Emerson Essay -- essays research papers fc

In Emerson's Self-Reliance we see the crowning work of the transcendentalist movement. In this piece Emerson explains his belief in the innate divinity of man and defines our "Self-Reliance" as the broad identity in which we personally participate. Emerson challenges his readers to not conform to traditional practices in a variety of realms. However, he punctuates just four aspects of these challenges to tradition and they are: religion, education, art, and society. I found these passages to be the best representatives of Emerson's ideology due to their poignancy and numbered paragraphs. He talks of these challenges to man as revolutions due to a greater self-reliance. The profoundness of thought in this piece is surprising to me given the historical period Emerson was bathed in. His thoughts on genius are the means of conveyance for his ideal about nonconformity and originality. Also, the personal and emotional connection with which Emerson uses to convey original thoughts and ideas is apparent in his evaluation of great minds of the past. The first passage regards the challenge to revolutionize religion; and more importantly, to discount the practice of prayer and creeds. He says, "Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious" (Robinson 102). He is basically announcing his contempt for the pious nature man has come to have and his belief that we should not pray for things we can achieve ourselves. He goes on to say, "But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness" (Robinson 102). He is equating prayer with begging to God and believes it is not needed when you become one with God and therefore can see prayer in all productive actions. Prayer for Emerson creates a distinction between himself and God and does not allow for the self to become one with nature and consciousness. He also critiques man's practice of creeds and he believes the practice of one negates all others and vice versa. He says creeds are "a disease of the intellect" (Robinson 103). Whereas prayer is a disease of the will, creeds perform a habitual complacency in the life of man which allows only for the teachings of one particular idea. This is intellectual death for Emerson. To not only have to beli... ...hat is known is not valuable and not beneficial, and what is unknown is original, daring, valuable and great. The greatness resides inside of us and we must excavate it through constant reevaluation of our principles and virtues, without regarding foreign influences. In conclusion, I believe Emerson’s applicable challenges can be identified as his leading arguments when concerned with individual and personal revolution. His views on religion, education, art, and society are explicated through his gifted intuitional understanding and reason. By reasoning to the reader through vivid examples which are apparent and self-evident, he creates the proof for his understanding of reason’s uses to question what we are perceived to know. The personal connection to Emerson is clear in his engaging emotional remark in which we can simply recognize as his affection for the original, misunderstood, and individual contributions great minds of the past have made. RALPH WALDO EMERSON Self-Reliance WORKS CITED Robinson, David M. The Spiritual Emerson, Essential Writings. Ed. David M. Robinson. Boston: Beacon Press, 2003. Emerson Essay -- essays research papers fc In Emerson's Self-Reliance we see the crowning work of the transcendentalist movement. In this piece Emerson explains his belief in the innate divinity of man and defines our "Self-Reliance" as the broad identity in which we personally participate. Emerson challenges his readers to not conform to traditional practices in a variety of realms. However, he punctuates just four aspects of these challenges to tradition and they are: religion, education, art, and society. I found these passages to be the best representatives of Emerson's ideology due to their poignancy and numbered paragraphs. He talks of these challenges to man as revolutions due to a greater self-reliance. The profoundness of thought in this piece is surprising to me given the historical period Emerson was bathed in. His thoughts on genius are the means of conveyance for his ideal about nonconformity and originality. Also, the personal and emotional connection with which Emerson uses to convey original thoughts and ideas is apparent in his evaluation of great minds of the past. The first passage regards the challenge to revolutionize religion; and more importantly, to discount the practice of prayer and creeds. He says, "Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious" (Robinson 102). He is basically announcing his contempt for the pious nature man has come to have and his belief that we should not pray for things we can achieve ourselves. He goes on to say, "But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness" (Robinson 102). He is equating prayer with begging to God and believes it is not needed when you become one with God and therefore can see prayer in all productive actions. Prayer for Emerson creates a distinction between himself and God and does not allow for the self to become one with nature and consciousness. He also critiques man's practice of creeds and he believes the practice of one negates all others and vice versa. He says creeds are "a disease of the intellect" (Robinson 103). Whereas prayer is a disease of the will, creeds perform a habitual complacency in the life of man which allows only for the teachings of one particular idea. This is intellectual death for Emerson. To not only have to beli... ...hat is known is not valuable and not beneficial, and what is unknown is original, daring, valuable and great. The greatness resides inside of us and we must excavate it through constant reevaluation of our principles and virtues, without regarding foreign influences. In conclusion, I believe Emerson’s applicable challenges can be identified as his leading arguments when concerned with individual and personal revolution. His views on religion, education, art, and society are explicated through his gifted intuitional understanding and reason. By reasoning to the reader through vivid examples which are apparent and self-evident, he creates the proof for his understanding of reason’s uses to question what we are perceived to know. The personal connection to Emerson is clear in his engaging emotional remark in which we can simply recognize as his affection for the original, misunderstood, and individual contributions great minds of the past have made. RALPH WALDO EMERSON Self-Reliance WORKS CITED Robinson, David M. The Spiritual Emerson, Essential Writings. Ed. David M. Robinson. Boston: Beacon Press, 2003.

Woman as the Other and as the Other Woman

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), French existentialist, writer, and social essayist, passed on just over two decades ago. Putting it this way makes her ideas so much more alive. She did not just write about how she lived. She wrote, and she lived what she wrote about: she refused to be the Other, but she was also, in a manner of putting it, the Other Woman.Simone’s Life and Love(s) in Philosophy Simone de Beauvoir is now noted and appreciated as a philosopher. She was not always considered a philosopher however, but a writer, and has only been given the distinction of being a noted philosopher in more recent years.Her works became considered â€Å"philosophical† only after her death. Beauvoir was born in France in 1908. She belonged to a bourgeoisie family, and had one sister. As a teenager, she declared herself an atheist, and devoted her life to feminism and writing (Marvin, 2000). Apparently, her parent’s disposition and stature were a major influence on her. H er father was extremely interested in pursuing a career in theater, but because of his societal position (and with a noble lineage), he became a lawyer (which was expected), and hated it. Her mother, on the other hand, was a strict Catholic.Some authors have noted that Simone struggled between her mother’s religious morals and her father’s more pagan inclinations, and this purportedly led to her atheism and shaped her philosophical work. As a child, Simone was religious and had a relationship with God. She wrote in early work about her thankfulness that heaven had given her the immediately family that she had, but this feeling (at least the religious aspects of it) dissipated as she aged (Flaherty, 2008). When she was around 15, Simone de Beauvoir decided she would be a famous writer.She did well in many subjects, but was especially attracted to philosophy, which she went on to study at the University of Paris. There she met many other young creative geniuses, includin g Jean-Paul Sartre, who became her best friend and life-long companion. The group of friends that she spent her time with was considered a â€Å"bad† group, a circle of rebels. Such perceptions did not matter however for Simone and Sartre whose fondness for each other only grew over the years. Their works were frequently linked as they read and critiqued each other’s writings, and she was sort of considered as his ‘student’ — the Other.However, she was not just the Other, she was a significant Other, as it were. Their relationship became intimate and Sartre even proposed to her. She however declined the proposal because she felt that marriage was such a constricting institution and that they should, instead, be free to love â€Å"others† (Flaherty, 2008). After graduating from the university, Simone lived with her grandmother and taught at a lycee, or high school. She taught philosophy at several schools throughout her life, which allowed her to live comfortably. She spent her free time going to cafes, writing, and giving talks.In Berlin, she spent time with Sartre and they got linked with two female students, the sisters Olga and Wanda Kosakiewicz. Sartre initially pursued Olga but later had an affair with Wanda. Note that he and Simone had agreed that they would be free to love others. During this time, Simone got very sick and spent some time in a sanitarium. By the time she left the sanitarium, Olga was married, and Wanda and Sartre were no longer lovers (Flaherty, 2008). This phase in her life, one could perhaps say, highlighted her journey as the Other Woman. Simone traveled around the world later in her life, lecturing.She came to the United States in the 1940s and met another man, Algren. He proposed to her, but she opted to stay with Sartre instead. Also during her travels, Simone participated, with Sartre, in the 1967 â€Å"Bertrand Russell Tribunal of War Crimes in Vietnam. † There she met several note d leaders, including Khrushchev and Castro; however, unlike Sartre, she did not particularly enjoy being in the public spotlight. (Gascoigne, 2002) In 1981, when Sartre died, Simone wrote a memoir about him. After this, she continued to take drugs and drink alcohol, which contributed to her mental decay.She and Sartre had always taken drugs and alcohol. Simone frequently became drunk throughout her life. She died in 1986, and was buried beside Sartre’s remains (Gascoigne, 2002). Beauvoir’s Views: My Reflections Beauvoir strictly considered herself a writer, not a philosopher. Others did not see her as a philosopher because, in what may today be described as sexism, she was a woman and thus inferior in some ways. Moreover, she was also seen as merely a student of Sartre and not as a philosopher in her own right. On top of it all, she was a woman who wrote about women.It must be pointed out that this field of study was not truly accepted in the academe until very recentl y; hence, Beauvoir’s work was not accepted as being philosophical during her time. She was indeed heavily overshadowed by Sartre, especially because some of her work reflects his (Bergoffen, 2004). Beauvoir’s philosophical ideas focused on how truths in life were revealed in literature. She wrote several essays, including â€Å"Literature and the Metaphysical Essay† (1946) and â€Å"Mon Experience d’Ecrivain,† which translates to ‘My Experience as a Writer’ (1956).Her works include both fiction and non-fiction, all in regards to studying literature in reaction to human relationships and thoughts (Bergoffen, 2004). Truly life is mirrored by literature, but literature is also a part of life, and life can be shaped by literary work. In the life and works of this trailblazing feminist writer-philosopher, one can see the reality of literature as a potent force not only of self-expression but also of life changing. Feminism was of primary im portance to Beauvoir, and she is considered to be one of the pioneers of the movement.In fact, Beauvoir is best known for her feminist work, â€Å"The Second Sex,† now a classic of feminist literature (Eiermann). In this work, she looks at the role of women in society, and the advantages and disadvantages that she, herself, faced. It was initially not thought of as a philosophical work because it dealt with sex, which, during the Victorian era, was not a subject openly discussed. In reality, the book closely examines patriarchal society and its impact on women, and calls for women to take action against these oppressions.It fired up women of later generations to fight for political, social, and personal change. The book remains debated to this day because of the way it addresses the issues, but it is still considered a major early book on feminism (Bergoffen, 2004). Here she put an exclamation point on her observations of Woman in society being seen and treated merely as the Other. Beauvoir is also known for an earlier work, Force of Circumstance. â€Å"Within this piece she discussed vital issues of the day-confusion and rage regarding human freedoms and the French/Algerian War† (Flaherty, 2008).Human freedom was a big issue that was crucial in Beauvoir’s work. She was particularly concerned that people needed to be free. This is reflected in the way she lived her own life, and in the way she lectured others. She walked her talk, and was for some time describable perhaps (albeit from a rather sexist perspective) as being the Other Woman, with no rancor, in Sarte’s life. She Came to Stay (1943) is another work that deals with freedom. This is a novel that deals with â€Å"reflections on our relationship to time, to each other, to ourselves† (Bergoffen, 2004).The work doesn’t fit a traditional philosophical framework, where questions are brought to a close and fully answered. Instead it only explores questions by lookin g at the lives and interactions of the main characters. In this novel, a murder is committed because of a character’s desire for freedom, and the novel examines if the murder was just or not, among other issues surrounding the situation. This work is frequently considered her first true philosophical work (Bergoffen, 2004). How many times have this student been asked this question in real life by friends and particular circumstances: freedom or life?There is something profoundly unsettling in the questions that Beauvoir’s works raises. In She Came to Stay, purportedly a fictionalized chronicle of Beauvoir and Sartre's relationship with the sisters Olga and Wanda, we are treated to an exploration of complex personal relationships. Olga was one of her students in the Rouen secondary school where she taught during the early 30s. In the novel, Olga and Wanda are made into one character with whom fictionalized versions of Beauvoir and Sartre have intimate relationships.The novel delves into Beauvoir and Sartre's complex relationship. She wrote about her life, and she lived her writings. With what she wrote, she pursued her questioning, her philosophizing. Pyrrhus and Cineas (1944) is Beauvoir’s first philosophical essay and a major turning point in her life as a writer. This essay looks at questions like â€Å"What are the criteria of ethical action? † â€Å"How can I distinguish ethical from unethical political projects? † â€Å"What are the principles of ethical relationships? † â€Å"Can violence ever be justified?† The essay looks at the moral, political, and other implications of these questions, and further explores the notion of freedom, relationships, and violence. Simone was not sure if violence was truly justified, but concludes that it is ‘neither evil nor avoidable. ’ The questions are not truly resolved in this work, much like in her previous work (Bergoffen, 2004). Then there is Ethics of A mbiguity (1947), which further looks at ethical questions regarding freedom, and the difference between childhood and adulthood.According to Beauvoir, children ‘live in mystery,’ and they should. However, she posits that children should also be forced to be adults and there could be violations of freedom involved in this. This work expands on the idea of freedom from the previous work, and looks at new dimensions of it (Bergoffen, 2004). Two themes seem to appear most prominently in the work of Beauvoir: Freedom and Feminism. The Feminine is made an agent of freedom and is problematized so in the work of Beauvoir. Today, many still turn to her work for we can see the realities that her work reflects.We still find Woman as the Other — in some societies with her multiple burdens given her second-class status. Even in the supposedly modern nation that is the U. S. we find gender an unsettling concern in electoral politics. More broadly, freedom remains a problematic ideal in the globalizing world. Many states (e. g. , North Korea, China, Cuba, the young Republics in Eastern Europe) remain unstable at their core having had to grapple with forces of change and freedom from within and from outside their societies and territories.At another level, the world is not lacking with individuals and groups with their various advocacies aimed at expanding the limits of freedom in civil society. Today the woman question has become the bigger concern that is Gender. This student now more fully realizes that gender is a social-psychological thing while sex is a biological or physical matter. The Woman is more than her body after is all. To be Woman is a choice, is a matter of freedom. The definition of gender lies not in the body. Gender is the realization of what you think and feel you are, and what you prefer as a lifestyle, to put it broadly.

The Road Essay - 1519 Words

Prometheus, a Titan in ancient Greek mythology, stole the fire from Zeus, the ruler of all Gods, and gave it to humanity, even when Zeus strictly told him not to. As punishment, Prometheus is bound to a rock. Every day, an eagle swoops in to eat his liver, but Prometheus does not die. His liver regenerates only to be eaten again the following day. Because Prometheus â€Å"carried the fire† to humanity, his days are forever filled with torture. Similar to the situation that appears in the Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, the main characters, a man and his son also â€Å"carry the fire† for the sake of mankind. â€Å"Carrying the fire†, a motif that Cormac McCarthy portrays throughout his novel, The Road, can be used to explain the reasoning behind why†¦show more content†¦[Man:] No. Even if we’re starving? We’re starving now. You said we weren’t I said we weren’t dying. I didn’t say we weren’t starving. But we wouldn’t. No. We wouldn’t. (128) Since the passage states that the man and son do not eat human beings â€Å"because [they’re] the good guys† (129), it can also be said that people that do eat other human beings are the bad guys; however, this cannot be said for stealing from or helping others. There are several times in the book where the father does not find the need help others when they need it, and even steal from others. During the scene where the father entered the house that was inhabited by prisoners, the father did not choose the help them. During the scene where the father caught the thief that stole the cart, the father took away all the thief’s clothes and left him on the streets naked. The father has committed these acts, yet he is still classified as a â€Å"good guy†. Why is this true? Although the father has committed similar acts that â€Å"bad guys† commit, he does feels guilty about them, which separate him from the bad guys, who do not feel guilty about the act s they commit. Feeling guilty about committing these acts also resemble the ones that â€Å"carry the fire†, and carry the good morals that they were raised up with, and ones that do not â€Å"carry the fire†, and live to serve only them and no one else. God is also an influential subject in The Road.Show MoreRelatedRoad In Road Essay1355 Words   |  6 PagesNAVIGATING THE MISSIONAL ROAD IN FRANCE PEDESTRIAN CROSSING After an overnight flight and a six-hour time shift, our Calvary Church delegation received warm greetings at Lyon Saint-Exupery Airport in France, a 70-minute flight southeast of Paris and a 60-minute drive to our home-base city of Grenoble. Later that afternoon, our troop rode the commuter train to the heart of Grenoble on a historic city tour. Sometime afterward, Missionary Roy asked, â€Å"How many Muslims did you see in town?† â€Å"VeryRead More On the Road Essay848 Words   |  4 Pages On the Road On the Road, by Jack Kerouac was considered to be the first â€Å"beat† novel. The lifestyle of beats is explained as going against mainstream norms. The two main characters in the novel Dean and Sal both go against normal society. On the Road was written during a time when mainstream society was in to materialistic possessions. The average person was concerned with having a good paying job and raising a family in the suburbs. Beatniks had the complete opposite goals in lifeRead More The Road Essay1241 Words   |  5 PagesCormac McCarthy’s novel The Road â€Å"the man† and â€Å"the boy† refer to themselves as â€Å"the good guys† compared to â€Å"the bad guys†. While reading this book I was lead to believe that â€Å"the boy† is truly the only â€Å"good guy† left, because â€Å"the man† and every other character that I encountered in this book share some of the same qualities as â€Å"the bad guys†. The boy constantly begs his father to be sympathetic and charitable to the drifters that they encounter on the road, but the father usually refusesRead MoreRoad Essay1440 Words   |  6 Pagesto redesign the intersection of U.S. Route 62 and County Road 160. A public viewing of the land Monday evening was followed by a public hearing, at which Holmes County Engineer Chris Young acknowledged â€Å"change is always difficult.† Nevertheless, he said, it’s a job his office is tasked with managing, in the midst of commercial and residential growth throughout the county. â€Å"My office works very hard to try and minimize the effects of these road projects on our residents and communities. Frankly, itRead More On The Road Essay883 Words   |  4 Pageswhich would become ‘On the Road’ his most acclaimed novel. It is said to be an account of Kerouacs (quot;Sal Paradise’squot;) travels with Neal Cassady (quot;Dean Moriartyquot;). According to Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac typed the first draft of On the Road on a fifty-foot long roll of paper. On the Road gave an outlet of release for the dissatisfied young generation of the late forties and early fifties. And although it has been fifty years since the events in On the Road, the feelings, ideas andRead More Road Not Taken Essay980 Words   |  4 Pages Critical essay for â€Å"The Road Not Taken† by Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, Because it was grassy and wanted wear: Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same. And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads to way, I doubtedRead MoreOn the Road Essay2385 Words   |  10 Pagesrebellious lifestyle sparked various different views; those that look up to them, and those that look down upon them. Jack Kerouac plays a major role in this time period pertaining to this lifestyle, authoring many works about it, one being On the Road. He uses the characters in this story to depict the diverse views on the Beatniks. This strong interpretation used throughout the novel sets the stage for many other authors writing on behalf of the Beat Generation. The characters he uses in this novelRead MoreEssay On Utah Roads1119 Words   |  5 Pages12% ,Distracted and Drunk Driving - 9%. For teenagers driving on Utah Highways being ,Ran Off Road - 30%,Speed Too Fast - 22%, Failed to Keep in Proper Lane - 15%, Overcorrected - 15%Failed to Yield, Driver Distraction, Wrong Side of the Road - 11%. What was provided in what I read did not surprise me because of the fact that teenagers are always on their phones a nd not paying attention to the road. For me the differences between the statistics for teen drivers compared to Utah drivers asRead More The Road Essay2021 Words   |  9 PagesThe Road Named one of the four major novelists of his time, Cormac McCarthy has won numerous awards such as the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2009 PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, which places him in the highest rank of American literature. His tenth and latest novel, The Road (2006), known as his most traumatic yet intensely personal work, has won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature Award in 2007, as well as the James Tait Black MemorialRead MoreEssay on Road Accidents1888 Words   |  8 PagesEssay on Road Accidents !! Lack of road-sense has further complicated the matters. Driving licenses are given on illegal gratifications to the authorities and traffic rules and regulations are thrown to the winds. Overloading is one of the major factors of road- accidents and deaths. The condition of the vehicles is hardly found road-worthy. The unmanned railway level-crossings further add to the chaos and confusion. The multiplicity of authorities and utter lack of coordination among them is another