The Gleam in Their Eyes
Since both I and my roommate can’t go to sleep, I felt maybe if I got this out, could. I finally remembered why I am taking philosophy today! When I visited my philosophy teacher, I told him about starting to read the book he recommended. He told me that everytime he takes out, it just “makes sense” he just “gets it”. Then when I told him I was dissatisfied with it, because it focused on feelings rather than actions, he gave me a classic disappointed look, and then said, “Well, whatever you know. Study what you want.” Or something like that.
I had the urge to smirk. He is just as human as everyone else. No matter how much he thinks and doubts his beliefs, he still fights for them and thinks them right. He has faith like everyone, and that’s why I love studying philosophy. I was getting a little depressed studying it, only because sometimes being so analytical and logical, you seem to miss something. This was what I felt I was missing. I’m not studying philosophy to find truth for myself. I do that for myself anyway. I study it, for the same reasons, I want to be a minister -
That gleam people get when they feel like they finally “get it”. The sense of doubt, and the want to overcome it, or continue the search.
And then after that experience, I run into Christine, a girl in my dorm across the hall. We got on the topic of philosophy, and I said that although I believed I was beginning to remember why I took philosophy, I said I had a love/hate relationship with it because sometimes it seemed too scientific and too logical, and that is lost its . . . “humanity” she said, and was exactly what fit. She told me to read this book Sophie’s World, which was basically a whole over-view of moral philosophy in a fiction novel. Just talking with her, made her seem to know so much more than I did, and may its because I was already in a prophetic like mood that day, but looking back, I saw her as full of knowledge that I didn’t know yet, and as different than I normally see her. She was, as a person, beautiful and unique in a way I hadn’t realized before, mainly because there was so much more to her knowledge and awareness that I hadn’t seen before. But what also helped, is when she said she like this philosopher Duey, who just seemed to . . . you know “get it”.
It’s almost like an involuntary feelings, a compulsorily feeling I get when I find people being defensive about their beliefs, or just starting to grasp the largeness of their revelations. I don’t really know if I describe it as beauty really, although the moment to me is beautiful. I can’t explain it, but it seems to be something miraculous. The way we always strive after truth, and continue the search, and fight for what we think is the truth. It seems so human, so amazing. There are just so many people, and so many “get it”s. To a philosopher this is depressing, almost as if I am saying that truth is relative or that there isn’t a truth to find. But I am saying neither. I am saying I don’t really want to find total, perfect, and undisputable truth. It would be so boring! I could never imagine having purpose, having enjoyment out of life if the truth were so easily accessible. It just always makes sense to me, that we live in the mystery, and have reason and logic to help us try to figure things out, although never fully making us see, because that is what makes us go on existing, changing, living.
That is why philosophy works for U.U. ministry. That is why I like the study of philosophy. Not for the plain logic, and analytics, or even the study of truth and ethics themselves, but the understanding of a wide variety of beliefs, and how others will find them and life their lives from them. That is what keeps me going, that is what I believe, this is my faith.
I know I’ve said it a hundred times, but it all seemed to be in different ways, and to me, although I can never forget, it feels so good to remember who I am.
I had the urge to smirk. He is just as human as everyone else. No matter how much he thinks and doubts his beliefs, he still fights for them and thinks them right. He has faith like everyone, and that’s why I love studying philosophy. I was getting a little depressed studying it, only because sometimes being so analytical and logical, you seem to miss something. This was what I felt I was missing. I’m not studying philosophy to find truth for myself. I do that for myself anyway. I study it, for the same reasons, I want to be a minister -
That gleam people get when they feel like they finally “get it”. The sense of doubt, and the want to overcome it, or continue the search.
And then after that experience, I run into Christine, a girl in my dorm across the hall. We got on the topic of philosophy, and I said that although I believed I was beginning to remember why I took philosophy, I said I had a love/hate relationship with it because sometimes it seemed too scientific and too logical, and that is lost its . . . “humanity” she said, and was exactly what fit. She told me to read this book Sophie’s World, which was basically a whole over-view of moral philosophy in a fiction novel. Just talking with her, made her seem to know so much more than I did, and may its because I was already in a prophetic like mood that day, but looking back, I saw her as full of knowledge that I didn’t know yet, and as different than I normally see her. She was, as a person, beautiful and unique in a way I hadn’t realized before, mainly because there was so much more to her knowledge and awareness that I hadn’t seen before. But what also helped, is when she said she like this philosopher Duey, who just seemed to . . . you know “get it”.
It’s almost like an involuntary feelings, a compulsorily feeling I get when I find people being defensive about their beliefs, or just starting to grasp the largeness of their revelations. I don’t really know if I describe it as beauty really, although the moment to me is beautiful. I can’t explain it, but it seems to be something miraculous. The way we always strive after truth, and continue the search, and fight for what we think is the truth. It seems so human, so amazing. There are just so many people, and so many “get it”s. To a philosopher this is depressing, almost as if I am saying that truth is relative or that there isn’t a truth to find. But I am saying neither. I am saying I don’t really want to find total, perfect, and undisputable truth. It would be so boring! I could never imagine having purpose, having enjoyment out of life if the truth were so easily accessible. It just always makes sense to me, that we live in the mystery, and have reason and logic to help us try to figure things out, although never fully making us see, because that is what makes us go on existing, changing, living.
That is why philosophy works for U.U. ministry. That is why I like the study of philosophy. Not for the plain logic, and analytics, or even the study of truth and ethics themselves, but the understanding of a wide variety of beliefs, and how others will find them and life their lives from them. That is what keeps me going, that is what I believe, this is my faith.
I know I’ve said it a hundred times, but it all seemed to be in different ways, and to me, although I can never forget, it feels so good to remember who I am.