However, to interpret Machiavelli from this angle only would be to view his thoughts myopically. (Viroli, 1998) This is because the other piece of work that Machiavelli wrote at about the same time, the "Discourses on Livy" showed Machiavelli to be Continue Reading...
Hobbes and Rousseau The notion of the social contract -- the concept that human society is fundamentally a human construct -- originated in seventeenth-century European thought and was developed throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, r Continue Reading...
Justice equalled virtuosity. The goal was a rather pragmatic one since what the philosopher had in mind was the ideal functioning of the city (where a happy city would mean happy people). It is important to understand the fact that a city can reach Continue Reading...
The Greeks believe that the soul is an essential part of the body since it gives it life. The soul thinks, feels, and chooses[footnoteRef:1]. The interaction between the body and soul influences one another giving rise to the concept of dualism. They Continue Reading...
Wittgenstein Ludwig Wittgenstein is particularly interesting because in Philosophical Investigations (PI) he repudiated all of his earlier work in logical positivism and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP), along with much of what was tradition Continue Reading...
How is it possible, then, that we can come to know anything? Methodological doubt is best represented in the first of the Meditations, "What can be called into doubt." In this meditation, the meditator is forced to think about everything that he h Continue Reading...
Lastly, the abolition and non-subsistence to the principles of capitalism leads to the reinforcement of a communal society. This also eliminates the emergence of class conflict as a result of the inherent class division that develops from capitalism Continue Reading...
Civil Society and the Rights of Individuals Through the years, civil society and the rights of man have come to know many things. Many philosophers have helped lay the groundwork for how we govern ourselves today. We have words like democracy, autoc Continue Reading...
Personal Theory Self-Exploration When will you begin that long journey into yourself? One of the most famous philosophers in history of mankind, Rumi emphasized on exploring or discovering one self. Self-exploration is one of the fundamentals of p Continue Reading...
If it was a dream, then the programmers clearly attempted to incorporate background realism. For example, the characters get dirty; like sweat, dirt is not something that the programmers would need to create to have realistic humans, but there is di Continue Reading...
Nonetheless, this does not make philosophy any less important in the field. Philosophy today can be seen as a manifestation of the workings of the human mind, while psychology studies the mind itself. Philosophy is therefore a very important aspect Continue Reading...
Realistically Heidegger was at least vaguely a theist, which is rather contrary to the existentialist mind set of humanism, but his point was still existential and in his early work, at least he attempted to clearly deduce a way of stressing the nee Continue Reading...
Wulf, S.J. (2000). "The skeptical life in Hume's political thought. Polity, 33(1), 77. Wulf uses David Hume's well-known skepticism to advance his concerning the extreme degrees to which philosophy had been taken before returning to less radical m Continue Reading...
James believed that belief in God could be contemplated in terms of "live and dead hypotheses" (James 2010). He argues that when one is trying to find an argument for God existing or God not existing, we must consider three things: 1) Living or dea Continue Reading...
Social Theory in the View of Phenomenology: Alfred Schutz Who was Alfred Schutz, and why was his work on social theory and phenomenology so important? This is an important question that must be answered here, and will be answered, but there are oth Continue Reading...
forgiveness on human health. In its simplest form, the purpose of the study is to evaluate human psychological stress that might constitute a risk factor for heart disease. Further, the study will also evaluate the impact of forgiveness on heart dise Continue Reading...
Phantom Limbs When we ask ourselves what is knowledge (as we do when we are engaged in the process of philosophy) we are effectively asking what is our relationship with the world. V.S. Ramachandran - as is the norm for philosophers - asks the quest Continue Reading...
An Ontological Argument for the Existence of God 1. Introduction As the epigraph makes clear, one of the irrefutable facts about the history of humankind has been the existence of various types of religions since time immemorial. Indeed, ancient peop Continue Reading...
' Religion is belief in the existence of a supreme being while science is a study to explain the how. The main conflict of these two disciplines begins with the concept of life. Religion explains that God is the creator and giver of life, whereas sc Continue Reading...
Hume's conception is a more temperate one, but at the same time more vague, skeptical and relative. Neither for Hume, the substance of body or soul is not the primary focus, but the changing perceptions - becoming conscious of the bundle of percepti Continue Reading...
So in order for the good to spread and evil to be eradicated, Divine Law had to arbitrate (Thomas Aquinas, 1947). Conclusion It is clear that no one can dispute the fact that every creature is born with certain fundamental rights, known as Natural Continue Reading...
History Of Theory Behind Curriculum Development The evolution of curriculum theory by and large reflects the current of thought found in the academic-political landscape. The essence of the ancient maxim cuius regio, eius religio applies here: who r Continue Reading...
Zombie Argument v. Physicalism: In the field of philosophy, zombies are imaginary creatures that are used to illuminate problems regarding consciousness and its relation to the physical world. As compared to those in witchcraft or films, zombies are Continue Reading...
The book discusses the prevalent impression of oneself as a separate ego covered in a bag of skin that is similar to a hallucination that accords neither with experimental philosophy nor with the religions of the east, more specifically Hinduism. Th Continue Reading...
Relationship of Certainty to God From Descartes Compare With Gassedi, Pascal, and Spinoza The French philosopher Rene Descartes was one of the most transformational figures of his time and his work is now considered one of the pillars of modern West Continue Reading...
Life After Death Is there such a thing as life after death? This is a question which has attracted the attention of philosophers, scientists, and religions for centuries. The difficulty with the question of life after death is that there exists no g Continue Reading...
The metaphysical constructivists who are successful hardly take the truth of a substantive normative claim for granted. Transcendence In his phenomenological descriptions, Levinas used various accounts of transcendence to refer to the tradition an Continue Reading...
Philosophical Analysis of Animal-Human Interactions Both animal rights and ecocentrism discourage hunting, although for different reasons. Thesis: Animal rights philosophy views hunting from a moral perspective, as the unnecessary infliction of suff Continue Reading...
Thus we ought to take seriously the suggestion that, insofar as "the human individual develops biologically in a continuous fashion... The rights of a human person might develop in the same way (on the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion). Finally, Continue Reading...
Efforts were made to check the power of the majority as well as the minority, for to achieve justice not simply in the perfection of the individual soul but to create a functioning and just government that has effective checks and balances that stym Continue Reading...
Matrix and Descartes The film The Matrix represents many of the ideas of Descartes regarding perception and reality, truth and selfhood, knowledge and falsehood. The film is about a man who is awakened from a simulated world and shown the reality of Continue Reading...
1) and a boy who woke up one day to realise the world was not the world anymore, but something paper-ish. Flowers looked like flowers but were not, Milly, his friend, resembled Milly but was not the Milly of yesterday. Through his example, Bouwsma t Continue Reading...
Life After Death: Afterlife Within the Realm of Ancient Greek Beliefs The question as to what happens after death is not fathomable within human reason. As such, it remains one of the biggest mysteries of life. The belief in life after death is what Continue Reading...
Keats attempted to purify the sublimity in nature -- but it was disconnected from the old world view of sublimity in nature with regard to God. Keats' Romanticism often employed the use of the gods and heroes of antiquity -- what it moved away from Continue Reading...
Free Will and Determinism What is free will, according to philosophic interpretations? What is determinism -- and how is it different from free will? What do philosophers say about free will and determinism? These questions will be answered in this Continue Reading...
Price Beauty? 'For though beauty is seen and confessed by all, yet, from the many fruitless attempts to account for the cause of its being so, enquiries on this head have almost been given up" William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty, (1753) Not v Continue Reading...
Plato & Aristotle The Platonic theory of knowledge is divided into two parts: a quest first to discover whether there are any unchanging objects and to identify and describe them and second to illustrate how they could be known by the use of rea Continue Reading...
DESCARTES' BELIEVE IN GOD Descartes Believe in God Descartes' Believe in God Science attempts to prove how God did or does things. The assessment is heavily disputed by archaic religious doctrines. The traditional conflict between science and reli Continue Reading...
