Tag Archives: society

“Why I Hate School But Love Education”

Posted on March 15, 2015 by | Leave a comment

Ever since we began our discussions about education, I’ve been nagged by a memory of a video I’d watched in high school. It was a video my psychology teacher showed us in class one day, not because it was particularly relevant to the topic we were discussing, but because he was one of those teachers who liked to make you think and question your values. The video was a spoken word that differentiated education from schooling. After some descriptive Google searches, I found that it was called “Why I Hate School But Love Education.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Education, Knowledge

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Self-Consciousness and Feral Children

Posted on March 1, 2015 by | 5 comments

6_12_Cvr6_truffaut_ph5In discussions about identity, philosophers often mention the influence of others on a self. In our most recent readings about self-consciousness, Hegel says, “Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged.” He then goes into a discussion of the interaction between two beings and how the interaction is what makes them fully self-conscious. So if this reaction never existed, what would be the result?

Besides philosophy, this issue is analyzed from a sociological perspective in the cases of feral children. One of the first cases was in 1800 when a boy who had been living in the woods his whole life was discovered Continue reading →

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Proletariat=Modern-day Bondsman?

Posted on March 1, 2015 by | 1 comment

Hegel’s work on sense-certainty and the self-consciousness of others is a subject he is noted for in the scholarly world. The way he elaborates on his theories is similar to that of Plato, in which an extended metaphor is applied in order to make it easier to understand. In Hegel, the metaphor is placed between the relationships of a Bondsman to his Lord.

After reading the ending paragraphs of the section, it was almost obvious that I formed a relation to the metaphor of the bondsmen in Hegel, to the role of the proletariat in Marxist Theory.  In Hegel, the bon Continue reading →

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Are Professions Predestined?

Posted on January 25, 2015 by | 3 comments

Are people born with an inclination to do a certain job? Plato (through Socrates) believes this is the case (370b-c). He says, “one man is naturally fitted for one task, and another for another.” This means that fate determines what your profession will be before you ever set foot in school. If you don’t do this job, you are not being the best that you can be.

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Posted in Ancient Philosophy, Identity

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