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...
Action is character, FS Fitzgerald - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy
In real life, what we do is supposed to reflect our personality. What we are - to the others - is first and foremost what we do and what we look like : we are judged by the others through the prism of our physical appearance and of our own behavior. Doing something "reprehensible" according to...
Moral and Overman - Study based on: Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with a Hammer By Friedrich Nietzsche - published: 15/01/2009
Essay - 8 pages - Philosophy
“There are more idols than realities in the world. […] This time it is not contemporary idols but eternal idols that are being touched here with the hammer as if with a turning fork”. This “revaluation of all values”, an expression that Nietzsche would use numerous times...
Are forgiveness and a search for the truth a better solution to heal the minds and bodies of the victims of wars than externally imposed tribunals? - published: 15/01/2009
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
Even after a settlement is reached and a peace agreement is signed, this is by no means the end of the conflict. For a conflict to really end, healing the minds and the bodies of the victims of wars are necessary. Indeed it is the necessary first step to reconciliation to appear and people who...
How can MacIntyre claim that some traditions, but not others, can escape the problem of incommensurability in their moral reasoning? - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 6 pages - Philosophy
From the moment we abandoned Aristotle's teleology, MacIntyre believes, there has been no proper moral philosophy, but only philosophers "working ... with bits and pieces of philosophies which are detached from their original pre-Enlightenment settings in which they were comprehensible and...
Judaism and Rechtsstaat - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 4 pages - Philosophy
The modern political philosophy, influenced by the Enlightenment and the ideal of individual liberty developed by Locke, considers that the political sphere must be independent from the religious sphere. In Israel, this separation between the State and the religion is not so clear. The...
Medieval Renewal: The Pre-Raphaelites' Quest for the Holy Grail and Arthurian Legends - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 6 pages - Philosophy
The Holy Grail is usually considered to be the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper and the one used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch his blood as he hung on the cross. This significance was introduced into the Arthurian legends. In earlier sources and in some later ones, the Grail is...
Alterglobalisation: "Another world is possible?" - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 6 pages - Philosophy
In the mid-eighties there were huge criticisms caused by the liberal policy carried out both by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. There were, especially in the United Kingdom, a lot of strikes and manifestations against the neo-liberalism. However, Margaret Thatcher, answering to an interview...
Second Life - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 2 pages - Philosophy
Last time, we listened to a presentation on YouTube and the various problems raised by this website. Today, the subject is as topical as YouTube and we stay on the Web, because we are going to talk about another website called Second Life.Created in 2003 by Linden Lab, it became famous a year...
Propaganda is necessary for the functioning and survival of human society. Discuss - publié le 15/01/2009
Essay - 5 pages - Philosophy
“Propaganda, by whatever name we may call it, has become a very general phenomenon in the modern world. Differences in political regimes matter little; differences in social levels are more important; and most important is national self-awareness.”(1) Actually, propaganda is a large...
Issues in and around Liberal Theory: What is Liberalism? - publié le 13/01/2009
Essay - 7 pages - Philosophy
“In this essay I shall propose a theory about what liberalism is”. Dworkin's project is here clearly exposed. And, as most political thinkers when they try to define a coherent theory at the fundaments of actual political movements, “I face an immediate problem. My project supposes...
Assess why the era of embedded liberalism (1945-1974) came to an end - publié le 13/01/2009
Essay - 6 pages - Philosophy
One of the most important events of the 1970s was the end of the era of embedded liberalism; it brought about a change in the world order. Embedded liberalism was weakened, if not undermined, not by neo-protectionism, but by neo-liberalism (Adrian Jones 2005). Neo-liberalism entails heightened...
