Class consciousness

In the Appendix, Faulkner said that Quentin “loved not his sister’s body but some concept of Compson honor . . .” (709). Moreover, from this domestic angle, Faulkner clarified why Quentin could arrest the past through the power of language. In a class conference at the University of Virginia, Faulkner remarked that in the Compson family failure was inborn; consequently, Quentin was predestined to be unsuccessful: The action as portrayed by Quentin was transmitted to him through his father.…

One can only access the viewpoint of another from within one’s own horizon. This relationship between ‘one’ and ‘the other’ which, in Gadamer’s philosophy makes understanding possible, is what has been examined by other philosophers as well. Emmanuel Levinas considered this relationship known by him as ‘the face-to-face’ relationship, as “the heart of life [that] is found not in knowing yourself but in your relation to the Other.” (Theory for Performance Studies, Philip Auslander, p. 129) The…

In order to understand the mechanical character of Descartes’ physiology it is necessary to establish, firstly, that he considers the human body as a material substance, different from the soul, though connected with it. This distinction has been called classically ‘dualism’. In his Meditations, Descartes argues that the meditator recognizes herself as a thinking substance: ‘But what am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is…

The problem of scepticism comes to the conclusion that we do not know of our creation or existence, nor can we know. This assignment will dispute against scepticism in reference to the “Brain in a Vat” argument. This proposes that we are brains in vats which are connected up to an exceptionally sophisticated life force, in this case a computer, that somehow has the ability to counterfeit our experiences of the external world, deceiving us of what we thought to be reality. This argument…

Cultural Identity (1995). Halbwachs’ main thesis is that the memory of people can only function if it occurs in a collective context. He tries to uncover this by questioning how the past is represented not only in the individual’s consciousness but also in the collective consciousness and the mechanisms that it entails. From this he introduces the concept of collective memory which is used to illustrate the individual’s part in forming the past. Additionally, Halbwachs (1992) states that this is…

Equilibrioception is the sense of balance and a process that takes place within the body. Balance is maintained by the human body during both normal posture and movements. Thus, equilibrioception is a continuous process that takes place unconsciously in the body for the most part. This procedure requires the input of information from the vestibular, visual and proprioceptive systems. Motor output is relayed through two separate pathways in response to the integration of the information. Thus,…

One of the most important physical properties of molecules is their chirality, or lack thereof which is known as achirality. Chirality is defined as the ability of a molecule to exist in two no superimposable images called enantiomers. This means that achirality is the opposite, in which molecule is superimposable on its mirror image. When two molecules are related in the fact that they are stereoisomers of each other, but are not mirror images. In nature chiral molecules do not exist in their…

focused on memory, whereas Descartes is focused on the “thinking mind.” The thinking mind is our way of alerting the body, confirming that we are aware of our senses and selfhood. This interaction between the mind and body is commonly known as our consciousness, which has primary control over our mind and body. I unfortunately disagree with Locke and believe…

Rene Descartes proposes a variant of substance dualism that maintains the equal and distinct existence of physical and mental substances. Descartes (1641) discusses that bodies are physical substances because they extend outward and occupy spatial regions while the human mind is a mental substance because it cannot extend through space (P.165). Descartes also notes fundamental differences on their activities; the human body is passive because it cannot think while the mind can handle complex…

Freudianism Theory in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Sigmund Freud created the idea of the ‘psychologically divided self’, describing how there were three parts to the mind: the id, the ego, and the super-ego. Freud states how humans have the “The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in a man… it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture”(Freud 49). The ‘id’ represents a human’s primitive component of their mind, the ‘ego’ is where human’s mind make the…