Prompt 4

Lexi Graves

Wilhelmus

Ap Lang.

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

Immanuel Kant was a very successful philosopher. Not only was he himself a philosopher, but he was also a philosophy professor. This gave him an advantage because he knew all about the history of philosophy. He could compare his own thoughts to that of the past philosophers, enabling him to see philosophy from all different points of view. This made him an outstanding philosopher and allowed him to answer questions that even he had pondered.

Kant became interested with the way people see the world. His red-tinted glasses experiment was a study of how people see the world. He would have people put on the glasses and ask what they see, the answer was usually that they see everything the same, it was just in red. The fact that they couldn't see the colors of the world showed that their vision was limited. Kant came to the conclusion that everyone sees the same things in the world, it just depends on the type of “glasses” you're wearing. It seems to me that this is similar to the phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” because this shows that one person could see something as the most beautiful thing in the world and another might see it as average because they are wearing different glasses. Their perspective may be different simply because they have different interests and have a different idea of what they think is beautiful. Maybe one person has traveled and seen the world, so a sunset over a mountain top isn't as big of a deal as it is to someone who has never traveled and is seeing it for the first time. Everyone has a different perspective of the world because everyone is different, and wearing their own pair of glasses.

These questions of philosophy apply to my life just in my own home. I see everything so much differently than my family. I am the only one who goes to church in my house so my family doesn't see and experience things the way I do. My mom or sister might see reading the bible as boring, or something they don't have time for, but for me it is a part of my everyday life and a priority to me. Going to church, for my family, is more of an Easter/Christmas kind of thing. But I myself couldn't go a week of missing church because it's where I love to be. My mom tends to see more bad in people than she does good. I choose to see good in people before seeing the bad. We look at people differently and have different perspectives even though we are blood related. We simply lead different lives, so we see things differently, because we are all wearing our own pair of glasses.