This title is in honour of one of my teachers this year. One I didn't like much, actually. She taught her subject in English, but I'd say many of her students were better in English than her, so it's been... strange. And she always used the expression "this and that" in the middle of sentences. I had never heard it before, is it a common expression in English??
Anyway... all my grades were good (mostly Bs and two As). Not bad. Problem is, my best friend in the university is this over achiever, talented, intelligent woman (my own age) and so far she has 5 "10" with honors (way over A). It's hard not to feel a failure when somebody else at your side is so good.
Something bothers me about one of my examinations. It was about philosophy, and I had to write about Education (fairly easy), Marx and education (not difficult) and Sartre. I never understood Sartre, so I didn't even write a single sentence about this man.
"The basis of Sartre's existentialism can be found in The Transcendence of the Ego. To begin with, the thing-in-itself is infinite and overflowing. Sartre refers to any direct consciousness of the thing-in-itself as a "pre-reflective consciousness." Any attempt to describe, understand, historicize etc. the thing-in-itself, Sartre calls "reflective consciousness." There is no way for the reflective consciousness to subsume the pre-reflective, and so reflection is fated to a form of anxiety, i.e. the human condition..."
This is just an extract from wikipedia, but I still don't get it. Do you?
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7 comments:
I'm thinking a person should never feel less simply because someone else did better. No matter how good a person is a something there is always someone coming along that is better.
You're right, but it's funny how those school days ghosts come back... no matter how you've grown... you still want to please the teachers, to prove something, if only to yourself!
Philosophy is a game. Not to say that there aren't some brilliant revelations that have evolved, but largely it is a mind game.
That might make you feel better. Or not.
From my experience with you, Nuri, brief and at-a-distance as it is, is that you are quite intelligent and need not take a back to anyone.
Thank you, James!
Did any of you take philosophy in school? When I was a senior in high school, in San Francisco, it was an oddity. I had studied it back in Spain, but it was not "available" among the subjects in SF.
I took philosophy in college, but due to some odd circumstances didn't get nearly as much from it as I should have.
I don't know if I can be of much help, but I am willing to try.
Let us know how you are doing.
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