Abstract This paper looks at the philosophical writings of Rousseau where he examines the natural state, the state of nature, from which man has been removed by civilization. Rousseau states that the idea of morality comes with the formation of civil society and precedes the formation of political society. In this work, Rousseau distances himself from the optimistic, enlightened, and progressive attitudes of the eighteenth century. The paper shows how Rousseau characterizes modern society as not only incorporating, but fostering and demanding, deep and hateful inequalities between people, leading them further and further into corruption and misery.
From the Paper "With the creation of private property, there developed a sense of insecurity and conflict leading to the creation of political society through the social contract. This was conceived of by Rousseau as a real contract between the governors and the governed, with the governors selected by the governed. This precludes a despotic form of government, at least at this stage, for such a form of government returns people to the state of nature in which all are the same and all moral distinctions vanish under the power of the despot. The social contract requires some form of consent. If we have become slaves, it is because we have ceded too much power to the despots and have allowed them to void the social contract."
An comparison of Socrates, in Plato's "Five Dialogues", and Gilgamesh, in the "Epic of Gilgamesh" - comparison on their views on death and the afterlife.
Abstract This paper is a comparison between the way the Socrates sees life and death and the way that Gilgamesh sees it - what they think the afterlife is like, how that belief effects the way they life their lives, the changes that Gilgamesh's views about life and death undergo through his trials, Socrates focus on reason, Gilgamesh's focus on the passions/instincts, separation of the body and soul, etc.
From the Paper "Questions of life and death have been asked and answered in a vast number of ways by every culture and individual throughout history. In Plato: Five Dialogues and The Epic of Gilgamesh, characters Socrates and Gilgamesh understand these issues very differently. Questions of the how to live one's life, how to come to terms with death, and what can be expected of the afterlife are three main points in which their perceptions differ. Gilgamesh struggles and evolves with these issues, while Socrates has come to terms with and accepts his beliefs on these issues."
Abstract The paper examines the book "Raising Up A Prophet: The African-American Encounter With Gandhi" by Sudarshan Kapur, which describes how African-Americans became aware of Gandhi and used the ideas of his movement to facilitate the desegregation of America. The paper shows how African-American journals and newspapers like 'The Crisis' and 'The Chicago Defender', helped bring the effects of the Gandhian movement in India to the United States.
From the Paper "?Watch the people of India,? is a phrase taken from a piece in the Chicago Defender by Mary Church Terrel. In "Raising Up A Prophet: The African-American Encounter WIth Gandhi" by Sudarshan Kapur, Terrel's advice outlines the first step toward African-American freedom. Kapur's book describes how African-Americans became aware of Gandhi, and used the ideas of his movement to facilitate the desegregation of America. From this we can see the notion that a leader of desegregation (Martin Luther King Jr.) was born from an understanding and combination of Christianity and the methods of Gandhi."
Abstract This paper examines the contemporary issue of "artificial intelligence" by looking at potent arguments provided by leading philosophers of the mind and body question. It explains the personal position and philosophy of the author concerning the question of artificial intelligence and whether, in the end, men and machines are more alike or are in fact different living machines running on a kind of evolutionarily-advanced software or indeed something much more than that.
From the Paper "This contemporary issue, the question of humans and beings and machines, has a tendency to pull at me from both sides in the debate. On the one hand, I want to believe that humans are wholly physical beings and a kind of living machine. I see the work of writers like Hugh Elliot and Christopher Evans, who make me feel better by giving me special status as a physical being due to the complexity of the trillions of interconnected neurons that make up my brain, and it all seems so logical. I add my own scientific, concrete mind and non-religious background, and the comparison of man and machine seems clear. On the other hand, these philosophers are really just guessing when they explain how our mind and consciousness work, for the real problem is that despite scientific progress we still do not understand enough about ourselves."
This paper reviews Susanne Langer's "Philosophy in a New Key", a critique of her theory of art and focuses on her concept of art as presentational symbols.
1,350 words (approx. 5.4 pages), 1 source, 1974, $ 47.95
From the Paper "In her book, "Philosophy in a New Key", Susanne Langer draws a provocative distinction between verbal discourse and works of art. According to Langer, works of art are presentational symbols. These symbols conceptualize the flux of impressions in the sensory field and transform them into a concrete form. They articulate complex and subtle feelings and emotions which would be incommunicable through language. Presentational symbols differ from Discursive symbols (language) in that they have no vocabulary or syntax. One cannot, according to Langer, obtain meaning from a part of an art work in the same way as one can from part of a sentence. The art work has meaning only in as much as one scrutinizes the work as a whole, a constituent element has no intrinsic meaning. Presentational symbols are no less capable of articulation than are words. However, the laws ... "
From the Paper "The purpose of this research is to provide an analysis of the treatment of the concepts of consciousness and freedom by Sartre and Heidegger in their works Being and Nothingness and Being and Time.
Sartre's Being and Nothingness is in fact entirely a study of consciousness, of its existence and its absence. As such, the book qualifies as, and can truly be understood only as, a work of phenomenological psychology. At the heart of this specific psychology is the belief that much of what man perceives to be immanent and "within" his consciousness is in fact an illusion. The event we perceive as immanent is in fact not the event itself, but rather our consciousness of the possibility of that event occurring. Such subtle distinctions provide the structure of Being and Nothingness. Without an understanding of those distinctions ... "
This paper discuses Kant's "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals": ethics & morality are metaphysical in nature; ethics can be divided into empirical knowledge and a priori knowledge; compared to Aristotle and Hume.
1,350 words (approx. 5.4 pages), 3 sources, 1983, $ 47.95
From the Paper "Immanuel Kant begins his work, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, by dividing human knowledge into three branches: logic; physics; and ethics.He further divides ethics (which relates indirectly to reason), into empirical knowledge, and a priori knowledge. With reference to ethical behavior, the first term applies to sensuous experience, and the second to some inborn intrinsic knowledge. By making these distinctions Kant immediately alerts the reader that he finds morality and ethics to be metaphysical in nature. In other words, he finds some human concepts are simply consistent within themselves and must be excepted as such. For Kant, then, ethics, and therefore reason, are part of the human condition and have certain qualities that are ... "
From the Paper "The Darwinian revolution, encompassing the first six decades of the 19th Century, constitutes one of the most significant turning points in natural science. Moreover, ... the evolutionary point of view moved rapidly from the status of an almost heretical viewpoint to a theory with wide intellectual and popular acceptance. This rapid acceptance occurred not only because of scientific validity, but also because the basic ideas meshed with other intellectual developments of that era . The thesis of this paper is that the Darwinian revolution can be seen as part of a new world view, encompassing religion and philosophy as well as science. For example, ... that Lyell's work reflected an attitude that was a "compound of science, philosophy, and religion" This new world view incorporated a new respect ... "
From the Paper "This paper will be a critical analysis of arguments concerning immortality of the soul in the Phaedo. The arguments on immortality in the Phaedo are those found in the W.H.D. Rouse translation of the Great Dialogues of Plato (New York: New American Library, 1956). The translations were edited by Eric H. Warmington and Philip G. Rouse.
The Phaedo is a discussion of the death of Socrates in 399 B.C. Phaidon is telling Echecrates about the death of Socrates based on Phaidon's personal experience of being there when Socrates took his poison in prison (460). In the resulting dialogue, belief of immortality of the soul is brought up. The argument is made for the existence of the immortality of the soul. In today's world the argument would have to be made against the existence of the soul and immortality based on a lack (...)"
From the Paper "Probably the most divisive political issue in America today is the question of abortion, and one of the reasons it is so explosive an issue at the present time is because of its unsettled nature. After twenty years of enforcement of the Roe v. Wade decision that asserted that women had the constitutional right to an abortion, at least under certain circumstances, there are new Justices on the Supreme Court, fresh assaults on the underlying concepts of the Roe decision, and a growing sense that the decision may soon be overturned, throwing the issue of abortion back into the political arena. What are the constitutional arguments for the right of abortion and how does this relate to the issue of the right of privacy?
Privacy issues intersect with the Constitution in several different aspects, though there is no specific right of privacy enume (...)"
Discusses philosopher's investigation into free will & determinism, natural law, causality, empiricism, transcendental idealism in [Critique of Pure Reason].
1,125 words (approx. 4.5 pages), 1 source, 1989, $ 39.95
From the Paper " In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant effectively settles the question of the compatibility of free will and determinism. First, he explains the antimony which plagues reason; then, he discusses the fallacy that reason commits by confusing the crucial distinction established by transcendental idealism between appearances and things.in.themselves; next, he shows how this distinction supports the claim that the causality of natural law and the causality of freedom are compatible; finally, he examines the implications of this compatibility for human actions and morality.
Kant convincingly argues both for the thesis that free will and natural law are compatible and for the antithesis, which claims only natural laws determine events. By presenting these (...)"
From the Paper "Human beings have been asking for centuries for the answer to the question as to what is the meaning of life, and answers have not been in short supply. There is a good reason for this--there is no single answer to the question. Indeed, in one sense the answer is as varied as there are human beings, for the meaning of life may be what we make of life itself. For some people, there is no meaning, and they plod along and do as little as possible until they die. For others, the basic answer is that the meaning of life is life itself. We cling to life for a good reason--we know how valuable it is, and we know that we derive our sense of meaning in our lives by living. At the same time, there are a number of key issues which have been identified through the ages and which point to ways of expanding on the meaning of life so that we do more than live--we live with..."
From the Paper "In the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle carefully considers the issue of responsibility and finds that the human being is indeed responsible for his or her actions and may be morally culpable even for unintended consequences. This applies both to the private conduct of individuals and to the conduct of legislators acting for the public good. For Aristotle, acting unjustly is tantamount to wishing to act unjustly. The individual is responsible both for his or her moral disposition and also for the manner in which moral questions are decided by him or her. Indeed, this is seen as a natural process so that the individual is born with the ability to differentiate between good and evil. For Aristotle, it does not matter whether the individual is born capable of differentiating good from evil or that this is ingrained by society over time as the individual grows."
From the Paper "Aristotle described a remarkable set of criteria to delineate between good and bad people in his work entitled, Ethics. Aristotle believed that the pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain were important yard sticks in measuring virtuous and continent people, whom he believed were of strong moral character, and vicious and incontinent people, whom he described as dangerous and immoral. 100 pages into Ethics, Aristotle finally provides his definition of virtue:
So virtue is a purposive disposition, lying in a mean that is relative to us and determined by a rationale principle, and by that which a prudent man would use to determine it. It is a mean between two kinds of vice, one of excess and the other of deficiency; and also for this reason, that whereas these vices fall short of or exceed the right..."
From the Paper "In his classic work, The Republic, Plato puts forth a definition of justice that would be considered rather counterintuitive today. He argues that justice in both the state and the individual is basically "minding one's own business", or performing the function for which one is best suited and not interfering with others doing the same. This essay will explore why Plato thinks this is the case and how his definition is different from most people's idea of justice today.
Plato begins by saying that the ideal state must have the four traditional virtues of wisdom, courage, self-discipline and justice. Furthermore, he argues, the first three qualities are present in the state because they are present in the individual citizens of the state. In other words, because the Guardians are ... "
