Augustine Asuquo

Paragraph 1: In the opening statement of Aristotle metaphysics, he declared that all men by nature desire to know and this desire to know begins or parts with the senses preferably the sense of sight. For Aristotle every animal by nature has this sensation (sight) which is a starting point for knowledge and there is some animals also which has memory and can retain what they perceived. As noted earlier, outside this sensation there are some animals that have the ability to remember (memory) what has been perceived. Thus, animals which have memory and can perceive can be taught, but those who cannot perceived cannot be taught. For him, lower animals outside human race share perception of senses and memories but a real life of man is not directed only to perception and memories but man's life is directed by art and reason which places him as a higher animal. He gave the opinion that art is expertise which is the collection of several experiences and universal idea. For you to be an expertise you must have experiences and from experience you can build expertise but if you succeed out of experience then is luck. In paragraph 2, he enunciated that for individual experience that one person is sick means that the judgement must be passing through individual judgement to general judgement. He said that when it comes to action that experience has no superiority over art. In this sense, experience and art go in tandem or hand in hand or paripasu. But ordinarily apart from action, art is superior over experience. He went further in explaining that the doctor does not cure humanity but sick man. To this effect, what counts in action is not universal but individual. The man of experience knows individual but the man of art knows universal. Hence the level of question of why belongs to art. This now points to the fact that metaphysics studies the why or ultimate causes. In paragraph 3, he likened art which is expertise to master workers and manual workers to individual experience. He explicated that the master worker has truer wisdom and knows the causes of things because they have theory for knowledge while the manual workers act according to what is instructed by the master they don't have the theory themselves. Hence the master can teach because he knows (expertise) while manuals workers cannot teach. In paragraph 4, he said that he do not recognised any of the senses as wisdom because they do not tell us the cause of things but only give us knowledge of particulars. He said that he who

This was actually meeting setting. Both men and women were seated comfortably as the deliberations of the meeting went on. At the helm of affairs of the meeting is a man who was there because in the beginning the men insisted that a man should be there in place of a suggestion made that a woman should take up the reins of directing the meeting. That issue was amicably settled as the women present in docility accepted to step down so the men would take it up. The load about to break the camel's back was lifted when it came to a time that suggestions were thrown in from every corner. Men and women threw in their suggestions which were all evaluated. At the end, the opinion of a woman in this particular meeting was about to be considered as a man made one of the most silly, incompetent, and derogatory statement I have ever heard in such a formal setting. He said " how can a woman's talk be considered in this meeting when men are present; a woman that squats to urinate! " Please forgive the seeming obscene last sentence. I really needed to state it originally as was said so as to capture the intention I am about to iron out. An analysis of the man's statement is ignorantly formed from the biological fact that men stand to urinate therefore are superior to women who squat. This statement is not to be taken literary because I am sure the man was emphasizing a point through what I may call the " metaphor of stand-squat urination difference. " Actually the statement got hairs to stand on the neck of all who heard it. Some men present due to reasons I may not know acquiesced to the man's opinion. The women this time around having been stooped low in the beginning when they were denied the chance of heading the meeting with a subjugation mentality reacted in the most unimaginable way. They swore hell if the opinion to drop the contribution of one of them is honoured. Further reaction was to verbally tear the man to pieces. The attempt to resolve the situation nearly took double the time it took to arrive at that particular agenda of the meeting. Time was spent. Words exchanged. Importance exerted. At the end, apologies were exchanged also. This drama happened in a meeting where the least person that attended is a first degree graduate and the highest person is a doctorate degree holder both men and women. This " men Vs women " controversial meeting is to serve as a guide in the analysis of the topic under discussion. Note is to be taken that I intend to evaluate this controversy from the stand point of culture even though there are multifaceted issues that contribute to its practice. THE STRONGHOLD CALLED CULTURE The meeting described above is not a " local " meeting as we would always describe it had it been that those in attendance were not academically trained. One thing true about the situation is the fact that those in attendance were products of a culture; the African culture where women rank second in comparison to men. Despite the level of education some African men pass through, this education so many times fails to enlighten their mind on the acceptance of women as equals. This is the culture that developed us, the culture that reared us and the culture that shaped us into what we are and what we believe in. in this culture we are raised to view women as second in rank. In this culture women are only meant to be married and take orders from the male folk. In

OBASI ASUQUO The Critique of Pure Reason, published by Immanuel Kant in 1781, is one of the most complex structures and the most significant of modern philosophy, bringing a revolution at least as great as that of Descartes and his Discourse on Method. The complexity of the first review, the second is the critique of practical reason, and the third is a critique of the faculty of judging. In summary, the critique of pure reason tries to define credible to the question: How do I know? To this question Kant answers, I can think of the objects of metaphysics (God, I, the world), but not knowing in the sense that I know the laws of physics. Kant makes two crucial distinction: between a priori and a posteriori and between analytic and synthetic judgments. A posteriori knowledge is knowledge gained from the experience and knowledge a priori knowledge is necessary and universal, independent of experience, such as our knowledge of mathematics. Because man is capable of synthetic knowledge a priori, pure reason is then able to know important truths. However, Kant is at odds with the rationalist metaphysics poses the omnipotence of reason, capable of penetrating the mysteries. On the contrary, Kant argues that it is about shaping the reality around him. The subject is not only affected by the world, he is actively involved in its creation. We shall return to this Copernican revolution. Time and space, according to Kant, are pure intuitions of our sensibility, and concepts of physics such as causality or inertia are pure intuitions of our faculty of understanding. In other words, the subject experiences the real and the information received is processed, organized, analyzed by reason. After giving an explanation of how synthetic a priori knowledge makes math and science possible, Kant turns to metaphysics. Metaphysics is the realm of pure reason, i.e. the scope of a priori. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant achieves a synthesis between rationalist and empiricist traditions. Rationalism, it takes up the idea that pure reason is capable of important knowledge, and empiricism, he admits the idea that knowledge comes primarily from the experience. Thus, it avoids the metaphysical speculations of the rationalists without falling into metaphysical skepticism. Kant differs from its predecessors by claiming that rationalists pure reason can discern the shape, but not the content of reality. The critique of pure reason opens a third way for metaphysics, half way between rationalism that claims to know everything, and empiricism that defies reason to be able to find anything out of the experience: this path is that of criticism (or transcendental philosophy), which limits the power of reason to re-legitimized.