Lost my phone! :O But here are my English Essays: Daniel Bierek Jim West English 244B 4 March 2014 The Importance of Knowledge and Reason in Attaining Empowerment and Enlightenment The Enlightenment period in European Literature emphasized the importance of reason, attaining knowledge, and personal empowerment. Writers of the period had to deal with great injustices perpetrated by the wealthy and powerful and they wanted to expose those injustices that they saw. These two themes pervaded the Enlightenment and worked together to be an impetus for a dramatic shift away from illiteracy and acceptance of being subjugated and subdued by the powers that be and toward self-determination. Through this self-determination and empowerment an individual could strive towards perfection and not be permanently mired in the banal and unjust realities of their life. Samuel Johnson and Johnathon Swift wrote about these ideas and how to apply them to our lives and to the lives of their contemporaries. By not accepting the social conditions and intellectual deficiency of the masses of their time they and their ilk provided a spark to ignite the desires and passions of the people towards self-improvement and the attainment of the means to better themselves—knowledge and reason. Reason is the most fundamental trait of humans that allows us to better ourselves. We can decide what information is important and make judgments about a statements veracity, or our personal opinion on a topic. Without reason it is impossible to fully incorporate an idea into ones being, as its implications and nuances will be lost. Reason allows one to take information to its logical conclusion and turns knowledge into wisdom. Attaining knowledge is crucial but without refining that knowledge through reason the knowledge will not be available for the person to use. Johnson employs a quote from Francis Bacon in his “Role of the Scholar” to assert that reason allows knowledge to be thus transformed: reading makes a full man, conversation a ready man, and writing an exact man. (Johnson). This quote also illustrates the degrees to which reason can make truth more accessible to an seeker of enlightenment: reading information is an act that provides fuel for future discussion and as such requires the reader to use the reason of understanding. The reader must think about what they are reading in order to turn words on a page into a framework of ideas in their mind. Once in their mind the ideas can be connected in various ways in order to make the world more understandable. This gives the reader the ability to relate their understanding and any questions to their fellow man and exchange refinements to each others understandings. This in turn allows and invited the reader to incorporate changes in thinking about the topic and be able to write about an interesting or specific point. Johnson relates that without first attaining knowledge one can not even begin to apply reason: “An opinion has of late been... that libraries are filled only with useless lumber… Such is the talk of many who think themselves wise... [but] learning was never decried by any learned man...” (Johnson). Johnson here is saying that reading and thus learning are necessary to become wise and that they are also recognizably beneficial to the reader. It is thus crucial to pursue the attainment of knowledge if one seeks enlightenment / wisdom as well as a better life. Empowerment of the individual is achieved by exchanging of ideas between people as well as replacing unjust or improper ideas with beneficial notions. It is with these thoughts that Swift tackles the social and economic issues facing his fellow Irishmen and Dubliners in his “A Modest Proposal”. He expresses the hardships faced by the people and suggests various methods by which their situations could be improved. It is obvious that much of what he suggests is satirical and not intended to be directly applied: “[Many children should] be offered in sale... [and fed well to] render them plump and fat for a good table... Let no man talk to me of … introducing a vein of parsimony, providence, and temperence...”, thus he begs the reader to examine the problem and proposed solution, use reason to distinguish the sarcasm regarding the real solutions from the exaggerated, uncouth, and immoral proposals, and hopefully invigorate the reader, providing a stepping stone to their personal empowerment as they will see a problem that affects them and their friends and family and will want to solve it by either the real means suggested or by some other means that they themselves would have to come up with. In pushing the reader towards critically analyzing his work he is emphasizing that reason is essential in order to make morally sound and just decisions. He proposes a decidedly unreasonable and unethical notion in order to make the reader empower themselves to stand up for themselves and take responsibility for their personal social and economic betterment. Johnson and Swift both therefore indicate the importance of first attaining knowledge, as in reading books in a library or reckoning the number and situation of people in deplorable conditions. Without this firm basis for understanding one cannot proceed to reason through this information by themselves or with others, and for them and other Enlightenment writers reason was the ladder to personal empowerment as it allows one to distinguish beneficial from detrimental activities. Word Count: 876 Works Cited James, Lawall, Patterson, Spacks, Thalmann, eds. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature, Volume 2, 8th edition. W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. Print. Johnson, Samuel. The Role of the Scholar. Swift, Jonathon. 鄭 Modest Proposal.・James, Lawall, Patterson, Spacks, Thalmann 341-347. Daniel Bierek Jim West English 244B 4 March 2014 The Purpose of Reading and the Most Noble Pursuit for Enlightenment Thinkers and Romantics The Enlightenments focus on factual information and the power that meditating on it provides distinguishes it from the Romantic perspective of expressing personal feelings and of the shared experience of all humans in that the Enlightenment thinkers were more interested in how the world worked while the Romantics were focused on how people felt and how situations affected their emotions and state of mind. In Samuel Johnsons “Role of the Scholar,” the author relates that reading is vital to advancing the state of human knowledge. He refers to advocates of reason, noting that they say that “... much is to be discovered by attention and meditation...” (Johnson) to the writings of previous generations and on the knowledge gained from them. Once a person has discovered knowledge “... [he] is next to consider, how he shall most widely diffuse... it” (Johnson). Johnson is suggesting that knowledge and reason can be cumulative throughout time for humanity and that people who seek knowledge are “...by no means to be accounted useless...” (Johnson). This means that reason and the pursuit of knowledge are considered worthy and respectable endeavors. Interestingly, Jean-Jacques Rousseau describes spending a great deal of time reading as a child, as well as sharing the experience with other people: “my interest in the entertaining literature became so strong that we read by turns continuously, and spent whole nights so engaged,” (Rousseau) however rather than reading factual books as Johnson had suggested, Rousseau read the fiction of novels. Where Johnson had suggested seeking to build on the knowledge one as well as all humanity has and have gained by further reading and analysis, Rousseaus actions were to read for the thrill and pleasure of it. He didnt gain knowledge “I had no idea of the facts, but I was already familiar with every feeling” (Rousseau), but instead gained “... the strangest and most romantic notions about human life...” (Rousseau). Rousseau didnt seek enlightenment, he sought powerful feelings and emotions. For him it was also more important that others understood his emotional perspective whereas Johnson was focused on gaining and sharing pragmatic details. The Romantic sentiment was towards introspection and self-discovery whereas the Enlightenments driving force was in participating in the destiny of practical human knowledge. In “To Autumn” John Keats describes being among nature not in a manner of cataloging or enumerating but rather trying to evoke a visceral feeling of being alive: “... flowers for the Bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has oer-brimmed their clamm cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?... with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours” (Keats). Keats is emphasizing that observing or otherwise experiencing nature is a shared human experience that is beautiful and not to be taken for granted. The willful separation from other humans implies the importance of individual sensation and personal reflection felt by Keats and this feeling is shared by the Romantics. This focus on the intangible emotion of man allows them to be more attuned to subtle beauty in Nature and to the sorrowful, slow plodding of time that propels us towards our ultimate fate. This passage of time for Johnson and the Enlightenment writers was seen more as a torch being passed from previous generations; one that should not be forgotten and extinguished but one that while held with care and conscientious, urgent determination by those special, lucky currently living people. The individualism and introspection of the Romantics is in contrast to the supreme, somewhat divine regard held towards social interaction and determined effort towards factual truth by Johnson: “Of those whom Providence has qualified to make any additions to human knowledge...” (Johnson) and “it is, however, reasonable to have _perfection_ in our eye; that we may always advance towards it, though we know it never can be reached (Johnson). Johnson is saying that gaining knowledge or adding to human knowledge propels us towards perfection and that it is therefore honorable for one to work towards those actions. This is in an exemplification of the ideals of the Enlightenment, that attainment of knowledge, reasoning about the knowledge, and using that knowledge and reasoning for personal or societal benefit. Word Count: 766 Works Cited James, Lawall, Patterson, Spacks, Thalmann, eds. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature, Volume 2, 8th edition. W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. Print. Johnson, Samuel. The Role of the Scholar Keats, John. 典o Autumn.・ James, Lawall, Patterson, Spacks, Thalmann 763-764. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 鼎onfessions.・James, Lawall, Patterson, Spacks, Thalmann 498-519.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 17:21:10 +0000
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