“The Socratic-Platonic description of the process of thinking seems to me so important because it implies, albeit only in passing, the fact that men exist in the plural and not in the singular, that men and not Man inhabit the earth” (Arendt 96). After reading this, I was reminded of a similar quote that we discussed about whether there is a society or not. I think that this is more along the lines of what I tend to agree with. It is important for individuals to realize that we are a society of many people; there is not one person who is more important than any other is. I think that this idea could and should be integrated with classroom rules. It is important for the fifth graders I work with to be able to work with each other and teachers, especially since this is their last year at an elementary school.
Teachers and other adults call for common sense in these young adolescents. I found it interesting to read that, according to Kant, common sense is not an individual sense, but rather takes into account the thoughts of the rest of the community. “Common sense … can think … in the place of everybody else, so that when somebody makes the judgment … he claims assent from others because in judging he has already taken them into account and hence hopes that his judgments will carry a certain general, though perhaps not universal, validity” (Arendt 140). I found it interesting to look at common sense as a sense of the community as I thought of it as an individual sense. However, after reading the pages concerning Arendt’s and Kant’s I understand how individuals must look to the community to see what is right in the eyes of peers. Now I want to try to look more closely at this aspect of behaviors from the kids who I work with.
Arendt, Hannah. Responsibility and Judgment. Ed. Jerome Kohn. New York: Schocken, 2003.
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