In the poem and essay "Compensation," Ralph Waldo Emerson makes a much more cogent and coherent assessment of how perspective seems to determine good and evil. His examples, however, are purely situational and do not adequately support his central thesis. For example, he compares a farmer jealous of power to the President examining what he has had to sacrifice to earn the White House (par. 11). While it is true that what one might see as a "good" here might be seen as an "evil" by the other, this has nothing to do with real morality. It is not what the President sacrificed of himself that determines the evil of this situation, but whether he sacrificed others for his own personal gain.
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of the most well-known pieces of literature in the Western world. Robert Louis Stevenson shows the novels protagonist, Dr. Jekyll, at first pleased with his ability to transform into the conscious-free Mr. Hyde, making it clear that evil only exists for those that feel a need to perceive it. Ultimately, however, Mr. Hyde's evil ends up destroying both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When Dr. Jekyll writes, "I am careless" just prior to his final transformation into Mr. Hyde and his subsequent suicide, he seems to have not more regard for morality at this point than does his darker counterpart (chapter 10). It is only because Hyde's evil has brought his life to a close, however, that he feels this...
Existence of God The philosophical questions I will try to answer and why they are of particular interest to me. Opinions that ordinary people tend to have on the issue The great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam profoundly influenced Western philosophy. In all of these religions, the existence of God is a central claim. For nearly a millennium from 500 S.D to about 1500 A.D., Western philosophy was the handmaiden
Perceptions About Muslims: In the past few years, negative perceptions about Muslims have continued to grow and affected the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. As these relations are hugely affected, many Muslims across the globe are constantly fighting negative perceptions. These negative perceptions about Muslims and Islam in general have been stimulated by recent events in the Muslim and non-Muslim world. These events have continued to receive huge media coverage and
Initially St. Augustine favoured the dualistic view that evil was external and separate from the world and mankind that in evident from the Manichean worldview. However, he was later to reject this strict dualism and taker another view of the nature of evil. This was more Platonic and was based on the writings of Plotinus and Porphyry. This refers to the view that evil is a measure and result of
If something happens, then it is a belief that somebody caused that thing to happen the way it did, and it is an effect of some kind of action. If then several actions take place one after the other, then the earlier/older happening caused the later event thus, "the first cause is the cause of all things and itself had no cause since it always existed." (Trigilio, and Brighenti
If it was a dream, then the programmers clearly attempted to incorporate background realism. For example, the characters get dirty; like sweat, dirt is not something that the programmers would need to create to have realistic humans, but there is dirt on people. If one accepts the premise that the entire story is a dream, it is not difficult to take an additional step and assume that the programmers
Personal Theodicy Apologetics The problem of evil is something everyone has to face sooner or later. As Schlesinger points out, philosophers want to understand “why there is any suffering in the world at all.”[footnoteRef:2] The problem with a philosophical approach to suffering is that it does not reveal the whole story or the whole picture of why suffering (evil) exists. Religion, on the other hand, does provide that whole story—and depending
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