All in all, I'd say that I had a great time in this class during the semester. Based on the format of my last History of Philosophy class (lectures + daily homework assignments), I wasn't looking forward to it. The format of the class and how it was run was very enjoyable.
For my final blog post, I'll comment on the inter-connectivity of different philosophies across different times and locations. While writing and revising my essay, I noticed that a lot of concepts from the Pre-Socratic turned up in other religions and philosophies. In my essay, I wrote about Pythagorean metaphysics. In my research, I found that the idea of an over-arching harmony is actually pretty popular. It's the crux of the Buddhist religion, it appears in European philosophy (Spinoza and Leibniz), and is a part of the Ontological argument for the existence of God.
I'd like to think that something like this is indicative of the existence of a divine harmony. Just the fact that so many different philosophies and religions recognize the existence of harmony doesn't necessarily mean that it exists, and we can't know the characteristics of the harmony from this fact either. But it would be nice.
Nothing comes into existence as an original idea. Different areas of philosophy do not exist in isolated vacuums. I don't think that it's really too strange how philosophical ideas are interconnected. It's certainly cool and can help to establish credibility.
So yeah. Peace.
-Andrew
You're right that the fact that different philosophies and religions affirm an over-arching harmony doesn't prove there is such a harmony, but it does provide some evidence in its favor.
ReplyDeleteMonkeys are a metaphor of monkeys
ReplyDeleteI meant 'for'. Monkeys are a metaphor for monkeys.
ReplyDelete