Mimetic rivalry in 'Envy' and 'Safe conduct'
Thesis - 8 pages - Literature
Mimetic desire is the desire of an object, not because of a rational choice to fulfill one's own needs, but instead because that object fulfills the needs of a rival subject. It is meta-desire, desire of someone else's desire. Mimetic desire develops out of an attempt to imitate the rival...
J.M.W. Turner: Incendiary change
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
The late eighteenth century through the first half of the nineteenth century witnessed vast transformations in Europe, as the notions of a voice for every citizen and the power of the common people became powerful stimuli for change. Although the move away from unchecked monarchical power was...
Evil: Destroying from within
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
American literature in the nineteenth century was a journey in exploration of previously hidden aspects of the human psyche and this involved surpassing the boundaries of regular fiction to mystery and fantasy. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe were pioneers in the subgenre of dark...
Hobbes's account of religion/nationalism and terror management theory
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
Throughout Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes makes repeated reference to the primacy of human consciousness in provoking individuals to subject themselves to the rule of a sovereign. Specifically, the ability to conceptualize oneself as a discrete entity with a past and (imaginable) future, combined with...
The hobbesian state of nature: A prisoner's dilemma?
Thesis - 7 pages - Philosophy
In his 1651 work Leviathan, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argues in favor of a societal structure in which individuals must waive a portion of their natural rights to an ?artificial man? in order to avoid battling with each other. Most famously, Hobbes declared that this condition of war was...
Warfare can never be justified on moral grounds
Essay - 4 pages - Politic philosophy
This essay will be discussing why warfare can never be justified on moral grounds. The investigation will be about warfare and whether it is justifiable on moral grounds or not. To begin with this essay, the investigation and discussion will be about just the war tradition and the holy wars...
Aristotle's teleology and the doctrine of the four causes
Thesis - 4 pages - Philosophy
In Aristotle's Physics, he presents his teleological theory of nature as comprised of changing materials which are to be understood in terms of the factors that brought them about, particularly their final causes (i.e. the function that they ultimately exist to serve). In his view, wisdom is...
Dialectical inquiry and the divided line
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
In Republic, Plato (using Socrates as a literary mouthpiece) examines the nature of justice and describes the ideal city as being ruled by philosopher-kings. In Books VI and VII, the philosophers engage in a discussion of the qualities of true philosophers and the process through which these...
Sufficient to have stood: Temptation in Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Perelandra
Thesis - 7 pages - Literature
Original sin has a curious, irresolute connection to human freedom. God?s fundamental gifts to His children?reason, imagination, free will?are the very things that give men the desire to sin as well as the ability to resist. This combination makes the Fall of Man a paradoxical event, one that...
Pay a ticket, value life: Theories of drama in our town
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
Thorton Wilder's Our Town remains a classic work of existential ideas and American theater because of its universality. While the play does take place specifically in Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, this specific small-town life is a metaphor not even for our own towns; rather, Thorton Wilder's...
The decay of magic: Karen Tei Yamashita's postmodern fable
Thesis - 6 pages - Philosophy
In her satirical, surreal debut novel Through the Arc of the Rainforest, Karen Tei Yamashita asks us to believe in magic. She puts forth five original miracles at the beginning of the story: a lucky man named Kazumasa who happens to have a sentient ball floating around his head; feathers that can...
A review of Tom Perrotta's The Abstinence Teacher
Book review - 11 pages - Literature
Tom Perrotta, the reigning bard of American suburbia, can inspire compassion for the most unlikely of subjects. In Election, he humanizes heartless, bitchy Tracy; in Little Children, he measures out kindnesses to Larry the violent racist as well as Ronald the convicted sex offender. But in his...
Celtic imaginary: the birth of desire
Essay - 12 pages - Literature
Comparative study of Ellys et Thanatos of André Suarès, The Shadowy Waters and The Land of Heart's Desire of William Butler Yeats. "Le rêve ondule sur la mer. Qu?est-ce que tout cela ? La pensée d?un mort, qui médite la vie ? Ou la vie qui s?adore elle-même, dans la langueur ? Ou? On...
The Garden Party, de Katherine Mansfield
Text commentary - 1 pages - Literature
The Garden Party is considered as Katherine Mansfield's most frequently anthologized short story. In this fiction story which was published in 1922, Mansfield draws the contrasted painting of childhood and adulthood, its innocence and experience, the upper and lower classes which was...
First scene of Doris Lessing's "The Fifth Child"
Text commentary - 3 pages - Literature
This extract is the first scene of Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child, a book published in 1988 which deals with Ben a monster-like child whose birth deeply alters his parent's life. This first scene introduces us to the main characters i.e. David and Harriet and sets the general tone of the...
Fitzgerald and Borges: The desire for the absolute
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
F. Scott Fitzgerald?s The Great Gatsby and Jorge Luis Borges?s ?El Aleph? can be said to share a structural framework or paradigm which takes the form of a paradox. This paradox concerns the fact that desire is at once finite, because it becomes substantialized in an object, and infinite, because...
Historical analysis of the Shakers
Thesis - 8 pages - Philosophy
The early Shaker belief system rested on an understanding that Christ's second coming had arrived. The founder of the sect, Mother Ann Lee, experienced a mystic vision of Christ while imprisoned. This vision was of the Christ and his church on earth. The early Shakers believed Ann Lee was the...
Construction and development of anthropology
Thesis - 10 pages - Philosophy
Often times, especially in ideological disciplines, there is a great gap between theory and practice. Not all theories apply to lived experiences and not all lived experiences can be summarized in theories. Nevertheless, this paper seeks to construct an ideal relationship between anthropological...
Phallocracy in Alan Moore's "From Hell"
Book review - 8 pages - Literature
Alan Moore offers a diagnosis of reality that portrays misogyny, homophobia, racism, classism, and governmental tyranny as demonic forces. Moore uses the graphic narrative medium as a means to communicate the demonic nature of these systems of power. In Moore's work on Swamp Thing, he created...
The anti-apocalyptic Markan community
Dissertation - 7 pages - Philosophy
Apocalyptic literature often is ignored when constructing theology and ethics. Theologians and ethicists ignore scriptural images of otherworldly beasts and supernatural beings. Prophesy of cosmic suffering and references to apocalyptic literature are not calculated in the work of most...
Imagination and Self-Transformation in Puig's El beso del la mujer araña
Thesis - 6 pages - Literature
One of the first things to strike a reader of Mañuel Puig's El beso de la mujer araña is its narrative, or rather, textual structure. The novel is composed of numerous different discourses, including film narrations, footnotes, surveillance evidence, dialogue, subjective thoughts, etc. Most of...
Victorian Gothic literature
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
All was dark and silent, the black shadows thrown by the moonlight seeming full of a silent mystery of their own. Not a thing seemed to be stirring, but all to be grim and fixed as death or fate; so that a thin streak of white mist, that crept with almost imperceptible slowness across the grass...
Bajan dialect
Essay - 11 pages - Linguistics & languages
Barbados is a small Caribbean country situated in the East of the West-Indies Archipelago. The capital is Bridgetown. In the administrative side, Barbados is divided into 11 'parishes' and has about 270,000 inhabitants. Historically speaking, Barbados was colonized by Great Britain, in...
Mary Magdalene in alternative Christian texts
Thesis - 9 pages - Literature
The most common portrayal of Mary Magdalene has been as a prostitute, though even the Roman Catholic Church, which invented that story, has conceded that it is not true. The second most common portrayal of her has been as the woman who was present at the crucifixion and went to the tomb....
The making of a saint: the early life of Mother Teresa
Thesis - 5 pages - Literature
Of all the modern people canonized as saints by the Roman Catholic Church, Mother Teresa was the most famous. She was widely admired for her dedication and her charity and almost as widely criticized for her doctrinaire approach to religion. This paper will examine her life before she began...
The origins of Freemasonry
Thesis - 7 pages - Philosophy
Freemasons have been a focus of interest for centuries, partly because of their secrecy, and partly because they have been linked to esoteric and secret knowledge. One of the most common questions asked about Freemasonry is, how did it begin? It may surprise some that this question is hotly...
A fractured fluency: Amy hempel's exploration of grief
Thesis - 5 pages - Philosophy
Amy Hempel's story “The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried” appears to be a bleak depiction of human selfishness and avoidance in the face of death. A woman visits her dying friend in hospital, but instead of staying to offer comfort, she departs abruptly, leaving her friend crying in...
Marx, Nietzsche, Freud
Essay - 5 pages - Politic philosophy
Marx, Nietzsche and Freud are three German thinkers who lived during different epochs, the eldest was born in 1818 and the youngest died in 1939. As very different as they are, one is an economical and political theoretician, one is a philosopher, one is a doctor, they can however be seen as...
Religious analysis of death
Thesis - 5 pages - Philosophy
Many controversies arise from the interaction between human ideas and religious thought. One of the issues that create much confusion among religious scholars, as well as the average man has been death. Since it is believed that there is no turning back, death raises many questions, and creates...
The religion card
Thesis - 5 pages - Linguistics & languages
Marx's theory of the trajectory of the dialectic relationship between the bourgeoisie and proletariat argues that internal homogeneity within each class is a crucial prerequisite to class action/revolution. This is because internal homogeneity gives rise to class consciousness within each class;...
