Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Meditations Part 5 page 87-88

'Their truth is so open and so much in accord with my nature that, when I first discover them, it seems I am not so much learning something new as recalling something I knew beforehand. In other words, it seems as though I am noticing things for the first time that were in fact in me for a long while, although I had not previously directed a mental gaze upon them." 

Is he saying that everything we encounter for the first time is inherently understood and known inside of us and when we assume we are learning something new we are actually reminding ourselves of what we had forgot? Thats kinda crazy and I think I like it. What Im getting out of the excerpt above is just that. When we assume we are learning we are actually reminding or in other words extracting a pre-observed understanding of what we are dealing with or what we assume we are seeing and feeling for the first time. 
I guess this means that we are all rusty experts. What do you think?

4 comments:

Kimberly said...

That was a great response you had, but I don't know if I agree. I feel like Descartes means that he realized things that he had never focused on before. For example, if you never really played basketball and when you tried it out you were remarkable. If we were all rusty experts, wouldn't everybody know everything? Why would we go to school? If we know everything, what would we be learning?

Anonymous said...

Ohh I see you mean for example suppose your friend buys a new car and later on in the day you just so happen to notice that same car always passing you by and you say to yourself, wow that thing is everywhere, when in fact its always been as abundant. Kind of a corky example though.

Kimberly said...

That's a great point though! When I got my car I felt like I saw it everywhere and still do! It's just what you notice one day you might not notice another or vice versa.

kelsoa said...

To put it in simpler terms... he seems to be saying that we overlook our previously learned knowledge and only after we have had a refresher do we realize that we've known it all along. That's what I got out of that passage.