Contradiction is the nature of the society. If there is a religion, there will be those who do not believe. If there is a war, there will be those that want peace. If there is a political movement, there will be those that disagree. Humans are bound to go against their own believes, their own strategies, and their own establishments. Nothing is forever. History portrays people going against the accepted ideologies. It shows the everlasting change of the society. First, they thought that God was the explanation to everything. A century later, they started doubting the Bible. The period of Enlightenment embraced rationality. People believed that they could explain anything, either through science or through religion. They believed in the capability of their own specie. In 19th and 20th century, that stable rationality of the human beings was rejected. The phrase "man is a rational animal" turned into "man is weak and inconsistent." One would agree that the abandonment of the confident human rationality in the 19th and 20th century would be best pictured through psychology and biology.
So much time was spent on the creation of the stable public institutions that were the main results of human rationality and would also benefit the society. Those are equality, democracy, universal male suffrage, and peace. Equality was the idea pursued during the Enlightenment, supported during the French Revolution, and some what stabilized when the industrial proletariat rose up and attempted the protection of their rights. The German philosopher of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche, however, had a different take on the equality. His point of view is completely different from that of the Enlightenment thinkers because, in his opinion, equ...
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... of such an order, he performs the action anyway. Freud's explanation to such a phenomenon is the surfacing of the impulse, which is only part of the reality that happened in the past. "The order has been present in the mind of a person...but not the whole of it emerged into consciousness" (Freud, A Note on the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis). This idea implies that people are often not logical and irrational while referring to the real events and that is when the big question arises-- what else is hidden in human's mind and what is the reason behind it? Both philosophers, Nietzsche and Freud, desired to look beyond the external appearance of the society. "[Nietzsche] wanted no only to tear away the masks of respectable life, but to explore how human beings made such masks" (Kagan, 868)
Science brought fine examples to prove the lack of rationality in humans.
The society that Equality belonged to drives him away. As Equality runs away from the society he explains, “We have not built this box for the good of our brothers. We have built it for its own sake. It is above all our brothers to us, and its truth above their truth” (Rand 76). Equality begins to put technology over his fellow citizens, showing how technology began to spur division between Equality and those he knew. The ultimatum of putting technology over humans is what this totalitarian government fears against. Additionally, the splitting up of opinions can come from technology development, adding to the idea that freedom of oppression can enable technological progress. The Council discusses with Equality about former inventors similar to Equality’s situation. Solidarity 8-1164 explains what process happened in the past, “Many men in the Home of the Scholars have had strange new ideas in the past […] but when the majority of their brother Scholars voted against them they abandoned their ideas as all men must” (Rand 73). The actions of one man are not to be implemented in this society against the word of the Council, as all men must agree and think the same. Divisions of opinion can disrupt the unity of the community, encouraging the authoritarian government to begin to restrict these ideas. Likewise, authoritarian control with
In conclusion, some people were fixated on their old beliefs and did not accept the new adjustments taking place. New technology, and fundamentalism and new ways of looking all attributed to the tensions that were arising when the old and new conflicted.
...own as philosophes, French for thinkers from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who hoped to find natural laws in humans by observing them. They hoped to use these laws in order improve upon societies flaws. John Locke wanted more freedom to the people as opposed to the government, Voltaire encouraged more religious freedom since it was correlated to peace and prosperity, Adam Smith pursued individual economic freedom to boost the economy and keep it stable, and Mary Wollstonecraft sought equality for women at an attempt against discrimination and sexism. Although these philosophes lived hundreds of years ago they still impact and shape the world today with their reforms, many modern laws and ideas are derived from their work, such as no discrimination based on race or sex, democratic governments, and free business that continue to play a major role in society.
The French Revolution was a tumultuous period, with France exhibiting a more fractured social structure than the United States. In response, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen proposed that “ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities, and of the corruption of governments” (National Assembly). This language indicates that the document, like its counterpart in the United States, sought to state the rights of men explicitly, so no doubt existed as to the nature of these rights. As France was the center of the Enlightenment, so the Enlightenment ideals of individuality and deism are clearly expressed in the language of the document. The National Assembly stated its case “in
The Enlightenment was an astonishing time of transformation in Europe. During this time in the eighteenth century there was a progressive movement that was labeled by its criticism of the normal religious, social, and political perceptions. A number of significant thinkers, with new philosophies, had inspired creativeness and change. These thinkers had many different thoughts and views on people and the way they act, and views on the government. Two well-known and most influential thinkers of this time were the English political philosopher John Locke and the French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. These two men had laid down some of the intellectual grounds of the modern day government and both had different opinions on what the government’s role in a society.
The Enlightenment is a unique time in European history characterized by revolutions in science, philosophy, society, and politics. These revolutions put Europe in a transition from the medieval world-view to the modern western world. The traditional hierarchical political and social orders from the French monarchy and Catholic Church were destroyed and replaced by a political and social order from the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality(Bristow, 1). Many historians, such as Henry Steele Commager, Peter Gay, have studied the Enlightenment over the years and created their own views and opinions.
Equality is a great thinker and is good at finding ways to innovate. He experimented everyday in his tunnel to create new things that could impact the world. Such as electricity, which Equality discovered, he wrote this in his journal “The frog had been hanging on a wire of copper; and it had been the metal of our knife which had sent a strange power to the copper through the brine of the frog’s body”(pg.53). Equality discovered the power of electricity that could save lives and make life easier, but can not put it to use because his ways are sinful to his society. He has a greater range of wisdom than the Home of The Scholars but he is useless to their society. Equality has “A greater wisdom than the many scholars who are elected by all men for their wisdom”(pg.54). That wisdom helps him create the lightbulb, something the Scholars will not accept. He is a different type of person than anybody else. Socrates best explains that “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel”. Unlike his brothers there is a fire lit in Equality, the others are filled with orders from their leaders. His mind helped Equality become a better thinker and problem solver that not only helps himself but helps
The Enlightenment challenged what was previously thought to be the way of life. Prior to the Enlightenment whatever you were born into that was it, you were stuck and had no say in if you could receive power or money, you were the king’s subject, but the Enlightenment changed the role of the people from subject to citizen. This switch gave the people abilities that were never seen before 1450. It became a change and with the movement from subject to citizen, questions started surfacing and with those questions came action, and with that action came a new era for human rights. Human rights were improved across the board, from African Americans to women to the citizen. Without the Enlightenment some powers that needed to be changed like that of slavery may never had been
...e centrality of economics to politics, secularism, and progress played a very important part in the formation of the United States Constitution. With such commonwealth thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau, the Fathers of the Constitution were able to establish the supreme law of the land. Using the ideals of these enlightenment thinkers, they were able to describe the organization of the government and its relationship with the states and its citizens. The Enlightenment period, and more importantly the philosophies of the thinkers of this time, pretty much changed the entire world viewed everything in the 17th and 18th centuries. For our purposes, it was most important because it set the tone for what citizens go by today; there is still a separation of power, natural rights, and the citizens can live peacefully knowing that there is no supreme ruler.
...much equality and a sense to keep that equality was the downfall of this society.
Throughout history, conflicts between faith and reason took the forms of religion and free thinking. In the times of the Old Regime, people like Copernicus and Galileo were often punished for having views that contradicted the beliefs of the church. The strict control of the church was severely weakened around the beginning of the nineteenth century when the Old Regime ended. As the church's control decreased, science and intellectual thinking seemed to advance. While the people in the world became more educated, the church worked harder to maintain its influential position in society and keep the Christian faith strong. In the mid-nineteenth century, the church's task to keep people's faith strong became much harder, due to theories published by free thinkers like Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, David Friedrich Strauss, and others. These men published controversial theories that hammered away at the foundation on which the Christian church was built. As the nineteenth century progressed, more doubts began to arise about the basic faiths of the Christian church.
Criminals have been committing crimes for centuries, and they are always fooling the police detectives and federal agencies sometimes. If the justice departments would actually look at the persons thought processes and reasoning before a crime is committed, the justice departments will be able to answer the reason for the crime. The different departments could possibly figure out why the criminal did what they did in the first. For instance, they should use a couple of criminology theories to help them with certain cases that are more difficult than the rest. The theories that the justice departments should use in their systems are the rational choice and biological theories of criminology.
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory was based on the belief that human personality is made up of three components: the id, ego and superego. These three components are arranged in a hierarchy order with the id at the basal end, the ego in the middle and the super ego at the pinnacle. The id at the base, seeks instantaneous pleasure and fulfillment, driven by the pleasure principle. The id wants what it wants, when it wants it regardless of whether or not it is possible to satisfy that particular want or need. The presence or logic of reality or societal behavior has no effect on the id. For example, if an infant is thirsty and sees a bottle of water, he will take the bottle and drink even if it belonged to someone else and he did not have permission to drink, all that matters is that the needs have been met.
As a cultural movement, Romanticism “revolted against academic convention, and authority,” and the “limitations to freedom” that Romantics saw in the Enlightenment period (210). “Among European intellectuals, the belief in the reforming powers of reason became the basis for a progressive view of human history” (144). Enlightenment figures Antione Nicolas de Condorcet and Mary Wollstonecraft advocated for one such progressive cause, the rights of women. Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman put the idea of women’s rights into the minds of people during the Enlightenment period. As a merely progressive view, women did not obtain rights such as voting until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Enlightenment writers like Jonathan Swift and Voltaire, used satire to “[draw] attention to the vast contradictions between morals and manners, intentions and actions, and, more generally Enlightenment aspirations and contemporary degradation” (158).
A principal element in Freud’s theory is his assignment of the mental processes to three psychic zones: the id, the ego and the superego. The id is the passional, irrational, and unconscious part of the psyche. It is the site of the energy of the mind, energy that Freud characterized as a combination of sexual libido and other instincts, such as aggression, that propel the human organism through life, moving it to grow, develop and eventually to die. That primary process of life is completely irrational, and it cannot distinguish reasonable objects and unreasonable or socially unacceptable ones. Here comes the secondary processes of the mind, lodged in the ego and the superego. The ego, or “I,” was Freud’s term for the predominantly rational, logical, orderly and conscious part of the psych...