\”To Be\”

Rational self-interest leads to mutual self-destruction, but reasonable self-interest can lead to harmony of co-existence.

Filed by Satoru Shimada at 2:45 pm under Personal Statements
No Comments

‘The one is only the other deferred, the one differing from the other. The one is the other in differance, the one is the differance from the other.’

This corresponds to the idea splashed out in ‘A Piece of Thought’ owing to Adorno, Negative Dialectics.

Filed by Satoru Shimada at 6:05 am under Personal Statements
No Comments

The way to acheive happiness is to pursue something else.

Filed by Satoru Shimada at 5:26 am under Personal Statements
No Comments

Thinking is positing or identifying something against something else. By the act of thinking itself, we are negating that which we are thinking against. Therefore, thinking is both positive and negative. Then, reasoing, a coherent process of thinking, has also a contradictory element by and in itself, because it affirms a point by affirming the counter-point that reasoing tries to discredit in the first place. Reason is not to deny a counter-point but to be aware of what its counter-point is. Thus, identity is also non-identity. Knowing what we are not makes us what we are. Therefore, if there is no otherness, there is none. The elimination of otherness is the elimination of sameness. Otherness is in sameness, and sameness is in otherness. This is the legitimate limit of reason. It is as it is and as it should always be unless it wishes to destory itself by denying its otherness.

For this, I owe a debt to Adorno’s ‘Negative Dialectics’.

Filed by Satoru Shimada at 4:36 am under Personal Statements
No Comments

From all the philosophies I have learned, from all the experiences I have had, one thing comes to my mind; that is, “perspective comes before reason”. What is my perspective? What does this mean to me?

Filed by Satoru Shimada at 3:22 am under Personal Statements
2 Comments

Happiness is a pleasurable moment in life. On the other hand, life itself is a pursuit of a purpose if one finds one’s own. A sense of satisfaction and fulfilment comes from the process of pursuing a purpose.

Filed by Satoru Shimada at 11:52 pm under Personal Statements
No Comments

“Be a philosopher, but amid all your philosophy, be still a man.”

Filed by Satoru Shimada at 10:31 pm under Personal Statements
No Comments

“…as soon as age permitted me to emerge from the supervision of my teachers, I completely abandoned the study of letters. And resolving to search for no knowledge other than what could be found within myself, or else in the great book of the world, I spent the rest of my youth traveling, seeing courts and armies, mingling with people of diverse tempraments and circumstances, gathering various experiences, testing myself in the encounters that fortune offered me, and everywhere engaging in such reflection upon the things that presented themselves that I was able to derive some profit from them. For it seemed to me that I could find much more truth in the reasonings that each person makes concerning matters that are important to him, and whose outcome ought to cost him dearly later on if he has judged badly, than in those reasonings engaged in by a man of letters in his study, which touch on speculations that produce no effect and are of no other consequence to him except perhaps that, the more they are removed from common sense, the more pride he will take in them, for he will have to employ that much more wit and ingenuity in attempting to render them plausible. And I have always had an especially great desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false, in order to see my way clearly in my actions, and to go forward with confidence in this life.“

“…after I had spent some years thus studying in the book of the world and in trying to gain some experience, I resolved one day to study within myself too and to spend all the powers of my mind in choosing the paths that I should follow. In this I had much more success, it seems to me, than had I never left either my country or my books.“

Filed by Satoru Shimada at 11:41 pm under Personal Statements
No Comments

Three questions to address;
1.        What can I know? – “Critique of Pure Reason”
2.        What ought I to do? – “Critique of Practical Reason”
3.        What may I hope? – “Critique of Judgment”
Human Beings
- Theoretical Reason →Concepts of the conditioned: the sensible world
(Understanding with Senses)
- Practical Reason → Ideas of the unconditioned: the intelligible world
(Pure Spontaneity)
Human Actions
-          Observed Events (the sensible world)
-          Internal Choices (the intelligible world)
 

Filed by Satoru Shimada at 12:51 am under Personal Statements
No Comments

Love is necessary, because it gives you even if temporarily the reason and importance of your existence, however trivial your existence seems to be. However, love is not sufficient, because it does not give you the meaning of your existence, as the meaning is something you choose and realise through your activities, and it is something that could be permanent in nature.  

Filed by Satoru Shimada at 11:56 pm under Personal Statements
2 Comments