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Literature and Philosophy (Philosophy ((An Essay Concerning Human…
Literature and Philosophy
Philosophy
Meditations on First Philosophy
by Rene Descartes
Cogito = "I think therefore I am"
One must doubt that which seems certain if they are to arrive at any semblance of truth
The sense are deceiving, how do we know that we are not dreaming?
-Furthermore are thoughts may be manipulated by an "Evil Genius" holding power over us
Primary Essences Mind and Body
Mind = Thought
Body = Spatial expansion
Mind-Body Dualism
Consciousness
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
By John Locke
The Cartesian view of knowledge is wrong; human beings are not born with ideas already planted in their heads
Rather ideas are formulated through two possible modes of experience:
They formulated through an interaction with senses or they are born out of introspection into the mind's networking powers themselves
Problem of the Prince and Cobbler: No two bodies can be the same at time of resurrection - if a prince's soul was transferred to a cobbler the prince would still see himself as a prince
Free Will
Existentialism is a Humanism
by Jean Paul Sarte
Sarte argues against the negative view the public has of existentialism as pessimistic, he states that it is viewed this way because the public is so afraid of the evil within their individual selves that they become a part of the status quo
"Existence precedes essence" - human existence is unlike that of an object manufactured for public consumption. A tool is unlike a human because it is created with a purpose in mind whereas humanity has no immediate purpose upon creation.
Social Identity
Performative Acts and Gender Constitution
by Judith Butler
Gender as Performance: Butler argues that we are not born as a man or a woman it is society that turns into either. Gender is like a theatre performance that we put on according to rules laid out by generations of history and social expectations.
Furthermore there is no reason that we should resign ourselves to the gender binary of history. As gender arises through performance there is no reason a third gender cannot be constructed through performance as well.
Social Identity
Performance
Literature
Swann's Way
by Marcel Proust
"Involuntary memory" -The Narrator relives a moment from his childhood that had escaped his thoughts through contact with the taste of madelenie dipped into tea
-The Consciousness in sleep - The Narrator describes how in sleep we are like different people and our relationship to objects is different than in waking life
Memory
The Metamorphosis
by Franz Kafka
-Duality of Consciousness
Gregor Samsa is transformed into an insect over night, and slowly begins to act differently
His family treats him differently until they declare that he is no longer Gregor
Mind - Body Dualism
Consciousness
Get Out
Dir. by Jordan Peele
African American Chris Washington visits his white girlfriend's parent's where the two attempt to "correct" him through hypnotherapy.
Eventually Chris discovers that the trip and his relationship with Rose are a ruse. The family has been transplanting their brains into others to achieve immortality, primarily making African Americans their prey.
-The host's original consciousness is transferred to a place called the "sunken place" where it remains active but unable to take control of its body.
Consciousness
Social Identity
Free Will
The Second Sex
by Simone de Beauvoir
The Other: Women exist with society as the "other" something that exists in opposition to what is considered the standard, in this case "men."
Alterity: the term that is what ultimately structures the diffrences we use to divide the male and female genders. It generates differences on a level of individuality and yet at the same time this individuality is saved exclusively for the men
Self and Other
The Souls of Black Folk
by W.E.B. Du Bois
Double Consciousness: One forms multiple consciences, one that is individual and another that is generated by outside society's perceptions of an oppressed group of people, in Du Bois's case African Americans
Metaphor of the veil: a "veil" that all African Americans are forced to wear due to the vast social and economic differences that separate white American from African Americans.
Self and Other
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But What Are you Really? The Metaphysics of Race
by Charles W Mills
Social Metaphysics: Mills stresses that as opposed to white intellectuals, intellectuals of color have often had to place race as a central component of their thought. Thus he sets to examine "social metaphysics', which he believes can be broken down into two tenets "objectivism" and "Anti-Objectivism."
Self and Other
Eichmann in Jerusalem
by Hannah Arendt
"The Banality of Evil" - Responding to the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann Arendt is faced with the troubling question of whether or not it is possible for one to be involved in an act of evil without actually being evil themselves.
Banality of Evil
Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill
"Social Utility" Mill argues that morality is based in happiness, and what is moral is useful to society. i.e. moral law is means to an end as it produces happiness.
Happiness is, to mill, that which is pleasurable and bereft of pain.
Moral law
Social Utility
Happiness
Beyond Good and Evil
by Friedrich Nietzsche
"Philosophical Dogmatism" - Nietzsche argues that eventually adherence to all philosophy becomes like a dogmatic practice that robs the individual of their own free will.
"The Will to Power" - this is what motivates an inspired, individual thinker to move past the dogmatisms of old. The only way one can be expected to come to a truer understanding of the universe is to look inwards at their own desires and tendencies.
Freedom
Self Preservation V. Acting on Principle
Free Spirits
Free Will
Antigone by Sophocles
After Antigone's brother polynices is killed following an attempt to gain the throne for himself he is denied burial within the grounds of Thebes being labeled a traitor to the state.
Antigone believing it her duty by blood to er brother buried with his family denies these orders and attempts to bury her brother's body anyway.
Angered by this, Creon the king of Thebes orders Antigone locked away in a cave for the remainder of her life. However, the blind prophet Tiresias warns that Creon has angered the gods and that they will exact vengeance upon Thebes
Duty
Divine Law v. human law
State V. Individual
Self Preservation V. Acting on Principle
The Act of Killing
Dir. by Joshua Oppenheimer
A documentary that seeks to expose the injustices of the purge of Indonesian Communists that occurred from 1965 to 1966.
Oppenheimer and his crew ask members of group responsible for carrying out the killings to create filmed reenactments of the murders.
The leader of the group, Anwar, participates in a scene where he plays the victim this ultimately makes him uncomfortable. upon being shown the footage he realizes that what he has done may have been evil, and vomits on a rooftop.
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
by Immanuel Kant
"The Good Will" - Kant argued that all good actions must come from what he termed the "Good Will" something that wills one to do the right thing in regards to the rules of morality that structure an individual's society'
Moral rules come from the individual but they are a part of larger network of morality that comes from a collective.
Moral Law
Self Preservation V. Acting on Princple
Happiness
The Ones Who Walked Away From Omelas
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Omelas is seemingly a city without pain. A festival is held on the summer solstice.
Le Guin uses meta-textual commentary to comment on how implausible the existence of Omelas is. The truth is revealed that Omelas's eternal bliss comes at the hands of the eternal suffering of a child.
The narrator reveals that once this truth is expose to the citizens of Omelas must become accustomed to it as a way of sustaining life while a few choose to walk away, with no one knowing where it is that they go.
Duty
Moral Law