Aquinas and Anselm - Arguments for the existence of God
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
Within the field of philosophy, more specifically, the philosophy of religion, many thinkers have employed theories (or proofs as they would say), arguing for the existence of God. One prominent theorist was Saint Anselm who sought to prove the existence of God through his ontological argument....
An essay on Charles Hartshorne's mnemonic metaphysics
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
Our ancestors of the ‘pre-philosophical' era - much too often called Ionian thinkers - engaged themselves in an admirable quest to make sense of everything that struck their awe. As a consequence, the concept of deity, as well as the supernatural forces attributed to nearly all types of...
Philosophy of religion
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
According to the Divine Command Theory, God is the ultimate source of morality; an action is obligatory if God commands it, permitted if it does not go against any of God's commands and wrong if it is inconsistent with that which God commands. God has infinite freedom and omnipotence to do...
Locke's empiricism
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
Empiricism is a branch of philosophy that is said to have emerged with the theories of John Locke in the 1600s. It is a theory of knowledge that argues knowledge comes from lived experience, and it is one of the many notions about how we come to understand aspects or things in the world. It...
Socrates - Immortality of the soul
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
There are many philosophies of the soul presented in ancient philosophy. Among them was Socrates who gave an influential account of the immortality of the soul. In the Phaedo, Socrates offers four arguments for the soul's immortality. This essay will discuss which of these four arguments is...
Cheyette v. The State
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
In his article “The Invention of the State,” Fredric L. Cheyette argues that the in the eleventh and twelfth centuries medieval society allowed an organized, coercive “other” to evolve, courtesy of a small group of literate elite. His idea is that following the Investiture...
Cultural anxiety of "the Modern" in Nietzsche and German expressionism
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
In his work analyzing early German film, Siegfried Kraucauer defines expressionism as “a shaping of primitive sensations and experiences” and supports this definition by suggesting that the early German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari makes use of expressionist aesthetic in its...
Reincarnation: The repression of past-life teachings political, not spiritual
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
Noting the resurrection of all in nature, reincarnation may remain at center stage: very prominent and well respected in the first 500 years of Christianity. In his "Confessions" even St. Augustine wonders about the viability of reincarnation. Emperor Constantine omitted the earliest references...
Spectrum of consciousness: Time, eternity, space and infinity
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
It has been established that Reality is a level of consciousness, and it is ultimately and inherently ungraspable and unthinkable by the human mind. In this chapter, Wilber discusses how consciousness is not contained by the human body or mind, but is Absolute Subjectivity, so termed because the...
The make-up of a successful kingdom
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
After reading St. Augustine's The City of God and Aristotle's The Nicomachean Ethics, it is clear that the formula for a successful kingdom is the same now as it was in the days of St. Augustine and Socrates. The City of God focuses on teamwork in order to bring success to a kingdom while The...
One last blessing
Essay - 1 pages - Philosophy
You are a Roman merchant, walking down the dusty road from Jerusalem to Bethany. It's a warm morning in early spring; the summer sun hasn't yet begun to bake the land, and you would swear you could feel a breeze from the Mediterranean, even though it's nearly forty miles away. You breathe...
Essay on Christ in Majesty
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
As one walks through the medieval gallery in the Museum of Fine Arts, the prevalence and emotion of the religious artwork is profound. But, it is not until one walks into an indiscreet open doorway that one sees the grandiose work that is the apse fresco from Santa Maria de Mur. Christ in Majesty...
Pascal's dethroned king
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
The problem with treating a book like Pascal's Pensees as an apologetic is that images and analogies like the dethroned king thereby lose much of their force. As a description of the human condition, considered without reference to the question of why it is true, its power grows the more we...
Reflections on The Prince
Book review - 3 pages - Philosophy
The Prince, by Nicollo Machiavelli, is a foundational work of political philosophy. Through the men it has shaped and who have in turn shaped modern society, its influence is incalculable. But the methods of political success, and, indeed, the definition of that success which it presents, have...
Kallipolis
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
Plato's Republic makes a very interesting and convincing case for how people should live and the way in which to bring about this life. His view states that people must live in his theoretical city of Kallipolis in order to be truly happy. In my opinion he is mistaken for a few very key reasons...
Equality of the soul
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
Religion is often seen as a way of civilizing the foreign, or different, and making them on near equal terms. Examples are visible throughout history, such as with the Romans conquering foreign lands and making the conquered worship their gods to allow the captured to feel a part of the Roman...
Aristotle's theory
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
The main 3 parts of Aristotle's theory, of how someone gains knowledge, are sense perception, memory, and the systemizing of these persisting impressions. He begins by saying that all animals contain innate sense perception. However, even though all animals contain it, in some it comes to...
Knowledge and reality
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
The concept of a non-material reality is one that is not only fundamentally important but also highly debated in the field of philosophy. Different ideas and opinion abound over the division and labeling of various types of matter and reality, the source to obtain inferences on such a subject,...
An anthropological perspective on Western rituals
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
One of the most fascinating and yet utterly odd rituals that the group being studied undertakes in involves a complex mouth ritual preformed by many inhabitants twice or three times daily. It should be added that while appearing ‘strange', it is not without its own distinct function as a...
Investigation tools for Westminster Presbyterian Church
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
Change is an element of any congregation which survives to serve more than a single generation. Your congregation contracted this firm to give you tools to examine the nature and identity of Westminster Presbyterian, but also to discover the congregation's environment. Congregations are centers...
Black theology and homiletics for the Mainline Church
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
Liberation, community, bitterness, deficit, grim statistics having faces and names instead of numbers; this full litany shows itself in communities of faith. Pastorally, this litany plays out in several ways. The personhood of all those in our church communities show the wounds this world gives...
Atonement
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
What happened on the cross? When Jesus suffered and died, what happened? Atonement theology often claims that the death was a sacrifice for the sins of the world. This statement becomes nuanced in contemporary theologies because surrogate suffering was used to oppress others, salvific violence...
Plato and education
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
Creationism was the prevalent education style used to explain how the Earth came to be and how humans came to be. When the theory of Evolution came into being, teachers began telling students about it. Obviously there was an enormous amount of reluctance to teach this new idea as well as learn...
Hume's skepticism
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
Hume's skepticism of miracles centered around the use of them to explain things that could not be explained in any other way. Doing so sets a limit on what we can achieve through human understanding. Take for instance intelligent design. Intelligent design states that there are objects...
Berkeley's theory of knowledge
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
Berkeley's theory of reality and reality can be considered to be the opposite of Descartes' theory. For Descartes, the one true thing that could not be disproved was that people have their own thoughts and they can perceive themselves as having these thoughts. Even if they cannot prove anything...
Plato's epistemology
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
Epistemology deals with what knowledge is, how we acquire knowledge, and how we justify what we believe. Plato's theory of knowledge is generally referred to as “justified true belief.” This epistemological theory basically states that knowledge is gained through an explanation...
Law and violence in Jewish and Islamic perspectives
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
When the above is read at a glance, one would think Jewish Law states that a son who does not obey his parents shall be put to death. However, we do not see this implemented in society today - nor are there notable instances of this occurring in history. Has it been ignored? Does this suggest...
The Church of our holy death, identity and human emission
Thesis - 5 pages - Philosophy
Eros is the sum of life-preserving instincts that manifest as impulses to gratify basic needs like sex, as sublimated impulses motivated by the same basic needs, and as impulses to protect and preserve the body and mind. Thanatos is Greek for death. “Death” is more than the physical...
Education: Where the 2008 Presidential candidates stand
Thesis - 2 pages - Philosophy
There are 76.6 million children under the age of 17 currently enrolled in school in the United States. In 2008, education reform ranked as the third most important issue for voters, behind the war in Iraq and the economy. The No Child Left behind Act, passed in 2001 by President Bush, is an...
Hegemony and dominant ideology
Thesis - 3 pages - Philosophy
The dictionary defines hegemony as the “predominant influence, as of a state, region, or group, over another or others”. It is the process of turning parts of society into something seeming natural using a dominant ideology. The more specific concept of hegemony was developed by...
