Sayre (2011) tells us that one of the questions that the Pre-Socratic philosophers asked was “What lies behind the world of appearance?” This question While Sayre (2011) tells us that the Pre-Socratics “were scientists who investigated the nature of things”. This question goes beyond the physical world and what might be in the next. Being that I was raised in a home where it was all about religion I always believed that there was a “heaven” with streets made of gold, beautiful oceans of crystal blue, and angels flying around singing. As I got older I was one of those people that didn’t just believe something because I was told to. I don’t think that a question like this can be “fixed” in place for most people and I know that it wasn’t in me. So at this point in my life even though I do believe that there is an “after-life” I don’t believe that there is the “heaven” and “hell” that I was raised to believe in. I have concluded that not everyone is going to have the same answers to questions such as these but that doesn’t make one person right and one person wrong. Maybe in the end since I believe that there is something that comes after this life that I will go somewhere that is my “heaven” or “hell” and that someone that doesn’t believe will just “stop” being. I have no “proof” to answer this question but I don’t think anyone does which is why most people that ask this question go off of something called belief or faith. As stated above I am answering this question off of how I grew up and things that I have learned in my life since I have been on my own and the things that people have taught me along the way.
Sayre (2011) next tells us some of the questions asked by the Socrates, one of which was “How do we know what we think we know?” This question isn’t about the world around us by instead it is a question about us. Like Sayre (2011) says “the Sophists concentrated not on the natural world but on the human mind”. Something that I have almost always loved is learning, it doesn’t matter whether it is about something that is “useless” knowledge or something that will help me on my next exam in school. While I am not sure that there any answer to philosophical questions that are ever “fixed” in place. This one seems pretty straight forward. We know what we know by either ourselves or others doing research, experiments, or other avenues of study that proves that something we know is a fact and not just something that someone made up and told us. I think that humans by nature are curious beings that we always want to know if something is true, for real, or a story. Something’s that we question we might not have the answers to in this lifetime however that is what people call faith and that is what they stand on. We know most of what we know through science and people doing things to prove things that we know as things that we know. I have years of going to school and knowing that there are books upon books out there that have helped me come to the conclusions that I have for answering this question. The answer to this question isn’t based off of belief or faith but off of facts that have been proven over the years by many different people.
Sayre, H. M. (2011). Discovering the Humanities, 2nd Edition. [VitalSource Bookshelf version]. Retrieved from http://online.vitalsource.com/books/9781269651950