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I was doing work for my intro to philosophy course, and we have gotten to the chapter of virtues and moral duty. I picked up my deck and accidentally cut it to reveal The Fool. I thought this was poetic. The fool, as we see him most, can be seen as an egoistic, reckless man.-
"How can he be so reckless?" we might say. "He's going to fall! He is lucky to have those animals save him." The animals can be seen as morals and values. These were important to many known philosophers because they are said to bring us closer to a balanced, fulfilled life.-
However, this is not the only way to view the fool. He is not always reckless (this is my birthday card, so I hold a soft spot for him
). He could be a young pupil, ready to attain higher knowing. He may follow the wisdom of Socrates, who said, "an unexamined life is not worth-
). He could be a young pupil, ready to attain higher knowing. He may follow the wisdom of Socrates, who said, "an unexamined life is not worth-
living." The fool can embody the innate need of humans to follow an internal moral compass, one we attained as a child. The fool can very much represent a child, a little person who has not yet formed values and opinions. However, they are born with a very strong True North.-
Although family and peers help shape this little one through their own attained virtues and ethics, the philosophical child seeks to attain what is the True North of existence. What really is right and wrong? What is the benefit and harm of indulgence, of egoism, of duty?-
What is my True North? With the fool, I feel a strong outwards pull from the universe, a strong sense of urgency to learn and be shaped as a fresh ball of clay. He is hungry to know, learn, fail, and succeed. He is in love with life! We may see each other as fools, as unexamined-
lives because the values of others do not match up with our own. And to me, that is the beauty of humanity, a collective fool in the most loving sense. The childlike need to clash, to bounce off the walls, to fall off of the cliff, to be wrong. And, as we clash, like the-
force of stone against stone, we are molded and formed into something fascinating. Something that is not necessarily perfect, but peaceful. We are, as philosophers strive to achieve, stripped of our rough edges. We may even, by luck/chance, find our perfect state of existence.-
To be held in this space of our True North, our right and wrong, is to work in a symbiotic relationship with knowledge and virtue. Aristotle would say we achieve the "golden mean,"a happy virtuous medium. To be unsure, but nevertheless persistent, is the fool's teaching. -
To me, we are here to live out very different journeys. However, there is one truth that the fool teaches us here, one True North that we are internally guided to find. We are all living and breathing the pursuit of knowledge, the venture into the unknown. Thank you 
