TIME

What is time? For me time is a product of man's deductions and massive information that allows all people to communicate better and to locate ourselves in a more exact plane, to introduce people to what we are trying to communicate and situate them in our context, and by this path reach the goal of interaction between humans and make possible our co-existence. I think it may be possible that mad scientists and people with radical capacities analyzed this, getting to the conclusion that it can be flexible and that people should not conclude that the time is absolute, as we have seen among all these philosophy chapters, there is not absolutism in any chapter and in any thought that is universal. I think people who start to study and become obsessed with this time travelling thing are losing time that they will never get back, it is not easy to create a time machine and I could predict that people have died spending years related to this time traveling instead of living the now. Yeah, I know the word now does not stand completely for the present but what I am trying to say is that people shall live in all senses, letting apart all those aspects that somehow absorb time itself, consuming every moment of life that we are living, prohibiting us from being free and happy. Everyone shall worry more on improving the relationships with their family and people they cherish to don't have a reason to go back in time and repair mistakes.

In this last chapterof the book "The Questions of Life" Fernando Savater talk about time and how we use tiume but that doesn't even matter, some questions that we ask ourselves are how did time started?, wh started it?, and what did they do to know when do they start them. Those questions are not easy to answer but I'm sure someone had made already a hypothesis of it.
Well after reading this chapter I learned that every person has to enjoy every minute of his life even if in the past they did something wrong, because life is a gift given by god and you have to take advantage of it or try to use and make it worth avery minute and second of your life.
Some people think or try to get into the future before they even pass the present, and that is not a good thing because you are trying to see what and where destiny puts you in, instead of you being the creator of your own life, and try to make it the best way possible.
As a conclusion, I can tell everyone who reads this post,that you should enjoy your life but just the part that you are liveng, never try to win the time or to make your life faster, because that is when people get lost and they dont even enjoy their lives. What happened already was a mistake and you should forgett it and overpass it, then create a better life with no regrets

Time

Throughout the semester we've been reading Savater's book "The Questions of Life" and every week we've been focusing on a different chapter/topic. After reading most of the book I started wondering which topic Savater would choose to finish his book and now that I've read it I think I understand why he picked "time" as his closing topic. Time is something so big and yet so enigmatic, it's really hard to define what time is. I mean sure, there is a technical definition in the dictionary but that's not what I mean. Time is essential in our everyday lives, we live according to it and it measures our entire life. The number of years we'll live, the number of seconds a kiss may last, the number of minutes the referee is going to add in a soccer game, everything is measured through time and that is why it is so important.

In his book, Savater quotes Pascal, who says that past is the most important of the 3 tenses. This has always been a topic of discussion because some people say that past and future are equally important but I want to try and prove them wrong.

Sure, our past defines our present, and we live our present focusing on the future but if you think about it, the past is unchangeable and the future unpredictable. No matter what you do you cannot alter the past and no matter what you do you cannot know what the future will bring.

This is why I think the present is the most important time to focus on. You should live every moment to the fullest without regreting what happened in the time and without worrying about the future, which may not even come.

I'm not saying that the past and the future are completely useless. On the contrary, we should learn from the past mistakes and we should always have goals to accomplish in the future, but only so that our present can be better.

Taking into account what has happened in the past helps us live the present better, we learn from past mistakes and try to avoid them because we know what tehy bring.

In the same way we plan our lives according to the future. We prepare ourselves in school for the future, we eat healthy so that we'll live longer and we take our time looking for a partner in life because we don't want to be alone in the future.

Nevertheless, to me, we do all these things so that our present feels better and more enjoyable. It's nice to have goals and it's nice to have memories of past times but I think that It is very important to know that the present is the only thing that matters because let's face it, no matter how much we want it, there's nothing we can do to change the past, and in the same way, we can die the next week, or tomorrow, or even in the next hour so, the only time worth focusing on for me, is the present. That's why I intend to live my life to the fullest each moment.

I heard a quote somewhere, I can't remember where but I think it's a nice way to close this post: "Dream as if you'll live forever, Live as if you'll die today"

Time Never Stops

In this chapter we talked about time and how does it has to do with everything. As the title says, time never stops. We can say "now I am reading", but two seconds later that "now" is going to be in the past; it is going to become a "before". Time goes on and on and never ever stops.

I agree with Augustine when he said that "if nothing passed, there would be no past time; if nothing were going to happen there would be no future time; and if nothing were there would be no present time".

There's nothing more "familiar" to us than time. Everything in our lives has to do with time. When we make an appointment we say the day and the hour; when we are going to a place we need to take time to get to that place; we have a specific time to present an exam; everything has to do with time.

There are a lot of theories about traveling through time, but I really don't think that it can happen. If we could travel in time, we could change things and the future would be different than how was going to be.

We have to be focused on living the present. The past has already gone and maybe the future will never come. Live today!

time

Time. We all relates our life with time, we say we don’t have time, I am on time. You always talk of it, but if I ask you what is time you will not be able to tell what it is or you may say me yes I know what it is but I don’t know how to explained to you.

We take a lot of it determining what was, but we really never get to a conclusion, but I think that we say that time is something we measure it by periods. In order to have movement we need time. What I am trying to say is that you could stop the time of the world there will not be any movement at all.

We can divide or classify time in three different ways, past, present, and future. Past, past are the old thing we can not change it for any reason, what you had done is now a memory, present, its only now and no other time, and future is the only thing that you could change, not really change but you could have and idea what will come, I say that because you could have an idea what is coming or what to speck by the thing that you are donning now. This contradict with the people that believe that the future is all ready writhed by god, people that believe that you have all ready a destiny and you cannot change it. So now tell me in what do you believe in the one that you could write you future or in the one that say that your future is all ready determined.

The Shiver of beauty

In the book The Questions of Life, Fernando Savater quotes an important philosopher, Plato. Plato said that we are "forced to follow the teachings of two very demanding tutors: pleasure and pain." This is a very thoughtful idea, because it makes us think about that which deeply in ourselves influences in a powerful way the totality of humanity and its individuals like the sexual pleasures for instance. As we saw in other chapters, there are common factors which unify humanity; I believe the pleasure and pain are members of the most important factors. Humans say often that they like something when they feel good while having it or experiencing it. There are also some people who declare to like something because of the emotions or feelings they have like suffering and sorrow, being these not so wanted but yet seen in our society. It would be beneficial if everyone would ask themselves whichever they live with more pain or pleasure, regarding their experiences and the interpretation both physical and mental they had about them. In my own judgment I would say that I had and have always interpreted life's experiences with pleasure or with pain, but never without any of those. It is curious that humanity wants to settle down everything that is experienced in a way or another, but never a middle point where everything is neutral and is just something that is. Humanity appears to take everything personally and compare it to human emotions, transforming the outside reality into an inner feeling.

Beauty

Well, this chapter was kind of wierd because Fernando Savater mixes some ideas that i didn't like because, what I think is that something is beauty if you like it, is not because you sar to think every aspect of the object or analize it because is not like tha. For me "beauty" is something that appears espontaniusly, a first impression. For example if I like a woman, i don't start thinking on every aspect of her, i just like her as a complete thing.
Thats why i disagree with Savater because this kind of ideas or thoughts shouldn't be related with phlosophy because isa waste thinking on beauty if it is smething physical and not philosophical.
Another example is when he states about the pyramids of Egypt that everyone can see that they're beatiful because of its height and size, but those characteristics are physical, is not something philosophical that we could analize and describe.
I'm not saying that Savater used bad ideas for his book, but what I'm trying to say is that why is he trying to relate something physical with philosophy, maybe he can have his point of view and I respect it but for my opinion I think he wasted his time and thougts in this chapter.

Beauty

Beauty. Beauty can be different for every single person. We can think that a person, a thing, a place, a feeling, or any other thing is beautiful, but others can disagree with us. Something can be beautiful for me while the same thing is ugly for someone else. We all have different concepts for "beauty".

In chapter 9 of Savater's book "The Questions of Life", he talks about a pyramid. He says that we can go to egypt and admire the pyramids and say that they are beautiful because they are huge, amazing, etc; it gives us visual pleasure. But he also says that others can think that it is not beautiful because the pyramids represent that there were many people and slaves suffering and working very hard to construct that pyramid.

Everything is unique. If someone wouldn't existed, the things that he created also wouldn't existed. Maybe someone would create something similar, but not exactly the same; similar. Definitely, beauty makes us happy. In some cases, beauty makes us change our minds and see everything in a different, better way.

The Shiver of Beauty

I have to tell you something, I didn't like this chapter. Why? Well, to be honest I think there are hundrerds of other topics Savater should have used to talk about in this chapter. Previously, I have liked some chapters and dislike a few others, but u untl now I always understood why Savater wanted to focus on that specific subject. However I don't believe beauty is something that should be discussed in a philosophy book simply because of the fact that it is not too important. In my opinion, Savater shouldn't have wasted 20 pages of his book on talking about something that is so... vain.

I'm not saying his ideas weren't good, he has some good analisis and points of view, it was nice to read about all these things, nevertheless, all the time, I couldn't help but to think: Ok but, there are many more important things than physical beauty aren't there?. I just think that having just 1 more chapter to go, he should've picked a more impotant and meaningful topic like, I don't know, the importance of a partner, or why having children, something deeper.

However this is just my point of view, feel free to disagree with me.

Beauty. One of the most or even the most important question. What is beauty? We cannot define what is beauty, because what is beauty for you its not beauty for everyone. One example is the one that we discus in class, the pyramids one, for one person it was something wonderful, but for the other men is was something horrible for the background of the pyramids, all the people that die, slavery, how can that be something beautiful for him.

Other thing that we discuss on the class of Friday is what is pleasure. Almost all of the persons when they hear the word pleasure they instantly related it with human pleasure(sex). Pleasure is not only that, pleasure is something that make you feel good. Pleasure could be a good food, a good drink that pleasure, as I said something that make you feel good.

For last other thing that impact me was the video that we saw in class, the one of the mother telling to her daughter thing that will we so impactfull on the girl life. In the video they don’t show who was talking to until the end it appear a little girl of no more than ten years old. Some of the thing that the mother was telling her was that she don’t eat junk food she need to have a balance diet, she tell something about plastic sergury to a girl of ten years that information that could have really bad impact on the girl life.

FREEDOM IN ACTION

The world, what is it compared to human freedom?
Savater responds that "man inhabits the world" which is different from having a determined function that makes up the world, like if we were in a magazine and man was just another product from it. It is not as if we were inside something else, or as if man was the owner of the world, because man isn't, man just inhabits it.

We are in the same place as before, just that in this moment we could assent that the world is that place in the space we live in, eat in, walk in, talk in, and especially we relate in, actually it is the most significative place in the universe where we act.

But it is not just the truth that we are symbolic which separates us from other animals, it is also our undetermination, the real truth that we are open and capable of deciding the course of our actions. The thing I want to make clear is that we can decide what to do or what to think from all the things, living and unliving, which are also part of the world. This is what makes us genuine and in my opinion that is a good argument opposite to the determinism. In my opinion we are free just by the truth that we don't have a particular habitat and we can choose from all habitats in the world, we can choose if we want to live in the world and what to think of it. I think we don't accept this truth oftenly, but it is good to question ourselves that if we can decide where to exist then why wouldn't we be capable of deciding all other subsequent things.

Freedom In Action

In this chapter, I really liked the way Savater focused on the concept of freedom. When I was reading the 3 different types of freedom he comes up with I was like, wow, I had never thought of freedom in such ways, only in the first one. I particularly liked his second way of using the concept of this word. I maybe handicapped, in prison or extremely poor, and maybe because of this I can't do a certain amount of stuff like backpacking across Europe or climbing mount Everest, what do I know? But nobody, and I mean, nobody, can stop me from wanting to do all these things. I am completely free of wanting to go and do all those things. I will never be forced to like or want something I do not like. Yes, I can be forced to do it, to some point, but If I don't like that action, if I don't want to do it, I can always remain hating it. Nobody can change my will. It is all mine, and that, to me, is what is so great about freedom.

Also, on a completely different aproach of the term freedom, I think it is really important for us to realize that freedom and responsability are always linked. I may be free to do whatever I want, but eventually the things I do are going to catch up with me and I will have to take responsability for them. I believe this is very important because we have to know the consecuenses of our actions before we act, so that we can be truly free and live in peace.

The universe

Well, in this chapter i found interseting how Savater argues about the creation of the universe, but I don't agree with him, because he argues that someone had to be the creator of the unvierse, he says that because he also uses the example of any object, when you see and object , you know that someone made it or created it, but after all I don't really think that someone was the creator of the universe, because no person in the world (including god) can ever create a phenomenom so big and large just like the universe is.
In my opinion i think what created the universe was something that happened naturally, for example the big bang theory, I found interseting the concept of the big bang theory because I think is something that happened naturally, beause of the preassure of the molecules, or whatever i don't really know, but no person or thing could ever made an explotion just like that.
The weirdest thing is that the universe is perfect, i mean the planet's orbits, the galaxy, the distances, etc. but the question is how? how is it possible that from an explotion suddenly is all made up? but that's a question that maybe some people had already tried to answer and many people will try, but I think this question will never have enough arguments to prove how this huge thing called "universe" was created.

My order or your order?

Reading the book of Fernando Savater I saw a pair of lines that strongly capted my attention. When I was young, my family, teachers, and people in general kept telling me to put my things in order. They said what objects belonged to what places and so on, admitting that their order was the right and I was expected to follow it. I kept thinking and asking myself why did my parents tell me that my order was wrong, if there was not a book nor law that said how the order in general should be. At last, I agreed with my parents and teacher's order and appeared to accept that order.

There are conditions that affect the ideologies we walk on. Tolerance I think its a very important condition. If my parents or my teachers above all, would have been tolerant to my type of order, my entire life would have been different. I think that people have stereotyped the word order and acceded to the general conception of it.

I learned in this chapter that order " denotes an attemp to introduce unity and articulates relations within a multiplicity of elements". In addition, I noted that we tend to classify everything surrounding us, making me wonder if everything is a casualty or is it ordered in a determined mode we can't recognize. These questions are difficult to answer but with open minded attitudes and a sense of tolerance we could be capable of figuring out that order is relative, different and doubtful.

The Universe

In chapter 5 the origin of the universe is widely discussed by Savater. And while I think that everything discussed throughout the chapter is worthy of discussion, what caught my attention the most was the origin of the uvinerse as seen from the religious point of view (with God being the creator) and from the scientific point of view (with the Big Bang theory).

First of all, he gives the metaphor of the clock on the street. This metaphor is based on the fact that if you see a clock in the middle of the street, you know that someone made it, you don't think that it just appeared in the street, you are certain that somebody must have made it. The same happens with the universe, it's foolish to believe that it is just there, somebody or something must be responsible for it, be it God, a big explosion or whatever other theorys there may be.

In my particular point of view, I think that once you see the immensity of the world, the perfection of the universe and the greatness of its components, it sounds almost arrogant to believe that it all resulted from an explotion, specially because nobody has been able to say what caused it.

I say arrogant because to me, the universe is amazing, this planet is amazing, the human body and its anatomy is amazing, and to deny that only a superior being could be responsible for all these things sounds arrogant to me.

I mean, if you think about it, our body functions in an amazing way. The way it defends itself against viruses, the way it recovers from illnesses, its just amazing. The nature and its diversity is amazing too, all the ecosistems, the animals and their cycle of life, it's all jus awesome. And the universe, the enormous universe and the way every part of it is arranged, it's almost incredible.

So, in conclusion, for me, from my point of view, it sounds way more reasonable to believe that a supreme and superior being is responsible for the universe and its greatness, rather than to belive that an explotion came out of nowhere and created every single thing that the universe is made of.

Chapter 5 the universe.

This chapter is divided in three mayor levels for a human that are, first my world, that is refers to my family, my friends, my culture and its keep going. They are almost the thing that belong to you, that the first. The second one is ower planet, that refers to the people that is around us and thing that we don’t put attention in normal life but they are there. For last there is the universe. The universe is something that has not really a meaning, the universe it is deferent for every body even for the philosopher, there are a lot of meanings for it.

Some people said that the universe have some kind of order. That depends on how you interpret the meaning of the word, because for normal people the universe is a mess the planets are all over, things flying across every were… but for the scientist the planets are alien, all the comics have a specific routine that they are always following.

Other thing that scientists say is that the universe doesn’t have a limit. I think that the universe it need to stop or finish in a certain place, yes its to big but it need to have a ending point. Every beginning have a end.

Happy Animals

The book The Questions of Life by Fernando Savater, cites a play written hundreds of years ago. This play Antigone, which we have read before in literature class, has many controversial points of view. Sophocles brings up certainly an interesting theme, stating that the fate of humans is to wonder. I want to zoom in some of the aspects this observation means.

At least I, wonder numerous times. I believe I exist among wonders, creating them and also being part of them. Day by day I live thinking with curiosity, and I'm constantly admired by how the world is. I become aware of all that surrounds me and see the way all those things affect me. I believe humanity has evolved not only in a biological way, but in another level, like spiritually, destroying barriers which block the entrance to other realities.

I was amazed when I read in the book that we are like free animals, because many times before I thought like that. No other animal limit our mental capacities from the inside, and we almost all the times create our context for livehood. It is us who dare to control other beings, and that I presume is a result of our own freedom. I consent that some people look like they do not wonder at all, but deeply and in their own way, they are wondering about things we don't even imagine.
I consider that Sophocles was right to say we wonder, and that yes we are happy animals, because wondering allow us to be marveled, even for one single moment, to feel admiration for something, to feel amazed and to be happy. I consider the world to be as complex as it is wonderful.

what are we?? Animals or humans??

First of all, whan I heard the tittle of this chaper, I only thought on the difference between animals and humans, in the aspect of what do we do and what do we think on, but after reading this chapter I realized that we have some kind of differences between us that I didn't even think about.
One of the major differences that I thought it was special, was that Fernando Savater states that Animal conduct is different from human behaviour. And what i understand on this statement, is that animals are born with an instinct that makes the knowledge for them and they have prepared or done what they're going to do. And humans are born in the way that we have to learn everything from the knowledge and experience of our parents from the beggining of our lives, untill the end of them, and if you think on this, as a human, you never stop learning new things and that is completely reasonable because everyday a human is supposed to learn at least one thing each day.

Well as a conclusion I think we are similar to animals, absolutely in NOTHING but reproduction, which goes to the same end, that is to create and educate a new life, and better yet complete a kind of children however you want them to be

Symbolic Animals?

Why are we sometimes considered as animal? Why are we always compared to them? If we are dirty we are called pigs, if we aren't intelligent we called donkeys, etc. After reading Chapter 4 of Fernando Savater´s book, "The Questions of Life", we analyze some of Savater´s ideas and of other philosophers that he mentions.

Fernando Savater has a lot of ideas about the relation between animals and humans. He brings up differences and similarities between both of them. One of his ideas in his book "The Questions of Life" is that animals use their intelligence to get and achieve what they need and want, the have something in mind, a goal. On the other side, humans use their intelligence to get what they need and want, but they are not always satisfied, they continue searching for more.

Another difference that Fernando Savater states in his book is that animal "conduct" is different to human "behaviour". Animals are born knowing almost everything and they have a predetermined conduct, for example all wolves have the same conduct; they are aggressive, they attack, etc. Humans learn everything through life, starting from our parents raising us and continue learning in school, and they have a behaviour; every single person have a different behaviour, even though some of us are raised together, we behave in a different way.

According to Ernst Cassirer, we are symbolic animals. He states this because he says that we express ourselves with symbols, signs that represent ideas, emotions, etc. I agree with Ernst Cassirer because it is true that we express everything through signs, and everything means something to us, for example a dove or an olive represents peace. He is absolutely correct in his idea.

Humans vs. Animals

When i heard we were going to read a chapter about the difference between men and animals, I immediatly thought that all the arguments that Savater or any of the philosophers quoted in his book were going to be negative, denying the existance of God or simply saying that we are mere animals. That's why it was such a nice surprise for me to see Giovanni Pico della Mirandola quoted.

It's not only that I was very glad to see someone sharing my point of view on man's superiority over animals, but it is also that his point of view is exactly the same as mine.

Everything he says about man being more than animals because of our free will and God granting us the opporunity to create things, at least with regard of ourselves, is exactly the argument I use whenever someone asks me why we're more than just animals. That, and of course the fact that we were made similar to God.

So, in conclusion, this chapter totally changed my judgement of this book by surprising me with the diversity of its opinions and different points of view which is why from now on I'm going to try and be more open-minded whenever it comes to discussing this book's topics.