Taking an Approach on Taking an Approach

In Harris' chapter "Taking an Approach" he describes two kinds of it. He leads with the type of "taking an approach" that is used in art. He describes it as "weak". This type of taking an approach is often used to contradict the original idea. The other type of taking an approach was the intellectual one. The main difference was that rather than taking a contradictory view, the intellectual one focuses on using the idea to question the idea, not necessarily contradict, simply question. Using the idea to further the thoughts on that idea. This is a very interesting concept, which can end up very confusing, but also very enlightening. By using a text to justify itself I feel like we begin to validate it. And through this validation we allow ourselves to use this idea to further our own thinking. Taking an approach focuses on the how rather than the what.

Taking an approach seems to me to be most useful in intellectual papers. In papers that discuss ideas, where they came from, how they came about, and even more importantly why they came about. So in searching for examples of this in news articles and my blogs I found it rather hard to apply these ideas. I don't know if this is due to some blindness on my part or if it is because these particular sources are more based upon facts of the day than ideas that people are discussing. But anywho I made an attempt to procure some examples. Because I found it so hard to make this connection I decided to search in the Opinion section. I did this because I felt that although most articles are factual, opinion articles may have some ideas that are that of the author. I found my example here. This is a discussion on the reasoning behind why Hobbes' "Leviathan" was not published in Hebrew until recently. Rebecca Goldstein uses Hobbes' idea that religion was ""man's terror at his own mortality" to further her idea that religious leaders use their religious texts to stir up our "inner demons".