The Philosophy of Life Before Death and Afterwards

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous

Note: This essay was written in my freshman expository class in 2011. I have tried to keep editing to a minimal, so you can see how I have evolved since 2011. The books mentioned in this essay are Juhani Pallasmaa's The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture of the Senses and Tim O' Brien's How to Tell a True War Story. In the first book, Pallasmaa makes the argument that the five senses are all uniquely contributing to the human experience and the human condition. In How to Tell a True War Story, the perceptive capacity of humans is both challenged and fulfilled through the horrors of war and survival afterwards.

More than Meets the Eye: Is Seeing, Believing?

Every human being recollects and stores information from the real world in their brains via the five senses: vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch. In Juhani Pallasmaa's book, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture of the Senses, vision and hearing are regarded in western culture as "the privileged sociable senses" which attain the highest "collective awareness" above the three other senses (Pallasmaa, 283).There are many fallacies with this perception however, as pointed out by author Tim O'Brien in his passage, How to Tell a True War Story. Just the mere sight of war is"[...] astonishing. It fills the eye. It commands you" (O'Brien, 275). But does that mean vision ultimately helps determine the truth of the real world with only one sense?

The ability to see is only being able to perceive one fifth of the universe's capable truth—as far as man can measure truth via his senses. To fully understand how to use senses as tools for measuring truth one must see that vision is not the only sense involved in thought processing. Pallasmaa states that the sense of vision has been highly valued in western culture because the eyes possess the enigma "'that not only can [they] see but they are also able to see themselves seeing.'" (Pallasmaa, 282) This quote from German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk implies that above all the other senses, thought is literally seen via the eyes and seen in the brain. O'Brien holds true to this theory as a western author by his overuse of visual imagery and auditory devices. For example, when O'Brien speaks of the jungle as being "wet and swirly, and tangled up [...]" he never states how the jungle feels when it's wet (O'Brien, 271). O'Brien never talks about the truth in the texture of the wet forest leaves. He never talks about how the jungle smells after the rain, after the burning synthetic fuel of pouring "purply orange glow[ing] napalm." (O'Brien, 275) The only thing O'Brien seems to remember about smell in a 'true war story' is "[...]the smell of moss. [...]" (O'Brien, 270) Even in this shoddy example, O'Brien succeeds at describing what he is smelling, but not how it smells, not how it evokes the nature of the environment, but he simply gives us a crude idea of what the environment is like. Moss isn't the only thing that smells in a jungle, in fact, "We only need eight molecules of substance to trigger an impulse of smell in a nerve ending and we can detect more than 10,000 different odors." (Pallasmaa, 292) If we can detect more than 10,000 different odors, why not describe them?

This lack of description towards the senses of smell, touch, and the 'secondary' sense of hearing provides an interesting roadblock in the idea of using the senses to interpret reality—how can the truth be measured if society only defines truth by only one out of five possible variables? Human reality or not, western culture has categorized thought and knowledge as something that is seen in your head. (Pallasmaa, 283) In defense of the sense of vision however, one must realize that the sense of vision is multifaceted and structured—even when one loses visual clarity, temporarily. "Deep shadows and darkness are essential, because they dim the sharpness of vision, make depth and distance ambiguous, and invite unconscious peripheral vision and tactile fantasy." This idea of deep shadows and high contrasting perceptions of light and reality creates the tenebrism found "[...] in the paintings of Caravaggio and Rembrandt[...]". It creates a feeling in you that