600). What Cushman means with this is that the self has become empty resulting from the loss of the community, tradition, and shared experience connected to specific cultures or communities (Cushman, 1990, p. 600). This empty self then needs emotional fulfillment, which individuals have sought in consuming products and ideas offered by the media and by shops. Indeed, the author claims that the current psychological phenomena of narcissism and borderline states are the direct product of the emptiness created by the post-World War II loss of connection to humanity via common culture and belief systems.
Twenge (2006, p. 2), on the other hand, believes that individualism has reached an ultimate high with today's young generation, or what the author refers to as the "Generation Me." This is a generation for whom morality and human connection are exclusively focused upon the individual as well as individual desires or ideals. Even love needs to be directed at the self first before it can be directed towards others.
In these terms, it is difficult to imagine how Kant's ideal of the collective moral good can still apply. Indeed, Twenge's theory is even further removed from Kant's than Cushman's. For Cushman, there remains a sense of the collective. This collective experiences a common emotional hunger for the loss of culture and common mores. As such, even though the bond has been severed, the resulting hunger becomes the new bond that binds individuals into an unhappy but universal whole. There is no common morality, because there is no common culture. The only possible conclusion is therefore that Kant's ideal of the common moral good cannot apply. Consumerism is at the basis of everything.
For Twenge, individualism has progressed so far that the hunger has been replaced by an almost feverish drive to prove one's individual self to the rest of the world (Twenge, 2006, p. 17). In other words, the drive to put the individual self on display becomes somewhat extreme. One can conclude that this drive is so far removed from Kant's ideal of the universal law and the universal good that no reconciliation is possible.
In the same spirit, however, one can surmise that Kant's theory...
Global Warming Major Issues of the 21st Century: Who is Responsible for Addressing Global Warming? Global warming is one of the most pressing issues in the 21st century. In the last few decades, the world has experienced higher temperatures, increased melting of ice caps, rising sea levels, more regular and more adverse weather events (such as storms, floods, heat waves, and drought), and changing rainfall patterns. We have also observed increased rain
Kant and Rousseau Reducing Conflicts Between States The Theories of the Great Philosophers Rousseau and Kant The great philosophers of the 18th century were the first of their kind to fully encapsulate what it meant to be an ethnocentric state, rather than a simple nation or territory, and also were the first philosophers able to address the question of war between states as not merely individual struggles for dominance, but rather persistent frictions
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This object, though, sets in human consciousness in many divergent ways -- perception, memory, retention, etc. Depending on the manner in which the idea is intentional, the object may be identical but interpreted different and thus a divergent sense of reality for individuals. Opposite of Descartes and Kant, there is no one finite way of describing this object and it is entirely dependent upon the method of reduction and
It is not too much of a stretch to extend the moral choice to the question of following through on commitments in general. If everyone abandoned their commitments when circumstances changed, the concept of commitment would become nonsensical, resulting in a logical inconsistency. Therefore, according to Kant, Ben and Sarah would be bound by a categorical imperative to continue paying their mortgage if they are able. The situation is more
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