Carl Friedrich Gauss

Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and John Stuart Mill are three authors who tackle the topic of freedom in unique ways, but their messages are fundamentally the same and further the ideas that we encountered in the esoteric texts as well as in The Matrix, most prominent of which is the claim that our freedom is simply an illusion. These texts differ from the esoteric texts in that they do not try to get us to believe in religious ideology, however they still suggest ways for us to better our lives.…

An Inspector Calls is a play written by Dramatist J.B Priestley in 1945. Priestley was a left-wing socialist and this was one of the factors which influenced him to write this play. Even though the play was written in 1945, it was actually set in 1912, right before the start of the First World War. It is set in the spring of 1912 at the Brumley home of the Birlings, a prosperous industrial family in the North Midlands, getting involved in the death of a woman named Eva Smith. The Inspector uses…

The categorical imperative, to Immanuel Kant, is an overarching principle of acting towards others the way you would like for them to treat everybody else; a slight furtherance of the ‘Golden Rule’(Where your actions are based upon the way you would like them to treat you). The categorical imperative creates a moral basis based upon one’s understanding of their own individuality coupled with an empathetic understanding of those around them, based upon their precepts that they’ve come to…

Different “Ways of Seeing” In the essay, “Ways of Seeing,” John Berger applies Marxism to art history. Marxism is the social, economic and political theory formed by Karl Marx. It deals with class struggle and the oppression of the lower classes by the upper classes. In the essay, Berger focuses on using Marxist methodology, when he analyzes and explains an artist named Frans Hal. Berger uses Hals paintings to demonstrate the structure of social classes, and their struggles to give an idea of…

However, if – as I have discussed above – Nietzsche claims that all of reality is Will to Power, then to show what it means to be in general is to show what it means to be as Will to Power. Of course it could be pointed out that Parkes is talking about human beings and Nietzsche about the overhuman. However, I believe that can be said for the latter is valid for the former. As mentioned above, in EH Nietzsche claims that because of his great health Zarathustra ‘is reality itself’ insofar as he…

In his second essay in the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche discusses the creditor/debtor relationship, the resulting bad conscience and most importantly the sovereign individual, “liberated again from morality of custom, autonomous and supra moral” (Nietzsche 59). In fact, Nietzsche further emphasizes that a sovereign person has a “power over oneself and over fate” (Nietzsche 60). I find Nietzsche’s description of this superhuman, sovereign state of mind both interesting and perplexing. I…

Introduction Max Weber, born on April 21, 1864, was a German social scientist and the founder of modern sociological thought. Having a father who was an active lawyer in political life influenced him to attend Heidelberg University and to major in law, history, economics, as well as philosophy. After later continuing his studies at the Universities of Berlin and Göttingen, he managed to pass his bar examination in 1866 and he decided to practice law for a short period of time. In 1889, he…

In Essay I of Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, ‘Good and Evil’, ‘Good and Bad’, Nietzsche attempts to study the origin of contemporary morality by examining the conditions and circumstances by which the values of morals have emerged. This investigation of his, lead him to conclude that the morals that exist in us now, are not inherent in us, but were caused by a “slave revolt” in morality through the feeling of ressentiment. In this essay, I will be discussing what ressentiment is, why and…

Friedrich Nietze’s systematic work titled On the Genealogy of morals comprises three essays that explicitly question, as well as critique, the value of people’s moral judgments on the basis of a genealogical approach whereby he investigates the origins and the significance of people’s diverse moral concepts. Nietzsche sees morality as something that embodies a system of faults that humans have integrated into their basic ways of feeling, thinking, and living; thus a strong symbol of how people…

good and evil behavior. A German philosopher who researched and examined moral judgments was Friedrich Nietzsche. Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most influential German philosopher, who contributed greatly to the field of philosophy through his writings. One of his most important piece of work of all time is the “On the Genealogy of Morals.” On the Genealogy of Morals is a three piece essay, where Friedrich Nietzsche encourages us to use new set of philosophical tools and disregard the old…