Gospel of Judas
Essay - 1 pages - Philosophy
I believe the Gospel of Judas should be added to other books in the bible because it contains very important religious information. Even though the plot leading up to Jesus' crucifixion is contradictory to way it was written in the previous books already in the bible, the story behind Jesus'...
The story of Abraham and Isaac
Essay - 1 pages - Philosophy
God decided to test Abraham's faith in him by telling Abraham to sacrifice his most important possession, his very own son, Isaac. Abraham was basically told to give up his future because he made a promise earlier in the book of Genesis that he would be the father of a great nation, referring to...
For Plato, knowledge ultimately depends upon the Good
Essay - 2 pages - Philosophy
In The Republic, Plato tries to describe his view of the ideal society, by setting the characteristics of a just state, a just individual, and the notion of justice seems to go along with the notion of goodness. Ultimately, a good or just person has been defined as the one that serves its...
Capitalism and Christianity: Weber's capitalist spirit and potential Christian influences
Essay - 9 pages - Philosophy
The questions of what is capitalism and how did it arise have been of central concern to Western economists and sociologists since the 1840s. At that time, commentators began to recognize that a fundamentally new economic and social order - with the expansion of machines in manufacturing and...
Advertising is good for the 'humanity?
Essay - 2 pages - Philosophy
Advertising executives and branding gurus have perfectly understood the power of a man's beliefs, and to what extent his eyes, misled by persuasive arguments or suggestive images, can alter the perception of what stands in front of him. From a mere plasma screen to a symbol of social...
Descartes' dream argument and its followed knowledge
Essay - 2 pages - Philosophy
Meditations on first philosophy, a text written by René Descartes, is one of Descartes most recognized works. The book is divided in to 6 meditations in which Descartes helps the meditator cast a series of progressively radical doubts on preconceived notions, and metaphysical beliefs. The...
Defining virtues in Plato's Euthyphro
Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy
In this essay I examine the motivations behind Socrates' pursuit of a precise definition of a virtue. The particular virtue that interests me is piety, examined by Socrates and his interlocutor, Euthyphro, in Plato's Euthyphro. Like many of Plato's early dialogues, Euthyphro features the standard...
Natural sciences versus human sciences
Essay - 2 pages - Philosophy
By and large, the status of the sciences of nature or natural sciences such as physics or chemistry goes unquestioned. They conform to the different criteria put forward by epistemologists and qualify as sciences. This does not mean that physicists or chemists never encounter epistemological...
Why should the human sciences be patterned after the natural sciences?
Essay - 2 pages - Philosophy
At some point, we may want to ask radical questions: after all, why should human sciences be patterned after natural sciences? After all, why is it that we need to have such a monolithic model of scientificity? Why couldn't there be several ways of being 'scientific'? Let us review...
We would all be idle if we could', Dr. Johnson
Essay - 1 pages - Philosophy
The relationship between human beings and work or idleness has been widely debated by many philosophers and writers, including the British poet and novelist, Samuel Johnson. The author of the Dictionary of the English language also wrote poems on idleness during the eighteenth century. Advocating...
The universal human rights concept
Essay - 5 pages - Philosophy
The UN was founded immediately after the horrors of the Second World War because of the Nazi-regime and in response to the economic and social difficulties after the Depression. This need of security by law was explained by a particular tradition in Europe where in the seventeenth and the...
An essay concerning Bloom's reading of the Republic
Essay - 5 pages - Philosophy
Philosopher and literary critic Allan Bloom (1968) writes that “The Republic is the true Apology of Socrates, for only in the Republic does he give an adequate treatment of the theme which was forced on him by Athens' accusation against him. That theme is the relationship of the philosopher...
Blind Spots in Richard Rorty's Ironical Liberalism: from Posture to Re-creation
Essay - 7 pages - Philosophy
Under the influence of the Marxist materialist historicism, numerous authors have deemed Modernity as the historically necessary and unavoidable result of the development of economies and trade relations that has occurred in the Western World since the late Gothic Ages and the Rinascimento....
Charles Taylor's Ethics of Authenticity
Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy
If Francis Picabia was right in asserting that "only cowards celebrate every idiocy that emerges from History in the name of Modernity", Charles Taylor's The Ethics of Authenticity testifies the author's intellectual courage. In this opus, the Canadian philosopher presents a thoughtful...
Convergence between Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky's Modern Theories of Human Passions
Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy
Nietzsche describes the shift that occurred in Western thinking from the "enchanted" to the "disenchanted view of Nature" as the greatest "event" of our time. When acknowledging the gap in between Dante's depiction of Nature as a "canvas upon which symbols and images are painted" (Barrett) in...
Colonial mentality in Filipino Immigrants
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
The Filipinos were among the first Asian groups to enter the U.S. Unlike other groups, they had a unique colonial history, and thereby their acculturating experiences were not the first encounter with discrimination they faced. Though they were considered nationals, they weren't citizens and...
Is man one or many?
Essay - 6 pages - Philosophy
This paper seeks to examine how three anthropologists, E.B. Tylor, Bronislaw Malinowski and Levi-Strauss address the question “is man one or many?” They were chosen on the basis of their being the leading figures of three different schools of thought, evolutionary anthropology,...
Is Confucianism in china threatened by globalization?
Essay - 5 pages - Philosophy
"Confucius". This name rings a bell for everybody in the world. It reminds China, of a philosophy, a way of life or even a religion. The Chinese philosopher, better known in China as "Kongfuzi", was born in 551 BC and died in 479 BC. Confucius's life has been the object study of several...
Distinction between internalism and externalism about moral motivation : does Smith's argument against externalism work ?
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
Internalism and externalism about ethical motivation are two philosophical theories which appeared in the middle of the twentieth century. They are both concerned with the problem of ethical motivation. This implies that they both attempt to explain the way an agent can be motivated to act...
The soul, according to Aristotle
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
In the work De Anima, Aristotle presents his account of the soul. He sees the soul as inexorably tied to a physical body. This is because the soul is a form, while the body is the matter that is acted upon. Inherent in this characterization of the soul is the idea that the soul is actuality while...
Myths of origin: Their role in religion and society
Essay - 5 pages - Philosophy
What is myth? For rationalists such as Muller, they provide pre-scientific explanations of natural phenomena. For functionalists such as Malinowski they are a "codification of belief", explaining rites and justifying norms. For Jung, myth provides expressions of a collective unconscious. (i.e....
Liberalism: What are the main concepts of liberalism? - publié le 21/01/2009
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
Liberalism is a philosophy, or political movement that has, for an aim, the development of individual freedom. Since the concept of freedom evolved over time, liberalism evolved as well. However, some core assumptions never changed. First, let us consider how all the core concepts of liberalism...
What was 'Tito's way', and how successful was it? - publié le 19/01/2009
Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy
Looking back at the time after the end of communism (Cuba and today's China being particular and Chavez not a communist), we basically find only three different ways of communism; the original one, the Lenino-Stalinism in the USSR, the latter one, China's Maoism, and finally the...
What is the relation (if any) between virtue and human flourishing? - publié le 16/01/2009
Essay - 5 pages - Philosophy
When you shout at a passer-by in the street, and ask him what would be the most important goal in his life, he is likely to answer, like a majority of people that he wants to live happily. Then, we should raise the question: how could we achieve this happiness? More than two thousand years ago,...
Fascism, communism and totalitarianism - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 5 pages - Philosophy
“Fascism was the first mass-mobilizing development dictatorship that provided a frank, complete, and relatively coherent rationale for totalitarianism." Actually, Mussolini's doctrine of delayed industrialization was the first to openly affirm “the reality of production and the...
France and the United States: Two different approaches to feminism - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
Feminism is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as “the belief that women should have the same economic, social, and political rights as men” . However, there is not a single definition for feminism. This notion is rather complex and controversial, and it cannot be fully comprehended in...
The universal human rights concept and its roots in Western political thought - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
Commitment to the idea of cultural relativism is usually seen as precluding the acceptance of the idea of universal human rights. But is relativism against universalism a false dichotomy? Can we construct a “differentiated universalism” or a “non-ethnocentric universalism”?...
The Australian Strine - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 17 pages - Philosophy
Having spent my eight-month-stay between Sydney and Brisbane, respectively State capitals of New South Wales and Queensland, sharing Australians' life, and having also travelled a bit to other cities and States of the East Coast, I feel I must share my affection for this vast, exciting...
The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 5 pages - Philosophy
The original idea of the Ku Klux Klan was born in the late 1865, in the minds of six young men -John Lester, James Crowe, John Kennedy, Richard Reed, Frank Mc Cord and Calvin Jones- in the quiet town of Pulaski, Tennessee. They were Confederate soldiers during the Civil War and were bored with...
The role of NGO's during wartime: humanitarian vs pacifist ideals - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 5 pages - Philosophy
Since the beginning of modern humanitarian action during wartime (with the birth of the ICRC), the question of the NGOs' role on the battlefields has been the subject of an important controversy, opposing humanitarian to pacifist ideals. Indeed, pacifists' main point was to denounce the...
