To this week’s
theme I read both texts and tried to interpret them. I was present during the
lecture and the seminar.
During the
seminar we discussed the meanings of the two texts. We had a discussion on the
preface to Kant’s book Critique of pure
reason. Something that I found interesting during our discussion was that
we discussed how everything around us is concepts of objects. One of the
discussions was about how a table did not have to be a table, but it is
considered to be a table because most people are willing to accept the concept
of the object being a table. It is based on our own experiences how we perceive
objects in different ways.
Plato’s
text, we discussed, is also about how we interpret our surroundings with the
help of our experiences. Our discussion about Plato’s text concerned how we are
not able to simply register what we see and then come with an “objective
experience” of what we have seen. Even though human beings have eyes and ears,
this does not conclude that we are experiencing objects the same ways when
using our senses to observe them. That was our discussion on why we thought that
we experience through our eyes and
not with them.
Another
interesting thought that was brought up was how Kant and Plato’s ideas
differed. It was said that Plato, in his text, suggests for us to try to
ignore our senses in order to be able to develop our knowledge. Meanwhile Kant
is trying to say that we are not able to do so. Instead Kant wants for us to
realize that our senses are highly present in our concepts that we develop in
order to try to explain our surroundings and to not try to ignore them.
When the
discussion on Kant and Plato was more or less over, we discussed the difference
between knowledge and concepts. To summarize that discussion and to end this
post it was said that concepts and knowledge are related in a sense, but they
are separate terms. To be able to develop our knowledge we create concepts. In
other words concepts are necessary because they lead to knowledge.
Hi, reading you reflection I noticed the worth comparison of Kant's and Plato's ideas. It requires a lot of intellectual capacity to find similarities and differences. So I can be sure that made efforts. You wrote that in Plato's text it is suggested to ignore our senses in order to be able to develop our knowledge.I will not agree with this conclusion. I apprehended that Socrates is in favor of senses which lead to empirically investigation and gaining knowledge. While Kant is looking from more pro-concept and structure point of view. According to him, categories let us perceive and articulate knowledge. Just my interpretation, maybe I am wrong.
SvaraRaderaIt seems like you got a firm grasp over the subject. I would also like to hear what your opinions were about these texts: great, bad, difficult, easy? Nice summary about concepts needing to exists to form knowledge!
SvaraRaderaHello fellow blogger!
SvaraRaderaYou've managed to make a good summarize on this theme. The ending with the comparison of Plato and Kant point of view is a very good ending to sum up the two text we read. It would have been interesting. It would have been interesting knowing reading more about your own personal thought, how you perceived the text, lecture, seminar or just the whole theme. Did you feel that you made any progress, what helped and what not?