Sitting in my third grade classroom we chattered anxiously, waiting for the spelling quizzes to be passed back. My teacher placed them all facing down on our desks, a rather pointless effort when she was already aware that at any moment the room would burst into havoc with yells of "what did you get?", shouting numbers back and forth, and of course superior comments from the students proud of their marks. I quickly flipped mine over and grinned at the 8/10 scrawled in red marker near the top of the page.
"What did you get?" sure enough my friend Jenny thrust me her paper. As I stared down at her 100% sitting aside a bright yellow smiley sticker I felt a familiar twinge of jealousy. From that day on I had a secret goal to achieve higher marks than my friend. I can not remember when this rivalry ended, but I do know that it is normal behavior.
Each person feels rivalry or competition to other humans, for the majority of their lifetime. This rivalry greatly affects our ability to understand others, and this eventually results in war, discrimination, and enmity. Children are definitely culprits for acting inhumane to each other with teasing, competition, and often hurtful remarks. Although this is the way children often act, it is in the teenage years realization, along with careful thought and consideration, brings each individual to understand wider prospects of human nature; that people coldly drive ahead for themselves alone. Man’s inhumanity1 to man is a way for people to protect themselves from having pain inflicted on them by fellow humans, and achieving their goals and desires free from interference of others.
The concept of man’s inhumanity to man is developed in John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace. The primary conflict in this novel centers on the main character, Gene, and his battling of jealousy, paranoia, and inability to understand his relationship with his best friend Phineas. Yet the larger battle of man’s inhumanity to man is portrayed by the backdrop of World War II.
Gene Forrester is an average, studious, young man attending Devon school in New Hampshire during the second World War. His roommate at Devon, Phineas (otherwise known as Finny) sends Gene on an unexpected journey of self discovery. Finny represents man in his innocence, a kind of edenic2 Adam. He is very athletic, honest and trusting.
John Knowles writes a compelling realistic fiction about the lives of two teenage boys throughout the start of World War II in his novel A Separate Peace. Peter Yates the director of the movie plays the story out in a well organized theatrical manner. There are similarities and differences in these two works of art. However; there are also similarities.
A persona is a mask shown to the outside world developed in relation to consciousness, to hide the darkest aspects of a psyche, known as a shadow, behind it. Shadows contrast personas by holding undesirable and unwanted memories and behaviors, but the dark side of an individual must be accepted for the individual to fully understand oneself. In the coming of age novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, narrator Gene Forrester returns to New Hampshire to visit Devon School, where he studied fifteen years ago just as World War II had begun to unfold. The narrative shifts back fifteen years ago to Gene’s days at Devon School with his best friend, Phineas, also known as Finny, as he recalls memorable events from his past. Gene’s persona and shadow
A human being is a complicated entity of a contradictory nature where creative and destructive, virtuous and vicious are interwoven. Each of us has gone through various kinds of struggle at least once in a lifetime ranging from everyday discrepancies to worldwide catastrophes. There are always different causes and reasons that trigger these struggles, however, there is common ground for them as well: people are different, even though it is a truism no one seems to able to realize this statement from beyond the bounds of one’s self and reach out to approach the Other.
In the awe-inspiring play of Antigone, Sophocles introduces two remarkable characters, Antigone and Creon. A conflict between these two obstinate characters leads to fatal consequences for themselves and their kindred. The firm stances of Creon and Antigone stem from two great imperatives: his loyalty to the state and her dedication to her family, her religion but most of all her conscience. The identity of the tragic hero of this play is still heavily debated. This tragedy could have been prevented if it had not been for Creon's pitiful mistakes.
A Separate Peace is a coming of age novel in which Gene, the main character, revisits his high school and his traumatic teen years. When Gene was a teen-ager his best friend and roommate Phineas (Finny) was the star athlete of the school.
In the essay titled “Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals” published in the Morality and Moral Controversies course textbook, Immanuel Kant argues that the view of the world and its laws is structured by human concepts and categories, and the rationale of it is the source of morality which depends upon belief in the existence of God. In Kant’s work, categorical imperative was established in order to have a standard rationale from where all moral requirements derive. Therefore, categorical imperative is an obligation to act morally, out of duty and good will alone. In Immanuel Kant’s writing human reason and or rational are innate morals which are responsible for helping human. Needless to say, this also allows people to be able to distinct right from wrong. For the aforementioned reasons, there is no doubt that any action has to be executed solely out of a duty alone and it should not focus on the consequence but on the motive and intent of the action. Kant supports his argument by dividing the essay into three sections. In the first section he calls attention to common sense mor...
Sophocles’ Antigone and Euripides’ The Bacchae are indubitably plays of antitheses and conflicts, and this condition is personified in the manifestation of their characters, each completely opposed to the other. Both tragedians reveal tensions between two permanent and irreconcilable moral codes; divine law represented by Antigone and Dionysus and human law represented by Creon and Pentheus. The central purpose is evidently the association of law which has its consent in political authority and the law which has its consent in the private conscience, the association of obligations imposed on human beings as citizens and members of state, and the obligations imposed on them in the home as members of families. Both these laws presenting themselves in their most crucial form are in direct collision. Sophocles and Euripides include a great deal of controversial material, once the reader realizes the inquiries behind their work. Inquiries that pertain to the very fabric of life, that still make up the garments of society today.
In John Knowle’s A Separate Peace, symbols are used to develop and advance the themes of the novel. One theme is the lack of an awareness of the real world among the students who attend the Devon Academy. The war is a symbol of the "real world", from which the boys exclude themselves. It is as if the boys are in their own little world or bubble secluded from the outside world and everyone else. Along with their friends, Gene and Finny play games and joke about the war instead of taking it seriously and preparing for it. Finny organizes the Winter Carnival, invents the game of Blitz Ball, and encourages his friends to have a snowball fight. When Gene looks back on that day of the Winter Carnival, he says, "---it was this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusory, special and separate peace" (Knowles, 832). As he watches the snowball fight, Gene thinks to himself, "There they all were now, the cream of the school, the lights and leaders of the senior class, with their high IQs and expensive shoes, as Brinker had said, pasting each other with snowballs"(843).
In his work, Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes narrates the search for certainty in order to recreate all knowledge. He begins with “radical doubt.” He asks a simple question “Is there any one thing of which we can be absolutely certain?” that provides the main question of his analysis. Proceeding forward, he states that the ground of his foundation is the self – evident knowledge of the “thinking thing,” which he himself is. Moving up the tower of certainty, he focuses on those ideas that can be supported by his original foundation. In such a way, Descartes’s goal is to establish all of human knowledge of firm foundations. Thus, Descartes gains this knowledge from the natural light by using it to reference his main claims, specifically
Descartes’ first two Meditations are arguably the most widely known philosophical works. Because of this, one can make the error of assuming that Descartes’ method of doubt is self-evident and that its philosophical implications are relatively minor. However, to assume this would be a grave mistake. In this paper, I hope to spread light on exactly what Descartes’ method of doubt is, and how, though it furnishes challenges for the acceptance of the reality of the external world, it nonetheless does not lead to external world skepticism.
Obvious -the word that perhaps succinctly defines the way Kant saw the truths of the world around him. Not so obvious are the arguments that lie within his writings. As he emphasizes the importance, yet confusing nature of reason in his Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, he proves his own point by his reasoning processes. However, in this work he systematically develops his argument for a universal good- the good will, in which inclination, duty, and reason play crucial roles. In this essay I will explain Kant's reasoning behind his statement that the only true good, without qualification, is the good will, and consequentially determine whether his idea of good varies from the Platonic ideal of goodness.
Descartes was born 1596 in France. At eight years old he was already in college. Descartes was a scientist and was also known as the father of modern Western Philosophy. He is famous for his book “The mediations of philosophy,” first published in 1641. He is much like me because he refused to stem off other philosophers thought. Instead, he created his philosophy. He is most famous for his quote “I think therefore I am.” This paper will include Descartes doubt, Descartes the cogito, his knowledge of the material world. The principles of the Cartesian epistemology. The “light of nature.”
Morality has been a subject of many philosophical discussions that has prompted varied responses from different philosophers. One of the most famous approaches to morality is that of Immanuel Kant in his writing Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals. Kant in this work argues that the reason for doing a particular action or the drive to do good things is a fundamental basis of defining moral quality in a person. To him, an action could be considered morally right only if the motivation behind doing that action was out of ‘goodwill’. When he defines these moral rules, he characterizes them in the form of imperatives – the hypothetical imperative and categorical imperative. While hypothetical imperatives deal with motivations and actions that lead to a particular end, categorical imperatives are a product of rational behavior in human beings. Kant considers such categorical imperatives to be the moral basis for life.
René Descartes presented his readers to the thought of differentiating scholarly learning from church doctrine. He asserted science filled with myth and uncertainty could never advertise taking in or the headway of public opinion. Descartes reacted to the developing clash between these two powers with an endeavor to bring clarity. He was eager to test the acknowledged plans of his day and present change. Religion had not been independent from science previou...
In this paper I will describe the foundationalist structure of Descartes’ arguments in his work Meditations on First Philosophy. Foundationalism is the view that there are some beliefs are epistemologically basic and can be known without knowing anything else is true (Loeb, Lecture 1-14). For example, philosophers such as Descartes would acknowledge that geometric truths, such as 2 + 2 = 4, are so fundamental that they don’t need to be proven through argumentation. Thus, these truths can provide the basic foundation for further arguments. In my paper, I will show that two foundational claims of Descartes are first, the existence of the mind, and second, the existence of God. From these claims Descartes derives many others, including the argument for material objects and souls. As I lay out Descartes’ case, I will examine the philosophical soundness and validity of his foundationalist account, as well as its merits and potential weaknesses. In the end, I will conclude that Descartes’ foundationalism, while alluring in its simplicity, does not survive deeper investigation.