I think that the red-tinted glasses mentioned in chapter 25 'Kant' is a metaphor for how visual perception, interpretation and opinions of things can be changed through different 'tinted glasses'. In practical terms, when a person wears the tinted glasses, he sees everything in red and his perception is altered and limited as the only colours he sees are shades of red.
However, red is not the only colour we can view the world. There are many different ways to 'view' the world. In other words, the colour possibilities (way we look at things) are somewhat endless. When Sophie puts on the glasses, she is familiar with what she sees but the difference is how she sees them. For example, if a person puts on tinted glasses, everything s/he sees is familiar to him/her but the colours or shades of the objects are changed and is interpreted differently. The glasses limit our insight of reality. Knox states that "You cannot say the world is red even though you concieve it as being so." Sophie learns that empiricists believe that knowledge of the world come from the senses whereas rationalists believe that all human knowledge lay in the mind. With tinted glasses, the knowledge of the world is filtered through and not all available knowledge is grasped and understood.
The tinted glasses are an asset which controls the way we think and experience things around us. We have to view the world with all the different coloured tinted glasses in order to fully understand and open our eyes to other cultures, nationalities, religions and beliefs.
3 comments:
very nice ideas Josh,
but how can you explain what actually cause people to see thing in different ways, is it our own beliefs blocking us from seeing the actual picture or is it something else?
Hey Josh,
I like the connection you've made with the novel, Sophie's World. However, have you considered the different areas WHY we wear these tinted glasses, and HOW they change our perspective of life and WHAT are the causes of these tinted-glasses?
Near the end of your response, you mentioned about having to view the world with all the different coloured tinted glasses to fully understand other cultures, nationalities, religions and beliefs; do you think that's possible? To me, I think it's impossible to 'swap' glasses with another person in the world, so therefore it's impossible to fully understand and open our eyes to other cultures. Do you think so? Is it even possible to truly understand how your closest friend/family member thinks?
I completely agree with the fact that the red tinted glasses limit us to seeing the actual reality of the world. Therefore when Sophie put on the glasses, she saw everything in shades of red rather in the actual colour. This means that she saw a different view of the world, in which it is all in one colour and it kind of could mean that everything is related to one another in this world, just like we are able to see connections between different subjects for example maths with physics or philosophy with ToK.
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