Reflections

As the semester is coming to an end I found myself reflecting on some of the topics we discussed in our philosophy class. I can honestly say that this was my most interesting and favorite class this semester.
We have been introduced to a lot of different concepts and ideas with the intention of putting our brains to work.

Looking back to the beginning of the semester when we read Adrienne Rich’s “on claiming an education” I must say that it was really refreshing to see that all of us claimed our education in this class. All of us seemed to be highly motivated and always engaged in good conversations.
The ethical and unwritten contract between teacher and students (as Adrienne Rich talks about in her essay) led to active and responsible participation of all of us.

Of course Philosophy itself gives a lot of room for free discussions. Since it is the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom by intellectual means many questions were being asked. Not all of them found a satisfying answer at the time. But that is ok.

I understand that life cannot be viewed and understood from one single perspective. For me there is no universally valid right or wrong answers that account for all human beings. It all depends on the viewpoint of each individual person I believe. And this is what makes it so interesting and wonderful. There is so much room for different ideas and as long as we remain open minded to other people’s idea it will never get boring and there will never be limitations to our thoughts. We may evaluate others idea and see how far we can come to agree with them or if we can even be persuaded and change our own ideas to the new ones but it is important to remember not to judge. One of my favorite philosophers is Krishnamurti (whom we did not discuss in class I know.) He once said something like “Thinking without judging is the highest form of intelligence. This seems like quite a challenging task and maybe even impossible for humans, but only this let's us stay open minded and be tolerant of other people's thoughts.

However, sometimes I think life would be a little easier if we didn’t have so much intellectual freedom and just had to follow rules and opinions. If there was a definite right and wrong. But since humans constantly evolve this can’t be the case. We thrive forward… we want new stuff, new ideas, new concepts. Things just don’t ever stay the same. We change our attitudes and ideas over time as we learn more. This all helps to sort our own thoughts and discard old useless stuff.

This course was really the best example how things can turn out when students actively claim their education and not be limited to learning fixed things dictated by teachers. Not only are students encouraged to challenge themselves but also teachers (as I mentioned in my very first blog entry) to be open to challenging questions and recognizing the idea that things can also be learned from the student. This concept has really been successfully implemented in this class. Philosophy covers such a big terrain that unfortunately we were only able to touch on a few things and not go through anything thoroughly but I have made some mental bookmarks for myself on things I want to return to later and read/learn) more about.

Some of the most basic and fundamental questions in life to me are:
Who am I? How can I transform myself? How important is authenticity and is the ultimate purpose in life “the quest for happiness”?

I really loved this class and feel like I have learned quite a bit.