Letters to My Daughter

The following is another B quality paper I wrote for my philosophy class, that will undoubtedly be marked down to a B- for lateness and overall dysfunction. I do not properly present Aristotle's arguments or Plato's arguments because quite frankly, I didn't know what they were. It was me just writing what I knew in the last minutes before my submission was due. I am not sure if it was due noon time LONDON or noon time NEW YORK, cause I defininitely did not care to ask. Basically, a failed attempt to write yet another philosophy paper. I am definitely not doing honors in this department. Astagfirullah. Sadia Kalam Word Count: 1650 Plato and Aristotle on Forms and Phenomenology How do we know the real? Both Plato and Aristotle answer the questions of epistemology and metaphysics differently. Plato believes that the most knowable things are imperceptible. In the Republic, he proposes that the most knowable things are Forms, which are innate, unchanging, immaterial substances t...

My friend Roman and I were spilling the contents of our brains last night instead of studying for exams. It was a more fulfilling experience anyway, to sit and discuss the philosophy of your own mind than to the read the philosophies of others, or in his case, a financial (statement?) analysis textbook. I do believe I am more interesting than his textbook. One of the many things discussed was the notion of fatality, specifically my irrational belief that things get better because God wills it to get better; or classes go as they do because I relinquish a nonexistent work ethic to chance (or God); or people walk away from me because that is how it was supposed to be; or I will marry X because he was prescribed to me. Today in Harper's I found an interesting word to describe this phenomenon PATHETIC FALLACY: the anthropomorphic projection of human feeling or volition onto nature Why does God have all these human attributes--anger, disapproval, e.g.--when He is Transcendent over all t...

“The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself. The study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself. Working on a motorcycle, working well, caring, is to become part of a process, to achieve an inner peace of mind. The motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon.” According to Robert Pirsig, motorcycle maintenance allows one to use rationality. Although a motorcycle appears to be only a machine, one should be able to think and see beyond the aesthetics of the machine, to the underlying form within the machine. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a book that challenges you to reexamine the world, to revisit the ancient Greek thinkers like Plato and Aristotle to gain a better grasp of your reality right now. In examining the past, we can live in the present and find the patterns that have existed perpetually in human history. “You work to live” (8): I’ve thought about this. My parents surely have reminded me ...

A Sequence of Unrelated Events: 1. I am posting past writings as a reminder to myself that I am not a failure, despite the course of events this year, with the repeated misplacement of assignments, the forgetting of deadlines; the overall failure to be productive this semester is a result of something I was supposed to learn, i.e. how to be a failure for a little while. I have seen from this experience that 1) I do not like to be a failure and 2) I am not even going to pretend to be a failure because it is just not THAT amusing to others anyway. I exaggerate my delinquency, but really, this needs to stop. Thus, posting my old assignments, written the morning they are due, is a testament to my belief that I am capable of doing the work, and inshallah, in a timely manner. 2. A friend who used to read my blog, but no longer does, said: "It's all connected!" This is not so amazing an insight, and in fact, with enough time, I could easily have derived such a claim myself. The ...

"One might like someone because he is good, or because he is useful, or because he is pleasant. And so there are three bases for friendships, depending on which of these qualities binds friends together. When two individuals recognize that the other person is someone of good character, and they spend time with each other, engaged in activities that exercise their virtues, then they form one kind of friendship. If they are equally virtuous, their friendship is perfect. If, however, there is a large gap in their moral development (as between a parent and a small child, or between a husband and a wife), then although their relationship may be based on the other person's good character, it will be imperfect precisely because of their inequality. The imperfect friendships that Aristotle focuses on, however, are not unequal relationships based on good character. Rather, they are relationships held together because each individual regards the other as the source of some advantage to ...

What do you do when a man asks you to dance? This is a metaphor for the larger societal control men exercise over women with their charm, wit, and greatness. We cannot refuse to dance. More specifically, I cannot refuse to eat. The following is a piece I wrote earlier this year for a class on Gender and Language 2.7.05 Response to “The Waltz” (The New Yorker) Dorothy Parker’s “The Waltz” is written in a stream of consciousness style that hints at the duplicitous role of women’s language. The narrator is a performer. Her oral speech contrasts with her inner thoughts. For example, when her unnamed dancing partner kicks her shin, she thinks, “For God’s sake, don’t kick, you idiot; this is only my second down”—a football reference, atypical of women’s speech. But out loud, she says, “Oh, no no, no. Goodness, no it didn’t hurt the least little bit. And it was my fault. Really it was. Truly. It really was all my fault.” Her verbal speech, however, is marked by Lakoffesque stereotypical mecha...

What do you do when a man asks you to dance with him? This is a metaphor for the unconscious control we give to the opposite sex for all his charm, greatness, and wit. We cannot refuse to dance. Gender and Language 2.7.05 Response to “The Waltz” (The New Yorker) Dorothy Parker’s “The Waltz” is written in a stream of consciousness style that hints at the duplicitous role of women’s language. The narrator is a performer. Her oral speech contrasts with her inner thoughts. For example, when her unnamed dancing partner kicks her shin, she thinks, “For God’s sake, don’t kick, you idiot; this is only my second down”—a football reference, atypical of women’s speech. But out loud, she says, “Oh, no no, no. Goodness, no it didn’t hurt the least little bit. And it was my fault. Really it was. Truly. It really was all my fault.” Her verbal speech, however, is marked by Lakoffesque stereotypical mechanisms like qualifiers, intensifiers, empty adjectives. She overuses words like “lovely” and “reall...

The following is an essay I wrote last year, around roughly week 12 of the season. Thanksgiving weekend: the Giants played the Eagles at home and lost not because it was Manning's (second?) game, but the Eagles are a vicious, parasitic team. I no longer despise the Eagles, but I still love this essay. Thought it appropriate given Giants victory over the Cowboys (17-10) this weekend as well. Sadia Kalam 11.28.04 Eagles and Ebola Ten-year-old Peter Cardinal dies within 24 hours of arriving at Nairobi Hospital. He begins his fatal embrace with red eyes. Then his lungs fill with mucus, making his breaths slower and more difficult. He is misdiagnosed first with malaria, then acute respiratory distress syndrome. His colors change: there’s blue in his fingertips, little red spots over his skin, then finally spontaneous black and blue bruises over his body. His brain bleeds. His eyes dilate. He dies. The death of the young Peter Cardinal is much like the rest of Richard Preston’s novel T...

If you really are that ambitious, here is a 2660 word essay submitted late for your enjoyment. Gendering the Qu’ran: Analysis of Amina Wadud’s Qur’an and Women (A Draft) “How can ideas that transcend gender be expressed in gendered language?” In her Qur’an and Woman, Amina Wadud asks a hard but uniquely modern question of the timeless text of the Qur’an (xii). She contextualizes the language and ideas of the Qur’an with a model of hermeneutics that is characterized by standard notions to context, grammar, and Weltanschauung, or world view. Rather than simply extend medieval exegesis, Wadud returns to the original text of the Qur’an in order to derive the fundamentals concerning Muslim women, their roles, and responsibilities. She does this through an analysis that is critical of both the cultural context of revelation, as well as the context of classical tafsir, or interpretations of the Qur’an, given that the androcentrism of seventh-century Arabia still pervades society today. She pr...

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