Descartes assumes that it is reliable, when searching for true knowledge, to conclude that any principle that is obtained from our senses is false. His doubts are furthered by the deception of the content of our dreams, which is assembled and often Continue Reading...
Put another way he contends that the reasoned man must expect the unexpected, while relying on his own memories and senses to determine eventual effects. Rules must apply only when they have been proven repeatedly and are therefore a sound represent Continue Reading...
1 A DEFENSE OF PLATO'S IDEA OF THE GOOD IN HIS REPUBLIC The main prompt or assertion provided in the lecture notes, being "Whatever might be its philosophical value, the idea of the Good has no political relevance," goes completely against Pl Continue Reading...
Mill believed that any act may itself be inherently moral, so long as the outcome of that action produces a benign effect. Mill believed that the most ethical act is that which produces the most good, even if the act itself is one which is tradition Continue Reading...
Hypothetical Scenario: The creation of a "sensory bar" and the First Meditation of Rene Descartes At the beginning of the "First Meditation" the French philosopher Rene Descartes takes a philosophical posture known as radical skepticism: he resolv Continue Reading...
"Slave morality is, for Nietzsche, clearly a decadent, unhealthy morality" and it is meant to relate to people putting across bitterness with regard to individuals controlling the social order. Slave morality is, in essence, focused on the well-bein Continue Reading...
Nietzsche and Power What does Nietzsche mean by a "will to power," or "life affirmation?" "The world itself is the will to power -- and nothing else. And you, yourself are the will to power, and nothing else!" F. Nietzsche Much of Nietzsche's thou Continue Reading...
Living authentically "as if" my actions had the force of reason strikes me as very similar to living in deliberate opposition to reason -- which, in a contemporary milieu, often entails structuring a life according to personal experience or even fai Continue Reading...
Morality therefore comes within but is associated with the results generated within as well: The force of an internal sanction derives from the feeling of pleasure which is experienced when a moral law is obeyed and the feeling of pain which accomp Continue Reading...
Life in a Godless World For as long as mankind has contemplated its own creation philosophers have pondered the meaning of life largely within the context of humanity's relationship to the divine, from Aristotle's metaphysical conception of God as Continue Reading...
Self-Reflection and the Philosophical Mirror In Plato's Socratic dialogue in Apology, Socrates makes the bold declaration that "the unexamined life is not worth living" (Apology 38a). Since I am a great believer in the value of self-examination, thi Continue Reading...
Indeed, arguably he is playing a little loose with the terms here, for persuasion, while it may be based on logic, is rarely simply logic. Rather it is logic combined with at least a coating of emotion. In the following passage toward the end of hi Continue Reading...
The death of God and value propositions thus sows the seeds of what will become, after the German philosopher's death, the beginnings of postmodernism's relativistic moral understanding of cultural life and existentialism's freedom of understanding Continue Reading...
Philosophers and Great Leaders Ancient Greek philosophers will always have a distinct place in human history by giving shape to Western philosophical thought (Fieser 2014). That philosophical thought moved away from myth to a method based on reason Continue Reading...
Strauss on Moral Relativism The Shifting Sand of Moral Relativism Current political and social thought which is built on the foundation of moral relativism can no more chart a path for a nation to follow out of confusion into an enlightened and ord Continue Reading...
Plato and Kant Plato's life span was between 427 BC and 347 BC. As a youth Plato possessed political visions, but he turned out disenchanted by the political authority of the city of Athens. He slowly turned out a follower of Socrates, adhering to Continue Reading...
Mill, Kant, And Torture An Analysis of the Utilitarian and Kantian Arguments for and against Torture Alan Dershowitz expresses moral approval (with reservations) in his essay "Should the Ticking Time Bomb Terrorist be Tortured?" Dershowitz's argume Continue Reading...
Descartes Cartesian dualism emerges from Descartes's approach of radical skepticism. Wanting to know what can be determined to be absolutely true, Descartes begins by doubting all sensory perception as fundamentally external and liable to interferen Continue Reading...
This implies that a lot about us is built via our symbol systems. Burke's asserts that a correlation exists between the nonverbal and the oral. Burke believes that non-verbal language involve signs plus labels that help one to understand things. Bur Continue Reading...
(Ng, 1994, p. 93) The philosophy of Confucius was based essentially on that of human relationships expanded to the sphere of the state, and even beyond into the cosmos. Right conduct and proper action among individuals and groups would result in an Continue Reading...
Some of the reason for error, therefore, is not related to indifference or for not having enough time to fully consider some matter. Some of it is due to man's propensity to flaw, and to his limited ability (which is related to his limited mental an Continue Reading...
Ricoeur The context is liberation. In this short essay, the author will evaluate Ricoeur's hermeneutical method. They will go on to describe Ricoeur's method, critique its strengths and weakness and then raise questions that need to be answered for Continue Reading...
However, many times, viewing an object in relation to other objects does indeed transcend the permanence of the meaning and create new meaning. Therefore, our knowledge of what we are convinced is real can change, which highlights the question of wh Continue Reading...
These quotes also enhance the plays parallelism by balancing not only the sentence structure, but also showing several sides of the issue. Of course, each side is shown in the specific light that Antony sees it in, but in a roundabout way that makes Continue Reading...
But the real world was a whole and perfect entity." (Philosophy Is a Way of Life) The theory of dualism and its implications in term ethics and politics can be derived from the following concise but insightful analysis. A dualistic view of reality Continue Reading...
Question 2: The goals of the philosophies were meant to exercise a set of ideals. Which common tenets of enlightened thinking do writers Mary Wollstonecraft and Denis Diderot advance in "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" and the selection from Continue Reading...
Existentialism is one of the most talked about -- and least understood -- theories today. Broadly, existentialism is the philosophy of existence or experience. More specifically, existentialism is the philosophical cult of nihilism. In other words, e Continue Reading...
Matrix or the Cave? The Matrix (1999) has singlehandedly brought the debate over the epistemology of the Real into popular dialogue. For the first time in centuries --if not in history-- a large section of the common crowd had a metaphor by which to Continue Reading...
geniuses, history will never even be aware that most people even lived at all, much less that their lives had any real purpose, meaning or worth. All ideas of human equality and natural rights are just pious little myths and fables, since only a han Continue Reading...
Foremost, though, is the Nietzschian concept that freedom is never free -- there are costs; personal, societal, and spiritual. To continue that sense of freedom, one must be constantly vigilant and in danger of losing that freedom, for the moment th Continue Reading...
Greek/Hellenistic Tradition Augustine View In Book XIX of Augustine's City of God, his focus is on the end of two cities -- "the earthly and the heavenly" (843), which he explains while simultaneously illustrating the nature of the Supreme Good. He Continue Reading...
As a result, Plato is demonstrating social disobedience, by highlighting how anyone who questions authority will face a similar fate as Socrates. (Plato, 2007) In Crito, Socrates has been found guilty of his crimes and is awaiting his death sentenc Continue Reading...
He who would attack that state from the outside must have the utmost caution; as long as the prince resides there it can only be wrested from him with the greatest difficulty. (Chapter III) So, then one must be present and able to seek ambitious g Continue Reading...
The text deals at length and often with a great variety of matters which bear on the human condition, but there are matters which would certainly have no place in a modern treatise on politics" Therefore, it is rather hard to determine the extent t Continue Reading...
Plato and Death One of the most influential minds in western philosophy describing this search for meaning was Plato. Plato lived from 422-347 B.C, and was born into an aristocratic family in the city of Athens where he became a student of Socrates, Continue Reading...
.. [they mean] absolutely nothing!...Or they means so many things, that they amount to nothing at all!" (Nietzsche, sec. 5). His major problem with the logic of the ascetic ideal seems to be that it rejects everything outside the body as unimportant, Continue Reading...
Carrying it to the next logical step, he says that all opinions are false until proven otherwise, and perhaps it is not he himself who is responsible for his own deception, but rather it is "some deceitful demon" who is so clever and capable that h Continue Reading...
The Bible also calls for the application of human free will to morality, as does Kant. Stories in the Bible reveal how human actors either obey or disobey the moral codes prescribed to them by the Biblical authorities, namely God. When God issues a Continue Reading...
Justice Given by the Character Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic Is Incorrect The objective of this study is to prove that the theory of justice given by the character Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic, using only Plato's arguments in Books 1 and 2 i Continue Reading...
