On Looking: Eleven Walks With Expert Eyes

This semester we read many texts, went over some major philosophers, and also asked questions like what is truth. Truth is what is going to be addressed today through the eyes of different people including the philosophers Socrates, Aquinas, Descartes, and Nietzsche. The meaning of truth will also be talked about surrounding how authors Alexandra Horowitz and Daniel Quinn would define it, as well as how I perceive it. Socrates was the philosopher that held the idea that he was wiser than others only because he admitted that he knew nothing and that idea carried into what he considered to be the truth. He felt that a “universally valid truth existed” (Johnston 13). This came from the truth that you know nothing and that from there you must

In general, Nietzsche’s way of thinking was find yourself for yourself by yourself and that transferred as well into what he thought about truth. He thought that to find truth you must first disregard everyone else and their findings and then go from there (146). He felt that the only path to truth was one you had to make yourself, by yourself and for your own betterment.

Alexandra Horowitz is the author of On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes. In her book documents how she walks with many people to see fine details that she had previously missed. I believe the walks to find the small details she was missing was actually her way of looking for the truth. Horowitz’s pursuit of minute details led her to understanding that “Everyone needs a mechanism to select what, out of all the things in the world, they should both look for and at, and what they should ignore” (Horowitz 108). What people select to see is the truths they want to

Quinn, Descartes, Aquinas, and Socrates all believed that there was some kind of universal truth to the world. Nietzsche and Horowitz both felt you had to go looking for the truth, however Nietzsche thought people should do it alone and Horowitz thought that people should be helped along by experts. Descartes and Nietzsche both believed you had to disregard everything everyone else had proved or believed and then find truth. The opposite could be said of Horowitz and Quin who openly seek people to show them the truth. When it comes to my own ideas about truth, it is hard for me to describe. Truth is one of those words we use all the time, but when asked to define it almost all of us are left sitting there baffles at its actual meaning, and feeling silly that you can’t answer the question. When you Google “what is truth” the definition is merely “the quality or state of being true or in accordance with fact or reality.” Truth to me is anything that can be proven to be correct. Truth is the facts that are undeniable and proven time and time