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Let's take the example of water. Someone who understands water only in terms of the wet stuff that comes out of the faucet obviously has an incomplete conceptualization of water's form. If water is reduced to two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom with covalent bonds, the idea of water is becoming more complete. We can still further investigate water, noting its dipole moment, free electron pairs, and characteristic hydrogen bonding, thus explaining its surface tension, its extremely high boiling point, and its incredible versatility for use in biological systems. At this point, we seem to have a rather well defined concept of water, theoretically bringing us closer and closer to the realization of its form. A further reduction of water, however, yields some disturbing results.
Machiavelli, however, was a realist. He was concerned with how things were in reality, not how things could be if the world was perfect. He was greatly influenced by his failures in public life. He had served as head of the second chancery of the Florentine republic, but was dismissed after it fell in 1512. The Medici family was again ruling Florence, and a Medici also sat on the papal throne in Rome. The Prince was an attempt to prevent form those failures being repeated in the future. Machiavelli tried unsuccessfully to use this treatise to gain an advisory appointment either to the papacy or the court of the Duke. He was not concerned with moral virtue, if it meant the destruction and defeat of his state
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It seems that Augustine's view of grace versus free will reacts in a similar fashion. Grace is that act of god by which our souls can turn from a carnal and sinful existence to look toward the world a...
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Hobbes' definition of justice also deserves questioning. Is injustice really as he defines it, as a sort of follow the laws . . . regardless of other considerations (i.e. morality, values, etc)? Again...
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Today, there is a big push in this country to limit individual freedom/liberty for the good of society. People fear crime and the diminishing of what is called family values. The problem is whose spee...
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12/12/2008 17:56
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Hume's arguments seem directed at Descartes. Hume argues that man gains knowledge from experience and that we should be skeptical of all other knowledge. Descartes believes all knowledge comes from th...
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13/12/2008 00:09
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