What Is Empiricism?
Essay - 2 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Empiricism is a view about where all knowledge comes from. Empiricism is not exclusive to scientific knowledge, but rather knowledge as a whole. This includes knowledge of everyday life. Empiricism states that science and everyday thinking have the same basic principles,...
Who Has Final Control Over Our Bodies: Me, You, or God?
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Human beings, as superior animals, are born with unique cognitive processes that we have yet to identify in other animals. It is our cognition, our thoughts that set us apart from other creatures and make us who we are. However, our ability to think and analyze is also what causes us to question...
Homer and the Futility of War
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Rage. Rage is the first word that starts the Iliad (1.1), and as beginnings go it is a substantial foundation for the story told, however leaving the question “Which Rage?”. The rage of Achilles at the death of Patrokles, the rage of Menelaus at the theft of Helen, these are the...
What is Practical Wisdom?
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Aristotle within his Nicomachean Ethics defines the different regions of the soul, especially the virtues and functions of each. After all his contemplation over universal ideas, such as the very essence and base of justice and wisdom, he also realized the soul must contain a part to contemplate...
Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Good versus Evil, this is the ever present conflict in human morality and while nearly one third of the modern world supports this doctrine by supporting Christianity, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche abhors this division of morals. His essay, Genealogy of Morals, remembers that once Good...
Carpe Diem? Try Tomorrow
Essay - 2 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Initially, I sat in front of a blank page contemplating how to start the introduction, how to draw the reader in. But after an hour, it became clear to me that I could not easily conjure up a stylish lead-in with the subject matter. So here I am addressing the issue flat out....
The North Indian Tabla Drum as Saivite Hindu Religious Path
Essay - 2 pages - Humanities/philosophy
The traditions of Hindustani (North Indian) tabla drumming gather the various strands of culture that exist in India into a complex social tapestry. In order to understand the cultural phenomenon of tabla music, it must be heard within the context of an Indian heritage originating from a wide...
Anthrologists in Disagreement over Cockfighting
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
In anthropological theory there has been a clear division and consistent debate between cultural materialists and non-materialist symbolic anthropologists. Theorists such as Marvin Harris and Julian Steward are exemplary of the materialist position, while others such as Sherry B. Ortner...
The Flavor and Sound of Liberation
Essay - 2 pages - Humanities/philosophy
The versatile musical functionality of the tabla reflects its utility as an instrument of contemplation. As the rhythmic expression of the drone, the tabla focuses the listener's attention on the present musical moment. From a psychological perspective, “the basis of listening is the...
Devotion and Musical Practice in North India
Essay - 5 pages - Humanities/philosophy
The guru-shisya parampara is the system of master/disciple lineage that characterizes the traditional education system of North Indian music. The term parampara, ‘disciplic succession,' is introduced in the Bhagavad-gita (4.2), when Krsna tells Arjuna: “This Knowledge of yoga...
Longing For HER: Ferlinghetti's Mad Quest for the Muse
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
While Lawrence Ferlinghetti makes no claim to being enlightened, his poetry is nonetheless a record of and reaction to the sacred journey. While it is illuminating to read words of the awakened prophets of world history, I think it can be as rewarding to read the work of those who, sincere in...
Concise Summary of Descartes' Reasoning in "Meditations on First Philosophy"
Essay - 4 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Descartes' Meditation One sets out his purpose of creating a new scientific paradigm to be based on a foundation built above the wreckage of his former opinions. He sought a reason to doubt the entire canon of his opinions so that he might begin “to establish anything firm and lasting in the...
Exposition of Kant's "Copernican Revolution" in Philosophy
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Taking their cue from the scientific philosophy of Francis Bacon, the thinkers of the Enlightenment assumed that the mind acted as a mirror, simply reflecting images of outward objects onto the subjective self. Immanuel Kant proposed a reorientation in which the relation between subject and...
Duality in Mahayana Buddhist Scriptures
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
The Buddha's teachings, although expressive of ultimate reality, have been conveyed through the relative medium of language. This discrepancy has led to the invocation of dichotomies such as “reality versus unreality”, “existence versus nonexistence” and “truth versus...
A Comparison of Zen and Shin Buddhism: Dogen VS Shinran
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Buddhism was not originally a Japanese religion, since the said originator of the way, Siddhartha Gautama (also referred to as Shakyamuni Buddha) was born in a region that is now Nepal, and spread his teachings mostly around northern India. China later received his teachings through various...
What is Judaism?
Essay - 2 pages - Humanities/philosophy
What is Judaism? What does it mean to be a Jew? According to Webster's Dictionary, “Judaism is a monotheistic religion that traces its roots back to Abraham and having its spiritual and ethical principles embodied chiefly in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Talmud.” There are three...
To Exist Is to Question Existence Itself
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Writers define themselves by their purposes. A novelist writes to entertain, to embrace the imagination and create a world of escape for the reader. A columnist writes to inform, to relay the facts and describe a world of current events for the reader. What,...
The Fall of Ulysses
Essay - 4 pages - Humanities/philosophy
In all its humor, 1984 ½ would have in actuality been a very fitting title for Terry Gilliam's Brazil. An invisible, all-powerful government, the struggle of the individual against the state, the apparent hopelessness, there is no doubting the similarities between George Orwell's...
Self-fulfillment
Essay - 20 pages - Humanities/philosophy
The controversy surrounding self-fulfilling prophecies, while originally centered on proving their existence, has recently settled on the probability of such phenomenon occurring in a natural environment. While not directly cited in this resource guide, the original “Pygmalion...
Punishment and the Damned
Essay - 4 pages - Humanities/philosophy
It can be questioned whether the Greek and Roman people ever believed in their own gods. However, even such questioning cannot undermine the didactic value of their religion. Greek and Roman mythology thrived on storytelling; bards assumed the role of primitive priests, teaching moral reasoning...
A Discourse on Happiness for a Drug-Free Nation
Essay - 2 pages - Humanities/philosophy
For the most part, there are two desirable products of problem solving: personal pleasure and the happiness of others. This difference between selfishness and unselfishness has often defined moral decision making, the former being nothing less than sin and the latter being utterly...
A Better Fate: Mythology and the Creation of Meaning
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Mythology: the bookstore catalogue designation where religions go to die. When the believers cease believing in their gods, and when the gods cease believing in themselves. We often forget we once worshiped Zeus and those other “primitive” gods with the...
Kant, Mill and Protagoras
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
When following the determining factors of morality for either Kant or Mill one would generally arrive to the same conclusion on whether an action is moral or not. Although Kant believes that his method of deriving morality is best, Mill believes that Kant's process is lacking. “But when he...
Three Vehicles and Their Resulting Enlightenments in Buddhism
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
The Buddhist path leading toward nirvana is one properly undertaken with the understanding that enlightenment is something coming in degrees, and perhaps without a finite ‘ending point.' It is not unlike the mathematical concept of a limit. “The limit of ‘the function of x' as x...
On the Education of Edgar
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
“For doubting pleases me no less than knowing.” This quote by Dante which Montaigne uses in his essays strikes at the heart of his ideas about education. He believes that the ancient ways of Aristotle, where one learns through the text of learned men, are outdated because it...
The Ethics of Cheating: A Look into the Decision of Harry Potter
Essay - 2 pages - Humanities/philosophy
In an attempt to test the Aristotelian method discussed in Nicomachean Ethics, I have chosen to discuss the dilemma of cheating. I have chosen this topic in an attempt to be as impartial as possible while discussing at and I have a thorough knowledge of the subject taking part in and witnessing...
Gandhi's Experiments with Truth
Essay - 3 pages - Humanities/philosophy
The concept of truth is the central aspect of religion. What is truth? How is it attained? These questions have been the focal points of theological discussion throughout history. Gandhi suggested that truth can be found in his concepts of Satyagraha, or total self-renunciation, and...
Utopian Thought: Political Perfection Built Upon Human Imperfection
Essay - 4 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Utopian fiction, a genre originated by Sir Thomas More in 1516, attempts to expound political theory under the guise of fiction. The narration of these works is essential to the communication of political ideas, as the integrity of the political information conveyed hinges on the actual...
Arguing Their Way to Salvation: Eschatology in Jewish-Christian Polemics of the Middle Ages
Essay - 4 pages - Humanities/philosophy
This essay will investigate how issues of Jewish messianism and eschatology were used as polemical devices in medieval disputations between Jews and their Christian interlocutors. Eschatology, the system of religious beliefs about the end of time, is a crucial theme in medieval Judeo-Christian...
Religion as Means for Social Mechanization in Dystopia
Essay - 4 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Dystopian literature describes societies in which Government seizes total control over its citizens by eliminating their sense of individual self, and in turn, efficiently regulating their personal desires. Only with deviant selfishness can a member of dystopian society regain his personal...
