Religious Skepticism: "Oedipus Tyrannus"
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The ancient heroes and rulers all had many great qualities that allowed them to rise to such as level, but all were aware that the gods could take it all away in an instant. Therefore, these great men prayed and sacrificed to the divinities and feared their power greatly. However, in Sophocles'...
Gentiles and Gnomes: The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien and the Apostle Paul
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
The letters of Paul are the first written communication following the crucifixion of Christ. Paul's letters at first appear to be more written commands rather than correspondences. The letters of Paul are usually interpreted as laws given by Paul to different peoples concerning the worship of...
The Ethics of Cheating: A Look into the Decision of Harry Potter
Essay - 2 pages - 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 - 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 Ahimsa...
"Guilty Bloom: Hallucination Technique Reveals Leopold Bloom's Unconscious in Ulysses"
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
A hallucination typically connotes a bad meaning for the character who admits to having one; either the person is mentally unstable or he experiences a hallucination from the consumption of illicit drugs. However, in James Joyce's novel Ulysses there is a different meaning to the word all...
Irrational Underground Man
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
“I am a sick man” are the opening words to Fyodor Dostoevsky's novella Notes from Underground. For the narrator, the Underground Man is both figuratively and literally sick - his liver hurts but he will not receive treatment from doctors. Indeed, only a ‘sick man' would choose to...
"Physiognomy in The Jungle, The Rise of Silas Lapham, The Marrow of Tradition and The Portrait of a Lady"
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
A red colored complexion signifies a fiery temperament. A yellow or green hue of the skin may hint at sickness. A square jaw means the epitome of masculinity. Authors such as Upton Sinclair, Henry James, Charles W. Chesnutt and William Dean Howells used physiognomy to relay important qualities...
Hamlet
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet meets his demise with acceptance as he has reached a matured, highly introspective level of self-awareness. His state of satisfaction derives from a rigorous course of transformation. Throughout the play, he explores the design of mankind which he believes...
Manipulating God
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
William Faulkner's novel, As I Lay Dying portrays confused characters who attempt to assuage their instabilities by deferring to a higher force. Typically, people look to religion to reconcile haunting ambiguities and fill the voids in their lives. Establishing a secure belief system provides...
"What's Love Got to Do with It"
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
The Beatles echo popular sentiment with their hit tune from the 60's, “Can't buy me love.” The lyrics profess that love holds more value than money or materialistic cravings. Certainly, a romantic relationship can yield substantial benefits to both participants, including companionship,...
The Cunning Edge
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Each individual develops his own vision of the universe. A naïve person looks up to the sky to see the moon and strains to glimpse a shooting star, or perhaps, a distant planet. Euphoric about what appears in the distance, he becomes oblivious to what lies directly in front of him. Spending all...
Reality Blights
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
No matter how hard a person tries, he cannot escape a world exploding with discrimination, violence, and blind hatred. The smell of death permeates the streets as wars rage and the taste of man's inhumanity lingers in the air. An idealistic individual attempts to shield himself from the evil,...
Keeping the faith
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
Organized religion epitomizes man's need to give order and meaning to his life. Philosophy represents his effort to rationalize the principles of his faith and conduct. Acceptance of God or an all-powerful supreme being who governs the universe remains the cornerstone of most major religions, but...
The Form and Function of Sufi Mystical Visions
Thesis - 5 pages - Philosophy
Experience of direct union with God is most often reported to be of an ineffable nature that transcends any means of description. Mystical visions, however, afford the subject of such experiences the ability to interpret, through the hermeneutics of religious symbolism, what might otherwise be...
The Relationship of Being and Perception in Enlightenment Philosophy
Thesis - 5 pages - Philosophy
The philosophical efforts of the Enlightenment thinkers were based on the relationship between metaphysics and epistemology. Descartes, Leibniz and Berkeley progress in their understandings of being by refining the means by which they are able to make justified claims to knowledge. In a...
Utopian Thought: Political Perfection Built Upon Human Imperfection
Essay - 4 pages - 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 - 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 - 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...
Embodying Emptiness: (Anti-) Aesthetics of the Prajnaparamita-Hrdaya Sutra
Essay - 6 pages - Philosophy
The Prajna-paramita Hrdaya Sutra, the 'heart' of the Mahayana tradition, represents the Buddhist anti-aesthetic of complete enlightenment in which the perception of any dualistic reality is a view of the deluded mind. The Heart Sutra is Avalokitesvara's explanation of the...
Sufi Love: Submission to the Beautiful
Essay - 2 pages - Philosophy
The practical and esoteric dimensions of Islam intertwine in the Sufi tradition to forge a non-dual relationship between the worshipper and God. Sufis augment their adherence to the Q'uranic doctrine of submission to God (Islam) with a passionate love for “doing the beautiful” (ihsan),...
A Discussion of Panpsychism: The Metaphysics of Consciousness
Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy
Panpsychism describes a world in which “everything has a mind (Chalmers 298),” and everything- animal, botanical, even mineral- is conscious. In order to determine whether or not all things are indeed conscious, two problems must be addressed. A definition of what it means to be...
Personal and Societal Alchemy in Early Daoist Scriptures
Essay - 5 pages - Philosophy
The principle of interconnectedness pervades the worldviews of the Daoist and Buddhist religions originating from India and China. It is fitting that the traditions themselves are historically and textually interconnected in a way that finds traditions intermingling by borrowing teachings and...
Ideology and War: Pacifism and Eschatological Militarism in Foreign Policy
Essay - 9 pages - Philosophy
War is a situation that embodies the principle of duality: one side is pitted against another in an “an act of violence intended to compel an opponent to fulfill our will .” That will, whatever it may be, “has its root in a political object ” that is determined within...
The Daode Jing: Manual for Cosmic Living
Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy
The Daode Jing is a manual, attributed to Laozi, suggesting that non-action (wu-wei) is a way by which one may exist in accord with the cosmic principle of Dao and thus ensure a virtuous self and society. By cultivating the individual body, the Daoist sage in turn cultivates the social body. This...
To Kill a Mockingbird
Essay - 2 pages - Literature
"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mocking bird," explains Miss Maudie in Harper Lee's...
Dissecting Romeo and Juliet
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
When studying Romeo and Juliet, most critics focus on four main points: Romeo's and Juliet's death scene, the relationship between the lovers, a feminist look at Juliet's character, and the structure of the play as a whole. However, the death scene is the most criticized aspect of the play,...
Toni Morrison's Struggle to Find an Identity
Essay - 4 pages - Literature
In Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination Morrison rejects the theory that American literature reflects white male views. She argues that “Africanism”, a term she uses “for the denotative and connotative blackness that African peoples have come to signify”...
Open Me Carefully
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Throughout her life, Emily Dickinson wrote nearly 1,800 poems, many of which are known and cherished throughout the world. Like many other great writers, Dickinson not only showed talent in her poetry but in her other forms of writing as well. Nearly as famous as her poems, many of Dickinson's...
A Timeless Debate
Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy
At a lecture given at our own Stony Brook University, Michael Ratner asserts that “Justice is losing its power” . What Michael Ratner, the defending lawyer for many prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, means by this daring statement is that America is losing sight of its foundations....
A Question of Filial Piety
Essay - 3 pages - Philosophy
Should we publicly accuse our own parents of a crime, which will undoubtedly result in their punishment? This age old question has been debated for millennia throughout the world with varied and countless legitimate arguments swaying people's opinions from one side to the other. It is unclear if...
