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Tlon Sparknotes

Decent Essays

Man I am glad that our world is intelligible! Enjoy!

In his excerpt of Tlon, Borges speaks about the discovery of a nation called Uqbar and exhibits much interest in it. He attempts to conduct research on it, however, fails miserably and can only find a single encyclopedia that mentions it existence. Some years later, Borges comes across an encyclopedia called the first encyclopedia of Tlon. He becomes fascinated with Tlon and concludes that it was nothing more than a concoction of intellectuals who simply made up this planet and decided to write about it. Ironically, as the years pass, Borges comes across more and more information regarding Tlon and soon discovers that the rest of the world is being informed of the planet and its …show more content…

Clarke would offer little surprise that Borges retreats within himself because if being were unintelligible, then life would have no purpose. Clarke emphasizes that the unrestricted drive to know is what gives rise to metaphysics and that if the world was unintelligible that every person would be doomed to horrid frustration. Further, if the world were unintelligible, then our scope of knowledge would be reduced to nothing but the observation of what is in front of us. For instance, if a cow were to leave a cow pie on the edge of a green pasture(and lets say that only cows can leave a mark like this and that one cow-their cow-remained on earth) and then waltz over to the barn and the next day the farmer asked his wife to help him discover where the pie at the edge of the pasture came from, because it was not immediately observed that the cow had left the pie-and looking beyond the situation would imply the intelligibility of being-it would just remain a mystery that their cow had left a pie. Thus, any attempt at problem solving would presuppose the acceptance of intelligibility of being. Clarke further notes that one cannot simply survive in denial of the intelligibility of being and that our entire existence depends on our right to solve problems and expand our mind and make connections, rather than base ourselves on empirical observations. He also offers that nature is willing

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