Take that Baudrillard: The absurdity of narrative and the possibility of meaning in Candide
Essay - 6 pages - Literature
Voltaire has been said to have been mocking Leibniz's popular theory that “whatever is, is right,” (Pope, l.294) in Candide. While that is true, it only scratches the surface. The more significant fact is that the language and logic with which Candide satirizes Leibniz mock the very...
The work of Carl Gustav Jung
Thesis - 12 pages - Humanities/philosophy
In this essay we will explore whether the work of Carl Gustav Jung has been built upon. Alternatively the psychology that Jung built may have been close to entirely his own with little contribution from others. Or perhaps a great deal of additional work will have been contributed from others....
Reflections and remediation of the past: A survey of literary and philosophical Greece, and its similarities to the electronic age
Essay - 12 pages - Psychology
The topic that I plan to explore in this essay involves looking at the past and present in order to have a better understanding of the future. There are essentially three parts to my research. First, I want to explore what happens to the brain biologically when it must learn something new. In...
"No artist tolerates reality" - Nietzsche. To what extend is this true in the work of Yeats and Eliot?
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
"No artist tolerates reality", as far as this quotation of Nietzsche is concerned, it is true that artists - and therefore writers - cannot tolerate reality, and that is the reason why they often aim at changing this reality through their art, and in the case of writers, through their written...
The role of Eros, madness and desire, and physical sexuality in Plato's philosophy
Thesis - 7 pages - Humanities/philosophy
The philosophy of Plato had a strong impact on the development of Western thought and the evolution of Western culture. His ideas were influential with Christian thinkers in the third and fourth centuries and with European philosophers in the Renaissance and after.This paper will examine Plato's...
The goddess and Mary the mother of Jesus
Thesis - 7 pages - Social sciences
Syncretism means the merging of different forms of belief or practice. The word comes from the description of the fusion of Cretan cities, and is often used in the religious context to describe how new religious and spiritual ideas moving into a culture merge with the ideas that already exist in...
Myth, the age of irrationalism, and the cult of celebrity.
Essay - 10 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Ancient and primitive cultures demonstrate the use of myth as an epistemological basis, but historically they have been replaced by Rationalism. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, the insufficiency of reason for the task we give it has become more and more evident, until at last...
The Parthenon
Essay - 4 pages - Medieval history
After the Athenians defeated the Persians in defense of their glorius city. Pericles had proposed a resurrection and rebuilding of the Athenian temples that were destroyed by the Persian invaders. The best materials, artists, and laborers were called upon from the entire region to take part in...
The Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood
Essay - 11 pages - Arts and art history
A considerable number of women were active in every phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Some, as was the case for Elizabeth Siddal and Lucy Madox Brown, incorporated the ideas of their husbands and fathers into their own art. Others were deeply influenced by the freshness of the Pre-Raphaelite...
The empowered woman in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale
Book review - 7 pages - Literature
Speaking of his king's command to “stay [his wife's] tongue,” (The Winter's Tale, 2.3.110) Antigonus very succinctly states the theme of female empowerment in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Throughout the play, Shakespeare employs various strategies to communicate this idea. One...
Joseph Beuys's 'I Like America and America Likes Me'
Thesis - 10 pages - Arts and art history
Joseph Beuys's “I Like America and America Likes Me" was performed in May 1974. The location of the action is commonly referred to as the Rene Block Gallery in New York. The gallery opened with this performance at 409 West Broadway. Beuys performed this action as a 53-year- old and with...
A Post-Jungian perspective on the psychology of the pre-modern person in today's modern western culture
Essay - 6 pages - Psychology
The psychology that shall be articulated in this essay can from the outset be described as relatively pre-modern and relatively psychoanalytical. It is pre-modern because we will be focusing on the pre-modern psyche without arguing that it should be vanquished in favor of a modern psychological...
Creative psychology
Essay - 8 pages - Psychology
In this essay we discuss some selective creative areas of psychology; of interest to Depth Psychology. Part 1 discusses the influence of romanticism on the famous 20th century psychologist, Carl Jung. Part 2 discusses Jung's psychological perspective on the UFO phenomenon. Finally in part 3 we...
The Chinese dragon and its influence on Christianity in China
Case study - 2 pages - Management
Generally, dragons have held positive connotations in culture of the Chinese since the time of the Song dynasty, in AD 960-1279. The Chinese made prayers to the dragon for rain. In Chinese culture, the dragon has been used as a symbol of imperial power; in fact, the emperor wore a dragon robe,...
Neoclassicism, Benjamin West, and Cupid
Thesis - 3 pages - Arts and art history
The Neoclassical art movement began in Europe in the late 1700s and lasted into the early 1800s. The movement was inspired in part by the public interest in ancient artifacts found in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum - a sensational discovery at the time, which galvanized the art world of...
Belgian comics and constructing Belgian national identity
Thesis - 6 pages - Journalism
Belgium is a unique country that uses a federal solution to construct a civic nation from two competing ethnic and cultural identities. In the north is the Flemish region, in the south, Wallonia, and in the middle, the capitol and mainly French speaking, city of Brussels. There is also a small...
To hell and back: A human's tale by Dante Alighieri
Thesis - 4 pages - Literature
When asked to name the most influential authors in the history of literature, a person would most likely refer to authors whose acclaim is so great, one only has to say a single part of his or her name. Poets and playwrights, these authors composed works that transcend time and place and carry...
Visual analysis of an Assyrian winged deity
Thesis - 2 pages - Social sciences
Walking slowly through the cool, dark room of Ancient Near Eastern art at the Museum of Fine Arts, visitors come across the superhuman-size, alabaster relief of an Assyrian winged deity. It is this striking deity that catches viewers' eyes easily with its intricacy and precision of pattern as...
An essay on Charles Hartshorne's mnemonic metaphysics
Thesis - 4 pages - Humanities/philosophy
Our ancestors of the ‘pre-philosophical' era - much too often called Ionian thinkers - engaged themselves in an admirable quest to make sense of everything that struck their awe. As a consequence, the concept of deity, as well as the supernatural forces attributed to nearly all types of...
Strategic marketing : the secrets of Harry Potter's success
Case study - 12 pages - Services marketing
Over ten years ago, the world witnessed the inception of one of the most impressive success stories ever - the Harry Potter books. Since the publication of the first book, Harry Potter has become a commercial, cultural and social phenomenon. With each passing year, the Potter mania has captured...
The impact of the French Revolution (1789-1815) on social structure, legal system and political life and institutions during the nineteenth century in France
Essay - 5 pages - Modern history
Some events stamp on the history of mankind forever : the French Revolution is definitely one of these. Indeed, really few upheavals such as this one triggered so many thoughts, comments and passionate reactions all over the world. Although lot of scholars tried to understand and qualify this...
Book Report: Romantics, Rebels & Reactionaries by Marilyn Butler
Book review - 7 pages - Literature
Offering a precise and coherent definition of artistic movements has always been a tempting prospect for whoever seeks to make sense out of our historical and cultural background. One has to confess, that it is equally tempting to approach the Romantic period in an attempt to set fixed...
Personal and Societal Alchemy in Early Daoist Scriptures
Essay - 5 pages - Humanities/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...
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...
Journeying Abandonment
Essay - 3 pages - Literature
Dante's Inferno, while a fictionalized version of the dichotomy of Heaven and Hell, is in many ways an accurate portrayal of the doctrines of Christianity. However, this Hell he creates is a Hell the Bible never expected. Influenced by the growing mistrust of the Pope throughout his native...
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...
The Taste of Peace and Practice of Love in North Indian Drumming
Tutorials/exercises - 3 pages - Arts and art history
The knowledge gained by practicing the North Indian tabla drums situates the musician within two spiritual modes of the Hindu tradition: the tantric, via rasa, and the yogic, via bhakti. Is there a limit to the spiritual efficacy of such musical practice? Citing the lack of “common measure...
Book Review: Women in the Viking Age
Book review - 3 pages - Literature
Women in the Viking Age by Judith Jesch is a detailed and informative publication that discusses women during the Viking Age through the close examination of a vast amount of resources. Judith Jesch is currently teaching at the University of Nottingham, and has extensive experience in a variety...
Why the Greeks?
Essay - 4 pages - Humanities/philosophy
I take the question which is the title of this paper in two ways. First, I take it to mean, “what racial, historical, cultural, geographical and political factors gave rise to what is commonly considered the first flowering of philosophical thought;” Second, to mean, “for what...
Inhabiting the Myth of Dune
Book review - 6 pages - Literature
The structures of everyday life are embodied in patterns that align with an internal concept of the mythic. The extent to which all societies are guided by some sense of the mythic is proportional to a culture's dependence on language, religion, or historical foundation; for these structures that...
