Pleasure

Aristotle is one of the most popular philosophers, and also very well-known not only in philosophy but also in literature. A very popular argument of Aristotle is the “Virtuous Function Argument”. This argument concludes that; If any person is virtuous, then he/she performs his/her purpose/function well. But with this argument, it could have disagreed due to the vocabulary and it is noted “not sound”, or not valid in the sense that they set the argument up wrong. I tend to feel that this…

Ethical Egoism, a normative theory, states that an individual should only look out for themselves, personally and individually. The theory believes that the only time that someone should consider the act of helping another person, would be if that act would help them in the end. This theory focuses on how we should act as individuals, what we believe we should do. Utilitarianism in theory believes that we should concern ourselves with the decisions that will bring the greatest happiness and the…

Laura Mulvey on Feminism in Cinema and Theater Laura Mulvey is best known for her essays written in “Visual Pleasures and narrative cinema” published in 1973. In this book she argues that the controlling gaze in cinema and theater is always male. Mulvey’s concept of the “male gaze” is only mentioned twice in “Visual Pleasures and narrative cinema” but it has become the main point in feminist film debate. “The Spectacle is Vulnerable:Miss World 1970” offered a good starting point for the…

Ethical Dilemma: is it Ethical for Jack and his tribe to kill Simon The book, Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, tells the story of a plane full of boys that have been evacuated from England. Their plane crashes on an island. Upon crashing, the pilot and all the other adults have died, and the young children have been left alone on the island. The oldest child is named Ralph, who is 12 years of age. Ralph, the protagonist of the novel, teams up with his friend Piggy, and gather the…

Dorian’s character there was the temptation for the forbidden. Lord Henry saw this as an opportunity to introduce his philosophy and indulge his desire to manipulate him for his own pleasure. Lord Henry’s philosophy of Aestheticism is not inherently bad, it simply allows an individual to experience things their beauty and pleasure are regardless of the moral inclination. However this ability to experience aspects of life without moral accountability gave way to Dorian’s temptation, something…

Happiness is pleasure and the absence of pain versus unhappiness which is pain and the absences of pleasure. Mill thinks pleasures and happiness are the same. If something brings you pleasure, then you are happy. Just as if you are happy something has brought you pleasure. Take for example food, it is only desired to stop and/or prevent hunger which brings happiness to the person starving. Together the theory of value and consequentialism make the principle of theory. This says “pleasure and…

Utilitarianism is one of the most addressed ideologies in ethics. Blackburn explains this ideology as: “It concentrates upon general well-wishing or benevolence, or solidarity or identification with the pleasures and pains or welfare of people as a whole” (Blackburn, 86). To expand on this quote, the basic goal of utilitarians is to have the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people in a society. (Blackburn, 82). It focuses on actions that are morally right and forward-looking. When…

Republic written by Plato, the idea of a happy person is dissected thoroughly by Socrates and explained. He makes the argument that the happiest person is the just rather than the unjust. He does this in many ways by explaining; what is a just man, pleasure, tyranny, a city etc. Thus, in Plato’s Republic, Socrates demonstrates a successful…

Desired suffering as we know it, but in the form of transformative cultural rites of passage (coined in 1909 by the Anthologist Gennep) appears mysterious in it universal multiplicities. Ritual combat – such as the bloody, skull shattering club-fights of Aché – persists as a dominant commonality and (in a Western functionalist reading of intelligibility) serves as sort of social function among neighboring clans, tribes and bands for releasing pent-up mental cathexes and aggressive energy. In…

of his pleasure and eventually, rekindle the original grief he once felt. As a way to perpetuate the cycle of masochistic relationships wherein his lover dies, the narrator remarries repeatedly and guarantees the passing of his wife. The narrator’s repeated cycle of marrying women fated to die fulfills the ‘provocative’ characteristic of the masochistic relationship, or when “the masochist aggressively demands punishment since it resolves anxiety and allows him to enjoy the forbidden pleasure”…