These
days, everyone has an opinion. You could even say that this article
you are reading is an opinion. With our incredible and unlimited
access to the internet and all the media we are constantly presented
with, we cannot help but be full of opinions. But opinions are not
clear, they are not knowledge, they are subjective and they rarely
tell us something about the thing that people are giving an opinion
about. I believe there is a difference, a huge difference, between
knowledge and opinion, and philosophy holds the key.
When you compare a decent
news article to a thread on twitter, you can notice a slight
difference between the two, cant you? But its hard to explain just
what it is. Plato has a theory that helped me differentiate between
the two. A good investigative journalist, similarly to a philosopher,
is interested with what the things are, in themselves I mean. What is
commonly known in Philosophy as the Love of knowledge. What happened?
Why? Where does it all come from? The trouble I mean. A wish to
understand the concepts. Plato would argue that a piece of news is a
manifestation of what things are in themselves, in the same way that
a beautiful landscape or a piece of art is a manifestation of beauty
itself. Thus when you want to find out what the thing is in itself
(go deeper) you are looking for knowledge. When you just look at the
manifestation and say ‘that’s pretty’ or ‘that’s bad’
then you are just stating an opinion. The contrary to the love of
knowledge is to just love beautiful things, or things, without
thinking about the thing itself, only about the manifestation of it.
Thus you give an opinion, almost like giving a superficial gaze.
This very populated land of
opinion was placed by Plato, as a land right in between knowledge and
ignorance. He claimed that to give an opinion, is a capacity, but not
a very deep one, as to look for knowledge. So opinion is clearer than
ignorance, because at least it looks at the manifestations of what
things really are, but darker than knowledge, because knowledge wants
to know what things really are.
To be fair to most of us
who fill the internet with opinions, most of the media we are shown
are manifestations of things. We are shown just and unjust actions,
we are shown beautiful and ugly scenes… Thus we see the
manifestations we can give an opinion about. Yet we have to dig
deeper by ourselves to really find some knowledge about things,
especially about what is going on in our world. To claim to have
knowledge, we have to cultivate this knowledge, otherwise, we are
just arbitrarily calling things good or bad, without understanding.
And you might agree with me that it is incredibly annoying to see
someone have an ignorant opinion on something you know or understand,
so lets not do the same.
Eliza Veretilo
