Mister Rogers and Philosophy by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Court
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

IV

You Are My Friend, You Are Special to Me

14

A Party to Celebrate the Personal

ERIC J. MOHR

Mister Rogers begins the weekly theme “Everybody’s Special” by reflecting upon his reflection in a mirror: “There’s only one person in the whole world exactly like me,” he says, “and there’s only one person exactly like you: nobody else but you. Each one of us is unique. Unique means one of a kind. Only one like you! Only one like me!” But, in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, Prince Tuesday is struggling with who he is, and whether it’s merely his royalty, and specifically his royal cape, that makes him special (episode 1686).

Meanwhile, the neighborhood is preparing a surprise birthday party for Cornflake S. Pecially. Chef Brockett plans to bake him a very special (and quite unique) birthday cake with raisins and nuts in it. What better way is there to celebrate Corney’s specialness (Corney’s “corny-ness”) than by throwing a party designed just for him, by people who see how special he is?

In contrast to all of this talk about difference and specialness, there’s also a segment that week about how ceramic plates are made. It’s a highly mechanized process where the goal is to make sure all the plates are exactly the same. In fact, there’s a worker whose job it is to eye the plates that come off the conveyor belt and to remove and recycle any plate that is noticeably different from the rest. What an ironic and strange juxtaposition! What’s valued in the factory is sameness. What’s valued in the neighborhood is difference.

A Rebellious Mister Rogers

The ways that things are the same, and the ways in which they’re different has played a central role in philosophy even before Plato and Aristotle made philosophy cool. The earliest philosophers were metaphysicians, which means they thought more in terms of categories or kinds of beings, and tended to emphasize our sameness. Since all human beings are commonly human, it stands to reason that we must in some basic way all be the same.

On the inside—on the level of the “soul”—we’re all the same kind of being. Aristotle famously called us “rational animals.” But on the outside—on the level of bodily appearance—we’re different. It’s our “matter” that individuates us, they thought. This means that you and I are distinct individuals because your body is separate and different from mine, but our “insides” (to use Rogers’s phrase) are basically the same. The soul is a higher kind of being than the body, and the highest kinds of beings, in this classical metaphysical worldview, are also the most formal and universal. Aristotle even calls the soul the “form” of the body. And while we each may live out our human lives in different ways, the way of life that is most fulfilling of our common human, rational nature has to be the one correct way to live, for everyone.

These early metaphysical considerations about a common nature and the extent that we are, and are not, different from each other (and from other kinds of living things) have their place.

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