Winnie The Pooh Analysis

“So he became a philosopher- someone who does not give up but tirelessly pursues his quest for truth” (Gaarder 68). Throughout the novel, “Winnie-the-Pooh” by Ernest H. Shepard, Pooh strives to solve all of his problems with his ability to reason and think rationally. Pooh is a philosopher as he constantly searches for answers and analyzes situations with his remarkable insight. He can be compared to Socrates, a philosopher who stressed the importance of human reasoning and believed that the right insight led to the right action. Like Socrates, Pooh has great insight and also acknowledges that he knows very little. In addition, Pooh can be compared to René Descartes, a philosopher who emphasized the importance of reasoning and rational thinking.

Immanuel Kant’s ideas about the law of causality and his views on reason are similar to Pooh’s views. His idea about the law of causality is that it is “eternal and absolute simply because human reason perceives everything that happens as a matter of a cause and effect” (Gaarder 327). Throughout the novel, Pooh uses the idea of cause and effect in his reasoning. For example, he related a rabbit hole to company and then company to food (Shepard 24). This shows that Pooh does reason things that happen as a matter of cause and effect like Kant believed. Kant also believed that people cannot know everything. Similarly, Pooh always mentions that he has a very little and acknowledges that he does not know everything. He also believed that “the difference between right and wrong was a matter of reason” (Gaarder 344). Winnie-the-Pooh’s way of reasoning between right and wrong supports Kant’s belief, “I have just been thinking, and I have come to a very important decision. These are the wrong sort of bees… Quite the wrong sort. So I should think they would make the wrong sort of honey” (Shepard 18). Through reasoning, Pooh is able to distinguish between right and