Eyes O Eyes, Heart O Heart

Orange is orange and apple is red. Elephant is big and heavy whereas sun is bright and hot. We know this since we perceive color, size, temperature and weight. In other words we experience these qualities. These are simple experiences and they bring great joy to us when we stop and contemplate them. The gift of life is that we do not stop at these primary experiences and are capable of having complex and sublime experiences too. When we feel awe or fear, joy or anxiety, love or loss, passion or revulsion, we experience a number of primary ideas together. John Locke, the philosopher from England told us that all that we learn comes from experiences that we gather and when we are born; our mind is like a blank slate or “tabula rasa”. 

‘All our knowledge comes from experiences’ is the theme of the masterpiece that John Locke wrote in 1690, just two years after the glorious revolution in England. The masterpiece “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” changed the way we looked at our mind and suddenly we understood.  The ‘Essay…” gave the doctrine that there are primary and secondary qualities. The primary qualities are those that cannot be separated from the body like solidity, figure, motion etc and secondary qualities are all the rest like color, sound, smell etc. The primary qualities are in the body and secondary qualities are in us. Such simplicity of thought was rare and powerful in philosophy and therefore influenced even physics. It became source of many important theories in the field of heat, light and electricity. This essay also inspired the ideas embedded in American Constitution. British Constitution is predominantly based on this essay and on doctrines espoused by him. The French adopted the ideas of this essay in their constitution in 1871. 

John Locke is the apostle of the revolution of 1688. Bertrand Russell, the famous mathematician and philosopher calls it the most moderate and the most successful of all revolutions after which hitherto no need for any revolution has been felt in England. Locke is one of the most fortunate philosophers. He completed this essay just when the government of his country fell into the hands of people who believed in his ideas. His views therefore were held and pursued by most vigorous and influential politicians of his times. 

John Locke was born in 1632 and his father’s name was also John Locke. Though he lived to be 72, all his influential works were produced in a short time span of about 6 years from 1687 to 1693. He studied at Oxford University but he did not like the rigmarole of the syllabus and university education. He enjoyed studying works of Rene Descartes. He was deeply interested in medical studies and obtained a bachelor’s degree in medicine as well under the guidance of Thomas Sydenham. He worked closely with scientists like Robert Boyle who described the relationship between pressure and volume of a gas. He also discussed matters with figures like Sir Issac Newton and John Dryden. The events that he saw in his life time were English Restoration, The Great Plague of London and The Great Fire of London. Constitutional Monarchy and Parliamentary Monarchy was in their infancy during his life time. He died on 28^th October 1704 and is buried in the house where he lived since 1691. He never married and had no children.

Uncle Sam and Uncle Tom

Uncle Sam is a popular name for United States of America. This name is associated with ideas of power, control and dictatorship. USA exerted this authority on the whole world and was therefore never liked by people of other countries. The situation however in the United States  was not always so rosy and pleasant. Its people who came from all over the world, considering it a land of opportunities, were not treated as equals. Those who were given the color black to their skin by God were considered slaves and lived a life of indignity and exploitation. 

Uncle Tom is an equally popular name that relates to USA and this name too does not show USA in good light. Uncle Tom is the chief character of the famous novel ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ written by Ms Harriet Beechter Stowe in 1852. It was revolutionary for its passionate evocation and indictment of the practice slavery in American society. The author presented Uncle Tom as ‘a man of humanity’. He was also the first black hero in American fiction. Uncle Tom’s Cabin had several characters that attained iconic status; Simon Legree, Little Eva and Topsy Sambo are even today American bywords. They made a heartrending and a dirty picture of America, which showed blacks as a tradable commodity and as people who ‘don’t have the same feelings as we do’. It was a society divided into only four categories slave catchers, slave traders, slave owners and those who aspired to own slaves. 

Uncle Tom’s Cabin emphasized that slavery was an unchristian practice and both cannot exist together. Ms Stowe accentuated benevolence as a feminine trait and also called outraged feminine feeling as the widest opposition to slavery. Little Eva, daughter of dissolute and weak Augustus comes across as sensitive and saintly whereas Mr Shelby sells Uncle Tom to the negro trader Haley and Simon Legree and his brutish black attendants beat him to death. At his death, Uncle Tom with his Christian meekness stands up to Legree as morally superior wholly perfect human being. 

Ms Harriet Beechter Stowe, the author was born in Connecticut in 1811 and was brought up on tales of devotions, Christian charity and brotherhood. She was exposed to slavery, race riots, runaway slaves early in her life. She moved to Maine, after her marriage and joined Bowdain College as a professor. She wrote this novel as a reaction to the passage of Fugitive Slave Act. It became one of the most-sold books of 19^th century, was translated into 37 languages and was reviewed by renowned figures like Thomas Macaulay, George Sand and Heinrich Heine. She wrote several novels however only Uncle Tom’s Cabin has survived.

Ms Stowe was always outspoken on controversial moral issues like temperance, women’s suffrage and of course slavery. Perhaps her early religious training aided her to be fearless and confident. She enjoyed friendship of several greats of English literature like Lady Byron and George Eliot. Mark Twain was her neighbor. Leo Tolstoy admired her book and called her ‘a brilliant soldier in the liberation war of Humanity . The greatest tribute to her came from Abraham Lincoln who greeted her at the White House in 1863 as “The Little woman who started this great revolution’.

A Train Journey Not Taken

Love for life and hatred for death is a malady that most of us suffer from. If there were a person who suffered from it the most, it was Sisyphus. The legendary Greek poet, Homer tells us that Sisyphus had put Death in chains so that no human being had to die ever. The God of Death, Pluto could not endure the sight of Death in chains and promptly sent god of war to punish Sisyphus. Sisyphus was condemned to ceaselessly rolling a big stone to the top of a mountain whence the stone would fall back of its own weight and Sisyphus will again have to take it up the mountain. This punishment of hopelessly unending and futile labor was considered to be most dreadful that could have been inflicted upon Sisyphus for his sin.

This meaningless nature of life was the subject of the famous philosophical essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” written by Albert Camus. He presents Sisyphus's ceaseless and pointless toil as a metaphor for modern lives spent working on futile jobs in factories and offices. People today work every day on the same task that has no end and purpose that is absent.  It is tragic however only at the rare moments when man becomes conscious of its futility. Camus dwells upon Sisyphus' thoughts when the stone has rushed down and he is marching down the mountain, to start afresh.

This essay introduced the philosophy of the absurd. In this philosophy he wonders what a man should do when he fails to find meaning, unity and purpose in his life. Should he commit suicide? The answer that Camus gives is No, as suicide is also meaningless and absurd. What is needed is a revolt, a constant confrontation against this absurdity.

Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and one of the most important philosophers of 20th century.  He was born in French Algeria to a Spanish mother who was half deaf and father who was an agricultural worker. His father died in WW I in 1914 and Camus passed his childhood in poverty with his mother. He was a bright student and was admitted to University of Algiers. He was also the goalkeeper of the university football team though he had to give up football later as he contracted Tuberculosis.

He was always politically active and was in and out of the communist party of France and Algerian People’s Party. He also participated in the Hungarian revolution.  He always sided with parties that promised anarchy. He argued passionately against the institution of marriage though he married twice, first to Simone Hie, a morphine addict and later to Francine Faure, a pianist and mathematician. He also conducted numerous affairs, most famous of them being the one with the Spanish-born actress and star of Parisian theatre Maria Casares.

Camus was always bracketed with Jean Paul Sartre as a fellow Existentialist who together promoted the cause of absurdism.  Camus remarked to Sartre "If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning” and this he ascribed to qualities that people imbibe when they play football or any sport. These qualities he mentioned as camaraderie, solidarity, joint effort, cooperation etc.

Camus was awarded Nobel prize for literature in 1957 “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times". He was youngest recipient of Nobel prize for literature after Rudyard Kipling and first African-born writer to have won this award. He died two years after receiving the award in a car accident. From his pocket was found a train ticket which he was to board and he did not and took the car ride instead with his publisher who also died in this accident.