Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Literature & Philosophy (Morality (Deontological (Kant
…
Literature & Philosophy
Morality
Deontological
Kant
- Consequences should not factor into moral decision making
- Intentions matter!
- the will is good when acting from duty and not inclinations (inclinations... to act because something feels good or to benefit from the action)
- Categorical imperative: act in a way that your maxim (moral principles) would be a universal law... people are end in themselves, not a means to an end
Sophacles
- Explores a persons duty to the state, duty to family
- Creon sees obedience to authority as good
- Living by law is necessary to keep order; people have a duty to follow the law
- But there are unjust human laws and deontological ethics does not perscribe that laws be followed blindly or be unquestioned
- Antigone's duty to her family- her brother Polyneices comes before her duty to the state because of this she consciously chooses to defy Creon, the king, and bury her brother anyway
- In line with duty ethics, Antigone doesn't think about the consequences of her actions because she believes that it is the right thing to do to bury her brother
Arendt
- Misinterpreted Kant!
- took duties to be externally imposed
- the principle of his action wasn't practical reason but that of the Fuhrer
- confused acting in accordance w/ moral law w/ written law
- Contrary to what Kant said, Eichmann accepted existing legislation as his own rather than have his reason legislate
- Acting in accordance with law doesn't mean blindly following the law... which he did, he killed a lot of people because he believed it was his "duty"
Utility/Consequentialism
JS Mill
- Greatest happiness principle: actions are right if they promote happiness, wrong if they bring about the opposite
- Sacrifice of one for the benefit of many
- Intentions don't matter, consequences determine morality of actions
- not expedient... expediency does not promote happiness in the long run
- Hero/martyr is a person who chooses to sacrifice their own happiness for that of the collective; must be a choice
Le Guin
- The people of Omelas, both those who stay and those who leave seem bound to protect the happiness of the city, event if it comes at a personal cost... many of the people who see the child struggle for weeks/years to come to terms with what they saw and some just leave
- Neither group ever attempts to do anything to rescue the child, they don't do anything that would threaten the happiness of the city
- They are not selfish or self-serving, in line with utilitarian principles they seem to understand that aggregate happiness... the happiness of the collective supercedes their individual happiness
- Their actions are moral in as much as they don't bring about suffering/pain to the people of Omelas
-
Responsibility
Sartre
- Man is free
- The freedom comes with a responsibility to the world and those around us
- "... existentialisms first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him. And when we say that a man is responsible for himself, we do not only mean that he is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men (36)."
Arendt
The piece of about Eichmann, a Lt. in the SS explores his responsibility in the Holocaust. His defense was that he was following orders and didn't intend to cause a genocide. Arendt blames him of thoughtlessness, but that thoughtlessness doesn't exculpate him from the horrible things he did. He is responsible for his actions. After all, he orchestrated a lot of evil acts. He took pride in what he did and he went above and beyond the orders he was given. He wasn't just following orders. As a Lt. he was also giving them. The holocaust was done through administration and bureaucracy and the people working within this system, even though they are following orders are still making decision to follow them.
Evil
Suffering
Nietsche
- Suffering is not a "bad" thing
- Suffering caused by life, by the evil of others is natural and is actually beneficial to man
- Life is essentially about oppression, exploitation, and suffering and it should be embraced rather than categorized as bad and avoided
- Avoiding suffering is one of the reasons why people have created moral systems but these systems become dogmas and rather than avoid suffering people are just self-deceiving themselves
- There is no "good/evil" and we should see beyond moralizing things into those categories
Identity
Gender
Butler
- identity is created through a "stylized repetition of acts"
- gender created through stylization of the body; bodily gestures, movements, enactments
- gender is performative and reinforced through repetition
- gender is not a fact; it is not a substance; it is something we do, not something we are
- gender performance are collective and socially shared
Sophacles
- Gender roles as explored
- Creon is the traditional male; a leader, powerful, autonomous, sovereign
- Antigone the defiant woman
- Ismene, her sister represents a more traditional female character; submissive, accepting of man's rule
- Antigone challenges/defies Creon causing him to state that if she wins, then she is the man/king... by disobeying him she is emasculating him
- Relates to intersubjectivity as Creon is conscious of his manhood through his power struggle with Antigone; being challenged by her makes him questions his authority as man
De Beauvoir
- "One is not born, but becomes woman"
- What is the being of woman?
- If a woman inquires into her being she specifies gender, whereas men don't have to do that
- Gender is acquired and is not an essential characteristic... gender is acquired over time and is not pre-established (existence precedes essence)
- Woman is "determined" by her relationship to man
- Man is the subject, woman is the other; absolute alterity
Kafka
- Gregor has fulfilled a very traditional male role in this story, as his dad is not able to to work he has taken over as provider for his family
- Gregors sister, Grete also fits the standard mold for a woman in as much as Gregor doesn't see her as a provider. Instead of have her work so she can help him (given that she is healthy and abled bodied) he allows her to pursue expected female things such as occasionally helping around the house
- Both Gregor and Grete perform their genders and don't seem to think outside of their respective roles... that is until Gregor can no longer provide and Grete steps in
- Her father, resumes his place as "man of the house" after Gregor dies and rather than allow Grete to continue working they marry her off further reinforcing that her traditional role as a woman
Personal
Proust
- Identity is not fixed or determined by social caste/status
- The narrator's aunt had one understanding of Swann's identity that she had created and was different from the way that others saw him
- The narrator states that "our social personality is a creation of the minds of others"
- Someone's identity is just as dependent on the external minds as the internal and personal mind
Locke
- Personal identity based on consciousness/memory and not on a substance or body
- Someone is the same "person" provided they are aware of their thoughts and have their memories of the past
- Personal identity not dependent on the body. In fact, the body can change as in the prince and the cobbler thought experiment where the prince had the body and outer appearance of a cobbler. Illustrates that it isn't the outward appearance that determines someone identity but that individual's thoughts/memories
Racial
Peele
- Literalize double consciousness
- Chris is initially concerned about meeting his white girlfriend's parents who don't know he is black
- Chris maintains awareness of his blackness in a white society due to experiencing racism such as the incident when his girlfriend hit a deer
- He fears rejection while in a white town
- Ironically, during a dinner party Rose's parents and their white friends seem to glorify Chris' blackness
- The film explores ideas of wealthy white people hijacking a black body by performing a brain transplant and imposing the white consciousness into the body and pushing the black consciousness into the "sunken place"
- the film also skirts on concepts of racism by portraying a disregard for black minds/brain and identity and only placing value on the physical attributes of the black body
Du Bois
- What happens when our awareness of how others view us becomes a burden?
- Presents the internal conflict that black people face living in white society and having to see themselves through the eyes of white people
Mills
- Race is not foundational... in different systems race could be different or wouldn't have been constructed
- Race is not an essence
- Race is not metaphysical and has no place or definition outside of our social systems
- Race is socially real
- The racial self made up of bodily appearance, ancestry, self-awareness, public awareness of ancestry, culture, experience, and self-identificatio
Consciousness
-
Cogito
Descartes
Descartes' "I think, therefore I am."
The self-evident truth that he is a thinking thing. Self-evident because it cannot be refuted. In attempting to refute that he is a thinking thing he is thinking.
This conclusion was achieved after practicing his method of doubt. In doing so he discovered that the "I" exists. This way arriving at an understanding of individual consciousness, and at the very least a vague understanding of the "I" as a thing that thinks.
Nietzsche
Unlike Descartes, Nietzsche does not easily accept the notion of the existence of the "I" and criticized it. Nietzsche has a passage in BGE where he questions what the "I" truly is and how we could know that we are truly this "I" that is thinking. He argues that the statement "I think" is arrived at by making a series of assertions, among those that we can know what thinking is.
In this way, he is not challenging and deconstructing the previously claims to consciousness and self-awareness which are cornerstones to Descartes' metaphysics and epistemology.
Sartre
Accepts Descartes cogito as the starting point, "the moment in which man becomes fully aware of what it means to be an isolating being (32)." Sartre's philosophy of human freedom argues that man creates himself as we have no "human essence." The cogito serves to prove the human capacity to think for oneself and to see that as the basis for human understanding of the self. God doesn't exist to tell humans what to do and even if he did humans would still need to think - to interpret that message. That interpretation, awareness, and ability to recognizing ourselves as thinking is human consciousness.
Memory
Proust
- Memory can work outside conscious awareness and can happen without our volition... there are things in the mind we may not be aware of
- Aside from conscious and visual memory we have involuntary memory and bodily memory
- The narrator describes his bodily sensations after having a cup of tea and a madelien and wonders where those feelings could have come from, he concludes that they are not in the drink itself but within him, involuntary memories brought about by his initial taste of the tea and cookie.
- Those involuntary memories serve as an example of the depth on unconscious awareness
Locke
- The mind starts off empty "tabula rasa"
- ideas come from the outside world through the senses, these ideas can be accessed later
- Memory is necessary for personal identity
- in cases where consciousness has been "interrupted" the question arises of whether it is the same person
-
Oppenheimer
- Anwar and his friends remember killing people during the Indonesian genocide that happened 1965-66
- Their memories are dramatized and reenacted as they make a film based on their killings
- Film styles include western and gangster
- Through accessing this conscious memory, Anwar and his friends enter into a self awareness that prompts Anwar to ask his friend if he thinks he they have sinned
- There is a scene toward the end of the film where Anwar is filming in a village with women and children and during a break he realizes how terrible the scene is... through accessing his memory he arrives at the conclusion that the people who were hurt- the children especially, will curse them forever
-
Individual v. Collective
Happiness
NietzscheThe instinct for happiness belong to slave morality.
- Slave morality judges by good and evil
- Slave morality is utility. What's good is what is useful to the collective, not just to the strong individual as the slaves are not the strong and they don't seek power through strength
- Nietzsche would also questions the value of happiness. The utilitarians see happiness as a good in and of itself but Nietzsche would respond by questioning the value of happiness. His argument is founded on the idea that suffering is beneficial to mankind - allowing man to grow and become strong. Collective happiness is unnatural to man who is motivated by the will to power/will to life which is based on competition, suffering, and exploitation of others.
J S MillThe "greatest happiness principle"
-Actions are right in proportion as they promote happiness; wrong as they produce the reverse of happiness
-Happiness = pleasure
-unhappiness = pain/privation
- COLLECTIVE happiness is more important than individual happiness
- A person who is willing to sacrifice their own happiness for the happiness of others or so others don't have to face the same sacrifices is considered a 'hero' or a 'martyr' and their act is a noble one. This further supports the greater importance of the collective over the individual
Kafka
When relating Kafka's piece to Mill of LeGuin we can see that Gregor accepts the importance of the collective happiness over his own. He acts as a martyr as he sacrifices his own individual happiness, social life, and career advancement for the sake of providing for his family who is indebted to his boss. However, Gregor is an example of the toll that sacrifice can take on an individual as he quickly unravels and becomes an alien unto himself - becoming an insect - no longer able to provide we see that his sacrifice to care for his family was successful but came at two high a price for him who felt stuck and trapped. In this end, he was no longer able to take care of the collective because his individual wellbeing was not maintained.
Kafka's story illustrates the importance of balancing the happiness of the group with the happiness of the individual because in the end he wasn't much use to anyone, not even himself.
Kant
- Happiness: being contented with one's condition
- Securing our own happiness is our duty (14)
- Humans have own inclinations towards their happiness
- Our capacity of practical reasoning is not to serve own happiness.
LeGuin
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas depicts a happy society where the collective enjoy the benefits of peace. Their collective happiness is made possible through the individual suffering of a young child. The people who see the child struggle to make peace with their individual happiness and the cost to the child. All know and accept that the collective happiness is more important as neither those who decide to stay or those who live risk the collective happiness by attempting to free the child. Even those who leave do not challenge the value of collective happiness. Though they may reject contributing the child's suffering it is better for them to leave than to destroy the happiness for the entire city.
Freedom
SartreExistence precedes essence and man is free to self-create, and self-determine.
- People are afraid of their freedom
- There is no god, man is free to determine himself
- Realizing that man is free and that when he chooses for himself he chooses for all mankind leads to anguish
- Individual freedom tied to responsibility to others... "Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions (39)."
- Individual freedom is not free from responsibility to the collective... there are consequences to our freedom (64).
Kafka
- Gregor abandons his individual freedom for his family's benefit. Instead of quitting his job and pursuing something else he continues to work at a job he doesn't like with a boss who doesn't treat him well.
- Gregor relinquishes his freedom by being an insect and later by letting himself die... an act of bad faith.
De Beauvoir
Like fellow existentialist, Sartre, De Beauvoir explores the concept of freedom - woman's freedom. Despite being the "other" (the dependent and relative) to man De Beauvoir doesn't claim that woman isn't free. Like, Sartre, she believes that existence precedes essence. There is no "woman essence" that determines woman as not free or less free than man. She claims that "one is not born, but becomes woman."
Though woman is free she admits that woman is not recognized as autonomous because women have always been subjugated by men and has been "determined" by her relationship to man.
Sophacles
Reading Antigone it seems to mostly relate to individual vs collective duties and responsibilities whether it be to someone's family or to the state. But it also explore the concept of individual freedom in spite of social/collective disapproval or punishment.
In many ways, Antigone's defiance of the state says more about her understanding of her individual freedom and her desire to exercise that freedom even though it was in opposition to the state/collective.
Nietzsche
- People are artists and a free to make meaning, create truths as a form of will to power which allows people to create the world the way they want it to be
- Rejects the collective mentality/morality and calls its slave mentality or herd morality
- The individual person to overcome dogmatism and self-deception and be independent thinker (free thinker... free spirit)
Intersubjectivity
- Necessary for freedom
- To be free is to be recognized as such by another free being
- Reciprocity must be freely given
- We have a vested interest in the freedom of others so we may be recognized as free
-
-