George Orwell's 1984-Challenge To Our Knowledge About Reality

1984: Challenge to our knowledge about reality

The Novel 1984 needs no introduction. George Orwell’s masterstroke over the decades has become the trademark for dystopic fiction. Often the themes of 1984 have become the defining features of a dystopic society. However, one needs to take into account that whether or not a society is perceived as a dystopic is usually determined by one’s point of view. What I may judge to be a horrible dystopia, other may consider it to be completely acceptable or even utopian. But more or less, most of us do agree that they won’t like to live in the world of 1984, or better, they would never want such a sorry state of affairs to exist anywhere in the world.

The most striking questions that

All our ideas, values and assumptions are the result of our experiences – or ‘sense impressions’ – of the world. While he assumed that the sensory apparatus of the body was the only source of valid knowledge about the reality, Descartes distrusted the senses. ‘Our perceptions of the outside world are actually just that – perceptions– and as such they are deeply marked by the perceiving subject’s pre-existing ideas about the world.’ We can only see the world through a filter of ideas. Kant agreed with both Locke and Hume that true knowledge derived from sense impressions, but also that sensory data were filtered and shaped by the faculties of the mind. Kant even demonstrated that thoughts and experiences were dynamically related, and that the acquisition of knowledge is a creative process. To know the world is to create a world that is accessible to knowledge. Individual is therefore in a sense unable to know the world as it is in itself (Ding an Sich). But she gains access to the world as it represents itself to her (Ding fürMich), and is able to acquire true knowledge about this world. Actually, Kant was the first to recognize explicitly that ‘we shape and interpret reality and thus to know the world is to contribute to its creation.’ Hegel adds to this that we are not alone in the world. The individual participates in a communicative relationship with other people. Thus, ‘the world created through

Through "doublethink," people consciously accept anything the Party tells them, even if it contradicts something they already know. Furthermore, they consciously suppress any thought or information that goes against anything the Party says. To complete the cycle, they must forget that they have even used doublethink. For example, Oceania is continually at war with either Eurasia or Eastasia. In April of 1984, Oceania is at war with Eurasia; citizens must force themselves to "remember" that they have always been at war with Eurasia, despite the fact that Oceania was allied with Eurasia only four years before. Failure to control their thoughts using doublethink, would result in