The role of Eros, madness and desire, and physical sexuality in Plato's philosophy
Dissertation - 7 pages - Philosophy
The philosophy of Plato had a strong impact on the development of Western thought and the evolution of Western culture. His ideas were influential with Christian thinkers in the third and fourth centuries and with European philosophers in the Renaissance and after.This paper will examine Plato's...
Pam Gems feminist vision in "Stanley". Exploring queer aesthetics through historical reflection
Dissertation - 6 pages - Philosophy
Stanley Spencer, one of England's most lauded post-war visual artists, is also among the most obscure outside of the context of his reception in England, which included his being Knighted near the end of his life.(Hauser, 2001) In a “Self-Portrait” from 1914 the artist paints himself in...
The light and the dark - Goethe's faust and the theme of the search for inner wholeness
Dissertation - 6 pages - Philosophy
In dramatic literary history, tragedies are a form through which dark elements in human motivation, character and decision making are explored. Often the tragedy revolves around the flaw of its main character, known as the tragic hero. The hero may have a tragic flaw such as egoistic hubris, or...
Heine's philosophical thinking
Dissertation - 10 pages - Philosophy
This essay will explore ideas from “On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany” written by Heinrich Heine, one of the most famous German poets and cultural figures in general, of the early to mid 19th century. The paper will argue that in his often enigmatic and aphoristic...
Healing and the modern day servants
Dissertation - 5 pages - Philosophy
The miraculous power of faith has been deemed able to heal a countless number of ailments from the time when Jesus walked the Earth performing miracles all the way to present day medical miracles involving prayer and strong faith. But what do these miracles tell us and prove in both the teachings...
Views about the afterlife
Dissertation - 4 pages - Philosophy
Nobody knows for sure what will happen in the afterlife, we can only estimate based on our religious beliefs and personal opinions. Five major western religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Ba Hai, also have very different outlooks on what will happen to us, individually and...
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...
Why has class conflict not occurred in the form expected by Marxist thinkers and why has history not developed in the way Marx predicted?
Dissertation - 4 pages - Philosophy
Karl Marx (1818 - 83) was responsible for one of the first and most influential theories of class within the sociological discipline. For Marx, classes can be seen as basic social groups divided by their specific position within the division of labor, and distributed within society according to...
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...
Michel Foucault and his discourse on discursive history
Dissertation - 4 pages - Philosophy
Michel Foucault may be one of the most influential French philosophers of our time. He spent much of his professional life as a professor, and he is best known because of his critical analysis of various social institutions; medicine and the human sciences being specific ones. He published many...
Human relationships in the teachings of Teresa of Avila
Dissertation - 9 pages - Philosophy
Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) was the founder of the cloistered Carmelite order during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. As the founder of a strict, cloistered order that emphasized poverty one might expect Teresa to have conservative views on issues like the value of human relationships. Her...
The development of Early Christianity
Dissertation - 7 pages - Philosophy
Jesus lived in a time period called second temple Judaism. During the lifetime of Jesus, Judea, where Jerusalem was located, and Galilee, where Jesus lived and taught, were separate countries under Roman rule. Though dominated by Rome the Jews in those countries had a certain amount of autonomy...
A critical analysis of William James's statement on attention
Dissertation - 5 pages - Philosophy
In this essay we will critically analyze the famous philosopher, William James' views on attention. James appears to be right when he describes anyone in this condition is not paying attention. When describing attention as the mind's taking possession of an object “in clear and vivid...
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...
An essay outlining David Chalmers 'The Matrix as Metaphysics' hypothesis
Tutorials/exercises - 7 pages - Philosophy
This essay outlines David Chalmers Matrix hypothesis. Chalmers is a consciousness researcher with interests in philosophical questions. As we shall see he regards the Matrix theory as a Metaphysical hypothesis. Chalmers neither endorses the Matrix theory nor rejects it. Rather he respects it as a...
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...
