Why I Disagree By Isabella Jackson-Saitz Analysis

“Why I Disagree” – Isabella Jackson-Saitz

From a very early age, perhaps the age of six or seven, I realized that I enjoyed disputing things. As I grew older, I attempted to curb this tendency, since I thought it might negatively impact people’s views of me, but I never intended to stamp it out, as it was too integral to my nature.

I was the oldest child of two by three and a half years which led to a sense of my knowing best– as well as my sister’s habit of thinking she did. Like most elder siblings, I became practiced at contradicting whatever statement she made. I took pleasure both in “winning” our squabbles and in the act of learning how to win. I feel certain that, had I been an only child, I would not disagree so often as I do. Nevertheless I was not angry or contrary; I tended to confine my audible arguments to my sister or close

The lovers of sounds and sights, I replied, are, as I conceive, fond of fine tones and colours and forms and all the artificial products that are made out of them, but their mind is incapable of seeing or loving absolute beauty. And he who, having a sense of beautiful things has no sense of absolute beauty, or who, if another lead him to a knowledge of that beauty, is unable to follow — of such an one I ask, Is he awake or in a dream only?

In my mind, the name Plato carried an indubitable authority. Despite that, I found myself contradicting his ideas. I completely rejected the idea of an absolute beauty only visible to an elite class of philosophers. When I voiced my opinions, some people nodded along while others pushed back. The instant I moved from disagreeing internally to verbally, I found a type of joy in the back and forth– a joy that came not from my being right, but from learning to defend my ideas and considering those of