\”To Be\”

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

Filed by Satoru Shimada at 10:31 pm under Personal Statements
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“…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
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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
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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
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