Rationalism

Throughout his “Meditations” Descartes will demonstrate that he is breaking away from the traditional way of thinking and metaphysics. And, throughout the text Descarte will lay out a foundation to a different way of thinking. One in which one does not solely rely on the senses to know things, but instead rely on an inspection of the mind. But, this conflicts with other philosophers of Descartes time, and it conflicts with what is being taught within the schools, Around Descartes time, many of…

First Argument Analysis In his book, The Abolition of Man, Lewis (1944) argued in the first chapter, Men Without Chests, that “Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element’” (p.24). In another words, “The head rules the bely through the chest. The Chest – Magnanimity – Sentiment are the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man” (p.24-25). Accordingly, Lewis suggests that the most essential thing about education is to inspire and train…

Merlin: Knowledge and Power through the Ages. By Stephen Knight. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009. xvii + 275 pages. $27.95 cloth. Merlin: Knowledge and Power through the Ages is an observation of Merlin and his different forms in the variety of literature written about him. In the books, films, poems, etc. written about him he is seen as a figure of knowledge. Knight follows the myth of Merlin and goes back to his earliest roots as the early Welsh figure of Myrddin. He traces the images…

Kindred and Coexisting As humans develop, the need to expand increases. Some of this increase causes the destruction of nature on the very foundation in which the new buildings and complexes stand. In the two pieces of writing, The Serpents of Paradise by Edward Abbey and Wasteland: An Elegy by Mary Oliver, the authors examine their own personal experiences with nature. In order to show that humans should treat nature with care, the authors narrate their story in first person, but choose…

Over a millennium after Aristotle wrote his unmoved mover argument. The Catholic philosopher Saint Thomas Aquinas reintroduced the idea as part of his five proofs for the existence of God. Aquinas’s first way is derived from motion. Following the same premise as Aristotle, Aquinas argues that a first mover, existing in a state of perfect actuality, must exist to move things from potential to actual states. Absence of this first mover would result in an infinite regress; therefore, the…

Effects of Humanism on Religion in the Renaissance The Renaissance is a time in history that introduced a vast number of new ideas. People were slowly moving out of the dark ages and embracing new concepts of thought. Also, with the help of new inventions such as the printing press, it had become easier for people to learn how to read and write. This had created a foundation for many Renaissance thinkers to help spread different ideas easily throughout the world. One of the numerous movements…

The mystery of what embodies "knowledge" is as old as philosophy itself. The Gettier Problem, refuting the JTB (justified true belief) account, has been a historical and on-going debate in the epistemological field. In simplistic terms, knowledge is understood as an awareness or understanding of something, such as facts, information, descriptions or skills, which are acquired through experience, perceiving, discovering, learning or intuiting. Consequently, truth is understood as a verified or…

To what extent are there contradictions within liberalism? (45) Liberalism is an ideology which places its main focus on individualism: the belief in the utmost importance of the individual over any social group or collective body. A key tenet within liberalism is that of universalism, the belief that a person is worth one and no more than one. This, coupled with the belief that humans are innately rational beings, encourages a tolerant, diverse society which focuses on maintaining social…

Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “Cask of Amontillado” (1846) shares the confession of a man who committed an abhorrent and nefarious crime half a century ago. Montresor lures Fortunato into the family catacombs under the pretext that he insists on requiring Fortunato 's self-proclaimed wine connoisseurship to determine the authenticity of Montresor’s newly attained cask of Amontillado. There, he proceeds to brick Fortunato into a wall of the vaults to perish as revenge for the “thousand injuries”…

of formalist philosophical methods as well as experimental science runs as a thematic undercurrent of all Merleau-Ponty’s work. Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception attempts to answer the mind/body debate by providing us an alternative to rationalism or empiricism. The work is structured as a critique of empiricism and intellectualism. Merleau-Ponty believes that the abstract and disembodied thinking present in such theories is problematic (Reynolds…