Journal Entry #2

The main component of the article The Prison Notebooks is the fact that everyone is a philosopher and the need for the prejudice of philosophers to be diminished (P.59). People think that philosophy is something that is very strange and difficult to understand but there are so many benefits to getting rid of that thought and seeing that every individual is capable of coming up with their own thoughts of the world, in other words their own conception. This article explains that prior to an individual finding their own conception they follow a social group with a set of “conceptions” and the individual is able to branch on from there (P.62). I thought that, that explanation was very realistic because we all grow up in a culture that was designated to us at birth and we have since then adapted to that culture’s “conception”. However, as one grows up and start to see that there is not just one way of seeing things but rather there are many ways to interpret an idea. The article also emphasizes that it is not the case of importance to claim originality but rather it is more important to have the masses follow along with your “conception”. I thought this was very meaningful because persuasion is typically deemed to be easy if an individual does not know their own self standing and their own conception. If the individual knows what they are looking for then it is more likely for them to second question but if they don’t second question it proves the consentient of the new “conception” which is what the goal really is. I thought the biggest point in this reading is knowing where you stand as an individual so you are not easily swayed to other people’s perspectives.

In the article Truth and Power, the emphasis on truth and correlation of that to power was seen. The fact that truth leads to more power, but what exactly is truth that is very vague and how is it guaranteed that an individual spoke the absolute truth? I thought it was rather biased in that point of view because not everyone will be carrying a lie detector to identify if someone is lying or not telling the truth. Also as mentioned in the article the truth is to be conformed to the liking of those in higher status which is very much ridiculous in my own opinions because it means that the other classes are being excluded and that should not be the point of authority. Rather I think that truth should not correlate to power and in fact have a third variable that connects to the two. Having good morals for telling the truth and having good intentions for having more power could be one.