The same tutorial
was occupying the room as the week before, so I decided there is no point
anymore in coming as early as I have for the last couple of weeks.
Sean began his
session with an apology because he was very sick and considerably slowed down.
Someone said that him at half his energy would be like a normal person so she
didn’t think it would be a problem. He said he’d take that as a compliment.
He did the roll
call and stopped to ask me if my full name really is “Christian Christian”.
When I confirmed that it was, he said, “That’s awesome! You win!”
He talked about our
essays, which would be due in ten days and told us that the thinking isn’t just
a matter of looking something up but rather of explaining the reasoning in the
text. He urged us to organize our material around a thesis and not to try to
solve every problem. Explain the text but present problems and questions. Just
answer one or two of the sub-questions. Don’t rely heavily on quotes. He said
that he doesn’t care about the format as long as the citations are clear. This
is pretty typical of philosophy TAs. One would never hear an English Literature
TA say, “I don’t care about the format.”
He said that the
Kierkegaard text is like an onion with many layers and lots of tears.
I wasn’t clear on
what was meant when Professor Gibbs wrote that we shouldn’t use the passive
voice. He answered that one doesn’t want what one is talking about to be the
subject of the sentence. I still didn’t understand, but decided to look it up
later. “Caesar was stabbed by Brutas” is passive, whereas “Brutas stabbed
Caesar” is active. The active voice is more direct. So why don’t they call it
the “direct voice”?
We talked about the
absolute paradox again. The only way one csn understand something totally
different from oneself is to have some likeness to it. Reason destroys itself
by trying to think that the unknown is absolutely different. One is redeemed by
having the absolutely different enter oneself. The divine teacher must become
human. The absolute experience is passive. One experiences relative freedom
that is present in all mental acts. There is no rational commitment to a view.
Choice is a terrible freedom. God’s contact with the world is not necessary.
Hegel attempted to
think in terms of absolute knowing.
Kierkegaard makes
it hard to be a Christian. Christianity doesn’t make sense unless you’re inside
of it. One has to kill reason to accept it. Faith is its own faculty. Our
capacity to understand the truth goes beyond reason.
I asked if the
absolute paradox is entirely dependent on the possibility that the absolute is
not a human construct. Sean needed me to repeat the question. He answered that,
yes, this philosophy does not think the absolute is a fairy tale. Then he went
on to mock Richard Dawkins’s argument against the existence of god, of which he
said the belief in a flying spaghetti monster is just as valid. But this is not
Richard Dawkins argument but rather Bobby Henderson’s argument against teaching
Creationism in schools. Dawkins’s atheist philosophy is more based in
Evolutionary Biology, which he says proves that the universe is not
intelligent.
Sean told us that
he has ruined many a Christmas by going home and trying to tell his family
about Philosophy.
I asked about the
idea that the eternal experience cannot occur unless god wills it, but that
also a leap of faith is required. My question was, is there any guarantee that
after one makes that leap of faith, god will make eternity happen for the
leaper. Sean answered that he didn’t think so.
At Remenyi I got
the bad news that their guitar guy had broken routine and come this week on
Thursday rather than Friday, so I’d lugged my guitar downtown for nothing.
I went to OISE to
find out if I’d reached the renewal limit on the French books I’ve been taking
out. I was told that I had, so that meant I should have brought the books with
me. I had reminded myself several times the day before and that morning, but I
forgot anyway. Because of that I would have to take another trip downtown later
that afternoon.
I was wearing my
recently acquired motorcycle jacket and rode home along Bloor, looking for
leather repair places along the way because after buying the jacket I’d noticed
that just below the neck, the seems were coming apart. It was a small
separation but I wanted to repair it before it got worse. I didn’t see any
leather repair places, so I just stopped at shop of the Persian tailor on
Lansdowne. He was glad to see me and declared that it’s been ten years. I don’t
think it’s been that long, but it has been a few. Before asking him about the
repair, I wanted him to confirm that the jacket wasn’t leather. He reached over
and touched the arm, then told me that he was 100% sure it was leather. When I
told him what I’d paid though he began to doubt himself and decided to do the
burn test. He took a piece of the belt and put it under the flame of his
lighter. It burned like plastic and so that was not leather, but he still
wasn’t convinced that the jacket was fake. I told him what I needed fixed, and
so since he needed to open up the lining anyway he showed me that the underside
of my jacket was suede and so it had to be leather. To double check though, he
took a piece and did the burn test again. The smell was more like burnt meat.
He said that if I paid sixty dollars for that jacket the people I bought it
from were robbed because the jacket is worth at least $500.
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