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Religious views of wealth
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Soren Kierkegaard was a very wise philosopher of the early and mid 1800s. He had a lot of different views especially when it came to aesthetics, ethics, and religious stage. Kierkegaard believed that the Aesthetic stage came from the desire from human beings to be able to escape what they considered to be boring. Boredom is something that everyone struggles with; Kierkegaard believed that “everything is evaluated as either interesting or boring.”1 If everyone truly views everything in life as only having an end result of two separate things this can cause a large dilemma. That’s is almost like telling everyone that they have a choice between one life or another, not everyone wants to be put on the same life plan. As a free person everyone wants to have a choice. If “One cannot discover one’s own true self here, as life is reduced to a series of feelings.”2 No one wants life to be solo feelings; everyone needs to be …show more content…
In this case the parable of the prodigal son can relate very well to the three stages of Kierkegaard. The first comes Aesthetic; it must have been very emotional for the father to loose his youngest son. He didn’t know where he was going or when he would come back. When the son finally returned the father could have viewed the situation as a beautiful or ugly. He decided that the fact that his son was home and well was more important the material things he lost. The prodigal son did not make the most ethical decisions with his money. He took half of the families belongings and spent it selfishly. The religious stage is pretty obvious with it being a parable; the religious aspect is that the father loved his son no matter what. He even let his son make the decision to leave the house which I am sure was very difficult to do. It took this journey alone for his son to find and realize who he truly
Take a minute to relax. Enjoy the lightness, or surprising heaviness, of the paper, the crispness of the ink, and the regularity of the type. There are over four pages in this stack, brimming with the answer to some question, proposed about subjects that are necessarily personal in nature. All of philosophy is personal, but some philosophers may deny this. Discussed here are philosophers that would not be that silly. Two proto-existentialists, Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, were keen observers of humanity, and yet their conclusions were different enough to seem contradictory. Discussed here will be Nietzsche’s “preparatory human being” and Kierkegaard’s “knight of faith”. Both are archetypal human beings that exist in accordance to their respective philosopher’s values, and as such, each serve different functions and have different qualities. Both serve the same purpose, though. The free spirit and the knight of faith are both human beings that brace themselves against the implosion of the god concept in western society.
Jesus tells his disciples a parable of the Prodigal son. But first, there is this family that has two sons. The youngest son asks his father for his inheritance. The youngest son then took the inheritance and ran away to spend it all. Then he ran into trouble. He ran out of money so he came back home. Instead of being punished he was welcomed with open arms. The older brother was furious. The older brother does everything right and never gets welcomed the way his brother does. This relates a lot to “Why I live at the P.O”. The oldest sister was getting along fine with her family until the youngest sister (Stella Rondo) decided to come back. They were excited to see Stella Rondo; Sister was jealous. Sister wants all the attention not the other way around. Sister then becomes petty and try to turn the family against Stella Rondo but turns out that Stella-Rondo becomes that master of the game. Sister tries to accuse Stella Rondo of lying but the family does not buy it. They do not believe sister but according to sister they believe Stella Rondo and rather take Stella Rondo’s side. Sister accuses her of lying but how do we know that sister is not the one lying. So at the end of the story Stella Rondo has turned everyone in the family against Sister. Sister got tired of all the ridicule and decides to take “what was hers” and leave. Sister then goes to the P.O. (post office) and decides to live
A deeply pious man, John considers the Bible a sublime source of moral code, guiding him through the challenges of his life. He proclaims to his kid son, for whom he has written this spiritual memoir, that the “Body of Christ, broken for you. Blood of Christ, shed for you” (81). While John manages to stay strong in the faith and nurture a healthy relationship with his son, his relationship with his own father did not follow the same blueprint. John’s father, also named John Ames, was a preacher and had a powerful effect on John’s upbringing. When John was a child, Father was a man of faith. He executed his role of spiritual advisor and father to John for most of his upbringing, but a shift in perspective disrupted that short-lived harmony. Father was always a man who longed for equanimity and peace. This longing was displayed in his dealings with his other son, Edward: the Prodigal son of their family unit, a man who fell away from faith while at school in Germany. John always felt that he “was the good son, so to speak, the one who never left his father's house” (238). Father always watched over John, examining for any sign of heterodoxy. He argued with John as if John were Edward, as if he were trying to get Edward back into the community. Eventually, John’s father's faith begins to falter. He reads the scholarly books
Throughout Kai Nielsen 's book: Ethics Without God, he attempts to use logic and reason to show that there can be ethics without God. Nielsen is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Calgary. Having written several books and holding a P.h.D, it seems that he is a credible source of knowledge. Yet despite his seemingly good arguments, they turn out to be statements that can 't take scrutiny.
God is waiting with open arms, we need only to turn back to him like the waiting father in this parable. I try to always look at my relationship with God as my father (yes I know he his) but I mean like how you view an earthly father. I had a wonderful father growing up. Not matter the situation, good or bad, that I found myself in, I knew that I could always turn to my dad for support, understanding, advice, and he was my ultimate supporter during these times. But he did as any father really should and told me when I was wrong, or that I had really thought through my situation and was making the right decision. I knew I could always turn to him. I think that is the relationship that God seeks to have with us. He wants us to come to him, in good and bad times, to seek his advice, or feel his joy in our joyful times, or even to fall into his arms during trivial times. In the story of the prodigal son, the son wanted everything that his father would have given him, but he wanted it now, unlike when you receive your inheritance after the passing of them. The father gave the son exactly what he wanted, and it hurt him maybe he even suffered a little, but he did it anyway. After the son had taken it and left and then found himself eating with the pigs did he think about his father again. No matter the time that passed, that father was so thrilled to have his son return home to him and accepted him
“The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die” (Kierkegaard 95). Søren Kierkegaard was a clear supporter of expressing our own personality. He wanted us to take the time to find our true selves. Even though he acknowledged there were social systems in our society, he still believed we were our own individual human being. The only way to make sense of our life and find our individuality is to embrace our faith in God. Kierkegaard wanted human beings to be able to exercise their freedom. Human beings should not postpone their choices simply because they do not know the universal truth. As humans we cannot postpone our choices because we will never
Bentham further stretches this to society and believes that if everyone has the opportunity to achieve genuine pleasure that society would be better off. This is a sound assumption in theory, however it is a bit too idealistic. As history, has shown us human greed would not allow Utilitarianism and Bentham’s social adaption of hedonism to be present in society. His pattern of thinking logically brings him to his conclusion as well. The assumption that the population overall would adapt to this is not likely. As for Kierkegaard, his existentialism ideals lead to more individual thought as well as individuality overall. His famous phase “the crowd is untruth” is a safe assumption as well. He believes that people are too willing to fall in line with a crowd and sacrifice their individuality to a group to fit in. He makes a valid point that isn’t really living, because you are not being a unique individual but rather you fall in line with whatever group you belong to. We can see examples of this in religion, and political parties. Kierkegaard just like Bentham made sound assumptions that led him to his conclusion, along with valid points as
In Kierkegaard’s two works “You Shall Love” and “Our Duty to Love the People We See,” we are introduced with a moral responsibility towards others since the start. In “You Shall Love,” we are provided with the second commandment: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (17) whereas in the other reading we are provided with a biblical excerpt stating how we cannot claim to love God while hating our brother. It is by providing this biblical references that Kierkegaard reveals how, despite that they are commanded to us by God, we hold a moral responsibility towards our neighbor by serving, loving, and caring for them.
In Korsgaard’s article on The Authority of Reflection, Korsgaard presents the idea that all rational beings have a unique ability to reflect on our actions and how it plays a role in determining what obligations we have. This means that rational beings can weigh the pros and cons of our options before we decide on what to do, influencing what obligations we will have. This is opposed to acting on one’s first instinct without reflecting on the action first. This essay expands on Korsgaard’s argument on practical identity, moral identity, and the different characteristics of these identities that influence how one acts.
In the “Prodigal”, the boy whom the speaker is addressing to yearns to accomplish his own goals by leaving his hometown behind and entering the urbanized world that is filled with endless opportunities and possibilities, including “[becoming] an artist of the provocative gesture”, “wanting the world and return carrying it”, and “[reclaiming] Main Street in a limo.” However, despite all these ambitious opportunities the boy wishes to pursue, he is ultimately unable to alter the perception of others who are the most familiar with his character. Rather, the people who are the most acquainted with the boy will perceive him with the same view as in the past. The thought of a newly changed boy that embraced a completely different identity while accomplishing several achievements, is incapable of affecting their perception of the past young boy from the county. This is illustrated when the speaker describes that even if the boy “stood in the field [he’d] disappear” and was still “aiming [his] eyes down the road” of opportunity, in the eyes of people who are most familiar with him, they will be unable to acknowledge this significantly changed individual. In complete contrast with those who are most familiar with him are others who are unfamiliar with his past. These individuals, whom the boy must have encountered while achieving his accomplishments,
In Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, the concept of the Knight of Faith is an exalted one, a unique title awarded to those whose devotion to God goes far beyond what is even comprehensible or expected for the average man, who has an aesthetic or ethical life. We are told by Kierkegaard that this Knight of Faith, when in a situation where resignation appears to be the only solution to a problem, puts his faith in what appears to be the absurd, and believes that the solution that he desires lies in God. This fuels his faith, and makes him better than the aesthetic man, who simply abandons or ignores the problem, or the ethical man, the Knight of Infinite Resignation, who accepts the problem and resigns himself to a life of despair. The Knight of Faith exists as a shining beacon of devotion to the will of God, and, according to Kierkegaard, there exist only two known examples of the Knight of Faith: Abraham, and Mary. These exemplary figures in history put their faith in God, and believed that God would provide a solution to their problems. This unconditional faith in their creator is supposed to be inspirational, and in a sense, make the reader feel incredibly pitiful and resentful of their own wavering faith. In the following paragraphs, I aim to argue that a moment of absolute faithlessness can prove to be just as powerful as a moment of pure faith, and that Mary and Abraham serve as God-given examples of an absolute faith that is inaccessible to all but a few humans who serve very specific purposes in this world. Finally, I will propose a different mode of existence, one in which a man’s free will allows him to find joy in whatever God provides for him.
As I watched this film, I couldn’t help to acknowledge a part of myself in Antwone Fisher. I found Myself understanding and empathizing with him on his coping mechanisms and protective factors displayed to survive his trauma. As a young child Antwone was able to develop physically according to his age. He did not show any physical health concerns, regardless of the circumstance’s. Growing up Antwone learned to lie and hide in order to protect himself from his life. I understand this as a positive factor even though it can be seen as negative or a risk. When you are able to avoid or deny, you are able to hide events and therefore creating a sense of wellbeing for yourself. As a boy he learns to be alert leading him to be able to adapt and overcome his
In his article “Prodigal Sons,” David Brooks take the “Parable of the Prodigal Sons by Jesus” into account while discussing about the modern society. The parable illustrates a situation where the hard-working elder son is largely forsaken, while the wasted younger son is forgiven of his debauchery and is celebrated. Brooks states that the lesson from the parable, forgiving the “younger sons” of the modern society, is crucial, and that the “older sons” should not be able to create schemes on behalf of the younger brother, and, ultimately, that the brothers should work together to better the society. Although this lesson can be applied to certain situations, it can not be applied to every situation, and the cooperation of the brothers is unachievable.
It's a pretty bleak picture he paints, cloaked in finery and delight but at the core full of stoic acceptance of misery, hardship and death. While there is a good deal of this that Kipling probably believed, even a casual examination of his own life suggests that this book is more of a bare-bones explication of the fundamental issues than a fully fleshed out portrait of how an artist ought to live.
Adam, a corporal officer, starts as man who works everyday to catch the ‘villains’ of society, but is not spending enough time with his family, especially his son. He favors his nine year old daughter over his fifteen year old son. Adam views his daughter as a sweet child, and his son as a stubborn teenager who is going through a rebellious stage. However, when his daughter is killed in an accident, his perspective of family changes. In his grief, he states that he wishes he had been a better father. His wife reminds him that he still is a father and he realizes that he still has a chance with his son, Dylan. After his Daughter’s death, he creates a resolution from scriptures that states how he will be a better father. Because of the resolution he creates, he opens up to and spends more time with his son. By th...