Reflection Paper On Philosophy

Attending a philosophy class was probably not what I had in mind for an ideal summer, but I do not regret my decision to sign up for philosophy. I didn’t have any previous philosophy classes in any of my previous schooling, so I figured that I would give this a shot. There are many opinions, perspectives, and experiences that I gained from this class. Before having this course, I thought that philosophy just consisted of a bunch of smart historians expressing catchy word phrases. What I now know is that philosophy is basically the human challenging of knowledge, existence, and morals. I now know that philosophy delves much deeper into the thoughts of man more than I could have ever imagined. I often found myself listening to a topic during

Many times I had to really work through the reading piece section by section very meticulously. Although this long process could prove to be extremely frustrating, it was also very self-rewarding when you put all the pieces together to understand the full extent or a good portion of a philosopher’s thoughts. For me, the most challenging section of a reading to grasp was the Allegory of the Cave. The most challenging philosopher as a whole to understand was Immanuel Kant. Thanks to our discussions, I feel like I really grasped the main concepts from both Immanuel Kant and the Allegory of the Cave. I found it interesting that even though Kant’s ideas were the most challenging for me to interpret, I felt that he had the best ideas out of the philosophers we examined. The philosopher that I disliked the most was Saint Anselm. I felt that he was sort of tunnel visioned throughout his writing, and did not have any solid ideas to back up his claims. Another experience that I consistently noticed was that philosophy could stir up a lot of controversy in the classroom. I found this interesting because you could really gauge how much people believed in their own opinions over others. I felt that we had a very dynamic group of

Another thing that I found both positive and negative about philosophy is interpreting someone’s work in a way which it was not designed for. I find this good because you can discover ¬different thoughts from what other people would have expected. I noticed on our online discussions that there were times that people took the reading in a completely different direction from me, and helped me see a different aspect of a philosopher’s work. On the other hand, it could be negative to see things differently from a philosopher because what the philosopher is presenting could be undermined and not appreciated in your own thoughts if you truly misinterpret their ideas. Another aspect of philosophy that I found interesting is that it is still a field that is explored today. I previously thought that philosophy was more of a history based art, and the world kind of faded away from serious philosophical exploration as time went on. It is interesting to know that there are people still participating in serious philosophical pursuits today. I think that goes to show that philosophy is very dynamic and can consistently change with the world. It is also interesting to see the flow of how philosophy changes