I love to write. Although, I am not a great writer, I love to write. To date, when I felt sad, I read books or wrote poems. For me, writing was an instrument to organize my thoughts and feelings. Writing was a window to figure out more about myself; and still, writing is a precious activity for me. I get inspired by others' writings, and I get inspired by my own writing. I like to get inspired by both written piece of paper and the process of writing.
When I was an elementary school student, I went to the Philippines, not to study English but to open my eyes toward bigger world. I have nice memories in there with my foreign friends which I had difficulties to become well acquainted with beyond the wall of language. I was in the class of ESL which shows how awful my English was. The ESL class was full of Koreans and I was one of them. Without any special reason, I was very eager to make foreign friends. However, to make foreign friends, there were a lot of obstacles: the wall of language and the different schedule of the classes. To overcome those obstacles, I started to write letters in English with a lot of cute drawings. I asked the teacher to correct the errors and kept sending letters. I wrote every letter sincerely from the heart. Afterwards, when my English improved enough for normal class, I became the best friend of the foreigner I kept exchanging letters with. Also in middle school, when I had troubles or something hard to tell face to face with any friends, I sent letters which improved the relationship. The more you trust in power of writing, the more people get influenced.
As the episodes show, adults say my writing is sentimental and warm. I think the warm style is strength of my writing. Whereas, on the other hand, the warm style is also a thing to improve; the warmth mustn’t stop at emotionally touching. The warmth must raise an emotive sensation and let readers feel joy of realization. In addition I need to improve writing essays which are argumentative, analytic and critical. I also feel the need of structural improvement. I wish I could make any improvements of my weaknesses in this class. I want to learn variety of expressions since I don’t have a fertile vocabulary. In Korean writing, I try to use impressive descriptions to evoke emotions using figurative languages. In English, since it isn’t my mother tongue, I’m not used to write with imaginative sentences. I also have to pour all my nerves to care about the grammar because I want to describe a high-ranking grammar. Without a watchful eye toward ‘English’ while writing, the vocabulary and grammar might spin out of control. One by one, step by step, I want to get better and approach people with all the kinds of precious emotion.
The term paper I wrote during the class of Mr. Johnson is what I am proud of the most. Honestly speaking, I am not so proud of my term paper. I know it is a common essay. But the 'Johnpaper' was my first term paper written in all English. I learned a lot during the research. Just like 'Johnpaper', I wish I could make a worthwhile essay or any piece of writing in this class which I will be truly proud of. I want to learn about friends' lives through their writing. I want to give the readers any refreshing idea toward life by my writing someday. I want to figure out meanings of every tiny little thing; not to become oblivious of my precious and normal surroundings. I hope this class would focus more on the process of writing and improvement than the result or grade. Writing this assignment, a calm smile kisses my lips. I appreciate to have a chance to reminisce my life as a writer even I couldn’t put everything, of course. I feel like I am going to love the class :)
When I was an elementary school student, I went to the Philippines, not to study English but to open my eyes toward bigger world. I have nice memories in there with my foreign friends which I had difficulties to become well acquainted with beyond the wall of language. I was in the class of ESL which shows how awful my English was. The ESL class was full of Koreans and I was one of them. Without any special reason, I was very eager to make foreign friends. However, to make foreign friends, there were a lot of obstacles: the wall of language and the different schedule of the classes. To overcome those obstacles, I started to write letters in English with a lot of cute drawings. I asked the teacher to correct the errors and kept sending letters. I wrote every letter sincerely from the heart. Afterwards, when my English improved enough for normal class, I became the best friend of the foreigner I kept exchanging letters with. Also in middle school, when I had troubles or something hard to tell face to face with any friends, I sent letters which improved the relationship. The more you trust in power of writing, the more people get influenced.
As the episodes show, adults say my writing is sentimental and warm. I think the warm style is strength of my writing. Whereas, on the other hand, the warm style is also a thing to improve; the warmth mustn’t stop at emotionally touching. The warmth must raise an emotive sensation and let readers feel joy of realization. In addition I need to improve writing essays which are argumentative, analytic and critical. I also feel the need of structural improvement. I wish I could make any improvements of my weaknesses in this class. I want to learn variety of expressions since I don’t have a fertile vocabulary. In Korean writing, I try to use impressive descriptions to evoke emotions using figurative languages. In English, since it isn’t my mother tongue, I’m not used to write with imaginative sentences. I also have to pour all my nerves to care about the grammar because I want to describe a high-ranking grammar. Without a watchful eye toward ‘English’ while writing, the vocabulary and grammar might spin out of control. One by one, step by step, I want to get better and approach people with all the kinds of precious emotion.
The term paper I wrote during the class of Mr. Johnson is what I am proud of the most. Honestly speaking, I am not so proud of my term paper. I know it is a common essay. But the 'Johnpaper' was my first term paper written in all English. I learned a lot during the research. Just like 'Johnpaper', I wish I could make a worthwhile essay or any piece of writing in this class which I will be truly proud of. I want to learn about friends' lives through their writing. I want to give the readers any refreshing idea toward life by my writing someday. I want to figure out meanings of every tiny little thing; not to become oblivious of my precious and normal surroundings. I hope this class would focus more on the process of writing and improvement than the result or grade. Writing this assignment, a calm smile kisses my lips. I appreciate to have a chance to reminisce my life as a writer even I couldn’t put everything, of course. I feel like I am going to love the class :)
my john paper :
Plato's cave
111112 Lee Ji Young 10b1
This time, people will lead you to the outside of the cave. At first, when your body is exposed to the sun, you won't be able to open your eyes by the brightness of the sun. You'll have to adapt to the brightness to distinguish things under the sun. The adaptation here means the practice of philosophical speculation, which is a requisite process to become a philosopher. Afterwards, firstly, you will see the shadows of things since you've lived a life stuck in the cave. Secondly, you will begin to see the night sky full of stars and an illuminating moon. Finally, you will see the sky in the afternoon and face the sun: the source of every other thing in the world, ruling the time and seasons. The recognition of the sun implies the enlightenment of the prisoners’ their ignorance toward their life. You will finally realize that the world you thought was just a cave: a small copy of the real. When you tell the people inside the cave about the real world, do you think your fellows are going to believe about the real world and that the shadows are not real?
This is what Plato's cave is all about. Plato compared the cave to our world and the outside world of the cave as ‘Idea [i: de: a]' according to his story, which means, the imprisoned prisoners are people who are living in this world, confused with truth and false. Plato thought separately of sensory world and the true world that people are deceived by their sense to think the untrue world as the true world. In bigger sense, the Idea is an ideal world and our world is a copy of the Idea. What kind of philosopher was Plato to think of Idea? How can we analyze “The Allegory of the Cave”?
Plato can be defined as a Greek philosopher, a student of Socrates, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and creator of the Academy in Athens, which was the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Plato was born into an aristocratic position that he was available to receive the best education. Most of Plato’s philosophical works are in essay or dialogue form in which Socrates speaks with one or more students or audiences.
Socrates and Plato had to live in turbulent times since Athens was defeated by Sparta. Furthermore, Athens’s government was taken over by tyrants that political life of Athens was very unstable and shaky. Plato tried, however, to make a positive change in politic system of Athens until Socrates finally died unjustly by the sin that he made subversive impact on youth of Athens. Plato was so shocked and stunned by Socrates’s death that Plato withdrew from the public and devoted his life to writing, Academy and his philosophical development. The Academy lasted for almost a thousand years, which shows us how valuable Plato’s philosophical thoughts were considered.
Plato’s concepts are not easy to summarize in one word. But we can say Plato as a philosopher who has held the world of sense perception to be inferior to ideal entities that exist in a pure spiritual form in Idea. Plato’s thoughts of the sense perception and ideal entities freed people from the danger of sensory prison and sensory reward that may lead people to a life of corruption. Instead, Plato emphasized spiritual love rather than body and its pleasures.
Plato uses rhetorical techniques, which reveals his ideas very efficiently: dialogue, question-and-answer and allegory. Allegory, which is used in the cave theory, is a story in which the characters and situations represent things that we are trying to explain. In some way, allegory is a hard rhetorical technique to use since the user of allegory should find something fits the thing that is to be compared. Also, allegory is hard to sustain; thus, leading to a fail of convincing. The advantage of allegory is, however, that a complicated argument can be explained in a better and easier way that it will lead audiences to a point of realization.
But we must look through Plato’s own style and concepts beyond these techniques. Plato is using rhetorical devices quite well that even though he introduces difficult ideas, people can accept the ideas and contemplates about it. His simple, accessible and clear style seldom leads people to have troubles in understanding. Considering Plato’s works’ influence and reputation, we can still infer that Plato’s style is impressive and succinct.
“The Allegory of the Cave” is judged as a persuasive allegory through the centuries. “The Allegory of the Cave” is a nice challenge toward the pleasures of sensual life. “The Allegory of the Cave” has made a lot of effects on religious aim and mental enlightenment. For example, Christianity and other religions are in a similar system with the allegory of the cave, showing a close similarity to Plato’s about opinion to human sense. In addition, after some refining process of Plato’s thought, there came a new principle called Neo-Platonism, is still influential to modern days.
In “The Allegory of the Cave”, a thought experiment, the prisoners of the cave mistake the shadows on the wall to be the appearance of reality. The prisoners don't have any idea where the shadows come from. When we show them a shadow of a pencil, they'll say "there's a pencil" even though they are looking at the shadow of a pencil. This incident indicates that the words referred to an object in our language are not “names” of the physical objects that we see. They are actually names of notions of the things that we cannot see, things of which we can only be aware of with our mind. So our world is a lesser copy of the Idea, and our senses are not as credible as we believe. Plato's giving us the message that we should try to get near to the Idea. By approaching to the Idea, Plato says that we can be happier.
Now, let's organize the allegory of the cave in a conceptual approach. Draw a horizontal line. This line is the boundary between the two worlds, which Plato explained: under the line is the visible world and the above it is the intelligible world. Let's draw another line vertically across the horizontal line. The left side of the standard line we just drew is the existing world while the right side is the conscious world. To perceive the visible world, we need to use our sense; rather; to perceive the intelligible world, we should keep our base on rational reasons. The concept of thinking sensible aspect and intelligible aspect separately is called epistemology. Epistemology is dualistic ontology. The Greek word 'on to' is 'to be' in English which means that it is a philosophical consideration of existence. Since the visible world is made out of fakes, the people must try to perceive the intelligible world by practice of rational thinking ability.
In the picture, School of Athens, we can see Plato pointing up the sky with his second finger. This pose, pointing up the sky, describes Plato's philosophical characteristic exactly. Plato thought there's no truth in our world since everything changes and disappears someday. The truth, Idea of a thing, he depicts can only exist at the behind a thing, which is undergoing the process of forming, changing and disappearing. This is the Idea I have mentioned before. The concept of Idea has now developed into a philosophical norm of eternal and constant being. To exemplify the Idea in a different way, let's suppose there's a circle here drawn by a campus. Even though the circle looks very sleek, if we see the circle through a microscope, the line of the circle is rough and bumpy. No matter what we draw with, the result is always the same. Then can there be a perfect circle? No, as we know, there can't be a perfect circle. However, there is a perfect circle in the Idea's world with the existence of the circle's Idea. The Idea of circle can only be drawn in our mind fixed with all the major characteristics of a circle.
To exemplify in another way, when we talk about trees, we think of different types of trees but we understand what each other is saying regardless of the kind of the tree. This is because in our mind, we have the Idea of the trees that makes a tree a perfect tree that satisfies the main characteristic of a tree.
As we keep focusing on this theory, we face the need to raise some related questions. Is there an ideal truth? Can there be something absolute? How can we know something is absolute? These questions have been asked and challenged to get solution by a lot of philosophers until now. However, these questions can’t be solved since we are not god. From long ago people were curious if there is an absolute formula or theory. They regulated the characteristics of absolute truth with 5 basic qualities.
First of all, the absolute truth has to be perfect and categorical without any errors or mistakes. Secondly, the absolute truth must be universal. The absolute truth is open to realization to everything, which means, the absolute truth must be useful and accessible at any rate. The absolute truth isn’t limited to certain language or place. Third, the absolute truth should be eternal. From past, present until future, the absolute truth doesn’t take any omissions. Fourth, the absolute truth can be learned by everyone regardless of intelligence or position. Fifth, the absolute truth provides practical solutions to difficulties in our life. Plus, the absolute truth must provide the key of the universe. These characteristics of the absolute truth are why striving for the absolute truth is considered as an essential behavior.
As we have searched for the specialties of the absolute truth, we knew how Plato thought of Idea’s characteristics. For Plato, Idea cannot be observed by our senses but by our wise intellect. However, we face a contradictory here. We develop our intellect by sensual means. We must get through our senses to think intellectually. We also are affected by our knowledge and experiences. These environmental effects on us will promote different concepts individually. Also, a lot of errors are going to occur. Therefore, as Plato also had claimed, we can't know about Idea actually or to know Idea is very difficult.
As we can see there's limitation on our thinking ability, we somehow proved that we cannot reach the ideal. Although we cannot truly achieve the ideal, can we say that the ideal actually exists? If the ideal does exist, can the ideal affect us whereas we cannot be thoroughly aware of it? To this question, we might be able to say that the ideal does affect us. We try to figure out what the ideal is and try to get nearer to the ideal. Since the ideal affects us indirectly, can we still say that as an ideal since Plato said the Idea's ignorant and separated with our reality? But if the Idea can affect us, can we say that the Idea is separate from our reality?
We can find the concept of “The Allegory of the Cave” in the movie, “The Matrix”. “The Matrix” is popular by its fighting scene, which is very thrilling and exciting. But The Matrix has become a cultural code beyond a movie. The reason why The Matrix earned such great reputation is because The Matrix contains a great deal of philosophical ideas to discuss and study; The Matrix contains intellectual contents that “The Allegory of the Cave” has many parallels with The Matrix. The whole plot and theme is closely related to the concept of cave. As in “The Allegory of the Cave”, The Matrix presents the idea that the sensory world is merely a computer program that humans are plugged in. So the people who have been unplugged only know that their world is not real, which means the truth exists separately. Those, who don’t know about the real world, strongly believes their stimulated world as the reality. The plugged body can feel everything vividly that if you die in the plugged world, the body in reality also dies by the reaction of you in plugged world. By the setting of The Matrix, after watching The Matrix we fall into a deep contemplation whether to choose the plugged world or to choose the reality. This movie suggests us to choose the reality.
Even though “The Allegory of the Cave” is usually known as a notion of reliance on our sensory perception with the relation between truth and the world, “The Allegory of the Cave” is also a discussion of politics since it’s written in the book, The Republic, with the treatise on justice and the ideal government. In “The Allegory of the Cave”, the dialogue talks about ethical life and what is important beyond the world of sensory perception.
By this allegory, we can learn a lesson. In the cave, there's a shadow-puppet play in front of the fire so that the prisoners are going to watch the shadows. The shadows refer to virtual reality as we every day meet television, the virtual reality that has crept very deep in to our reality. We must try to come out of the virtual reality and must face the reality as well. As the prisoners, we are mixing up the reality with virtual reality. We don't even consider which is meaningful for our life. We must challenge to know the true reality. We have to break out of the frame tying us. Let's face the real world and let us cooperate with each other by going back to the cave to inform others about the reality.
We can also learn the lesson that our world still has to be improved. The ideal world is going so far from the true reality. We must try to make our world brighter and not to be obsessed of prejudice.
Plato’s cave is very affective to our life, considering the concept’s influence until now. The argument hasn’t ended. We must come to a lot of new points that will improve our life and thoughts. This norm is so popular that they also make it into some animation, and in philosophy classes teachers usually talk about this norm. Platonism will not end until we conquer the ideal.
Through a different window, we will see a different world. The philosophical argument will give us time to think in our busily rolling daily life. Contemplation will remind us of our life and the ideal of oneself. In a logical way, we can learn how to think critically and creatively. We'll figure out different notions every time, as we meet some different part of the self.
The effort and will trying to reach the Idea is the important and beautiful process regardless of the result in which, we’ll really reach to Idea or not. People want better world, imagining truthful world. The great try to achieve ideal world for all will never end. The process of trying to achieve the ideal world might be the Idea that will finally lead us to truthful world, not corrupted by sensory pleasures as Plato wanted.
The references
Book - 1. 50 philosophy ideas (you really need to know) by Ben Dupre / Publisher: Book Sales, Inc. (September 17, 2009) - (11.06.02)
2. Philosophy concert(철학 콘서트) by Hwang Gwang Woo (황광우) / Publisher: Woong Jin Ji Sik house - (11.06.02)
3. Philosophy concert 2(철학 콘서트 2) by Hwang Gwang Woo (황광우) / Publisher: Woong Jin Ji Sik house - (11.06.02)
Web -
1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/ - (11.06.01)
2. http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm- (11.06.01)
3. Journal: http://people.virginia.edu/~jrw3k/mediamatters/readings/cult_crit/Plato_Allegory.of.the.Cave.pdf - (11.06.04)
4. Journal: http://www.oaklandcc.edu/essay/Docs/essays_10/Justin%20McBride%20-%20Unedited%20Essay.pdf – (11.06.04)
5. Journal: http://www.newtalavana.org/ebooks/sftat.pdf - (11.06.04)
actually, I am not sure if this johnpaper file is the perfect version. It might be one of the process of revision.
Nice blog, Jiyoung. Those cookie things in the background look delicious, so I'm kind of annoyed I can't try one. Speaking of your background, I found the essay a little hard to read at times, so maybe you could increase the font size or make sure it's a darker color. Play with the settings so it's a bit easier to see.
답글삭제This Plato's Cave sure sounds interesting, and I like your comparison to The Matrix. I can see that when you concentrate on improving your grammar that you pick up on most little errors, so keep focusing on that. I think you're "almost there" in terms of reaching a more comfortable level, and your hard work is paying off.
Good stuff.