoints that they started. It is hard to choose for it requires a lot of critical thinking and knowledge of oneself. Also one cannot agree with everything they say but we can get an idea of our own beliefs. 

Plato, Allegory of the Cave, Hero's Journey, The Matrix

       In the film that we attempted to prepare we compared various aspects of The Matrix to the hero’s journey, the allegory of the cave and to Plato and his world of ideas. In the introduction we would have The Matrix numbers in the background with a voice over explaining the comparisons.

       The first section of the film would have been a “draw my life” style clip explaining the various steps of Joseph Campbell’s “The Adventure of the Hero”. This consisted of several sped up clips of me drawing the hero going through the stages of the hero’s journey.  Having explained the hero’s journey we would go on to compare it to two clips. The one in The Matrix by the Wachowski brothers where Neo goes to sacrifice himself for Morpheus, gets killed by agent Smith, is revived by Trinity’s words and realizes that he is the one thus obtaining great power. The next clip is from Thor by Kenneth Branagh where Thor goes to sacrifice himself for the town, is wounded by The Destroyer/Loki, has Jane Foster reassuring him and becoming worthy, thus getting Mjolnir and his power back. These both reflect similar steps of the hero’s journey.

      Then we had the cave clips that we filmed. Those featured us being chained to the wall looking at the shadows and suddenly Kat being free and looking in wonder at the world around her. We then showed a clip of The Matrix when Neo goes sees the real world for the first time after taking the red pill. We also had a clip from the Dark Knight Rises by Christopher Nolan of Bruce Wayne being in the prison, not seeing the reality of his situation. He has to climb out of the prison emerging enlightened and ready to save Gotham as Batman. We also linked this to parts of the hero’s journey.

       Finally we linked all this to Plato by filming a clip with Kat as Plato as he is writing about Socrates. We had a clip from the British show Horrible Histories that did a comedy sketch on Socrates. We connected it to the hero by explaining how some parts of Socrates’ life fit into the steps. Finally we filmed a clip of me as Plato drawing the Allegory of the Cave and explaining it.