Ms. Wagener
AP English Language
23 July 2013
A Look Through The Lenses
Immanuel Kant saw philosophy and life through a new perspective. He said that everyone perceived things differently and nothing was really different just the way we saw it was. He explained that if you were to put on a pair of red sun-glasses you would see everything in red and if you wore them long enough that's how your mind would start to see things. He called this the "Red Glasses Experiment". He claimed that certain conditions governed how we experienced the world.
To think like this puts a whole new perspective on the way we look at things. As we grow older our outlook on life and how we wish to live changes. As with water into a pitcher, our mind and the way we see things adapt to our 'forms of intuition'. Kant claimed that we cannot imagine what the world is like for everyone. We can only imagine what life is like for me. Kant described that we cannot have an understanding for das Ding an sich, or the thing in itself, we can only be certain of how they appear to us.
I believe Kant's reasoning was brilliant! I think he is completely right. Someone sitting next to me looking at a half-empty glass might claim that it is half full. While, on the other hand someone else might claim it is half-empty. Why is this? Because as Kant explained, we all see and perceive things differently. Kant also said that we use reason to come up with answers to questions. Alberto used the example of a ball rolling into a room. If that were to happen to me I would turn to see where it came from. This is because I am a human being and the law of causality is part of who I am. As we grow older our perspective on things change. We might look at the same glass twenty years past the time we first looked at it and claim it is half empty other than half full. Kant believed that the 'tint' on our glasses changed as the conditions changed.
