Rationalism

It was once said that “He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great.” Being the poster child for the romantic era, this quote from Herman Melville greatly shows individualism, one of the many romantic tenets and ideas that he had developed in his daily life. Although a romantic artist from the start, he was influenced and inspired by the works of fellow romantics Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. His most famous work, Moby Dick, was actually dedicated to his idol Hawthorne and was…

Blade Runner is a science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott in which Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a retired blade runner, a cop specialized for hunting down replicants, robots that are as smart as and look like humans but only have a four year lifespan, has to hunt down four replicants who escaped enslavement. Deckard finds Racheal, who is revealed to be a fifth replicant who was given human memories as an experiment. After hunting down and “retiring”, with bullets, two of the replicants it…

“Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so you shall become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil” stated British philosophical poet James Allen. Since the dawn of time humanity has sought to find order in the world, to find means by which one could determine the future. In this endeavor many across time and culture have pointed their discerning minds to dreams. Dreams have been believed to hold the secret to future…

This political study will define the similarities between the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS) and the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th Century. The evolution of the Civil Rights movement sought to use “creative” methods of direct non-violent action to dramatize the social, racial, and economic inequalities through the Martin Luther King’s method of Civil Rights protest. The OWS follows the same creative non-violent path by occupying physical spaces, such as Wall Street, to protest the…

create a government that was fair for all of it citizens. The Enlightenment was a time where several new ways of thinking and exploring the world were being used in countries across Europe. People began to think objectively and used reasoning, rationalism, and empiricism to explore new ideas. New political thought processes from the Enlightenment were included in many of the documents written during the French Revolution. Throughout the four phases of terror in the French Revolution the new…

Neorealism assumes the state will always make the rational choice to maximize its utility. In neoliberalism, non-state actors such as civil societies and individuals also make rational choices. Both theories borrow ideas from the theory of rationalism (Wendt, 1992). Constructivism, on the other hand, does not make such assumption about rationality. By no means is constructivism suggesting that actors are irrational, but it provides us with two cautionary tales about rationality. The first…

human experience in that reason is the morality source while the time and space forms human sensibility. Kant was able to create the Kantianism framework (Kantian ethics), which is a deontological ethical theory that is premised on Enlightenment rationalism is the good provide the basis of the maxim or principle behind it is based on the moral law. In expanding his theoretical perspective, Kant points towards the categorical imperative that affects on all people without considering the desires…

Cruz Ruiz-Ayala Doubt In the movie Doubt, written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, we follow a catholic church in 1964 as it deals with suspicions of child molestation. Through observations by Sister James, played by Amy Adams, and a telephone game with Sister Aloysius, the audience find themselves making their own conclusions from the very beginning. As the movie progresses and the audience even meets the mother of Donald Miller, the supposed victim, whoms gives reason as to why Father…

Identity has always been a problem in society. People create terms or stereotypes that become the identity of another individual. The 1985 movie The Breakfast Club showed the effects that stereotypes have on people. The five main characters were coined as a criminal, jock, basket case, brain, and princess (The Breakfast Club). All of these names that are supposed to represent their identity turned out to be wrong. At the end of the movie, the audience saw that every character was more than their…

Immanuel, Kant - (1724-1804) Most influential philosopher in the history of Western philosophy. One of the foremost thinkers of the Enlightenment, he focused on rationalism and works of Francis Bacon. Kant wanted to structure ethics as consisting of a set of rules that one never shall break, he claimed that humanity has a dignity or worth that elevates humanity above all else in nature. In 1775, he wrote the “General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens,” a theory of the origins of the…