Reflection Week 15

I can't believe that the end of the semester is already here and it feels as if I had done nothing, but the time has flown. Reflecting back on this semester, the most interesting, insightful, and meaningful discussion we had personally was the discussion on realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Although I do not remember the detail of many other discussion we had throughout the course, I can remember the podcasts and discussions we had on those three schools of thoughts. This is partly because it has challenged me to consider what kind of school of thought I would agree with the most. Throughout this part of our course, I have been carefully considering what my views and opinions are, and as I went through this process, the interesting fact was that I could see sense in all three, and basically agree with all three. However, after more careful consideration, I must say that I would incline more towards realist view of the world.

I would not go into a detailed argument as to why realists views seem more adequate. This is partly because whatever argument one makes, there are always equally valid argument that others can make, and thus, no one can really decide what is the truth. This is a point that really made this course interesting. I like international relations and world politics, but I also enjoy thinking about philosophical question, and I believe philosophy has some place in world politics as well. The statement "no one can really decide what is the truth" is something that got me thinking beyond world politics. Is there really no objective truth? Can we decide if realism is the "right way" and liberalism is "wrong"? Although this topic is totally unrelated to world politics, it is nevertheless one of the most interesting questions from this course that got me really thinking besides the internal discussion about whether I would be a realist or a liberal. From class discussions and current media, as well as the social trend, I see people leaning more towards a subjective truth realm. I make this argument and you make another argument, we are different, but we are both right.

This was mentioned during our Todorov discussion; does difference justify believing in different things? Is truth something that people define, as someone hinted by saying that human rights were "established" by people after seeing so much cruelty? These are really philosophical questions and seem totally unrelated to world politics, but I must say that what we believe philosophically would definitely alter how we react and live our life as international scholars. Thus, besides learning about different schools of thoughts, I must say that this philosophical question of truth was one of the things from this course that really challenged me.