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Overview
Now empirical method isthe only method which can do justice to this inclusive integrity of "experience." It alone takes this integrated unity as the starting point for philosophic thought. Other methods begin with results of a reflection that has already torn in two the subject-matter experienced and the operations and states of experiencing. The problem is then to get together what has been sundered-which is as if the king's men started with the fragments of the egg and tried to construct the whole egg out of them. (Dewey, John, Experience and Nature. Dover: New York, 1958, P. 9)
25/11/2008 Machiavelli is naive, and in many ways promotes violence, if it justifies the ends to a means, "virtu". However, in so doing, he also exposes Monarchy as a fraud, and offers a way of separating morality or religion from politics. Politics is a cruel game, and sometimes politicians must lie in order to ensure the utilitarian good. Machiavelli warns that total honesty is not always what a good Prince needs to hear, but is a type of flattery that should be shunned. He writes: For there is no way to guard against flattery but by letting it be seen that you take no offence in hearing the truth: but when every one is free to tell you the truth, respect falls short. Wherefore a prudent Prince should follow a middle course, by choosing certain discreet men from among his subjects, and allowing them alone free leave to speak their minds on any matter on which he asks their opinion, and on none other. But he ought to ask their opinion on everything, and after hearing what they have to say, should reflect and judge for himself. (Machiavelli, The Prince. The Rennaissance Man, Edited by Daniel Fader, Gorlier: New York P. 113)
Locke's concept of the social contract is much more palitable than Hobbes' was. Locke not only delineates the nature and cause of the social contract, but he rationalizes his reasoning better. Locke's concept of a proper government and the relationship between the government and the people is also more consistent with a social contract theory than Hobbes was. While Hobbes' monarchy would work assuming the absolute goodness and reliability of the king, Locke allows for the shortcomings of human beings in reality, thus his propsal for social government is a more realistic doctrine.
25/11/2008 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 speech should be limited? Atheists may argue that all religious speech should be censored because it is false. Theologians may argue that atheism should be censored because it is false. Family values differ from family to family. The moral values taught to Islamic, Jewish, Christian and Catholic children are not identical. Who is to decide which set of values we should follow? The individual (or the individual's parents) has to make that decision themselves without interference from well intentioned others. No one has the right to interfere with a person's individual Liberty to choose what is best for them.
Usually, for beginners the best places to gather information about this re-emerging and mysterious topic, is at local lectures or workshops. Other resources may be the library or people who are interested in "new age" concepts, perhaps including yoga instructors, massage therapists, homeopathists, reverands, astrologers, and mediums/channelers or anyone who works with energy and healing.
26/11/2008 Dewey set out to show the harm which traditional philosophical dualisms were doing to our culture, and he thought that to do this job he needed a metaphysics--a description of the generic traits of existences that would solve (or dissolve) the traditonal problems of philosophy, as well as open up new avenues for cultural development. I think he was successful in this latter, larger, aim; he is one of the few philosophers of our century whose imagination was expansive enough to envisage a culture shaped along lines different from those we have developed in the West during the last three hundred years. (Rorty, Richard "Dewey's Metaphysics, Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays 1972-1980. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1982, P. 85)
Mill argues that society has control over a person's liberty when they are a child (77). It is society's job to educate a young person and make "them capable of rational conduct" (77). If society fails to educate a person to its mode of proper conduct, society as a whole is guilty, and the individual, as long as he has not harmed others, does not deserve to be punished (77).
The nineteenth century philosopher John Stuart Mill believed that for man to be truly free the rights and liberties of the individual must be guaranteed. Mill was concerned with what he called "Civil ...
The young are stronger, but the old more cunning. The older an animal or human gets, the more knowledge they possess. This knowledge is gained mostly through experience. A person can spend years in a ...
Mill argues that society has control over a person's liberty when they are a child (77). It is society's job to educate a young person and make "them capable of rational conduct" (77). If society fail...
Regardless of the government or law Hobbes believes "no man can transferre his Right to save himselfe from Death, Wounds, and Imprisonment" (Hobbes 199).
Though on the surface, this statement may sound like an advertisement for a monarchal society, it was in reality merely a resignation to the fact that man is simply incapable of governing himself, tho...
Locke believed that in order to understand the nature of power we must examine the origins of it. He felt that "Nature is a state of perfect equality amongst all men. In this state, no one man has mor...
Mill believes that a person has the Liberty to do what he wants as long as he does not harm others. If he does not harm others that is the part of his life that "concerns himself only," but if a perso...
According to Locke, "If one is to act in such a way that appears contrary to the natural laws, it is the right and responsibility of all men affected by these actions to judge and punish the offender....
Locke's assertion that an alien is exempt from the laws of a country to which he is not a citizen is a curious segment of his doctrine. Would an alien then be free to commit crime in a foreign land? W...
In defense of his teacher, and to disclose to all the truth of Socrates trial, Plato writes his version of the truth as he heard it. In the Apology Plato writes from the persona of his teacher, in the...
Augustine's discussion of Grace versus free will is especially interesting. There are several points in Augustine's arguments which rely on some sort of ambiguous, undefined concept to support a "we c...
How (it may be asked) can any part of the conduct of a member of society be a matter of indifference to the other members? No person is an entirely isolated being; it is impossible for a person to do ...
How does this effect Popper's criticism of Marxism as not scientific when nothing has technically been disproven and cannot be disproven unless another form of social production comes into existence? ...
Locke believes that at the beginning man lived in common ownership of the earth (Locke, 18). Man is blessed with the ownership of property in his own person (Locke, 19). Rousseau argues, the contrary,...
Dewey set out to show the harm which traditional philosophical dualisms were doing to our culture, and he thought that to do this job he needed a metaphysics--a description of the generic traits of ex...
Finally, each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as there is no associate over which he does not acquire the same right as he yields others over himself, he gains an equivalen...
There are, however, two possible reasons for de Beauvoir's primacy of freedom for others. One is that she has created a value scheme which promotes such values. But if this were simply the case, there...
In defense of his teacher, and to disclose to all the truth of Socrates trial, Plato writes his version of the truth as he heard it. In the Apology Plato writes from the persona of his teacher, in the...
They are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if they are wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced b...
These clauses, properly understood, may be reduced to one, the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community; for, in the first place, as each gives himself ...
The prerequisites before embarking on a metaphysical path requires the two following things: a belief in a God and the possibility of an afterlife. If these two concepts are not met, one will have tro...
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