Sunday, December 29, 2019

Aristotle s Views On The Morality Of Government - 1350 Words

The question of the morality of government has been one ever since the first prehistoric humans came together to form bands of nomads. This question was especially something the ancient Greek philosophers argued over as they were ruled by a patriarchal democracy. Plato and later Aristotle grappled with this question over who should rule and what various forms or kinds of rule would look like. Aristotle mentions a few various true forms of government such as a kingship, aristocracy, and polity as well as their perverted forms such a tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. The perverted forms are the same as the true ones only the true forms rule for the common interest and the perverted forms rule only to benefit the ruler(s). This represents†¦show more content†¦(1280a 5) This is why a polity might be the most effective kind of rule because it combines the need for government by the rich, but it allows the poor to have a say within representation as well. It is a compromise betwe en a true aristocracy/oligarchy and a democracy. So there is combined rule by both the rich and poor. This is why it is the most practical and rational because it allows for the rich (who would have ruled) to rule and the poor (who would have been ruled) to rule as well. So long as the government fulfills the common interest, this is the best kind of rule proposed by Aristotle. There are few major differences between Machiavellian political theory and Aristotelian political theory. Machiavelli saw principalities as the future of government and that only under a successful prince could people from various territories come together and unify under one ruler. Machiavelli offered virtu as the example for rulers rather than virtue. The difference is that virtu was about the ruler ruling effectively for the good of the people versus virtue which states that a person should be good and act justly. Machiavelli was only interested in the results of rule in using virtu rather than the person who was doing the ruling. Though Machiavelli does offer guidelines for a ruler to always be kind and to not take property from his subjects. Aristotle saw virtue as something that everybody should strive for ratherShow MoreRelatedEssay on Machiavellis The Prince: Politics, War, and Human Nature1334 Words   |  6 Pagesmany visions of morality put up on pedestals by thinkers be fore his time. He doesnt turn to God or to some sort of common good for his political morality. Instead, he turns to the individual?more specifically, self-preservation in a position of power. Machiavellis vision rules out the possibility of a higher political authority if higher is meant to say that the morality comes from the divine, but his vision certainly does not rule out any sort of higher political morality. To guide theRead MoreEvaluating Historical Views of Leadership Essay1194 Words   |  5 Pages Evaluating Historical Views of Leadership March 9, 2014 University of Phoenix Evaluating Historical Views of Leadership This paper evaluates the leadership views of Plato, Aristotle, Lao-Tzu, and Machiavelli from the point of view of the modern military leader. The process of evaluation includes an examination of the commonalities and disparities between these views of leadership. The paper explores a definition of modern military leadership. The paper includes an assessment of theRead MoreThe Theory Of Equality And The State1398 Words   |  6 PagesThroughout history, equality has been a political and social concept that has drawn controversy and confusion. The cleverest minds in time have debated what exactly equality is, and how it can be customized to faultlessly serve the purpose of the government, and therefore the state. Plato, Locke, and Nietzsche are just three of the philosophers that have contributed their thoughts for this topic. The multitude of differing opinions from philosophers on the political topic of equality and the stateRead MoreWhat Makes A Virtuous Ethic?1572 Words   |   7 Pagesgood but also based around good morality?† We use these kinds of ethics to guide us through the righteous path, the morally good path, and the paths that we believe lead to our own prosperity of the good life. But honestly what in the world is the hard facts on virtue ethics let me break it down for you. First off let me examine what these virtues are starting with my personal favorite Eudaimonism which simply put is obtaining over flowing happiness. It was Aristotle that stated â€Å"All actions are notRead Moreâ€Å"How Would Aristotle Respond to Utilitarianism?†1087 Words   |  5 PagesShort Paper 2 â€Å"How would Aristotle respond to Utilitarianism?† How would Aristotle respond to Utilitarianism? The Definition of â€Å"Utilitarianism† is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall good of the greatest number of individuals. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined by its resulting outcome. The most influential contributors to this theory are considered to be Jeremy BenthamRead MoreAristotle s Contributions Of Western Philosophy1124 Words   |  5 PagesOne of the greatest classical Greek philosophers still known is Aristotle. His contributions to Western philosophy are in the areas of nature, nature, logic, metaphysics, the soul, morality, and politics. He was one of Plato’s students and studied under him for twenty years in the academy in Athens. He started to lecture about his on top of rhetoric. Aristotle became well known for his philosophies he began to tutor Phillip of Macedon son Alexander. After the death of Phillip’s, the school of platon icRead MorePlato And Aristotle s Theories Of Utilitarianism And Kantian Ethics1408 Words   |  6 PagesThe ancient theories of Plato and Aristotle differ greatly from the contemporary theories of Utilitarianism and Kantian ethics. Plato and Aristotle focused on the importance of virtue in an individual’s life. Plato believed that purity of the soul was the most important thing in life and can be achieved by mastering the four virtues: justice, wisdom, courage, and moderation. Aristotle believed that the goal of human life was to achieve happiness, which is made possible by the cultivation of a justRead MoreThe Decline in Morality Has Caused an Increase in Crime Essays1011 Words   |  5 PagesThe Decline in Morality Has Caused an Increase in Crime In an age where violent crime is more dominant than ever and morality is not heard of, there arise many problems that result from each other. The past thirty years, our society has been determined to secularize itself and to separate from many moral standards that root from the Bible. Since moral values were removed from schools in the 1960s, crime and immorality has steadily risen. It is evident thatRead MoreAre There Any Immoral Religions Or Any Moral Atheists?1204 Words   |  5 Pagestype of philosophical discipline. Many of the philosophers in the past believed in the existence of a Mighty being who is in control of everything. In the same breath, Aristotle and Aquinas believed that God took care of everything, and only living a virtuous life guaranteed to be like Him. On some issues, Aquinas supported Aristotle s thinking, while in others he differed intensely. To achieve this goal, an array of intellectual and ethical virtues enables an individual to seek proper means of reachingRead MoreNietzsche s Critique Of Nicomachean Ethics By Using On The Genealogy Of Morals Essay1737 Words   |  7 PagesNietzsche and Aristotle were great philosophers of their respective times, but their ideas and beliefs were completely different from each other. The focus of this paper will be on Nietzsche’s critique of Nicomachean Ethics by using On the Genealogy of Morals. Nietzsche had a different outlook on philosophy, especially in historical and goal oriented terms. According to Nietzsche, everything, including virtues, needed to be understood through change and historical development. Aristotle believed that

Saturday, December 21, 2019

Essay about Everyday Use by Alice Walker - 868 Words

Everyday Use by Alice Walker Heritage is an important factor to every developing family. Heritage helps to develop a persons values showing what they believe in. Particularly about the values of their family. In the story Everyday Use, by Alice Walker, value of heritage is a main topic. Throughout this story there are many different words used to describe what Wangero (Dee), Maggie, and their mother value. These choices of words all play an important role in the contrasting values of these people and the battle over heritage. The mother of Wangero and Maggie is the narrator of this story. It is evident at the beginning of this story, when the narrator describes her clean yard as an extended living room, that she is proud of her†¦show more content†¦This value of hardwork is proven when she describes herself as a women who can hunt and work outside all day. She is a single mother and it is apparent that she is devoted to her family because of how hard she works to support their needs. Maggie is the young est daughter of the narrator; she has many of the same values as her mother. She was burned in a fire at a young age and is ashamed of her appearance. She is often intimidated by her older sister which is confirmed when Dee arrives to visit and Maggie attempts to run into the house. The intimidation is a result of Maggies belief that Dee gets whatever she wants and is not accustomed to the word no. Maggies main value is her heritage. She appreciates things made by her ancestors. She also has knowledge about her ancestry. An example of this knowledge is when Dee asks to have a dasher. When asked if Uncle Buddy whittled the dasher Maggie is quick to respond Aunt Dees first husband whittled the dash; his name was Henry but they called him Stash. Showing that Maggie knows who did what and appreciates the accomplishments of her relatives. Dee, on the other hand, is very different from Maggie and her mother. She has been put through college and is well educated as a result. Dee returns to visit her mother and asks for several objects within the house. Her value of heritage seems to serve more as a memory of where she came from, rather than an appreciation of her familys achievements. She asks for householdShow MoreRelatedEveryday Use By Alice Walker852 Words   |  4 Pagescomes or belongs to one by reason of birth. In â€Å"Everyday Use†, by Alice Walker, the theme of the story can be considered as the meaning of heritage or even the power of education. Alice Walker uses many symbols and motifs such as the following: quilts, education, knowledge, Asalamalakim, and the renaming of Dee. In the story, African heritage and knowledge takes a major role. The African heritage plays a major role in the story, â€Å"Everyday Use†. Alice Walker emphasizes the meaning of heritage by havingRead MoreEveryday Use By Alice Walker1372 Words   |  6 PagesEverday Use† research paper In â€Å"everyday Use,† Alice Walker tells a narrative of a mother’s frustrating relationship together with her two daughters. At this facet, â€Å",Everyday Use†, tells that how a mom little by little refuses the cursory values of her older, successful daughter at the aspect of the useful values of her younger, much less lucky daughter. On a deeper outlook, Alice Walker takes on the theme of heritage and its norms as it applies to African-Americans. Everday Use, is set insideRead MoreEveryday Use By Alice Walker1102 Words   |  5 Pagespoem â€Å"Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers† can be read similar to Alice Walker s short story Everyday Use† both are compared by the women’s ways of showing their strengths and how they identify their values, expressions and strength. Advertised in the general outlines of the plot, both literary themes talks of a quest for freedom, the characters identity and self-expression. Adrienne Rich â€Å"Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers† Alice Walker â€Å"Everyday Use† Comparison Paper Analyzing the two types of literatureRead MoreEveryday Use By Alice Walker1372 Words   |  6 Pagessociety as a whole, but more specifically in the African American Community. Alice Walker gives slight insight into   what being forced   to assimilate is like. She says in her short story Everyday Use: She will stand hopelessly in corners homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe. Statements such as these are a regular occurrence in her works. Walker often speaks on the ever so disheartening topic of cultural assimilation and theRead MoreEveryday Use By Alice Walker996 Words   |  4 PagesIn the short story â€Å"Everyday Use† by Alice Walker, the author describes different ideas about one’s heritage. Culture and heritage is at the main point of the story â€Å"Everyday Use† by Alice Walker as symbolized by the quilt. The bond that Mother and Maggie share is brought by their common talent to make works of art like quilts. Dee does not have similar capacity because she does not appreciate manual labor nor believes in her heritage. The idea of pride in culture, heritage, and family is the mainRead MoreEveryday Use By Alice Walker1721 Words   |  7 PagesIn her short story â€Å"Everyday Use,† Alice Walker summarizes the representation of the beauty, the conflicts and struggles within African-American culture. â€Å"Everyday Use† focuses mainly between members of the Johnson family, consisting of a mother and her two daughters. One of the daughters Maggie, who was injured in a house fire and has living a shy life clinging to her mother for security. Her older sister is Dee, who grew up with a grace and natural beauty. â€Å"Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicerRead MoreEveryday Use By Alice Walker1111 Words   |  5 Pagestheir culture. Alice Walker highlights and distinguishes the dissimilarities and clichà © of country African American women with the actualities that make up their lives. Characterized by short, compound sentences, with long adjectives and use of literary elements, her style is eloquent conversational and authentic. Alice Walker’s short story, Everyday Use is stylistic, ironic and narrates profound interpretation of unique views and approaches to African-American culture. Walker’s use of characterizationRead MoreEveryday Use By Alice Walker1735 Words   |  7 Pages â€Å"Everyday Use† by Alice Walker and â€Å"Brownies† by ZZ Packer are two different short stories with different lessons but both talk about the topic of race. Both stories talks about the time in the 20th century when slavery just ended but racism are still active between African Americans and Caucasians. Walker described a story about a single African American mother who is waiting for her daughter to arrive from college. Packer described a story about these African American fourth graders who are inRead MoreEveryday Use By Alice Walker1655 Words   |  7 PagesIn â€Å"everyday Use,† Alice Walker tells a narrative of a mother’s frustrating relationship together with her two daughters. At this facet, â€Å",Everyday Use†, tells that how a mom little by little refuses the cursory values of her older, successful daughter at the aspect of the useful values of her younger, much less lucky daughter. On a deeper outlook, Alice Walker takes on the theme of heritage and its norms as it applies to African-Americans. Everday Use, is set inside the late ,60s or mid ,70sRead MoreEveryday Use By Alice Walker1447 Words   |  6 PagesAbout â€Å"Everyday Use† The conflict in the story is centered around the clash between the two worlds with which Walker s character Dee is endued. Dee increasingly accuses her heritage of the ideas and rhetoric of the new Black Pride movement. Walker weaves the theme of African cultural nationalism with a descriptive conflict immersed in family issues. On another level, Alice Walker offers a unique look at the struggling African-American woman to find both a personality and voice from the shadows of

Friday, December 13, 2019

Motion in inferno Free Essays

The entrance into the second circle of hell marks a descent, a motion downwards, and this type of action is significant both in this fifth canto and throughout the whole of Dante’s Inferno. The theme of motion is dominant in this episode through the use of the winds and rains. It also comes out in other subtler motions that intertwine with the shades and the sins that brought them to this their eternal home. We will write a custom essay sample on Motion in inferno or any similar topic only for you Order Now The motions involved here are very frictional. They tell of coming and going, as well as of the conflict between the two. These motions depict a large amount of antagonism, yet they also tell of passivity and subjugation. They underline the posture of the persons involved as well as accentuate their roles in the epic. The motions evident in the poem also give insight into the nature of the hell being depicted. Much can be understood about the degree of the souls’ torment by the types of motion to which they are subjected. The motions of Minos make him out to be a wielder, and this gives him an air of being in charge. He wields his tail, and with that authority. He â€Å"girdles† and â€Å"entwines† himself, and this motion is symbolic of the extent to which those sent to him will be bound and tormented in hell (Alighieri, 15). It is interesting that the degree of hell itself is depicted itself by a girdling, as each degree entwines a more horrifying one. This shows a unity of action between the motions of Minos and the nature of hell itself. The spirits â€Å"come there before him† (15) and their movement toward him takes place in a manner of subjection. They are at his mercy, just as they will be at the mercy of the events of the hell to which his motion will whisk them. One almost gets from it the idea of the spirits’ genuflection before an elevated Minos. He sends, and that idea depicts a motion away from himself; but it also demonstrates mastery, as the souls who go away from him do so at his bidding. Then, the motion with which he sends them is akin to the manner in which they are taken. They are whirled away to the place of their doom. Motions of coming and going occur regularly in this place of gale forces. The motion of the winds is demonstrated by a coming and going. The motion from one circle of hell to the next dooms that spirit to spend eternity in a much more horrifying place. What is more is that each frictional motion to and fro, each coming or going, often happens in fast succession one upon the other, so that it almost seems that they occur at once. The spirits are forced into this frenzied motion by the winds: â€Å"hither, thither, down, up it carries them† (15). This motion echoes their plight. They are forced to come to this place, though in the same instant that they must come, their will is to go. This oscillating motion is indicative of the fact that decision is not granted those who have been condemned to hell. Hell is a place that commands, and all who go there must heed its every whim. There is also nothing inherently rational about that place, or at least its orders are not bound to be so. The vacillation of the winds shows that caprices of punishment are to be expected. Yet all will be punishment. Ideas of combat and battles are expressed by the motion in the passage. Warfare and all that is connected with such an event is present in the episode’s movements. Looting and plundering are involved in these events. The place is described as moving â€Å"as the sea does in a tempest, if it be combated by opposing winds† (15). The winds arise again in this image, but this time their motion creates an atmosphere of battle. This place is one of fighting, where the event smites and molests the â€Å"spirits in its rapine† (15). The whole atmosphere is described as a restless hurricane that pummels the souls that come within its domain. It rushes and blasts them, so that its very motion is of a type that harms and invites (impossible) retaliation. The only record of the souls’ giving back damage is in their lamentation, which smites the speaker as he comes near them. Though it is a battle, it is one that is already won for hell. Its pounding motions perpetrate upon its prisoners a torment that grants them no repose. Another motion that depicts the nature of hell is its ability to impose its will upon the damned souls. This ties in with the ideas that have gone before: the souls are often being carried and led. The shades are borne along by strife (15), and their motion in the air forms that of a long line, as the captives are being led in the train of death and damnation. This subjugation to the will of the forces of darkness mirror the subjection these souls once had to their own evil lusts. They are described as having been â€Å"called by desire† (16); called, not just in the sense of a foreign summoning but in the necessity they feel to move toward the source of the calling. These souls find themselves in hell because of influences upon their actions that have caused their motions toward things. It depicts a resignation to forces that cause actions that in turn lead to the peril of the damned, on whose part passivity (the lack of autonomous motion) is implied. This idea is extended in the stories of those whose love was the precipitant of their doom; it, in effect, was the catalyst of their motion toward hell. This love led them, and they in their passivity allowed themselves to be led. In fact, when the speaker addresses one of the souls described as being in motion â€Å"through the lurid air† (16), the same soul is described as â€Å"benign,† and this gives an idea of stillness and passivity that hints that the energy for its motion is generated by an outside source. Love is a slave-driver to all of them, continually making them move toward things they otherwise might not have chosen. Some even killed themselves for love, and this signifies a motion toward death that ushered their entrance into hell. Strangely, Achilles was somehow able to deviate slightly from this trend. He, after being ruled by love for so long, makes a motion toward self-government and fights with love. There is no evidence of his triumph, however, as he remains one of the captives of hell. In order to allow the lover Francesca to tell her story, the motions of the winds hush and the seas become quiet. A level of calm is depicted in the cessation of the motion of elements even beyond the dominion of hell. The city of the speaker’s birth rests its weight upon the seashore, and this motion effects the stillness of the waves. The river Po is seen as descending in order to have peace, so it too moves from motion to stillness. Prior to this, a quasi-invocation to the â€Å"King of the universe† (16) was given by the speaker for Francesca’s peace. Its effect is this stillness that would allow her to speak of happier times, and grant her at least a respite, if not complete relief. This seems to point toward a purgatorial notion of hell, where the living can pray to God for the succour of the damned. It implies that the motions of hell that grant agony to the spirits can be shielded by a divine Hand, further implying that hell itself is driven by an even greater power than itself. It is evident that the images of motion in the fifth canto of Dante’s Inferno create a dynamic theme that moves the reader along from the entrance to the portal through to the other dimensions of hell. The motions are indicative of the authority of hell over the souls that are quartered there. Ideas of abasement are dominant in the souls’ lack of autonomy, in their compulsion to do the will of the forces that surround them. Their spirits are flung upon winds, just as in life their wills were navigated by their desires. Other motions tell of a hell as a battlefield of lost causes, as the spirits are doomed, regardless of any desire they might have to fight. The nature of hell is to subdue and to punish, and its motions are ministrants of power that deals out anguish. How to cite Motion in inferno, Essay examples