Blog Post #3

Human understanding in a classical form causes us to view objects in our world according their functions and purposes rather than their physical appearance.  A romantic understanding, on the other hand, judges objects based on their immediate physical appearance, or form.  The distinction between classical and romantic human understanding is roughly similar to that of function and form.

I view myself as having much more of a classical mind, but I can admit to having some tendencies and views of a romantic mind as well.  I will use the example of my newly acquired project car, a machine with an admittedly large amount of classical value, to explain this.  While I view it largely in terms of its classical value, I appreciate and care about a few romantic aspects of it as well.  First off, it is a relatively old car, being produced in 1994.  While I did not choose it particularly because of the way it looks, physical appearance definitely came into play when I started considering this car and similar ones to it.  Being an old, small, German-made coupe, it is certainly styled well.  The body style and profile cause the car to be regarded nowadays as quite a classic, which seems misleading until it is clarified that this is due to romantic reasons.  The appearance of the car became representative and iconic to what the brand was doing during the 1990's.  The contours of the body are aesthetically pleasing to me.  There are other romantic aspects of the car that tick me off, and in this way I am also seeing romantically.  When my hands rest on the steering wheel, my left thumb sits on a portion where the padding and leather has been worn and ripped away completely.  This is both classically and romantically unpleasant.  The hood of the car has constantly been a source of romantic unease for me.  It has persistent small flecks of white paint that don't seem to want to come off no matter how hard I try, the the finish is beginning to crack or become worn away in some places.  While this is not immediately apparent until I get close and look hard at the hood, it frustrates me to no end and I have been considering purchasing a new hood.  My last example of romantic thinking as it relates to myself and my car relates to how the hood sits when closed.  When I used to close the hood, it sat unevenly and there was a larger gap on the right side than there was on the left.  This frustrated me as well, so I used the dominant classical part of my mind to fix the problem by examining the hood to find that there were two adjustable pins on the hood that secured into release holes above the headlights to keep the hood in place when it closed.  The right one wasn't long enough to stay secured in its hole, so I adjusted it with a screwdriver to solve this problem and I was very satisfied with myself for figuring this out and fixing it.

Now for the classical aspect of my car, which is much larger and significantly more complicated.  I bought the car for primarily classical reasons and I have an overwhelmingly classical mind.  The car was built by its previous owner to be somewhat of a track toy, meaning that as much weight was stripped from the car as possible.  When I bought it, the back seat was removed and there were no seat belts in it, just 5-point racing harnesses for the driver and passenger.  The carpet was removed as well and as much of the interior as possible was stripped to save weight.  The car still doesn't have a spare tire in the trunk as it once had.  The windshield was also cracked when I bought it.  Now you might be thinking that this car sounds like quite the piece of junk, and you must be wondering why I bought it instead of some other perfectly good German coupe from the 90's.  I bought the car for classical reasons, and why it may not make sense to many other people, it made sense to me.  The body of the car was from a 94 coupe, but all of the internals, including the engine, wheels, transmission and suspension among other things, had been swapped over from a car that had been gutted by the owner.  The donor car was a '97, a high performance version of my car costing 4 times as much.  The parts alone were worth as much as I paid for the car, and I got a very good deal for it.  The guy who sold it to me was very knowledgeable, and was able to answer every question I had.  He also explained to me in detail everything that had been done to the car.  He knew what he was talking about and seemed to think about cars very similarly to me.  I talked with him for hours before putting a down payment on the car before I later bought it and picked it up to drive home.  I maintain a healthy relationship with him to this day, and I have had many questions answered.  In addition, I have bought parts and upgrades from him since buying the car, and I have had no regrets thus far.

While classical and romantic views are opposed to one another, I believe that both have validity in the real world.  Even though they are irreconcilable with one another, I believe that they are able to coincide.  For example, when something is fixed in a romantic sense, it will often also fix a classical function of the object in question.  This can be reversed as well, as when something functions better it will often look or sound better.  Although I overwhelmingly think in a classical sense, I definitely don't overlook the value of the romantic perspective or physical appearances of objects in our world.