Author Archives: JACKY LIN

Balance

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I believe a balance in both Enlightenment and Romanticism ideals is vital in living a meaningful life. Enlightenment focuses more on reason and thinking whereas Romanticism utilizes emotions and feelings. When making difficult decisions, there is no clear choice and one must balance and consider both sides of the heart and mind. Purely living by Enlightenment ideas is dangerous as it threatens our humanity and emotions and purely living by Romanticism ideas is foolish as it disregards reason and the bigger picture.

Learning about the Enlightenment and Romanticism movements impacts my view on contemporary wester culture as it allows me to see how these movements have evolved and incorporated itself in everyday life. It also allows us to see where certain ideas and laws today originated which is quite fascinating.

I think the most important takeaway from this course is that one must live with both Enlightenment and Romanticism values in mind as stated above. Professor Watkins has shown in lecture how strictly adhering to one side of these values is dangerous and foolish and how a fine balance in both leads to success.

Our Responsibility

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With the recent fires in Australia, many of us are aware of the mere existence of forest fires. However, it is hard to grasp the impact of such fires as all we see on the news are just some trees on fire and not the millions of animals affected by forest fires. The image speaks sensually as we feel remorse for the disappearing monkey who is vanishing due to the forest fires that we humans have caused. It speaks to us intellectually as it informs us of the true impact of forest fires and that we need to act in order to see change. These sensual and intellectual feelings merge to create a sense of responsibility as we feel guilt and seek change. This also helps us become morally better people as it tells us to fix the problems we have created since it not only affects us but others as well.

How much freedom?

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The idea of freedom and its many sub-categories is expressed in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. It can be seen that there are many types of freedom: religion, speech, etc. The attached image shows an example of freedom of speech as expressed in article XI which expresses the significance of the freedom to communicate whether it be written, spoken or printed. The images represents freedom of speech through print as newspapers are a platform to communicate and write freely. However, it also states that abuse of the freedom of communication shall be punishable by law. This begs the question of what should be considered abuse of freedom of communication and how harsh should the punishment be?

Selfish or Enlightened

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In answering what “enlightenment” is, Kant claims that it is to think for and only for yourself and for no one else. In order to be “enlightened”, one must only consider their own feelings and disregard the feelings of others. For example, if someone were to make a large decision that would impact not only themselves but others around them, they should disregard everyone else and only think about what the impact will be on themself. This is interesting as most would see this as selfish or inconsiderate while Kant finds this to be freeing. This begs the question: Is thinking solely for oneself a selfish act or self-enlightening?

This philosophy can be seen today as birth rates are steadily declining and one of the major reasons for the decline is due to the cost and time of raising a child increasing. This has led to many would-be parents to choose not to have a child as it not only saves them a ton of time, but money and stress as well. The cost of raising a child has increased over the years as the cost of living and health insurance steadily increases while support systems such as parental leave continues to decline. However, many parents desire grandchildren for personal reasons and also to continue the lineage. If one refuses to have a child for financial and freedom reasons, would it be an act of selfishness to their parents or enlightenment to themselves?

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/15/723518379/u-s-births-fell-to-a-32-year-low-in-2018-cdc-says-birthrate-is-at-record-level