Existentialism Essay

2. The Crying of Lot 49: modernism or postmodernism? In my arguing that The Crying of Lot 49 can also be construed as a late-modernist text, I will turn to Harvey’s essay ‘The Cry from Within or Without? Pynchon and the Modern – Postmodern Divide’ where he fervently argues against McHale’s ‘claim’ that The Crying of Lot 49 is fundamentally a modernist text by presenting two core arguments relating to a) intertextuality and b) Oedipa’s search for truth. Before I will dispute any arguments of…

1. In your own words explain what a humanist is. Montaigne was considered a humanist. What do you see in his writing that supports his classification as a humanist? Explain your examples. A humanist is a person who does away with faith and lives for themselves. They wanted to live their lives without basing it on a religion. They believed that humans needs and wants are more important than the ones of religion. That people should be able to express themselves as individuals not as part of a…

Throughout Fyodor Dostoevsky’s work, Notes from Underground, the protagonist, the underground man, portrays himself as a spiteful, self-contradictory, and overly conscious melancholy man. He continuously over analyzes and questions everything, and this prevents him from taking any real action. The underground man is lonely and constantly vacillates between wanting society’s acknowledgment or to be socially desired and wanting to be completely isolated from society. He gives off the impression…

“Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny” -Harry S Truman. He is saying that your actions determine your fate, which influences your destiny. He is warning us to be careful of what we do. This is also shown in the play Macbeth. In Macbeth by William Shakespeare, the main character Macbeth is a nobleman to King Duncan. The play starts with Macbeth being a war hero by helping them win the war. This leads to the witches telling him he will become king. Macbeth believes them and ends up…

As the novelist Haruki Murakami wrote, “Now, though, I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts” (12). A work of literature is imperfect in the sense that it is more or less related to and restricted by the social context in which it is written and is a memory-carrier of its own culture. Sophocles’ Attic tragedy Antigone carries memories of sociopolitical concerns over the future development and fertility of the city Athens.…

When an individual feels that their life and actions are constantly being monitored, patrolled, and assessed by others or by God, there is more of an incentive to make “just” or “good” choices. How does one live life when nobody is watching, though? According to Glaucon in Plato’s Republic, one acts justly solely based on their care for reputation and future repercussions, not due to a genuine desire to do what is good and reflects justice. Glaucon expresses that without the worry of unfavorable…

Every person lives their own kind of reality. Not every person, however experiences this reality and copes with it the same way, or remembers it the same way. The Glass Menagerie is a play that exemplifies the role memory and escapism can play in life. The playwright, Tennessee Williams, based this work from his personal life and connects himself with his mother and sister to the characters in the play. As the play progresses, the narrator retains more from the past and the story grows through…

Albert Camus addresses the steps one should take when dealing with the notion of absurdity in order to make the choice to live without appeal. In the Myth of Sisyphus, Camus defines the clash between the irrational world and humans seeking for rational answers as absurdity. He then outlines the best solution for acknowledging the lack of meaning in life while not turning to suicide. There are many parallels to his reasoning in The Plague, where he uses the threat of sickness in a quarantined…

• The Absurd: What then is meant by the notion of the Absurd? Contrary to the view conveyed by popular culture, the Absurd, at least not what Camus had stated, that it does not simply refer to some vague perception that modern life is fraught with paradoxes, incongruities, and intellectual confusion. Instead, as he emphasizes and tries to make clear, the Absurd expresses a fundamental disharmony, a tragic incompatibility, in our existence. In effect, he argues that the Absurd is the…

The process for Peirce involves a «progressive investigation», which he defines as the «activity of thought by which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a foreordained goal, [-the impersonal truth]» (CP 5.407 1878). This idea is also captured in the following words of Peirce; The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality…