Sense & Reasoning. We need both of these.

Revisit the "red-tinted glasses" extended metaphor in Chapter 25 ('Kant'). What's the meaning of it? (Hint: Consider what Sophie discovers about rationalists and empiricists along the way.) How do these questions of perspective apply to your own life? Use examples from the novel and your life to illustrate your understanding of the "red-tinted glasses" metaphor/experiment.

In the Chapter ‘Kant’, Sophie was asked to put on a pair of ‘red-tinted glasses’. When she did so, everything that she saw appeared to be in different shades of red. The dark bits became crimson, and the pale bits became pink. The ‘red-tinted glasses’ makes everything seem red because it filters all colours of light, the colours in a spectrum, except for red. In my opinion, the ‘red-tinted glasses’ metaphor shows how each individual’s views may vary from one another, and that people’s views tend to be biased because of the filters.

I believe that everyone is born with a pair of ‘colourless glasses’ and as we grow up those ‘colourless glasses’ gain colour. They limit our perception of the world. There are countless factors that decide what colour the glasses turn into, such as our upbringing, environment, experiences, education, and etc. For example, if a child had been bitten by a dog at an early age, he/she may grow up with a fear of dogs. If one was brought up in an environment where eating meat was wrong, he/she would not eat meat. On the other hand, in European countries, many would not be born in an environment where eating meat was wrong. So they would show no hesitation eating meat.

This ‘theory of the red-tinted glasses’ makes me agree with Kant’s view, that to fully understand the world, we need both experience and reason, not just experience or just reason, as the empiricists or rationalists may say. In our everyday life we naturally use both sense and reason to understand our experiences. For example, on page 326, Alberto Knox talks about pouring water into a glass pitcher. We could apply this to Kant’s view. The water, which is ‘the material of our knowledge that comes to us through our senses’, adapts itself to the shape of the pitcher- this is understood by our reasoning. This would not make sense if we tried to get to the point using only our senses or reason.