Junior year of high school,
I took a full year of Philosophy—Ancient thoughts in the fall,
Modern musings in the spring—and it was one of the best decisions
of my life. Truly learning how to think has exponentially influenced
my mind. My neurons are restructured immensely from having taken that
class. Let me tell you a bit about it, because to understand me, you
have to understand the thoughts that go, or have went, through my
head.
For starters, we would explore Metaphysics daily, questioning whether or not God, the soul or the world exists. Puzzling over why there is being and not-non being drove us insane. Even A=A was not a given. My mental universe was shaken with questions demanding answers. But first I had to learn how to learn about learning.
Thus, we would turn to Epistemology, which deals with the way we know what we know. One problem arises called the Learner's Paradox. If you're looking for truth, how do you know when you have found it? If you already know what truth is, why are you looking for it? To answer this conundrum, Plato postulates the theory of the forms, where one has a previous existence in a realm full of true knowledge. Ripped from the realm of the forms, birthed into a body and brainwashed to forget what you knew, the process of learning would be that of remembering. Aristotle answers this enigma in a divergent manner, but don't let me spoil the fun.
Explaining that everybody thinks they know something, Socrates takes pleasure in bringing people through dialectic to the point of elenchus, where they realize they know nothing. Socrate's wisdom came from the fact that he knew he knew nothing. That's a wise guy if there ever was one.
Philosophy makes use of the original texts of the great men of renown. Don't be surprised if you read the Crito, Meno, Phaedo, the Republic or all of the above. I remember Mr. Nicholson saying “Everyone of these texts is a nut, and you have to crack it.”
Try splitting the following nutty sentence about Principles taken from Aristotle's Physics.“Nor can they be innumerable, because, if so, Being will not be knowable: and in any one genus there is only one contrariety, and substance is one genus: also a finite number is sufficient, and a finite number, such as the principles of Empedocles, is better than an infinite multitude; for Empedocles professes to obtain from his principles all that Anaxagoras obtains from his innumerable principles.”
Even though that is only one piece of a much longer treatise, don't let it scare you—your teacher can lecture on that one part for the whole hour.
Dear to my heart are certain unreproducible moments. From Andrea Slosser hiding under the desk and tickling Mr. Nicholson's toes and my turning on the T.V. numerous times through out the year, to Sean Nam kung fu fighting and Amanda Haase drawing creepy spiders above Mr. Nicholson's head, the 06-07 philosophy class was “da bomb.”
The fact that each class is unique adds to the adventure of plucking peoples mind with paradoxes. I also sat in on the Philsophy class of 07-08, but that is a different story. The second time around, I learned that my understanding of philosophy is shown to be knee high to a grasshopper. The well of Philosophy is so deep as to never be dry. Ask a philosopher how much they think about “The Good” and they well stare at you blankly. I encourage everyone to become a lover of wisdom.
While thinking back on this year, I discover that 2006 was International Asperger's Year and 2007 was the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All. This connection of human rights for the disabled leads me to compare my philosophical time with the time of those having troublesome thoughts.
For example, people with Asperger's have some trouble using language, taking social cues, and with general cognitive development. Fortunately while I was able to ponder intense thoughts through articulate language, others were suffering with limitations on their personhood. Even when I was being bombarded with works of literature, some people with Asperger's struggle with an overload of sensory input, feeling uncomfortable in their clothes, disliking the light that is too bright, and finding distracting the sound of the birds outside the window. While I was doing the day in and day out activities of dialectic, others with Asperger's were dealing with repetitive behavior that seems to get stuck in their mind. While I might have been contemplating the nature of space and time in relation to Emmanuel Kant, some might have been bothered by why other people treat them differently. In relation to my life and the life of someone with Asperger's, each of us has to struggle through language. In some ways, I follow along a general distinction made of some people with Asperger's. Klin McPartland said, \"Abnormalities [of Asperger's] include verbosity, abrupt transitions, literal interpretations and miscomprehension of nuance, use of metaphor meaningful only to the speaker, auditory perception deficits, unusually pedantic, formal or idiosyncratic speech, and oddities in loudness, pitch, intonation, prosody, and rhythm.\"
Even when I follow some of these symptoms, I am blessed with not having any autistic diagnosis. Others are not as fortunate. There is still a bright side, though.
Whether it is luck or just the ways of the world, the National Institute of Health declares that one out of five children will grow out of the symptoms by adulthood.";"Junior year of high schoo, I took a full year of Philosophy—Ancient thoughts in the fall, Modern musings in the spring—and it was one of the best decisions of my life. Truly learning how to think has exponentially influenced my mind. My neurons are restructed immensely from having taken that class. Let me tell you a bit about it, because to understand me, you have to understand the thoughts that go, or have went, through my head.
For starters, we would explore Metaphysics daily, questioning whether or not God, the soul or the world exists. Puzzling over why there is being and not-non being drove us insane. Even A=A was not a given. My mental universe was shaken with questions demanding answers. But first I had to learn how to learn about learning.
Thus, we would turn to Epistemology, which deals with the way we know what we know. One problem arises called the Learner's Paradox. If you're looking for truth, how do you know when you have found it? If you already know what truth is, why are you looking for it? To answer this conundrum, Plato postulates the theory of the forms, where one has a previous existence in a realm full of true knowledge. Ripped from the realm of the forms, birthed into a body and brainwashed to forget what you knew, the process of learning would be that of remembering. Aristotle answers this enigma in a divergent manner, but don't let me spoil the fun.
Explaining that everybody thinks they know something, Socrates takes pleasure in bringing people through dialectic to the point of elenchus, where they realize they know nothing. Socrate's wisdom came from the fact that he knew he knew nothing. That's a wise guy if there ever was one.
Philosophy makes use of the original texts of the great men of renown. Don't be surprised if you read the Crito, Meno, Phaedo, the Republic or all of the above. I remember Mr. Nicholson saying “Everyone of these texts is a nut, and you have to crack it.”
Try splitting the following nutty sentence about Principles taken from Aristotle's Physics.“Nor can they be innumerable, because, if so, Being will not be knowable: and in any one genus there is only one contrariety, and substance is one genus: also a finite number is sufficient, and a finite number, such as the principles of Empedocles, is better than an infinite multitude; for Empedocles professes to obtain from his principles all that Anaxagoras obtains from his innumerable principles.”
Even though that is only one piece of a much longer treatise, don't let it scare you—your teacher can lecture on that one part for the whole hour.
Dear to my heart are certain unreproducible moments. From Andrea Slosser hiding under the desk and tickling Mr. Nicholson's toes and my turning on the T.V. numerous times through out the year, to Sean Nam kung fu fighting and Amanda Haase drawing creepy spiders above Mr. Nicholson's head, the 06-07 philosophy class was “da bomb.”
The fact that each class is unique adds to the adventure of plucking peoples mind with paradoxes. I also sat in on the Philsophy class of 07-08, but that is a different story. The second time around, I learned that my understanding of philosophy is shown to be knee high to a grasshopper. The well of Philosophy is so deep as to never be dry. Ask a philosopher how much they think about “The Good” and they well stare at you blankly. I encourage everyone to become a lover of wisdom.
While thinking back on this year, I discover that 2006 was International Asperger's Year and 2007 was the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All. This connection of human rights for the disabled leads me to compare my philosophical time with the time of those having troublesome thoughts.
For example, people with Asperger's have some trouble using language, taking social cues, and with general cognitive development. Fortunately while I was able to ponder intense thoughts through articulate language, others were suffering with limitations on their personhood. Even when I was being bombarded with works of literature, some people with Asperger's struggle with an overload of sensory input, feeling uncomfortable in their clothes, disliking the light that is too bright, and finding distracting the sound of the birds outside the window. While I was doing the day in and day out activities of dialectic, others with Asperger's were dealing with repetitive behavior that seems to get stuck in their mind. While I might have been contemplating the nature of space and time in relation to Emmanuel Kant, some might have been bothered by why other people treat them differently. In relation to my life and the life of someone with Asperger's, each of us has to struggle through language. In some ways, I follow along a general distinction made of some people with Asperger's. Klin McPartland said, \"Abnormalities [of Asperger's] include verbosity, abrupt transitions, literal interpretations and miscomprehension of nuance, use of metaphor meaningful only to the speaker, auditory perception deficits, unusually pedantic, formal or idiosyncratic speech, and oddities in loudness, pitch, intonation, prosody, and rhythm.\"
Even when I follow some of these symptoms, I am blessed with not having any autistic diagnosis. Others are not as fortunate. There is still a bright side, though.
Whether it is luck or just the ways of the world, the National Institute of Health declares that one out of five children will grow out of the symptoms by adulthood.";"Junior year of high schoo, I took a full year of Philosophy—Ancient thoughts in the fall, Modern musings in the spring—and it was one of the best decisions of my life. Truly learning how to think has exponentially influenced my mind. My neurons are restructed immensely from having taken that class. Let me tell you a bit about it, because to understand me, you have to understand the thoughts that go, or have went, through my head.
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