...Although the author Joseph Conrad never met the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who died more than a century before Conrad’s birth, their distinct philosophies still have numerous points of intersection, suggesting some fundamental truths within the structure of the human reality. Through the novella Heart of Darkness, Conrad details his perspectives on the faults of man and reality as a whole, often coinciding with many of Leibniz’s theories, as found in his numerous philosophical works. Consequently, the two perspectives combine together, like a cyclopean image, enhancing and deepening each other’s philosophies on humanity, to claim that ultimately, man has the inherent capacity for evil. Among Leibniz’s many conceptual principles...
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...Frankenstein Science AO2 Unrestrained scientific desire: ‘they penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding places’ • ‘they ascend into the heavens’ ‘new and almost unlimited powers’ ‘penetrate’ ‘command’ ‘mimic’ • ‘with fervour’ • ‘performed miracles’ • ‘unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation’ • ‘secret’ ‘hidden laws’ • How dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge’ Power: ‘as if my soul were grappling with a powerful enemy’ • ‘like a hurricane’ ‘pour a torrent of light’ • ‘pursued’ ‘unremitting ardour’ ‘clung’ ‘dedicated myself’ ‘secret toil’ ‘tremble’ ‘tortured’ • ‘one pursuit’ • ‘tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man’ • ‘I preferred glory’ • ‘until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me- a light so brilliant and wondrous’ Lack of Morality: Transgression against God he mocks the power of the creator ‘torrents of light’ ‘a new species would bless me as its creator and source’ ‘many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me’ • ‘eyes insensible to the charms of nature’ • ‘Labours’ scientist in being able to mimic and usurp traditional creation methods; existence of an immortal soul? • Responsibility for creation image reinforced ‘inarticulate sounds’ Pursuit: ‘deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge’ • ‘Pursuit for discovery and wonder’ attracted to the tree of knowledge ‘eternal light’ back to biblical times, tree of knowledge...
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......the day of the philosopher as isolated thinker--the talented amateur with an idiosyncratic message--is effectively gone. | ” | —Nicholas Rescher, "American Philosophy Today," 'Review of Metaphysics' 46 (4 | It is possible to believe at something which could or couldn’t be true. Atheism is an example of this something. Atheists claim that there is no God because the evidence they experience shows that God is not real; however, to have a static claim as strong as atheism is anti-scientific: because the belief itself lacks foundation associated with our ‘natural laws’ and thus, having a set belief that is static is counter scientific spirit which contradicts that base of atheistic claim. Thus, to be an atheist using scientific claims as basis is illogical; however, this doesn’t mean that a person cant be an atheist; but only that person who claims to be an atheist because of scientific reasoning is wrong in his assumptions. atheists say there is no God, but before you can deny something, you must first affirm its existence, as a rule... in saying there is NO God, you actually affirm there is one. Hence I must conclude that the answer to our openeng question is a simple and flat no. No, it is not necessary for a truly contemporary person to be an atheist or to disbelieve in the existence of God. And I find no arguments, no reasons, no evidence or facts, not in Bishop Robinson's writings, nor in Bishop Pike's, nor in the writings of Tillich, Bultmann, and Bonhoeffer, or in...
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...Constructs of Human Psychology A. Human 1. What is a human being? 2. How do humans differ from animals? B. Human Behavior 1. Thought, feeling, action 2. Inner and outer worlds of human perception III. Human Origins A. Evolution 1. Life from non-life material/Big Bang Theory 2. Genetic mutation 3. Natural selection a. Competition as the foundation of behavior b. Law of the Jungle B. Creationism 1. God created the universe and all creatures 2. Each species was created separate and distinct 3. God created man special in God’s own image IV. Human Nature A. Evolution 1. Survival of the fittest a. Social behavior b. Mating c. Reproduction 2. Behaviorism a. Behavior is a combination of social learning and genetic influencces b. Effect on antisocial behavior on reproduction 3. Biological determinism a. No real basis for free will B. Creationism 1. Humans were made in God’s image a. God is love, justice, kindness, and joyful 2. The Fall of Man separated humans from God a. ‘War’ between good and evil b. Man’s nature is now sinful 3. Jesus the Son of God redeemed human beings a. Death and resurrection of Jesus b. Through God’s grace and his son’s sacrifice, man has the opportunity to accept a higher nature 3. Humans are free to choose between good and evil V. Humans’ Life Purpose A. Evolution 1. Reproduce/Survive 2. Personal purpose is what people make it to be 3. People can find satisfaction if they...
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...Frankenstein Notes ------------------------------------------------- Some Interesting Points * There is a chilling logic in the creature's arguments. Why should he not respond in kind to the way that he has been treated by both his maker, who should have cared for him and looked after him, and by mankind as a whole? If the creature is inhuman, it is only because he is imitating the inhumanity of the human species. Therefore, I think that the novel presents Victor as being more inhuman. * Victor is alien in his society in the way that he removes himself from others, for example when he goes about creating the daemon/creation. Victor is very secretive and seems to like it that way... he doesn't really try to understand people like the creation does. The creation tries again and again to belong in the community, its his greatest desire. With Victor, on the other hand, there seems to be a gulf between him and the rest of society. * Justine’s trial testifies to the inhumanity of man. What is important to note is the way this links in to a vital theme of the novel, which is the presentation of the creature himself. He starts off innocent and wanting a relationship with his maker. It is the way that he is shunned by his maker and by humanity and treated cruelly that forces him into cruelty, but this cruelty is only paralleled by the monstrous nature of humanity as displayed in incidents such as the trial of Justine. We cannot expect the creature to be good when...
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...world,” and the difficulty inherent in such a task. A brief review of May’s biography is useful in understanding the philosophical path which he chose. May was born in Ada, Ohio, the first of six children born to parents who had great difficulty in their marriage. His mother and sister both suffered from mental illness, and their instability caused May to spend much of his internal life in an introspective solitude produced by psychic pain. After briefly attending Michigan State University and Oberlin College, May traveled across Europe where he taught English. He was intensely lonely, and it was at this point that he had one of two epiphanies which would shape his belief in existentialism. May began thinking of his own and other’s inner beauty, and he enrolled in Union Theological Seminary in order to study his newfound optimism. It was during this time that he studied psychoanalysis with Alfred Adler and philosophy with Paul Tillich. He practiced psychotherapy privately in the 1940’s and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University at the age of 1940. During this period, May experienced a second life-changing event: he spent three years in a sanitarium after contacting tuberculosis. This period of solitude allowed him time to read and theorize about man’s ultimate responsibility for his own existence. May noted that this view of man as controller of his ultimate destiny could also be translated into the realm of therapeutic encounters (Feist, 1990). May’s epiphany...
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...finally recalls that the bus he and others were riding had to pull over to the side of the road to hide from an enemy patrol. Hawkeye yells at a woman to keep her chicken from squawking, fearful that the enemy would find them, only to be stunned when the woman smothers her chicken while trying to keep it quiet. The audience is just as horrified as Hawkeye when he realizes the woman didn’t smother a chicken; she smothered her infant child. This finale episode aired in 1983, and it remained the most watched episode in the history of television until 2010. When looking at modern day programming, the AMC original show Breaking Bad has provided moments on par with M*A*S*H, due to its strong character development, relatable stories, and good versus evil plot. Breaking Bad has had some water cooler conversation worthy moments because of its strong character development. The main character, Walter White, is a meth-cooking, drug kingpin, but he didn’t start out that way. At the start of the series, Walter is a high school chemistry teacher who...
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...possess. To put the Gods’ concerns at ease, flaws are added to humans. They make the human race less knowledgeable of the world and therefore, limit their power. Popol Vuh also indicates that animals are the gods’ first effort at creating man, so Mayan people probably have great respect for animals. When a culture’s main focus is on religion like the Mayans, studying their religion is the best way to learn about their culture, customs, rituals, social structure and their understanding of science. The Popol Vuh has resolved many spiritual concerns that have distressed the human soul throughout the ages. Some of those anxieties include questions about the creation of the universe, the celestial functions, the relation between God and man, the problem of the human form itself, accountability and truth, virtue and sin, the beginning of beings and things, life, death, and human destiny. The Maya religion, which is one of redemption, has a final goal of developing inner tranquility of the soul within a harmonious social order. The Popol Vuh continues to be an important part in the belief system of many Quiche. In strong contrast with all other creation myths, the story of Genesis has a Hebrew God and the views of a monotheistic world. Hebrew believe in a single omnipotent deity, omniscient and present everywhere. In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, one God creates everything in existence in seven days. He saves humans for last, because he plans to duplicate his image and fill...
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...Secularism A Religion Profile from International Students, Inc. Secularism: An Overview Number of Adherents Demographer Davit Barrett estimates that there are 150 million atheists and 768 million nonreligious people in the world. The combined total comes to more than 918 million people (Barrett). Toward the end of the Renaissance, the modern method of empirical science began to develop. The key players were Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), Johannes Kepler (15711630), and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Although it may seem ironic now, each of these men believed in the Christian God. They viewed science as studying the handiwork of an almighty Creator and discerning His natural laws. Galileo considered God to have written two “books”: the Bible and nature (Hummel, p. 106). Contrary to popular belief, the cause for the diversion between Christianity and science originated not with the Church but with the university professors who were threatened by Galileo’s revolutionary ideas. These professors were steeped in the Greek scientific method, which included observation to a small extent, but mostly explained the workings of nature through rational deduction from first principles, or assumptions, an entire view of the universe had been built up. Consequently, the professors embraced such misconceptions as the sun having no imperfections, the moon being a perfectly smooth sphere that shone with its own light, and the earth alone having a moon since the earth was at the center of the...
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...An Introductory Note by V.V. Raman We are multi-dimensional creatures. Even as biological entities we have several layers of existence: physical, intellectual, psychological, emotional, and yes, spiritual too. By the last I mean an inner experience and longing to be connected with the Cosmos. This longing expresses itself in a variety of ways, in most instances as a religious call. Evolutionary biologists and cultural psychologists may explain this away in the paradigms that are satisfactory for understanding the observed world. For practitioners, however, religious yearning derives from an external intangible source that is not directly amenable to empirical verification. If there can be neutrinos and dark energy that defy easy detection even through powerful and sophisticated instruments, one could argue, why can’t there be other intangibles whose existence is beyond meters and scopes? The matter continues to be debated, but this is not our concern here. No matter what the source, this heart-felt beckoning and fulfilling framework almost defines the religious person’s existence. There are many in our group who are religious persons. Religion informs and inspires the values and visions that are part of one’s existence. It provides a backdrop for one’s life, present and future, terrestrial and beyond, real and visualized. The spiritual yearning has taken concrete forms in human history as different religions with deep historical, geographical cultural links. Though...
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...and ethic’s particular matters might be hard to take on for the reason. Because of administration of criminal justice have a duty of creating moral decisions of what counts as right or wrong makes them have to be very professional. Also, employ critical thinking skill as well. Within this paper, it will analysis discuss, the critical thinking with the concerning association with ethics. In addition, professional conduct role with police officers, as well as the five areas of the ethical conduct, should communicate within the seminar. Also the reason to choice those areas and the suppose benefits, with the training for each the public and law enforcement. Professional Code of Ethic for Law Enforcement With the professional organization, concerning with certain parts of the law, medicine, also the criminal justice system as well gives professional codes. With the ethics as a point of reference, to the staff, perform professional, position as such within this study. It will show every feature that we are a people with our heart, relationship, also minds with one another. The purpose as well as the motive of the action we do concern, with each the inner also the outer of our surroundings. Because were taught, to...
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...DIVINATION SYSTEMS Written by Nicole Yalsovac Additional sections contributed by Sean Michael Smith and Christine Breese, D.D. Ph.D. Introduction Nichole Yalsovac Prophetic revelation, or Divination, dates back to the earliest known times of human existence. The oldest of all Chinese texts, the I Ching, is a divination system older than recorded history. James Legge says in his translation of I Ching: Book Of Changes (1996), “The desire to seek answers and to predict the future is as old as civilization itself.” Mankind has always had a desire to know what the future holds. Evidence shows that methods of divination, also known as fortune telling, were used by the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Babylonians and the Sumerians (who resided in what is now Iraq) as early as six‐thousand years ago. Divination was originally a device of royalty and has often been an essential part of religion and medicine. Significant leaders and royalty often employed priests, doctors, soothsayers and astrologers as advisers and consultants on what the future held. Every civilization has held a belief in at least some type of divination. The point of divination in the ancient world was to ascertain the will of the gods. In fact, divination is so called because it is assumed to be a gift of the divine, a gift from the gods. This gift of obtaining knowledge of the unknown uses a wide range of tools and an enormous variety of ...
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...Victoria Wright Wright 1 WRT 102 10190 Erin Armstrong 11/23/11 “Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson A Life of Crime Isn’t Hard to Find The movie Crime d'amour, (or Love Crime), exemplifies the human ability to manipulate and so deceive oneself of morality, as does O' Connor in "A Good Man is Hard to Find". In regards to the subject of moral judgment, psychologists and scientists alike have been baffled at the way human beings rationalize what behaviour is ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’. Are the things our society encourages us to see as bad concrete rights and wrongs, or does everyone develop their own right and wrongs based on their beliefs? When seeing Love Crime and reading “A Good Man is Hard to Find” I saw prime examples of human beings choosing to react irrationally...
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...Introduction to Behavioral Science: Personality Theories Dardree Weah University of Phoenix Sigmund Freud is the founder of psychoanalysis; his model portrays personality as a dynamic system directed by three mental structures: the id, the ego, and the super ego. The id is made up of innate biological instincts and urges. The id operates on the pleasure principle. It is self-serving, irrational, impulsive, and totally unconscious. It seeks to freely express pleasure-seeking urges of all kinds. The id acts as a power source for the entire psyche or personality. The ego is sometimes described as the executive because it directs energies supplied by the id. The ego is guided by the reality principle. It is the system of thinking, planning, and problem solving, and deciding. It is in conscious control of the personality and often delays action until it is practical or appropriate. The super ego acts as a judge or censor for the thoughts and actions of the ego. Freud believed that our behavior expresses unconscious forces. He claims that the unconscious holds repress memories and emotions, plus the instinctual drives of the id. He considered sexual impulses to be a primary source of motivation for a person, and that mental activity is essentially unconscious. Freud identified four psychosexual stages, the oral, the anal, the phallic and genital. At each stage, a different part of the body becomes the child’s primary erogenous zone. Each area then serves as the main source of pleasure...
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...Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The Duality of Human Nature Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde centers upon a conception of humanity as dual in nature, although the theme does not emerge fully until the last chapter, when the complete story of the Jekyll-Hyde relationship is revealed. Therefore, we confront the theory of a dual human nature explicitly only after having witnessed all of the events of the novel, including Hyde’s crimes and his ultimate eclipsing of Jekyll. The text not only posits the duality of human nature as its central theme but forces us to ponder the properties of this duality and to consider each of the novel’s episodes as we weigh various theories. Jekyll asserts that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” and he imagines the human soul as the battleground for an “angel” and a “fiend,” each struggling for mastery. But his potion, which he hoped would separate and purify each element, succeeds only in bringing the dark side into being—Hyde emerges, but he has no angelic counterpart. Once unleashed, Hyde slowly takes over, until Jekyll ceases to exist. If man is half angel and half fiend, one wonders what happens to the “angel” at the end of the novel. Perhaps the angel gives way permanently to Jekyll’s devil. Or perhaps Jekyll is simply mistaken: man is not “truly two” but is first and foremost the primitive creature embodied in Hyde, brought under tentative control by civilization, law, and conscience. According...
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