PHILOSOPHY
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Kant and the Unity of Self-Consciousness
Yuxuan Ma
St. John's College, 2021
Junior Essay Prize
This essay attempts to illustrate Kantian thinking through multiple aspects (mediative synthesis, the non-identification with concepts, time and space, purposiveness), in order to show how Kant's concept of the unity of apperception, fundamental to these aspects of his thinking, plays a central role in the freedom we exercise in both theoretical and practical/moral judgment.
A Gesture Towards a New Plato
Weiouqing Chen
St. John's College, 2019
In this essay, I try to analyze some of the most metaphysical moments of the Theaetetus and the Sophist to show that the metaphysical content of these parts are repetitive and do not stand up to close scrutiny. But these observations in themselves do not diminish the value of the dialogues. Instead, I think they point to the possibility of a new interpretation of Plato, which I gesture toward at the end of the essay very briefly.
On Death
Xin Ye
St. John's College, 2018
This essay aims to follow the thought process of Montaigne in his essay "That to philosophize is to learn how to die", in order to explore how the various philosophical ideas he discusses (virtue, pleasure, pain, freedom, imagination, living, nature) are related to death. In light of this consideration, I reflect on how the contemplation of death throws new light on these philosophical concepts.