Lost in Time

When I began reading “Lost in time”, I knew what we were about to talk, but I never thought time can get so interesting. We began with the “now” example, and my first reaction was wondering about the very moment I was living, but then I freaked out when I thought that what “I am living” all ready past! So… when is the present time exactly if we cannot catch it??
Then we got Aristotle’s point of view about time linked with movement, and I think most of us agree with him because we can even see it in the movies when time stops everything else is still or at least in slow motion. Also, I relate movement with time because every single action that we do, we measure it with time like.. “in the morning I went to school” I’m all ready implying time and action. And let’s just take a look to ourselves; we’re not the same as we were 10 years ago, we have changed physically! Meaning we had some kind of movement in time.
But then I read the phrase of Pierre de Ronsard “Time goes, time goes, my Lady, Alas, not time, we are the ones who go” that means that we believe that time passes but actually time is always present! What it appears to go it’s “our” time meaning our lives. This made me repeat myself that I am temporal and that I will have an end so, I need to wake up to do what I want and live for the moment, also to learn that the past can’t be changed and I need to move on and that it’s up to “now” how I want my future to be. I think we should leave all the fears from the past and the future and just enjoy the very moment.



ps. I leave you with this video that is not really related with time but I think that it has something to do with the book and the class.

TIME

The lost in time is a very interesting chapter, where Savater put me to think about time, time is something that we cannot control and we all are aware of that, in many situations we depend on time. Why is so difficult to think in time?, Savater make this question in the chapter and is so complicated because you cannot talk about the instant of time that you are passing, the “now” like for example, I am know talking about time, but the now is already passed when you even try to think about it, so time cannot be stopped, we can´t catch time, it just keep going.
Aristotle, the great philosopher made a great comment in this chapter, saying that time is linked to movement, “time passes because things happen or something happen to things”, this is totally correct because if you start analyzing this quote you notice that over the period of time things happen, something changes, we become older for example, but if anything happen to us or to things is like time have never passes, things change as time passes. One thing that we have to notice is that time never ends, what ends is our time, in other world our life that is changing over the time.

Lost in Time

In this chapter we read about time, Savater tried to explain what time is using the philosophies of different important people; however what caught my attention the most is what Pascal said about time. He talked not about what it is but how this time answers the question 'when?' and therefore divides time in past, present and future.

Anyways, as I was saying, I liked when Pascal said 'the past should not preoccupy us, since all we can do about it is regret our errors. But the future should concern us even less, since it has nothing to do with us and perhaps we might never reach it, the present is the only time that is truly ours.' (pg.169) I personally liked this reflection since it nowadays many people don't focus on the present and just regret past actions and worry how this will affect their future. Pascal explains really clearly and somewhat beautiful how one should solely worry about the present, and not even worry, but enjoy present.

I decided to talk about this in the final post rather than what time meant, since I believe the meaning of time has no special relation to us, is what comes with time, the actions, that make us enjoy, hate, hope, time in all of its 3 stages, past, present, and future. Finally I believe one should remember that even though we may not explain what time is by definition we can know that we should enjoy time as it passes and don't look back with regret or look ahead with anxiety, for at the present, what will happen is what we choose."Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today, today is a present".

Lost in Time

In this book Savetr talks about time, and one of the philosophers he makes reference to is Aristotle and how he supported the theory of future contingents, against the doctrine of destiny, where everything is already decided without the possibility of change.

When we talk about the future everything is uncertain, we can’t know what is going to happen, the contingent theory, though it supports this idea, narrows the possibilities of what could happen in the future. Savater explains this with the example of the naval battle, on the eve of the big fight we can assert two possibilities, there will be or there will not be a naval battle, we can’t have certainties about any of them, but we still know the possibilities.

I think this theory of an open future makes a lot of sense, because future is the one thing we can never be sure of, and when the contingents may narrow the possibilities of what is going to happen they never tell us what is actually happening, when we talk about future there is not most likely to. And even though those possibilities are not depending on us humans, like natural disasters, we always have an influence in what is going to happen, we can protect themselves against it, we don’t just stay aside and wait.

The Shiver of Beauty

During this chapter I had a different perspective of beauty. I remember once in my literature class, we were in a trial to save Aphrodite because they were blaming her as the causing of the Trojan war. If I just could have known this I(as the defense) could have save her. I wanted to talk about this because everyone sees beauty different. Beauty is different for all people; something can be beautiful because it means something to that person, also because it produces pleasure, maybe because it has a story, etc.
I think that you can change the beauty of things by looking them different, or because we understand it. For example: you can see a picture of a sad context and you might not appreciate as if you were 5 minutes before committing suicide! So beauty is different for everyone.
To finish I think that beauty is something that changes with time and is different for all people. And you can appreciate that something is beautiful when you really see “behind the picture”

miss, I didnt had 5 free minutes this weekends because of ONU, im shure you will understand thanks.

The Shiver of Beauty

This chapter was really interesting because I think it’s a great lesson for us to show us what the real meaning of beauty is. For example: my friends had always thought that I have a terrible taste for guys because they’re not the most beautiful creatures in the world, but I think that it all depends with the personal meaning of beauty, and according to Savater if something makes you feel good or gives you some kind of pleasure then is might be something beautiful! Beauty is something of personal opinion and we must respect each other’s beauty perspective.I think that according to my point of view, something that is beautiful is something that it’s completely honest and transparent in other words what it’s completely natural.

In this chapter Savater mentioned Plato’s idea of artists and how they could actually rule the world only by their art because they can convince people to follow their life styles, tastes, rules, etc. And I think it is related to form our perspective of beauty following a pattern that someone has all ready established and that fits into our life. But I think that besides convincing ourselves with someone else’s beauty perspective, we should add our own point of view and create our meaning of beauty so what we think we like, it’s actually something that we choose.

Finally I’ll like to say that according to Giorgione, beauty is something that passes, and I think we should be really aware of this when we are convinced that something is or isn’t beautiful because we can change our minds with time. Also the French novelist Stendhal mentioned that “Beauty is the promise of happiness”, So it doesn’t matter what you like or you think is beautiful as long as you really know it makes you happy.

beauty

I like this chapter, “The shiver of beauty”, because it talk about something that i thou that is very interesting, what it beautiful? Well I think that beauty depends on the view of each person and how the way you appreciate things, beauty I something that brings you pleasure.
Plato, this great philosopher didn’t like the artist because they have the power to seduce with their art and they don’t question things and facts as the philosophers do “the real teachers”, they just take thing as the see beautiful without questioning, in my very own point of view I don’t like the way Plato took this because I think that seeing something beautiful depends on how you feel about it, if it transmits pleasure or pain to you, beauty depends on every person and I don’t think that you have to question where it came from, who was it made, it is beautiful just because it seem beautiful to you, I don’t think that we need a “real teacher” to teach us how to view things beautiful.
That’s my point of view but everyone can think differently, but I agree with Schiller, about the aesthetic education letting people decide what they see as beautiful gives them freedom, the freedom they need for becoming the person they wish, that’s the point I think that beauty should be freely appreciated for each person, because no one thinks the same and perceive the same.

The shiver of beauty

In this chapter we learned about what beauty signifies and how beauty most of the times gives us pleasure. Also in this chapter we learned about the opinion of many philosophers, the one which I agree the most with is Kant; he gives us many interesting points about beauty.

One of which I like the most is when he says that "the pleasure produced by beauty is the only truly disinterested and unconstrained pleasure we can experience". I like this statement by Kant a lot because I very much agree on what he says, I do believe that the attributes beauty gives us are not only disinterested but pure, this meaning that the pleasure we obtain from beauty is unique and spontaneous. Unlike the other pleasures, we do not obtain the pleasure from a necessity we have because as Kant says the thirst for beauty does not appear to correspond to any concrete need, either of our senses or of our reason. Finally, I think Savater gives us these quotes from Kant in order for us to value the importance of beauty, not meaning physical beauty, but the beauty one observes in nature and in all those things we can't exactly describe why we found them beautiful.

To wrap this comment, I think that beauty is one of the greatest things we can obtain from nature since I believe that in a way beauty "humanizes us", by obtaining a disinterested pleasure by a sunset for example, we seem hypnotized by such wonder that as the chapter is called, lets us experience the shiver of beauty.

The Shiver of Beauty

In this chapter Savater talks about beauty and pleasure, and discusses some of Plato’s ideas about this subject, the one that caught my attention the most was the one about Plato’s distrust towards artists, towards their influence on the masses, to their capacity to produce pleasure .
He finds this so unacceptable because for him the one who controls the pleasure mechanisms in the society controls in a certain level the education of his citizens; and artists great fault is teaching the wrong lessons, is making up fantasies who then everyone takes as truth, is fighting morals and truth. Plato can’t conceive this influence could be use in a good way, because it is impossible to deny its existence, he never sees it as something that could unify people, that could make a united front against ignorance and gain sympathy to philosophy, which as he says, is not as amusing as art
I also want to point out that even though art does influence us, the effect they produce in us changes according to each person, art is subjective as well as our own interpretation of it. And whereas to follow or not the “teachings” an artist is giving us is our decision, we have free will for a reason. Artists are not demons.

Freedom in Action

We humans have the awesome power of freedom but sometimes we get a little bit confused by the word and its several meanings and we feel that we're capable of doing anything under any circumstance, and yeah we are! But first we need to take responsibility of our freedom and learn how to use it, that’s why Savater says that freedom can be an award or a burden, so then our whole life won’t turn into a complete chaos.
I think, we need to learn the concept of “voluntary” and apply it, so we can be sure that is US the once who choose what we want, and not our friends, family, etc. And learn that out freedom is ours and therefore we can’t let anyone else mess with it. Specially us that we’re growing, we’ve learned what our parents or teachers had told us, but I think that is time to learn and decide for ourselves, and think deeper of what freedom can be and can do for us if we know how to use it.
Also, respect and freedom are linked for us as a society; since everyone in this world is different, not all of us have the same ideas and it’s very easy to agree or disagree and sometimes even turn a little bit aggressive and the consequences can turn into a big monster, so in order to prevent all this consequences that even innocent people could suffer, we should live respecting each other, make use of our freedom by making our point but not by making a whole scene.

Finally, Freedom is a very important characteristic that we humans have and the only way to enjoy it is to make sure we really know how to use it as a good to ourselves.

freedom in action

When I was going to begin reading the 6th chapter I saw the title and it was “freedom in action” and I thought that it was simply that we are free to do or not to do an action, but after reading the chapter I noticed that it was much more complicated.
We saw that what you do can only by an action when you want to do it, when you do it “voluntary”, Voluntary is a word that we are use to hear and we just take its meaning as “do it because you want”; ok, it is right but voluntary has a more complex meaning for example the history that Savater tell us in the book about the Capitan of a ship that wanted to get safe to home, but to be able to do that he had to drew the cargo overboard, but he didn’t want to throw it because it was very expensive, but he finally throw it to save his and the crews life, so doesn’t it contradict what I just say about wanting to do something is an action? I think that actions cannot be just determinate because you want to do it, because even if you don’t want to do something and you have to do it and you do it, it is an action too.

Freedom in Action

For this week's post, I would like to talk about how responsibility comes next to freedom, as Savater expresses, "but responsibility is the necessary counterweight of freedom...". I agree with Savater in this quote since responsibility is the thing that makes us think before we act freely (well in some cases). I truly believe responsibility is basic and must come next to freedom so we can learn to manage our freedom correctly. However as Savater also says, "then we must carry the burden of having freedom..." I like this quote since it is true that freedom is a burden, I mean freedom is a great thing but it is also seen as a burden in the matter than YOU and only YOU are responsible of your actions, since you are FREE to choose them, goodbye to blaming your mother, teacher, etc, there comes a time in which every human being must accept the freedom they are granted.

I decided to talk about responsibility because it's something that unfortunately many people don't accept in some occasions, including me. Everyone knows they're free, and constantly they keep reminding the world of it by doing not such great things, but who ever brags about responsibility? Of course we all like to accept freedom but no one really accepts responsibility fully or at least brags about is as when they talk about freedom. It's like the book said, when something good happens to one, one takes all the merit, but if something wrong dare to occur to one then all the blame goes to others instead of ourselves. So I believe than every human that accepts freedom must accept responsibility, it is in fact the "ugly truth" about freedom, accepting the burden that we are going to be responsible, but it is also what will make us more mature and grow as human beings. So let's embrace responsibility, for better or worse...

Freedom in action

“To accept that we are free implies accepting responsibility for what we do, and even for what we try to do, or for the unwanted consequences of some of our actions.”
In my opinion this is, if not the most, one of the most important ideas of this chapter, because I think our whole society is based in this principle; we are free to act, but we must take responsibility of whatever comes from those actions, this is how human societies function, or how they should function, because, and I think this is the cause of all our actual problems, not everyone takes responsibility of their actions.
It is so easy to accept credit of good actions, but as soon as something comes out wrong it seems that it is no one’s fault, no one did it, we just blame each other without accepting our mistakes and its consequences. We are used to complain about the world we live in, putting the blame on everyone but us, and doing nothing about it; we might say it is not our fault if the poles are melting down or whatever because we recycle and all that stuff good for the environment, but in a way it is our fault because we are not doing anything else to help the situation even though we can, we are free to act and do something else. We are responsible of what we do, but also of that we decide not to do.

During this chapter I thought that my childhood questions might be solved. Who didn’t as himself when was little of how big was the universe? Or when does it started? All this kind of questions made me put extra attention to this chapter. When I read I realized that Saavatar states more questions than dots, so I asked myself, if we can see it why we can’t understand it? During this chapter saavatar focuses on three mayor questions, that we will see it one by one next.
The first question Saavatar addresses is how big is the universe? There are two options. One that is a finite universe or infinite. The main problem with the first is that if it’s a finite world it should come to a stop. Imagine for example a wall but then we will ask, what is on the other side of the wall? And so one, because as long as there’s something there is also a space. The other option is that is infinite. The main problem of this is very simple. Can we imagine an infinite universe? What I thing that might be a possibility is that we are like a sphere or a circle, so it never ends.
The second question saavatar addresses is. Is there an order in the universe? This question is kind of tricky because we perceive the universe around us in an order, but like saavatar says “my mess was order to me” so the next question we have is: what is order? Then we ask ourselves again: does the universe have an order? The most important thing we need to ask ourselves is in reference to what? If the person changes, the reference changes and the order changes too. So in reference to me for example the universe is order but perhaps to an astronomer it is a total chaos.
The third and last question is how did the universe started? This is a kind of question that is very probable we will never know, but there are two ways to analyze this one is religious and the other is scientific. According to science, the universe was created by the big ban theory. The big problem is where does the thing called the big ban come from? Where did it start? The other form of analyzing this question is by religion. The people with a religion say that god created the universe. The problem with this is that we don’t know where god came from, and how did he created it?
My conclusion to this problem is that knowing the answer to these questions practically would get us to know the universe itself. No one has ever arrived to satisfactory theory about the universe, about its origin, size, or order and this is why it frustrates us sometimes. Can there be an answer to these questions? Are we someday able to answer them?

The world and its outskirts

The world and its outskirts, this fifth chapter was kind of complicated because it questioned a lot of things that don’t really have an answer like the creator of the universe, we use the religious believe that God made it but we can’t be sure of that so we use it to explain what we don’t understand.
In this chapter there are three points that I found really interesting they are these ,What is the world? We don’t really know I mean “it is a framework were all the things relate” but for me and my world is my family, my friends, my school and all the things that surround me.
But when we come to the question about the universe I see this kind of complicated because even though specialist and scientist explain the origin of the universe we are not sure of that, that’s a hard question to ask, that’s we say “God the creator” as I said before to explan what we are not sure of, some poeple just stop quetsioning and find God as the first cause of teh creation of teh world.
The last thing was the point that Savater said about the order, before I thought that everything had an order that everyone have to follow, but know I realize that I was wrong because the order can be viewed differently from every person you see the order the way you arrange things as you like and as you see as ordered, everyone has its own order.

The world and it's outskits

Thinking about the outskirts… made me ask myself too many questions about the universe and some of the things that surround me, so while I was sitting and wondering what to write about the “outskirts” meaning something remote… I came up with this question... “How can I question something I don’t understand or not even know?” Ignorance can be a gift or a curse because I can’t even imagine something unbelievable, because everything I see or think is something real or at least possible because I know it! Everything else that may be or may exist is something I ignore that’s why it’s called an outskirt.

When we saw the picture of the levels of the world, the teacher told us that we should think of beyond our world, society, etc. Because when we get to think that big, we’ll be like amazing for just considering it, but… well I think that we should take a series of steps because now there’s people that do not even think of themselves, neither their society and so on, and.. How can we get to consider the outskirts if we don’t have a solid base? In my opinion, when I am conscious of myself, who I am and what I’m actually living, then I can go further, until actually wondering about the outskirts can be easier and even more logical.
This book tries to “slap me in the face” when Savater says that I’ve been living in my small world and that we should think beyond, of course I know I’m a little bit wrong for being so egocentric most of the time and I liked that he mentioned this because he made me thought of what a mess of world I’ve been living…I see the news, I’ve read history and many other discoveries and he made me realize that what do we actually know of ourselves?? Why do we try to explain so much and at the end get to know really nothing? Why do we attack our intellect this way?

Wondering about the outskirts made me feel very dumb for realizing that I can’t come up with something “that great” for actually consider it an outskirt… Now I know how Socrates felt when he said “I only know I know nothing”.