Opinions - Do they matter?

 “New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.”

John Locke

          Opinions are formed in a process of open discussion and public debate, says Hannah Arendt, but Walter Benjamin thinks otherwise, he is of the opinion that opinions are a private matter and that the public has an interest only in judgments. No two people see the world exactly alike, says Johann Wolfgang von Goethe; the same person may even see and judge the exact same thing differently on different occasions.

Early convictions must also, at times, give way to more mature ones. In silencing the expression of an opinion, we rob the human race; those who dissent from the opinion still more than those who hold it. If an opinion is right, says John Stuart Mill, then they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, which is also beneficial due to the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth as produced by its collision with error.

Nietzsche thinks that altered opinions do not alter a person’s character but illuminate individual aspects of that person’s personality, a personality which had hitherto remained dark and unrecognizable. He furthermore noted that we would refrain from letting ourselves be burned to death for our opinions, for the simple reason that we are not sure enough of them, but perhaps we will allow ourselves to be burned for the right to have our opinions and to change them.

Don’t be afraid to air your opinion,

in the process, you might illuminate another,

which may be regarded as an act of benefaction. 

An opinion is something you should never smother.