On one hand this means that absolute freedom, on the other this means man is solely responsible for his existence and future. The third condition, despair, is a manifestation of will. One has the capacity and capability to decide whether or not to engage in any activity or take any action. Once there is no longer control or involvement, one should disengage (Flynn, 2010).
I believe man is neither inherently good nor evil. I think the nature of man is an individual thing and is essentially the product of environment (such as home, education, and culture) and genetics. There is certainly a propensity of evidence to support Hobbes assertion that people are essentially selfish when viewed in the light of Enron, Wall Street, Bernie Madoff and the like. However, there are also many people who look at the world through a more benevolent lens than Hobbes and are more content than Sartre's portrayal of existence as nothing more than anguish, despair and forlornness.
I believe most actions are motivated by the desire to fulfill needs, or at least perceived needs. I believe that some needs, such as...
However, by looking at the eyes of an animal, one can find compassion or hate because predators do not require good eyesight, peripheral vision or binocular focus. David killed the numerous baby black widows not because they had tiny eyes that could not prompt his actions towards them, but because he dreaded them. David says the sight of the black widows struggle for space and life disturbed him, but
James believed that belief in God could be contemplated in terms of "live and dead hypotheses" (James 2010). He argues that when one is trying to find an argument for God existing or God not existing, we must consider three things: 1) Living or dead 2) Forced or unavoidable; and, 3) Momentous or trivial. He says, "and for our purposes we may call an option a genuine option when it
164). "Worry, believe it or not," Ellis continues, "has no magical quality of staving off bad luck. On the contrary, it increases your chances of disease or accident by unnerving you" (Ellis, 1997, p. 164). Thus, worrying about and subsequently avoiding fearful situations really accomplishes nothing but perpetuating the fearful situation and the worry; the situation will continue to exist if it isn't addressed. If the situation causes one
Her list includes the following: culture / Nature reason / Nature male/female mind/body ( Nature) master/slave reason/matter (physicality) rationality/animality ( Nature) human / Nature (non-human) civilised/primitive ( Nature) production/reproduction ( Nature) self/other At first glance, this list seems to capture the basic groupings and gender associations that are at work in Mary Shelley's novel. The Creature exemplifies animality, primitiveness, and physicality, whereas Victor represents the forces of civilization, rational production, and culture. Victor is part of a happy family
Life in a Godless World For as long as mankind has contemplated its own creation philosophers have pondered the meaning of life largely within the context of humanity's relationship to the divine, from Aristotle's metaphysical conception of God as all actuality to Descartes' systematic attempt to develop a proof of God's existence. The dominance of Christianity throughout much the civilized world invariably constrained the ability of great thinkers to challenge
Karl Popper is arguably one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century because of his role as one of the pioneers of philosophy of science. Popper was a political and social philosopher of significant stature, a dedicated campaigner and strong defender of the Open Society, and a committed rival of all types of conventionalism, skepticism and relativism in human affairs and science (Thorton, n.d.). He considered one of the
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