To understand or experience that spirit is to be truly alive. This spirit is what makes all things equal in the eyes of Mother Nature and what makes all things resemble God. True understanding of this concept cannot be done purely by intellect; “it must be experiential” as well in the form of “prayer, contemplation, and meditation.” Once action is taken to awake to this realization and “we become truly aware of our hearts, we feel comfort and release right away.” This must take place in order to become compassionate souls willing and able to produce real change for a better, happier existence for all transient beings.
Nicholas Applin’s historical fiction novel, The Everywhere Spirit, develops themes such as the joys and responsibilities of freedom, the unethical practice of slavery and the price of greed and cruelty in an epic tale traversing North America from the slave-owning South to the wild West. In early 19th century St. Louis, the slave Sebastian Fleet kills his brutal master, Peter Laroque, to save a prostitute from torture, rape and murder. Sebastian escapes via the Missouri River, always making his way westwards to the unconquered frontier to preserve his hard-won liberty. However, Laroque’s vengeful sons, Edward, Jacques and George are on his trail, hunting the runaway slave by joining trapping brigades and crossing unknown and dangerous country to find and murder Sebastian to restore the Laroque name.
This quote that I will be analyzing and explaining why it is the key quote that represents the thesis of Nagel. Nagel’s main goal is to define consciousness and refute any reductive approach to consciousness. Nagel claims that consciousness is the reason why the mind-body problem is so difficult. Consciously being aware and cognizant is unexplainable because it is hard to reduce down to a single entity. The chosen quote is essentially saying that all organisms have conscious states and in order to truly be that organism or understand, you must understand their consciousness while still maintaining your own consciousness.
Death by Thomas Nagel tackles the question of death and if it is bad that it is a permanent end to our existence. Nagel states two possible positions in response to this, either death is bad because it deprives us of living life, or it is not bad because even if death is a loss then there is no subject to experience it and therefore the loss of life cannot be felt. In response to the first position Nagel argues that life is valuable in itself even if we strip it of all experience good or bad. He then argues that since a state of nonexistence is not bad by itself, it cannot be what makes death bad. He argues for this position by stating that we do not see the period before we are born as bad so why would nonexistence after life be bad?
According the Huffingtonpost.com, the autonomous vehicles will replace taxi drivers. Uber, Google and Tesla are already working on the complete driverless autonomous cars. Uber is openly planning to replace human drivers with self driving cars. This will disrupt the transportation and other industries directly and indirectly. There would be many job losses in the GTA if Uber replaces the taxi industry by self driving cars.
Similarly, Nagel provides respectable arguments against the theory of Physicalism where he draws upon the idea of ‘What
Hegelian Dialectic is founded on socioeconomic phases. According to the German philosopher Goerg Willhelm Friedrich Hegel, there are three phases that make up the Hegelian Dialectic which evolve into a cycle. The first phase, being the “thesis” is what is considered to be the economic norm. What Sylvia is accustomed to based on her social-economic class. The thesis is then contravened by a “antithesis”.
Meaning of Life What is life? What is the meaning of our existence? These existential questions were asked by almost every individual alive at some point in their life. Over the years many philosophers have come up with individual explanations to why they believe life can be unreasonable, futile, the will of god, or just simply meaningless.
Hegel's philosophy has a huge connection to Pandora’s box because they both focus on terrible things being exposed, then later a fantastic solution to the problem. In Hegel’s philosophy, something irrational was to happen, then a recession, then something irrational would happen again, and then finally the irrational something finally reaches its equilibrium or homeostasis. In between the irrationality, people of the community has suffered, but through the suffering process, people did not give up. People of the community continued to strive for the best, hoping that the irrationality will get better, and so it did. Similarly, the box was opened in Pandora’s box.
Nagel contributes to the mind-body dualism by posing challenges to faulty reductive theories by discussing the importance of the consideration of subjectivity. He is entitled to the assumptions he makes because reductionism overlooks the gap between the subjective and the objective. Further exploring such gap can signify the creation of new methods that invoke the objective as well as the subjective. As of now the call for innovative approaches to understand the consciousness are essential to better understand our species and others
In Nagel’s “What Is It Like To Be a Bat?” he attempts to refute reductionism by stating that in order to understand the relationship between mind and body, one must address consciousness and reductionism fails to do that. Nagel lays strong emphasis on what he calls ‘subjective character of experience’ which states that everything has its own interpretation of what it is like to be themselves. Fundamentally, each organism has a unique subjective perspective and conscious experience that is only understandable from the organism’s point of view.
In the poem, “On the Divine” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the author states, “Noble be Man,/ Generous and good”. This quote is meant to show that mankind is to be noble and good from a very optimistic perspective. However, put in such an event as the Holocaust, for example, this quote is proven wrong, for mankind has just as much potential to be noble and kind as they do to be selfish and cruel. In the Holocaust memoir, Night, by Elie Wiesel, the author proves just this. The author, being a survivor of the Holocaust, writes of his first hand experience struggling through the awful events that happened to him and many other innocent people.
Athena Kennedy Philosophy Professor Berendzen Kant vs. Foucault December 1, 2015 Kant vs. Foucault Humans question their surroundings every day, weather it is “is how I am acting the way I want to portray myself,” “am I doing the right thing in this situation?” All questions can and should be debated, In philosophy we find new ways to questions everything, weather it is another’s opinion or our own, we form new ways of thinking critically and new ways to obtain answers that will satisfy our thirst for knowledge. Philosophers believe that you need to be able to question everything because there is always new knowledge out there for us to absorb and to question. In critical thinking you evaluate an issue you believe is present in order
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant is considered to be a central figure of contemporary philosophy. Kant argued that fundamental concepts, structure human experience and that reason is the foundation of morality. In Kant’s 1784 essay “What is Enlightenment” he briefly outlined his opinions on what Enlightenment is, the difficulties to enlightenment and how individuals attain enlightenment. Kant defined enlightenment as “Man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage” (Kant 1) and the “Courage to use his own reason.
The Enlightenment was a pattern of thought that started during the 1600s and 1700s “that critically examined traditional ideas and institutions, privileged reason, and championed progress” according to The Bedford Glossary of Critical Terms (Murfin and Ray, “Enlightenment”). Romanticism was the era that immediately followed in the 1800s, and it was characterized by an emphasis on emotion, nature, and fantastical writing (Murfin and Ray, “Romanticism”). Many of the ideals of the Romantic era were almost opposite to the ideals of the Enlightenment. Because of this, Romanticism is the Hegelian antithesis to the ideals of the Enlightenment because it emphasized emotion over reason, nature’s beauty over its danger, and personal stories over general
