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Collin College PHIL 1301 My Philosophy of Life Term Paper
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Collin College PHIL 1301 My Philosophy of Life Term Paper
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Philosophy 1301[Date]
My Philosophy of Life
To describe my own philosophy of life, I have to say that where I am now is much
different than I would have expected it to be many years ago. I feel as though I have come a long
way from where I was when I was younger, having experienced much since my youth, yet still
have so much still to learn. I feel that nowadays I am out of the aesthetic stage of my life as
Kierkegaard would say, and have begun the religious stage of my life. When I was younger, I
was not very interested in learning and knowledge and more interested in social events which
hindered my growth as an individual. Never finishing my scholastic studies, I am back in school
now to finish what I started so many years ago. However I must say that now is the perfect time
for me to do so, since now I have a genuine interest in learning and the “love of knowledge”
which is what philosophy is by definition. At this stage of my life I am not attending classes for a
grade, or just to get a degree as most of the students at the college are here to do. I am here to
gain knowledge, and as much of it as possible in the short time that we have in this world, to be
able to use it for the best possible good that I can. I want to be able to use that knowledge to
know the difference between what is right and wrong, and be able to apply them to my life
according to those values. I value what Protagoras once said, and that was “Man is the measure
of all things.” I truly believe that “man is the measure of all things” possible in everything living
or not. Without man, there is no need for knowledge, or existence for that matter, or need to
discuss the subject of wisdom, philosophy, or the love of it. But what it means to me is that we
are all responsible for our own actions, and whether we believe it or not we all must measure
ourselves by who we are and what we do with our lives.
, Hawkins 2
As far as my own thoughts on metaphysics, I think that everything to me is based on the
“Empirical Criterion of Meaning”, in the way that I do not tend to believe much of anything that
I cannot sense with my own senses. I suppose that would make me an empiricist in the likes of
David Hume, John Locke, and Berkeley. However the only exception I have to this would be my
faith in God, and what He has shown me in His teachings. To me, metaphysics is everything that
I know as it is in my life as it is in this moment. The harsh reality of what I have done with my
life up to this point, and what I am doing now to make the life that I have created for myself
better. There is a quote from William James that seems to point out the fact that life is what you
make of it. It goes, “This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it, from the
moral point of view; and we are determined to make it from that point of view so far as we have
anything to do with it, a success.” What it also says to me is that whatever I make of it is a
success, as long as I am the one who makes it.
Where the ethics of my life is concerned, I think that the “good life” is defined by how
you live your life, and also how you are perceived by others. When I was younger, I did not have
very good ethics at all. I was very much in the aesthetic stage of my life, and was treating people
around me as means to an end as Kant would say in his philosophy. I think that through this type
of living I learned many lessons, but also had to pay a very high price for those lessons, and lost
a lot of valuable friends and relationships along the way. By living my life the way that I did, I
think that I lost a lot more than I could have possibly gained had I lived by more of a moral code
of conduct like Kant had outlined in his teachings. One of my favorite quotations by Kant truly
captures the understanding of what the combination of youth and the lack of sound judgement
create. He says, “Deficiency in judgement is just what is ordinarily called stupidity, and for that
there is no remedy.” However, I would add that ignorance is really the issue at hand for my lack
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