Phil 1301 - Philosophy in My Life

Mengying Zhou

Professor James Kirk

PHIL 1301

November 20 2015

Philosophy in my life

In our life, we meet lots of questions, but philosophy could help us to understand. People are always believed what they saw is reality. What we saw is reality, but that was not always being true. What we “saw” could lie to us. You have been seeing Jack dead in the ocean, dinosaur are live in the world. Are these true? These are truly you saw, but these are just movie’s special effects play with your eyes. If our sense experience cannot trust then, what is reality? The problem ‘what is reality?’ arises from a consciousness of ourselves as living in a world which seems to be outside of, and yet is the cause of, our conscious life. Our reflections on this lead us to wonder if we can know of the world beyond our perceptions – the underlying cause of our consciousness of appearances. This world of the underlying cause we call ‘reality’.

The great philosopher Plato wrote The Allegory of the Cave to show the problem of ‘what is reality?’ and his idea of ‘form.’ Plato had used plenty of allegorical meaning because so many symbolic suggestions are used in this writings. The dark cave symbolically suggests the contemporary world of ignorance and the chained people symbolize ignorant people in this ignorant world. The raised wall symbolizes the limitation of our thinking and the shadow symbolically suggest the world of sensory perception which Plato considers an illusion. In his opinion, the appearance is false and reality is somewhere, which we cannot see. Plato as an ideal philosopher says that the appearing world is just the imitation or photocopy of the real world. The shadows represent such photocopy and, the reality is possible to know with the spiritual knowledge. The outer world of the light symbolically suggests the world of spiritual reality, which we achieve by breaking the chains that are used to tie us. The dazzling of our eyes for the first time symbolizes difficulty of denies the material world. The second time dazzling of the eyes symbolizes our difficulty to accept ignorance after knowing the reality. Hence, in allegory of the cave Plato has given a criticism over our limited existence in the material world. From the cave story, we know why education is so important. Only if you learned, then you know that what shows in the movie or drama are not real. Socrates said “I know that I know nothing.” If you don’t learn, how do you know that you know nothing?  People will not realize that there is unknown world or unknown knowledge. Education is like a door which links known world and unknown world. It helps people to know the world and to realize what they don’t know. As we learned more, we realized there are more things that we don’t know.

After people educated they will have more questions to ask because they start thinking. Such as where do we come from? Where are we going? What is meaning for life? Why we live in the world? People are always questions themselves. We are born in this world, we looking for our life’s meaning, we chasing for our desires. However, the meaning of life is to learn and to discover new world. It is about education but not just education. Certainly, every human being in the world has different definition for the meaning of life. It can be simply or complicated. The meanings of life related to how do you identify yourself. The meaning of life should concern with positive emotions. If someone stuck in negative emotion when she or he looking for the meaning of life. Then, she or he must be in a wrong way. Our mental must receive enjoyment or release, but our body can be pain. In my opinion, after people educated and use knowledge to help themselves or other human being for enjoying, it can be called the meaning of life. Do what you want to do, and you are enjoyed for doing it. Furthermore, the meaning of life can be changeable during the different period or age. But generally, the whole meaning of life during different period will not be opposite. Base on the difference of meaning of life, the definition for good life could be various. Of course an interpretive account would not be limited by such conventional understandings. We might be able to construct a conception of a good life such that an immoral or base act would always, or almost always, make the agent’s life finally a worse life to lead. But I suspect that any such attempt would fail. Any attractive conception of our moral responsibilities would sometimes demand great sacrifices—it might require us to risk, or perhaps even to sacrifice, our lives. It is hard to believe that someone who has suffered such terrible misfortunes has had a better life than he would have had if he had acted immorally and then prospered in every way, creatively, emotionally, and materially, in a long and peaceful life. Good life should not violate ethics. Killing someone for receiving pleasure is not good life. For you, good life is rich. For him, good life is to have a good romantic partner. For her, good life is travel around the world. A good life is chase for pleasure, for happy. A good life is not sad, angry or feeling depress. It is about both your mental and body feeling happy. I think we have a responsibility to live well, and the importance of living well accounts for the value of having a critically good life. These are no doubt controversial ethical judgments. I also make controversial ethical judgments in any view I take about which lives are good or well-lived. In my own view, someone who leads a boring, conventional life without close friendships or challenges or achievements, marking time to his grave, has not had a good life, even if he thinks he has and even if he has thoroughly enjoyed the life he has had. If you agree, we cannot explain why he should regret this simply by calling attention to pleasures missed: there may have been no pleasures missed, and in any case there is nothing to miss now. We must suppose that he has failed at something: failed in his responsibilities for living. Now, my meaning of life is to study hard, try to fit in the life of the United States, enjoy the time with family. These are the meaning of my life and also it means good life for me. This is my responsibility to live my life in a good way because I born in the world not for wasting time.

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