that the point of philosophy was to mediate, to understand our
experiences... this is one of the major points of philosophy..
to make sense of our experiences... and yet, as I grow older,
I find myself less and less enamored with this definition....
let us think about how we experience, experiences...
let approach how we would deal with the experience of
seeing ''tree's'' for the first time... imagine yourself as
one who has never heard of, seen or was told about tree's....
you have no idea what a tree is... and suddenly, you see something...
now remember, you have no experience of a tree, and this thing
was in your way....
and you might think, I see green, but that little bit presumes that
you actually know the color green... as a parent, I can tell you
that we teach our children about colors.. they don't know colors unless
someone explains it to them.. and show them... as with all parents, well, most
parents, I spent hours showing her the colors.. this is blue and this is white,
and this is green... they have no way of knowing this unless someone shows them...
concepts like colors are not inherited.. and in fact, they, children, well really
babies don't know anything.. they have no concept of parents, siblings, family,
time or space... as far as we can tell, babies are afraid of only three things,
snakes, the dark and of falling.. and that's it.. we literally have to show them
everything else in their lives...
and that is true of tree's. Someone has to show them, explain to them,
what trees are... and in showing children about tree's, we learn about
the connections trees have to everything... the tree is attached to the ground,
a connection, the tree has birds living in it... another connection, the trees
take in water, just as we do, another connection....
In fact, when we learn about trees, we are actually learning the connections
we have with trees.. and how trees are connected to the earth, sea and sky
and of course, to birds....
so, let us return to our first meeting with a tree... do you understand all
the connections we have to the tree, and the tree has with everyone
and everything? on first meeting a tree, what exactly can we know about it,
without the benefit of experiences or explanations? very little actually....
you might say, the tree is planted into the ground... but then again,
we require an explanation about the ground and how things are connected to it....
we are not in the ground, thus we might think, I have no connection to the ground.....
but that clearly is not true... the ground is human beings natural habitat...
we come from the ground, we live on the ground and we shall be buried in
the ground....( and here people will shout what about, but what about,
but what about... like cows, mooing about something and not really
knowing why)
with every bit of ''answers'' comes more and more explanations about
the nature of the answer, like trees, to know what a tree is, requires
quite of bit of explanations as to color, size, shape, connections,
and the point of a tree.....does a tree have a point?
and we return to the question at hand... if philosophy is there to
explain and understand our experiences, then we have to see our
point of reference..... with every single experience, we experience
something that was explained to us, as children... people explain to
us, 1 + 1 = 2.... and later when we reach higher math, we have some
experience with numbers...but without that basic introduction,
we cannot understand math such as algebra or geometry....
we cannot see an algebra problem and suddenly create an
answer without some prior knowledge of math...it takes
experiences to work out math problems...
so how we experience idea's, events, places and people, all come
from our prior knowledge and experiences... we cannot come in cold
and be able to explain something that we have no experiences with...
we have stories, novels, movies about stone age people being able to
grasp our modern lives.. no, no and more no.... they cannot because
they have no experience dealing with machines, technology,
gadgets of the modern age...
working with stone, does not make one capable of understanding cars or
planes or cell phones.. or condo's... supermarkets or the local mall....
it is completely and totally out of their experiences....
and it is only on approaching the 20th century, would we be able
to find people able to understand and comprehend our modern world....
and that comes from the beginning of the experiences of the modern age....
People were already in Nietzsche time, exploring cars, and air travel... so,
there was already talk in the air, by 1870 and later about our modern
technology... it would not have shocked Nietzsche or anyone in his time
as to cars and airplanes.. but Goethe, he would have had a problem
because he had no experiences with modern technology...Trains were just
starting to be a thing in his time... and more in England, then in Europe..
and Goethe died in 1832? I believe... so, in those 50 years or so,
ideas and experiences like train travel and cars and other such technology,
became part of the discussion... From Goethe to Nietzsche... is roughly,
depending on when you mark it, but that is roughly 50 years... or so....
and would Goethe have any understanding of our modern world, of computers
and cell phones and airplanes and space ships? I doubt it because
he had no experiences with any of those things... to understand experiences,
one has to have experiences with the experiences... there are no
experiences that we can come in cold and understand without some
prior experiences of a similar nature....
to understand experiences, we need experiences...
Kropotkin