PowerPoints

=Topics in the course:= =Western historical periods;= =Chief People and Movements in Western Philosophy;= =Buddha;= =Moral Philosophy from the Greeks through Nietzsche;= =Moral Philosophy in Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, others;= =Moral and Political Philosophy from Hobbes through Marx and Anarchism;= =Religion and Philosophy;= =Feminism and Philosophy;= =Existentialism, Structuralism and Deconstruction.= =Arab Philosophy, Hinduism, Taoism;= =Postcolonialism: Native American, South Asian and African Views.= = =


 * Philosophy investigates not through authority or religion, but reasoning. **
 * ** This process began in the West for the first time in Greece in the 6th, 5th and 4th centuries b.c. **
 * The first Western philosophers used their reasoning and taught others to do so too.
 * Thales of Miletus: everything that exists must be water in some form; the world floats on water
 * Anaximander: the world is a cylinder floating in space
 * Anaximenes: the world is a flat plane floating on air
 * Why was Anaximenes’ idea more accepted than Anaximander’s – when the cylinder idea was closer to the truth?


 * Heraclitus & Pythagoras **
 * Two Greek geniuses amongst the early philosophers
 * Heraclitus: taught the unity of opposites and the universality of flux (change)
 * Solid objects are not solid nor are they "objects":; everything is a process
 * Pythagoras coined the words philosophy & cosmology
 * __ #|Mathematics __ is the essence of philosophy
 * Math shows there must be an intelligent essence behind the cosmos

** Xenophanes & Parmenedes **

 * Xenophanes: human knowledge is a human creation
 * All of our scientific knowledge is conjecture
 * It is always replaceable by something that turns out to be nearer the truth
 * Parmenides: “Nothing” does not exist. Therefore existence cannot have “come out of nothing.”
 * There are no parts of reality where “nothing” is.
 * All of reality is beginningless – uncreated – eternal – imperishable.


 * Empedocles & the Four Elements; **
 * ** The Atomists **
 * Empedocles: everything is composed of Earth – Air – Fire –Water in combination.
 * The giant thinker Aristotle accepted this idea and it was carried into medieval Christian philosophy, only replaced in the Renaissance
 * Leucippus and Democritus: all is made of tiny indestructible particles
 * Using reason alone, discovered basic atomic physics


 * ** Socrates: The Great Turning Point in Philosophy **
 * His conclusions about the philosophers:
 * They contradicted each other
 * Their ideas made little difference to how people live
 * His basic questions: What is good? What is right? What is just?
 * “Socratic Method”: by questioning, he showed that the “wise” knew little, and he got people interested in the important questions

He was convinced that behind concepts that are abstract but are real to us – such as Justice, Love, Beauty, __Health,__ etc. – there must be some kind of abstract reality, existing invisibly but yet as real as matter.
 * ** This teaching was the seed for Plato in developing his World of Ideas **
 * He was loved and respected, but reviled by the powerful for influencing people to question authority
 * Tried & found guilty of corrupting youth & disbelieving in the gods
 * When offered asylum elsewhere, he refused
 * He died consciously with his friends and students in attendance


 * Socrates & Morality **
 * The only harm a person can suffer is harm to the soul
 * No one else can harm your soul - only you can do that
 * It’s far worse to commit injustice than to suffer it
 * If you fully understand a situation, you cannot do wrong; your conscience won’t allow you
 * Virtue is a matter of knowledge
 * He was the first to teach personal integrity as the #1 value


 * Takeaways for Socrates **
 * Can be applied to your life & your understanding of the world:
 * o ** The only real harm is harm to the soul **
 * o ** It is better to suffer wrong than to commit it **
 * o ** Think for yourself – take nothing for granted **


 * Plato **
 * First philosopher whose written works have survived, and we have virtually all of them
 * Many call him greatest philosopher of all time
 * Socrates’ execution drove him to prove that Socrates was good and right
 * Plato’s earlier writings are 100% records of what Socrates said
 * His later writings develop Plato’s own philosophy in detail
 * Agrees with Socrates:
 * o The only real harm is harm to the soul
 * o It is better to suffer wrong than to commit it
 * o Think for yourself – take nothing for granted

Published 2 dozen "Platonic Dialogues", the chief of which are:


 * Plato’s Theory of Forms **
 * What is beauty? What is courage?
 * These and other qualities, since we refer to them and “know” them, must have a real existence somewhere on their own – not just in objects or people
 * They are timeless essences existing independent of space and time
 * Everything in our world decays and changes; the Essences do not
 * Mathematics: a prime example. Numbers must have a real, abstract existence apart from all objects, or why would we all be born with basic understanding of numbers?
 * Underneath the apparent chaos we see, there is an underlying order with all the precision of mathematics
 * We can apprehend this with our minds even if we can’t see it
 * Plato called a “Christian before Christ” because of the way he divided reality into a lower world and an upper one
 * He believed that the human soul makes a step-by-step progress towards the Light of the Good through Love
 * Yet like Pythagoras, he believed in reincarnation, the oldest belief of humanity


 * Plato & the Arts **
 * Humanity’s purpose is to contemplate and participate in the World of Ideas, the divine Forms that give meaning to the lower world
 * Therefore the arts are not good for people! They depict the illusions of the lower world as attractive.
 * A work of art is a “copy of a copy“ because what we see on earth are all copies of Ideas in the upper world


 * Allegory of the Cave **
 * From birth we are chained in a dark chamber and only shown vague images of the truth.
 * We interpret these images according to our very limited knowledge.
 * Our direct experience is not of reality, but of what we have in our minds.


 * Plato’s ideal society **
 * The Intellect should control society, governing the passions and the will
 * Society should have a supreme ruling class representing the intellect, with a “Philosopher King” at the top
 * A police class, called the “auxiliaries,” should carry out the decisions of the ruling class
 * These are the “guardians of society”
 * Sounds like the Soviet Union or the National Security state
 * Plato’s thought dominated Western society for 600-700 years


 * ** Neoplatonism **
 * Plato's student Plotinus, 3rd cent. a.d., created “Neoplatonism,” a non-Christian doctrine which was adopted by Christianity
 * Neoplatonism emphasized and elaborated on Plato's idea that human beings are designed to ascend through their efforts in being more loving from a low point to the ultimate good
 * Neoplatonism was the norm in Christianity until Thomas Aquinas replaced it with theology based on Aristotle


 * Takeaways for Plato **
 * Plato reinforces Socrates: don’t harm your soul!
 * For your contemplation:
 * Is there an underlying mathematical order to reality that we can apprehend with our intellects and feelings?
 * Is there a metaphysical reality, invisible, that gives meaning to what we see here in our reality, even in
 * California?
 * The Cave: are we shrouded and chained in ignorance here on Earth, and prevented from seeing and living in a better reality?
 * Aristotle **
 * His idea of form **
 * Things are not just the matter of which they’re made – or a house would be boards, nails, etc.
 * A house’s __structure__ & __form__ make it a house.
 * If the form is not material, what is it?
 * If the form is not material, what is it?


 * The Four Causes or “Be-Causes” **
 * Form causes things to be what they are.
 * What is the nature of this causing?
 * 1. Material cause: what something is made of.
 * 2. Efficient cause: what makes it, or crafts it, or builds it: creates it.
 * 3. Formal cause: what gives it its shape.
 * 4. Final cause: what its ultimate use or purpose is.
 * The form is not material, yet exists IN something material.


 * Aristotle & Alexander **
 * Aristotle taught Alexander the Great to treat the Greeks as humans and all others as animals.
 * Such a teaching could never have come from Socrates or Plato.
 * Alexander showed his regret for warring against the world by making sure that at his funeral procession, his hands were outside his coffin, palms up, so that all could see that he died empty-handed.


 * Takeaways for Aristotle **
 * Observation, experiment and logic can lead to discovery
 * Human beings are here on earth to be happy
 * Become happy by finding out what you’re good at and then doing it for the benefit of all


 * Descartes **

Brilliant at math; invented the Graph, with its “Cartesian Coordinates”

Can we count on our senses at all?

Before Socrates, philosophers asked, “What exists?”

Descartes changed it again to “What do we know and how do we know it?”
(This is the "epistemological detour.")

Is the mind really immaterial? Is the body really material?
Maybe we don't really know what we're talking about when we say these things. If matter is energy and vice versa, don't we need a new way of discussing both?

He believed that everything was matter in motion, and there was nothing but matter. He was also an extreme cynic who believed that humans are governed only by "force and fraud," and that life on earth is "nasty, brutish and short." He was atheistic without quite saying so, and this was a hanging offense. Hobbes managed to avoid persecution by saying, when asked if God exists, that "whatever the sovereign decides is right." (Richard Nixon: "If the president does it, it's legal.") So he put the question of God's existence off to the ruler, and got off the hook. A person who says that spirit is nonsense, that all is matter, and that you should just obey your rulers - what would you make of such a man? Why has he been such a popular thinker? What attitudes does he encourage?
 * Hobbes** is in many ways the founder of the modern mechanistic scientific-type worldview.

As a philosopher, he was unafraid to criticize basic things about the religion that gave him a degree of protection. He was the first person in the West to do critical analysis of religious scripture - in his case of the Hebrew Bible. This was risky business. Yet as a philosopher he knew it had to be done. As for metaphysics, he applied reason to show that in reality there could not be a division between mind and matter as two types of substance, but that there must be only one universal substance, which he identified as God. In other words he was a pantheist" "all is God." The mind and the body are the same thing, conceptualized from different viewpoints. When I see "me" as thinking, I'm looking at "me" as mind. When I see "me" as walking, I'm seeing "me" as a body: as matter. He attempted to out-do Descartes in creating a system of logical analysis of existence that would be completely certain in every way. Insofar as his premises are unassailable, he succeeded. But no premise can be unassailable; at the best it can be highly probable. Is the sun going to rise tomorrow? Probably. Not certainly. (Besides, what do we mean by its "rising"?)
 * Spinoza,** a Jewish philosopher in a Christian culture:

He worked to establish great truths in both epistemology (the nature of the mind and learning) and in political and social thought. Though Locke was English, he was a kind of American "founding father." Without his ideas -- no America. Like Aristotle and Aquinas, Locke believed that all our ideas came from experience and the senses This position is called empiricism. It contrasts with rationalism, which says that ideas can come from reason, the mind, without having to depend completely on the senses. When we look at a basketball, all we are really seeing is our perceptions of that basketball within our minds. If a tree falls in the forest with no one to hear it, there is no sound. But there is still a tree falling. See the box about Rationalism and Empiricism on page 113. Descartes and Spinoza believed that the mind contains innate ideas known through reason; they are rationalists. Locke and Berkeley believe that our impressions come not from innate ideas but from our experience; they are empiricists. To know why particular ideas in philosophy are important, always remember their historical context. One reason that Locke insisted our ideas come from our own experience was to contradict the medieval idea that our minds and everything else about us depend wholly on God. Although he was not an atheist, Locke was trying to show that humans create their own destiny, their own fate, their own knowledge, their own societies.
 * John Locke** is one of the most influential philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, a person who has had enormous impact on modern thought.

He pointed out logically that if we all we know of an object is our perceptions of it, then we do not have real knowledge that the object exists at all. Size, shape, color, etc., are all ideas in the human mind, and we have no way of saying they actually exist in what we are observing. All we can say is that we know our perceptions of it exist. For that matter, how do we know that we're not dreaming those perceptions? Such thought processes may seem to us rather pointless today, because after all, we can put shoe polish on shoes and make them browner and shinier, even if we cannot "prove" that they even exist. Yet in the 17th and 18th centuries, such explorations were radical and controversial, and laid the foundation for modern psychology. All of this careful and detailed "Age of Enlightenment" reasoning keeps leading to the inescapable idea that no matter how much we analyze and reason about the perception process, //we cannot know anything for certain.//
 * Berkeley** (pronounced "Barkley") took Locke's thinking further.

Berkeley brought God back into the equation of human knowledge, but in a mystical way. Our minds all exist within the mind of God. This does not return to the medieval church's worldview because it dos not make God into a dictator, a super-Pope inserting ideas into our minds. Rather, God is the ground and atmosphere of our own experience. Berkeley said we can be sure that objects exist, but actually as clusters of ideas, not as "material things." The words "material things" show a mistake about the nature of reality. "Materiality" as we have thought of it does not really exist. Things which we mistake for "material things" of solid matter are actually spiritual entities. They are real, for sure; they have a real existence--and that existence is in God's mind. Berkeley also said that God speaks to us as individuals through our experiences. Meditate on your experiences and you'll come to see what God is telling you.

Note the summary of mind-body theories at the bottom pf page 115: In Descartes' dualism, there are matter and mind. In Hobbes' materialism, there is only matter. In Berkeley's idealism, there is no matter, only mind. In Spinoza's "alternatism," there is one substance, which sometimes looks like mind, sometimes like matter, depending on the observer. Which of these sounds most plausible to you? Why?

**HINDUISM, BUDDHA AND EASTERN THOUGHT (many notes below on this subject are not in the textbook)**
**Hinduism is the background of Buddhism, just as Judaism is the background of Christianity.** **Hinduism is entrenched in the caste system (see 464), which may be the oldest skin-color-based racism in the world.** **Hinduism is strictly patriarchal (like Roman Catholicism); women may be saints but never leaders.** **The doctrines of karma, reincarnation and nirvana overlap with Buddhism (see p. 467).** **Buddha:**

Vegetarian diet, no drugs or alcohol

 * Nothing that impedes or "twists" consciousness should be used **

Most have had no comment on it – just as they’ve had no comment on the “heaven-hell” belief.
Hume, an Irishman, was a humble man, yet brilliant. Above all he wanted his philosophy to be realistic and practical, yet he didn’t pull any punches in criticizing reason. He reasoned about the limitations of reason.
 * David Hume **

Apart from mathematics, we know nothing for certain. Yet to live a human life, we still have to take action in spite of our uncertainties. “We deal in hopeful probabilities, not in certainties.”

While Berkeley said that we can never know whether the world exists independently of ourselves, Hume took a further step and reasoned that we can’t even be sure we have “selves.” As far as our experiencing selves are concerned, We can only call ourselves “bundles of sensations.”

We should admit that we do not really use our intellects much in making our life-decisions. “Reason,” he said, “is the slave of the passions.”

If we cannot be certain of anything, how ridiculous it is to think we have the answer to everything! We should be modest, moderate and tolerant, Because the choices we make always assume that there are connections which we are unable to prove. So we are all groping in the dark. David Hume was a total skeptic, Yet had a moderate and compassionate attitude.

Since all we know that we observe is our perceptions, we cannot know that anything exists. Since all we see is one event following another, we cannot say we know that one event causes another. Since we cannot observe our own self, we cannot be sure that we even have one; the most a person can say about himself or herself is that they are a “bundle of sensations.”

Hume was “ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look at no opinion even as more probable or likely than another.” He was a great skeptic, and like Socrates, showed that we know much less than we think we know. However, he said that a good skeptic should doubt his or her own doubts!

1. “Hume-mility!” Human beings are limited vessels. Our minds can give us the illusion that we can master the universe. Don’t buy it!
 * Takeaways for Hume: **

2. “Hume – manity!” We are all the slaves of our passions, And we all follow custom much more than our intellects, So no one has the right to think oneself superior. We’re all in the same boat, groping in the dark.

Considered the most in-depth philosopher since Plato and Aristotle Was brilliant and sought-after as a speaker The first philosophy professor Never left his home town, never married Internationally known during his lifetime
 * Immanuel Kant **

Most famous of his books: __The Critique of Pure Reason__ It’s a difficult book, so he wrote an introduction to it called the __Prolegomena__ Followed John Locke: what is the main limitation on what humans can know? It’s not what there is to know – it’s our own abilities Our knowledge is conditioned by the limited capacities of our senses and of our minds

Just because we cannot perceive something directly doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist A tasteless, odorless invisible gas can kill you! Gravity exists – yet we can never see it in itself

What we can perceive with our senses is bound to be much less than what actually exists. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” - Hamlet to Horatio We mistake the ‘photographs’ in our minds for actual reality. We cannot know the actual nature or essence of a thing. All we can really know of it is made up of the impressions in our minds. This is similar to Locke, Berkeley, Hume.

There are two worlds available to us: The world of __phenomena__ – the things we can and do experience directly, with our senses. The world of __noumena__ - the things we cannot experience directly, even though we know they are real.

Our knowledge of a dog or a mouse is that of our sense impressions. But what that dog or mouse may be __in itself__ is forever unknown to us, and unknowable.The unknown world he called the __noumenal__ world, also called the transcendental world. Space and time are forms of our sensibility. We cannot imagine anything existing outside of space and time. Yet we know that some things do. We experience Beauty, Justice, Peace – are they in space or time? We can work math problems. Where does math exist? In space or time? Where does the mind exist? Inside the skull? Then how can it perceive so much beyond its physical confines?

Kant endeavored to show through pure reason, without any faith or religion, that there exists a non-physical realm of existence, and that we interact with that realm constantly. The physical world we interact with has been shown to follow laws of math and science in every way. Yet we experience freedom of choice, and that has no connection with the laws of science. It cannot be diagrammed or proved, yet we know we have it.

Kant has had a huge impact on the study of reality known as metaphysics. His work encourages scientists to explore the unknown and to realize there are limits on what they can learn. His biggest impact, however, has been in the area of Ethics and Morality. How can we know right and wrong if we do not have confidence in religion to tell us? He worked out this problem in a way that has become basic to moral thinking. If all is material, where in the material world do we make choices that affect our bodies’ movements? If all is material, where in the material world do we decide whether something is good or bad? Choices and moral decisions must be made in some realm – a realm we can’t touch, feel see, smell, taste. Yet it is REAL.
 * // This is what Kant called the Noumenal Realm. //**

An inventor of historical theories - the first to say that history is an important part of philosophy. Marx built his communist system on the framework of Hegel, though Marx completely rejected Hegel's idea that all proceeds from spirit - mind - ideas; Marx was a total materialist, or tried to be. In Hegel, the Absolute is thought thinking of itself. Everything that exists is the product of the knowing mind. The absolute mind is a series of interlocking triads: a dialectic among thesis, antithesis, synthesis. All that is is a grand unfolding of necessary reason. This made Kierkegaard sick!
 * Hegel **

All our experience is structured by the will. The will is as powerful a force as that which creates galaxies. yert it’s purposeless. We are driven by will and passions, not reason. We can live failrly well if we escape the passionate tyranny of the will and be placid. Loved Buddha! Was the first Western philosopher to learn about Eastern wisdom. Said that __our constant throng of desires is what keeps us from happiness and peace__ – exactly what Buddha taught. He saw Kant as changing human knowledge forever! through five major breakthroughs (pp. 138-139): His criticism of Kant: To exist as a separate something, a thing must exist in time and space, otherwise it flows into everything else. Time and space are the only things that differentiate objects. Outside the categories of time and space, everything must be One. Cause and effect exist only within the phenomenal world. Therefore nothing in the noumenal world can be the cause of anything else. The phenomenal is not different from the noumenal. It is the same thing, just understood in a different way.
 * // Arthur Schopenhauer //**
 * 1) Reality is divided into what we can experience and what we can’t: the phenomenal & the noumenal
 * 2) All experience depends on our bodily apparatus
 * 3) We can’t imagine anything that we can’t experience
 * 4) Time/space and cause/effect are categories of our minds only and not of the world outside our minds
 * 5) Science is key to understanding the empirical world, but can’t help us understand anything outside that world, i.e. in the noumenal world

The world, according to Schopenhauer, is a mess of conflicting wills, both human and cosmic, and it is not really fit to be our home. What did Schopenhauer say we should turn to, if we should look away from the world? Art, music, drama, poetry: these give us a glimpse of what is more real and important than the ordinary world.

Writers influenced by him read like a who’s who of modern literature: Tolstoy Turgenev Proust Zola De Maupassant Hardy Conrad Thomas Mann Chekhov Maugham G. B. Shaw Pirandello Rilke Samuel Beckett T. S. Eliot

Quotes from bumper stickers illustrating Schopenhauer: “Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.” “Space is what keeps everything from bashing into everything else.”

Emerson excelled as a preacher and pastor in a progressive Protestant church, but left to become an independent lecturer and scholar Gave a speech entitled [|//The American Scholar//] in 1837, which was called “America's Intellectual Declaration of Independence." Chief ideas: [|Individuality], [|Freedom]  The ability for humankind to realize and achieve almost anything  The relationship between the Soul, which is a part of Nature, and the surrounding world.  Compare Rousseau, who said that children are corrupted by the unnatural world of civilization.
 * Ralph Waldo Emerson & the Transcendentalists **

He influenced: Thoreau (author of Walden; a pioneer in civil disobedience) Walt Whitman (Emerson endorsed his poetry and began his fame) At any given time in the world, someone is reading one of Emerson’s Essays.

Takeaways for Emerson: “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” “Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” “We must be our own before we can be another's.” Suggestion: Find and read his essay “Self-Reliance.”

Nietzsche took the view that there were two moralities: master morality (the morality of the noble individual) and slave morality (the morality of the masses, epitomized by Christian ethics). Master morality invigorated the human race, whereas slave morality was a denial of life. Nietzsche saw his worldly outlook as a celebration of the will to power, which finds its highest expression in the noble individual, the //Übermensch// or Superman, who has risen beyond the slave categories of “good” and “evil” and who lives by the principle “There is no god or human over me.” In the U.S. in the 1930s, the two Jewish high school students who created Superman Comics, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, presented Superman as a Nazi-fighter. Thus the arrogant, elitist, racist “Superman” of Nietzsche was defeated by an American Superman! Nietzsche: “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” The ultimate internal human battle is between two forces, the Apollonian (the force of measure, order, harmony) and the Dionysian (the force of excess, destruction, creative power). He did not see Apollonian order and harmony as creative. He died insane, of syphilis!
 * //Nietszche//**
 * No moral obligations bind the Superman.**
 * He may lie and victimize others freely to get what he desires.**

and the most important relationship is that of the individual to God. He's often called the very first Existentialist because of his insistence on actual experience rather than abstract theory. Hegel's insistence on abstract theory was what Kierkegaard chiefly objected to in Hegel, especially Hegel's ideas about the dialectic of existence. Kierkegaard's idea of dread and anxiety as being a major facet of being human is a common note in most existentialists.
 * Kierkegaard ** said the most important human activity is decision making,

__** Prologue to Moral Philosophy **__

and succeeded!

 * Voltaire (1694-1778) was one of the best loved and most respected writers of his time. **

This made Voltaire a major figure in the historical era known as “the Enlightenment.”

 * Voltaire quickly became France’s most popular playwright. **

Two years of exile in England showed him what a society was like that respected laws and the individual

 * “The Enlightenment” meant that our ideas must be backed up by reasonable evidence, not just authority or superstition. **

Voltaire’s Liberalism supported social equality and the rule of law, opposing tyranny and hierarchy

 * Fled Paris’ persecution for the village of Ferny. Applied his intelligence to build up the village’s industry and made it rich. A statue of Voltaire still stands in the town square. **

A “serial monogamist,” Voltaire lived with a series of brilliant woman and learned from their ideas.
[]
 * These included scientist and philosopher Emelie du Chatelet; see page 108, and see**

[]
 * Voltaire is not spotlighted in our textbook; to include him in your term paper, see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry at**
 * // Quotes from Voltaire: //**

· “All the reasoning of men is not worth one sentiment of woman.”

 * // Takeaways from Voltaire: //**

Existentialism
Some of the main themes in existentialism are: (1) Traditional and academic philosophy is sterile and remote from real life. (2) Philosophy must focus on the individual in his or her confrontation with the world. (3) The world is irrational, beyond total comprehension or accurate philosophical conceptualization. (4) The world is absurd: there is no explanation why it is the way it is. (5) Senselessness, triviality, separation, and so on, pervade human existence, causing anxiety, dread, self-doubt, and despair. (6) One faces the necessity of choosing how to live within this absurd and irrational world. This is the //existential predicament.//

Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are important forerunners of existentialism. They held that philosophical systems that seek to make everything seem rational fail because not everything is. Such systems are futile attempts to overcome pessimism and despair.

Kierkegaard opposed the Hegelian view of the world’s utter rationality. Philosophy must speak to anguished existence in an irrational world, and Kierkegaard viewed with disdain philosophy’s concern with ideal truths and abstract metaphysics. The earth is a place of suffering, fear, and dread. The central philosophical problem is //sickness-unto-death//; only subjective commitment to God can grant relief.

Attempts to find the **answer to despair** spread into arts, literature, and culture generally (as found, for instance, in art movements such as Dadaism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and in the literature of Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Ionesco, and Samuel Beckett), and persist in philosophy.

We mask despair in an absurd world with false optimism and self-deception. We are strangers to ourselves. The world defeats our most fundamental needs. When we see this, the basic question is, Is there any reason not to commit suicide? Yet suicide is an unacceptable acquiescence. Only by struggling against the absurdity of life is it possible to give life meaning and value. The individual must spend life fighting the “plague” of injustice and violence through measured and nonfanatical revolt.
 * Albert Camus **

In //The Stranger//, Camus’ first novel, published in 1942, Meursault is a stranger even to himself, though the events of the story point to the possibility of authentic existence.

// The Plague //, first published in 1947, tells the allegorical story of the fight of an Algerian town against a deadly epidemic; in that very fight life has dignity and meaning in the face of absurd death.

Short Videos on Albert Camus 1. Quotes from his writing: http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A2KIo9gCIXpULVsAxSL7w8QF;_ylu=X3oDMTBzYmZpbnA0BHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDdmlkBHZ0aWQDBGdwb3MDMjU-?p=youtube+albert+camus&vid=ceaff6886bab20da756e2aece728e96d&l=1%3A58&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DVN.608036012209540296%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DvFymaUU5j4o&tit=%3Cb%3EAlbert+Camus+%3C%2Fb%3EQuotes&c=24&sigr=11a4kpf8a&sigt=10qalhg81&age=0&fr2=p%3As%2Cv%3Av%2Cm%3Asa&&tt=b

2. Short drama on robotic society: http://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A2KIo9gCIXpULVsAxCL7w8QF;_ylu=X3oDMTBzZjc2N3EzBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDdmlkBHZ0aWQDBGdwb3MDMjQ-?p=youtube+albert+camus&vid=a014e0cbe942eaf7e73dab2ffb163081&l=4%3A33&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DVN.608048579289154997%26pid%3D15.1&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dw3KfUp7LtkU&tit=%3Cb%3EAlbert+Camus+%3C%2Fb%3EDiscovery+of+the+Absurd&c=23&sigr=11b6qmm5g&sigt=11bvid62k&age=0&fr2=p%3As%2Cv%3Av%2Cm%3Asa&&tt=b

Camus was agnostic. Sartre was atheistic. Sartre: Man is abandoned; that is, God does not exist. Implications of abandonment: (1) There is no common human nature or essence; existence precedes essence; you are what you make of yourself. (2) There is no ultimate reason why things are the way they are and not some other way. (3) Because there is no divine plan there is no determinism: human beings are free. (4) There is no objective standard of values. Hence, we are responsible for what we are and must choose our own values. And in doing so we choose for all. We experience our responsibility in anguish or hide from it in **bad faith.** Only through acceptance of our responsibility and in choosing a fundamental life project may we live in authenticity. // You Are What You Do //. Persons create themselves through their choices. The choices that count are those that issue forth in actions. There is no hidden or “true self” behind those deeds.
 * Jean-Paul Sartre **

// Nausea //, Sartre’s first novel, published in 1938, shows Roquentin’s visceral reaction to what he sees the meaninglessness of life; //Being and Nothingness// is an exposition of Sartre’s own philosophy.

For Heidegger the truth of things lies not in phenomena but in Being itself. Being itself has been reduced to a world of objects (i.e., it has been forgotten). We are basically ignorant about the thing that matters most: the true nature of Being. Awareness of the priority of Being would require a new beginning for philosophy and for Western civilization.
 * Martin Heidegger **

In his first major work, //Being and Time// (1927), still sought true knowledge in //a priori// structures found in the human mind. But later, after his “turning about,” he sought a direct approach to Being itself. It is with respect to his earlier work that Heidegger is called an existentialist. But despite the superficial resemblance, Heidegger and Sartre are philosophically quite different. For Heidegger, Being is the basic principle of philosophy and is absolutely necessary; for Sartre, individual existence was of paramount importance and because of the nonexistence of God, nothing about Being is necessary.

There Heidegger was concerned with //Sinn// (sense or meaning), the absence of which was the problem of human existence. The cultural and intellectual poverty of the twentieth century is the result of the assumption that man is the measure of all things; an idea, entrenched in Western civilization since the pre-Socratic Sophist Protagoras, that found its fullest expression in Nietzsche.

Heidegger was a Nazi since his youth and spoke out in favor of Hitler. After Hitler's defeat, Heidegger was silent on the subject. Does advanced intellectualism in itself guarantee personal moral character and ethical insight? Nope.

//__Moral Philosophy: __// This is a survey of the assigned reading in the text, with some issues omitted and others added. Here we return to many of the philosophers whom we have looked at, this time for their views on ethics.

=
Ethics, or moral philosophy, is the study of moral judgments, which are value judgments about what is virtuous and base, just and unjust, morally right and wrong, morally good and bad or evil, morally proper and improper, and so on. ======

=
Because many questions can be asked about moral judgments, ethics encompasses many issues. The most important question of ethics, however, is simply, Which moral judgments are correct? ======

**The modern growth of sociopathy **
For a corporate CEO who makes a profitable product that’s harmful – or a politician who makes war for profit – What are their possible thought processes, if they are not sociopaths?
 * For those writing their term projects on ethics: consider these issues. **

Please note that it’s established that normal brain function includes moral and ethical sensitivity. A person who does not have this (serial killers, some politicians, etc) is not a normal human. Sociopaths who undergo brain scans are shown not to have this moral center in the brain.

Unfortunately many large and powerful institutions are influenced by sociopaths and their enablers. That’s why studies are published that go against the idea that human beings are naturally moral.

//Ethical skepticism //: The doctrine that moral knowledge is not possible.
===//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Individual Relativism: //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;"> What is right or wrong morally is what each individual believes is right or wrong. This is a subjectivist ethical philosophy. ===

===//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Descriptive Relativism: //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;"> Not a doctrine of ethics, it merely says that people in different cultures have different beliefs about what is morally right and wrong; it says nothing about what //is// morally right and wrong. ===

//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Hedonism //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;"> is the pursuit of pleasure.
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Two varieties of ethical hedonism: ===//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Egoistic ethical hedonism //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;"> (one ought to seek his or her own pleasure over other things). === ===//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Universalistic ethical hedonism //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;"> (otherwise known as Utilitarianism, in which one ought to seek the __greatest pleasure – the greatest good – for the greatest number of people__). === ===//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Divine-command ethics: //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;"> God ordains what one ought to do (examples: Augustine and Aquinas). === ===//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Consequentialism //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">: One ought to do whatever has the most desirable consequences (Epicureans, stoics, utilitarians). === ===//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Deontological ethics //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">: One must do one’s moral duty (in most cases, regardless of consequences) (Kant). Ethics are defined by one’s intentions. === ===//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Virtue ethics //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">: One ought to do what a virtuous person would do (Plato, Aristotle). === ===//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Relativism //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">: One ought to do what her or his culture or society thinks one ought to do. (No real philosopher is a relativist, but many students are!) ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Socrates was also concerned with the meaning of words that signify moral virtues, such as //justice//, //piety//, and //courage//.
===//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Socrates: //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;"> Wrong behavior is due to ignorance. Intelligent people always do the right thing because they understand the consequences. ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Because Forms are apprehended by reason, one should strive for knowledge of the Good and hence be ruled by reason.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">One ruled by reason exhibits four cardinal virtues—temperance, courage, wisdom, and justice—and has a well-ordered soul; virtue is its own reward. ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">[Not in text: He stated that happiness lies in finding out what does well, and then doing it for the benefit of all.]
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Though both Plato and Aristotle were proponents of virtue ethics, for Plato, the Good is an immaterial Form; for Aristotle, the good is what human beings actually seek (happiness). ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Personal pleasure is the highest good.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">We ought to seek the pleasant life, which comes with satisfaction of desires that are natural and the satisfaction of which is necessary for a pleasant life. ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Unnatural/unnecessary desires ought never to be satisfied.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">[Not in text: Again, the problem is defining pleasure; what’s pleasurable to one person may be painful or disgusting to another. Philosophies based on pleasure have become so hard to define that they may be considered outdated, or not having kept up with mankind’s psychological evolution.] ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">God’s divine law, revealed to us through God’s grace, guides us to happiness everlasting.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">There are two sets of virtues: the natural virtues such as courage, temperance, justice, and prudence, and the higher virtues of faith, love, and hope. ===

//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Can there be ethics after Hume? //
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">See the text for how he showed logically that ethics cannot be based on logic or revelation. That left the philosophers of his time with four options: ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">(1) Despite Hume, ethics might seek to establish that morality can be grounded on reason or on God— Kant’s option was reason.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">(2) Ethical thinkers might try to find objective sources of moral standards other than reason or God, such as on ideas of social contract or general agreement—the Utilitarians’ option. ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">(3) They might seek to determine how one should act given the absence of objective moral standards—the existentialists’ option.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">(4) They might abandon the search for moral standards altogether and concentrate on ethical descriptivism, i.e. just describing and not evaluating what people think is right and wrong—the option of analytic philosophy. This is no longer a humanistic philosophy because it dismisses the question of what is right or wrong. ===


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Hume. Hmmmmmmm. **

=<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">In Kant's view, the sole feature that gives an action moral worth = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">is not the outcome achieved by the action, = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">but the motive behind the action. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">The only motive that can endow an act with moral value = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">is one that arises from universal principles discovered by reason. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Duty is the supreme origin of moral action. =
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Aaaand now -- **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">KANT, ETHICS AND RIGHTS! **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Kant’s Duty Ethics **

=<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">One needs Reason to be able to make moral decisions. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">A poisonous snake can’t be blamed for killing; it has no reason. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">A good reason for a moral decision isn’t subjective; it has to be universal – = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">otherwise why would we try to persuade each other of it? =

=<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">The Categorical Imperative is Kant's famous statement of this duty: = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Act only according to principles that you believe should become universal laws. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">So if you’re thinking about cheating, for example – = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">can you believe that cheating should be universally allowed? =

=<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">In other words- nothing you do can be moral = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">unless you can show it applies to everyone at all times & places. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Can you commit suicide out of love? = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">No way. A defense of suicide cannot be universalized. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">IN ADDITION – Reason shows is that it is everyone’s duty = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">to protect the rights and dignity of all -- = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">--and that no one should ever be used as a means to an end. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">– an Enlightenment idea. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">To Kant, = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">morality is founded on reason just as science is founded on reason. =

=<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">The Categorical Imperative: = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">“Act only according to maxims which you can will also to be universal laws.” = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Kant’s ethics are based on DUTY. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Kant’s idea of DUTY reinforces the idea that people have RIGHTS – = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">another Enlightenment idea. =

=<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">HUMAN RIGHTS = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">In the ancient world, there were some glimmerings of the idea = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">that there were some things rulers should not be allowed to do to people. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Cyrus of Persia established some rights principles = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">but they did not live beyond his culture’s history. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Hebrew Prophets frequently took Hebrew kings to task for treating people wrongly. =

=<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Rome gave its citizens some protections. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">But after the fall of Rome, = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Europe was dominated by the idea that the ruler got his authority from God = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">and therefore could basically do no wrong. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">This idea held until the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. =

=<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">John Locke’s teaching was that each individual = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">was intellectually endowed with reason, = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">and therefore people are equal. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">This gives the ruler no divine right to have his way with people =

=<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">People have rights. This idea took over the world gradually. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">They are “endowed by their creator” with rights. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">But this doesn’t mean God gave them rights: rights come from Nature. =

=<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Kant: = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Reason shows is that it is everyone’s duty = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">to protect the rights and dignity of all -- = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">--and that no one should ever be used as a means to an end. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Morality is founded on reason just as science is founded on reason. =

=<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">World War II showed the consequences = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">of trying to pretend that people don’t have rights. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">After the war came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Although power-possessors keep trying to take people’s rights away, = =<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">the principles of human rights are universally acknowledged today. =

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">He espoused a philosophy of relentless materialism.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">There is no natural moral law. “Good” and “evil” denote only what one desires or detests. Morality is thus a quirk of the individual. But it is natural for one to preserve himself/herself at all costs. ===

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">A wise person recognizes that a state ruler has absolute power. Thus the wise person surrenders his or her rights to that authority, which he called the "Leviathan." ===

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">One should respect one's contracts to others and to the society as a whole; the rational basis of society is this social contract, agreed to by all sensible citizens ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">“Man was born free, yet everywhere he is in chains”
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">He often lived hand to mouth and had great difficulties early in life, yet wrote for Diderot’s Encyclopedia and composed a successful opera ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Value judgments, he concluded, are based on emotion, not reason.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Goodness consists in traits and actions that promote the welfare of people (this idea was taken up in the nineteenth century by Mills, Bentham and the other Utilitarians). All humans have positive emotional responses to goodness. ===

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">When someone is morally praised or condemned, it is the person’s moral character that we're considering. In the respect that he sees moral character as a foundation of life, Hume is part of the virtue ethics tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas. ===

// Morality in Kant //
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Kant saw religion declining fast and wanted to protect mankind’s moral sense. So he made it his project to show that morality could be based on pure reason and did not require revelation. ===

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Kant held that reason alone can ascertain principles of morality; they cannot be revealed through scientific investigation since scientific inquiry can never reveal to us __principles which we know hold without exception__ (as moral principles do). ===

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">He observed that there are many things we know intuitively or innately that we could never reason our way to. The basics of morality are included. Where do such things exist? In the noumenal realm, outside the phenomenal realm: beyond the senses and ultimately even beyond the grasp of the intellect. ===

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">The supreme principle of morality for Kant: // A moral rule is universal and absolute. Thus, the supreme prescription of morality is to act in such a way that you could, rationally, see the principle on which you act to be a universal law. //===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Rationality is the source of all value, so the rational will is alone inherently good.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Because a moral imperative must hold without exception, it differs from a “hypothetical imperative” which states that one ought to do something // if // <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">such-and-such an end is desired. ===

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Another formulation of the categorical imperative // : Treat rational beings (e.g., humans) in every instance as ends and never just as means. // <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">This supports Human Rights. ===

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Duty-based ethical systems such as Kant’s are known as “deontological” ethical systems (Greek // deont- that which is binding). The duty-based approach also supports Human Rights – we have a duty to treat others well. //===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Evolution of self-awareness: when humanity’s mind and spirit become completely aware of themselves, peace will arrive.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">This means the more we understand ourselves, the more we can reach a conflict-free state. This means our human essence is not about conflict, but about harmony. ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Then comes a new Antithesis, etc. The process can only stop when a conflict-free state of being is achieved.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">In Hegel’s vision, the individual is ALIENATED from society because of the constant conflict all around—even though he has created this society himself! ===

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">The conflict exists because the Geist has not reconciled itself to its own unity. When this happens, the individual can finally know himself/herself, and be free. ===

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Individuals are always motivated to keep changing things until the Geist reaches its conflict-free destiny. This is the purpose of Alienation. ===


 * //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Hegel: Left & Right //**

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">In Hegel’s vision, the Prussian state of his own time was ideal.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Among his students were Right Hegelians who believed in traditional power and authority coming from aristocracies and the strong. This philosophy combined with Nietzsche’s to promote Nazism. ===

//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 15.5pt;">Karl Marx //
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Marx was violently anti-religious (religion was “the opium of the people”) and spent his entire life writing and doing things to provoke the overthrow of governments and the end of religion. ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">The basic fact of everyone’s life is what he/she does for a living. Thus economics us the ultimate social reality.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">In Marx, the individual is ALIENATED from his place in the economy as an oppressed worker. For Marx, the process can only END with the ideal state. ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Resistance to dictatorships spelled the end of Marxism in the former Soviet Union.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Because Marxist governments regimes run their economies and markets by command from the top, their economies have tended to stop being creative. ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">North Korea has a dictated economy or “command economy,” and poverty is overwhelming the country. Cuba is in a similar situation.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">According to Marx. the process of workers taking over countries is absolutely objectively true and necessary. Anyone who disagrees with it is denying reality and is just wrong. ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Compare Augustine of Hippo’s idea of the “saved” as deserving to live and everyone else being expendable.
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Marx: “Human history consists of successive stages of development of various means of production.”

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Human needs gradually develop for means of production that go against existing “productive relations” or established institutions or practices. ===

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">For example, humanity now needs new sources of energy. But the fossil fuel industry is the established means. Therefore that industry suppresses new means of energy production. ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The longer capitalism lasts, the more wealth is accrued by a smaller and smaller number of people.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This is the income inequality we are now seeing and which many are saying is tearing away at the fabric of the US and the capitalist world. ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(Voltaire said that the art of politics lies in the transfer of money from one class to another.)

 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Marx - Takeaways **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Marx’s vision is also idealistic, but it has extreme violence and vengeance as necessary components.
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Chapter introduction: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Religious commitment involves philosophical beliefs. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The philosophy of religion attempts to understand and rationally evaluate these beliefs. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">In contrast to theology, it does not make religious assumptions in doing so. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">The beliefs of the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition have received the most discussion by Western philosophers.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Chapter 13, Philosophy and Belief in God: **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Main Points from Assigned Readings **

//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Anselm: //
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Though he thought it impossible to reason about God or God’s existence without already believing in God, Anselm was willing to evaluate on its own merit and independently of religious assumptions the idea that God does //not// exist.

===//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Anselm’s ontological argument //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">attempts to show that disbelief in God entails self-contradiction. === <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">“If you can think of a being greater than the greatest being you can think of, that shows that you actually believe in the greatest being you can think of!” <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">If you accept this wordplay, you accept the ontological argument.

**//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Thomas Aquinas: “Evil” Does Not Exist //**
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">In school he was known a the “Dumb Ox” <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Became known as a brilliant professor <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Eventually he resided in a monastery and never left his room <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Wrote highly rational systematic theology <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Reconciled Aristotle with the Bible <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Stopped writing after having mystic visions <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Called all his writing “nothing but straw”

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Declared official theologian of Roman Catholic Church
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">In Aquinas, the battle between good & evil is a fiction, <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">a story we tell ourselves because we love drama <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">– but there are no such opposing forces. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">He reasoned that existence is inherently good, <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">and that what we call “evil” <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">is only a matter of the good being missing or ignored.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Like Socrates & Plato, he said that what is, is good. “Evil” is just the lack of a “due good.” <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">In other words, evil is unreal. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">It‘s only a “hole” in the good.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Evil is not an independent force
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">and has no energy of its own. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">It’s just a sign that something is missing.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Thomas Aquinas’ Conclusion **
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">He’s called the foremost theologian of the Church – <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">yet after having mystic visions near the end of his life, Aquinas said, //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">"I can write no more. I have seen things which make all my writings like straw." //

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Takeaways from Aquinas
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">(1) Reason can strengthen faith. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">(2) Ultimately, reason is of less value than spiritual experience. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">(3) There is no evil per se. It’s just that sometimes the good that should be there is missing. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">No one is evil; some people are just missing something.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Only if it improves your life and your understanding.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Juliana denied that there is any meaningful difference in the validity of mystical revelations made directly to our soul and knowledge derived through reason. ===

Chapter 14: Feminism and Philosophy
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Because philosophy is the search for truth and wisdom, it is often one of the first fields in which the oppressed express themselves as soon as they are able.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Feminist philosophy arose as soon as women gained enough rights to be regarded as individuals with the same capabilities as males.

 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In the first wave of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) was one of the first statements of the obvious and egregious ways in which women had been deprived of the natural regard due every human. **


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In the second wave, women began to define attitudes and abilities that are essentially female. This has been called "essentialism." They began to identify patriarchal patterns as having pervaded and dominated society for milennia. Paternal ownership of property and its dominator model have pervaded politics, economics, culture, religion, education and more, at the expense of women and children, as well as at the expense of gentleness, caring, communication and relationship. Both liberal feminism and radical feminism are part of the second wave. **


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The third wave of feminism has included a wide variety of sectarian approaches to feminism. **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Feminist moral theory is more personal, subjective and relationship-oriented than mainstream society's logic and reason-based moral theory coming from Kant, traditional legal reasoning and criminal justice policy. **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Do you feel that many people who think of God still picture an old bearded white man?
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Back to Ch 13: Mary Daly **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The stereotype images from Michelangelo certainly depict God as such.
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mary Daley believes that this image is very pervasive and damaging to the worldview we share. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">To revise the false image of God passed on to us by institutions such as organized religions, we need to change: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The God who demands suffering <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The God who judges and condemns <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The God who creates false consciences and unnecessary guilt.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The only real God is Love.

 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Ch 14: Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">She formed a new psychology for women by listening to them and rethinking the meaning of self and selfishness.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">She outlines three stages of moral development, starting from selfishness, then progressing to social or conventional morality, and finally to post- conventional or principled morality. ===

===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">What is the difference between conventional morality and principled morality? It may be conventional to say that an act is right because it’s traditional and common practice, while a principled person may have to reject that act because of their higher standards. ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">We learn to care about others through our experience of being cared for.
===<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Instead of starting with an ideal state or republic, care theory starts with an ideal home and moves outward - 'learning first what it means to be cared for, then to care for intimate others, and finally to care about those we cannot care for directly.” ===

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Because of the social conditioning of men and women to be different from each other
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">(men oriented to rules and justice, women to love and caring), <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">there is often a difference in the ways men and women interpret the same situation.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Society, as Rousseau insisted, corrupts the individual, who is born with a purity.
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Men have dominated society through economics and politics for thousands of years, <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">and therefore society has become dominated by justice rather than caring.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">When women take care of themselves, of each other, and of other people,
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">exercising their natural compassion, <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">in a society that gradually allows women to be more free, <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">then women are preparing the next major shift in humanity: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">closer to the rule of love than to the rule of law.

3. Desire for vengeance, whether in the name of:

 * // -honor //**
 * // -justice //**
 * // -retribution //**
 * // -closure //**
 * // -payback //**

== All of the above, though they are part of some cultures and are often considered acceptable, have been specifically opposed by humanity’s major philosophers and spiritual prophets, because of their terrible consequences that can last generations. ==

**// "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." --Gandhi //**
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Because of their shared experience of domination, Third World peoples share a general revolutionary consciousness. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Postcolonial thought deals with dislocations caused by conquerors whose imperialism aimed at near-total domination
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Post-Colonial Thought **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">As with Feminism, when a huge systemic injustice begins to be removed, there is an outburst of original thought. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Philosophy as consciousness-raising about injustice and domination <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Third world thought is often Marxist in theory <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Models of colonization: Spain, Portugal, Britain, France. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The United States is the most active imperial power remaining in the world

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Aspects of colonization: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">--Violent subjugation of indigenous peoples <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">--Introduction of colonizers’ beliefs into traditional societies <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">--Economic domination and exploitation of natural resources and cheap labor <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">See the film //The Mission// about “good guys” within the Spanish Catholic colonial power in South America <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Read //Confessions of an Economic Hit Man// by John Perkins about the covert actions of the World Bank and IMF

__**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Africa **__
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Pan-African philosophy **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Oral traditions are being put into writing for the first time and discussed by people outside the originating cultures

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">This results in insight into tribal philosophy about metaphysics, epistemology, semiotics, ethics, etc.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Léopold Sédar Senghor **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Poet, philosopher and post-colonial President of his nation, Senegal

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Studied philosophy in France; France was the major colonist of West Africa

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Senghor tried to show that socialism was a better match for the African consciousness than capitalism

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">To the person of “negritude” or blackness, knowledge of an object is achieved through acts of love and identification, emotionally.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The African doesn’t ask “Do you understand me?” Rather, “Do you feel me?”

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">This quality is superior to the European method of analytical reasoning.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">This gentle participation in the act of knowing gives the person of negritude an advantage over the European mode.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The person of negritude is better equipped for a positive human future.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Bob Marley **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">In Ethiopia, from the time of the Resurrection, Christianity developed separately and independently from the Church in Europe

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Ethiopians were taken to Jamaica as slaves and developed their own offshoot of the Ethiopian Orthgodox Church

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">This developed into Rastafarianism, a culture, religion and philosophy of multiracial peace, harmony and love <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Marley expressed this philosophy far and wine through music until he died of a possible poisoning

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Anti-apartheid activist; like King, a Christian clergyman <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Worked with Mandela and the African National Congress party to democratize South Africa. now one of the world’s most hopeful nations <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The concept of humaneness: everyone must have the freedom to become fully human, and apartheid (a hate-based system) made this impossible both for blacks and whites. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Africans corrupted by the west are losing the quality of Ubantu, or being human, because it includes sharing. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“I loathe capitalism because it gives far too great play go our inherent selfishness.”
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Desmond Tutu **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Undeniably one of the greatest leaders of our time. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Attorney, activist, journalist, went directly from 28 years in prison to become the first fairly elected president of his country.\ <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 1.5;">Visited the US during the Civil Rights movement and learned from Gandhi and King. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 1.5;">Was designated by Ronald Reagan as a terrorist. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Through the Truth and Reconciliation process, white oppressors were allowed to confess and instead of being punished were invited to apply to take their former positions in government.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Nelson Mandela **


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The Americas **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">In Central and South America, Toltecs, Incas and Aztecs met a far more powerful and more bloodthirsty adversary in the Christian Spanish

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Genocidal aggression reduced Native American tribes in North America to life on reservations, with their way of life taken away

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">In 1987 the U.S. Senate passed a resolution saying that “the confederation of the original 13 colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy, as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the constitution itself.”
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The Iroquois Confederacy: its influence on the U.S. Constitution **

<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The Iroquois place the creation of their constitution at between 1000 and 1400 A.D. <span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">From a historical blog: "T <span style="background-color: #fff9ee; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia,Utopia,'Palatino Linotype',Palatino,serif; font-size: 14px;">he first Righteous Constitution (or: 'Law of the Land') ever to exist in Human History, was created by the Iroquois Confederacy's ratification council in 1142 A.D., August 31, shortly after a total eclipse of the sun, when it was adopted by the Senecas (the last of the five nations to ratify it), at a site that is now a football field in Victor, New York." __<span style="background-color: #ffffff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333330154419px;">[] __ <span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">In 1754 Benjamin Franklin asked a gathering of American colonial delegates to use the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy as a model for the U.S. Articles of Confederation. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">In the 1990s an economic resurgence began to create better days for Indian Country

__**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">African American Thought **__ <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Martin Luther King Jr. was a Boston University Ph.D. in theology and a third-generation Baptist preacher. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Dr. King studied Gandhi and Thoreau and sought to accomplish his goals nonviolently. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">He was assassinated one year to the day after he began speaking out for peace and not civil rights alone. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">He was one of the “Three K’s” who opposed the Vietnam War, all assassinated from 1965-68.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: ****<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">social justice **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Cornel West: activist and philosophy professor. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Urges creation of a more compassionate society. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Points out that conventional thinking is the barrier to a better way of life.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Professor Cornel West: ****<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Social activism **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The caste system is the means through which <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">the Hindu power structure exerts control of society
 * __<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Eastern Thought __**
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Hinduism **<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">is more a pervasive lifestyle and culture than a religion

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Philosophy: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Reality is absolutely one <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Acceptance of Vedic scriptures, especially Upanishads <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Upanishads: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Brahman and atman are one <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Consciousness is brahman <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">“That art thou” <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The self is brahman <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I am brahman <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Samsara — the cycle of desire and suffering <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Karma — “action”; consequences build up through multiple lifetimes (transmigrations) <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Nirvana — permanent liberation from samsara and a merging into brahman

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Flourished in the centuries just after Mohammed <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Was part of Islam’s Golden Age <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Arab philosophers had huge impact on medieval Christians <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Avicenna <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Allah (God) is a Necessary Being <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Averroës <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Eternal creation <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Double truth?
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Islamic Philosophy **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sufism <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Mystical strain of Muslim belief <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Predates Islam itself <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Seeks union with Allah <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Al-Ghazali, profound mystic thinker <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Kabir, poet and teacher who blended Hinduism and Islam through Sufism <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Rumi, one of history’s greatest poets <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">[] <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Intro to Sufism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EQtaQYpzTw

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Like Hinduism, more a pervasive lifestyle and culture than a religion <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Taoism consists of rituals and attitudes emerging long before Lao Tzu <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Lao Tzu is in a way the “savior” to emerge from Taoism <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Opposed to Confucius’ conservative ideology, which is not a philosophy <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Follow the Tao, the natural order of things, which gives rise to yin and yang <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Become a sage, cultivating tranquility, modesty, submission, selflessness <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Lao Tzu on Virtuous Activity: page 476 <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Lao Tzu on Government: page 477
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Taoism **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Four extremely informative and readable books about Eastern philosophy: <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters

//<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Satyagraha //<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"> (“clinging to truth”): the person “must become the change he seeks in the world.” <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Helped end discrimination against Indians in South Africa, then turned his attention to the British in India. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">It has been called “unbelievable and impossible” that nonviolence would drive the world’s strongest nation out of India. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Did his best to end the caste system, yet it remains.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">India **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Mohandas Gandhi **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Poet, activist and master teacher. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Humans must devote themselves to living the examined life. <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“A heart of love, a mind at its service that can cut like a knife, and in some sense the spirit of a child."
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Rabindranath Tagore **

**<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13pt;">Joseph Campbell: Be Your Own Hero **
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Also see Joseph Campbell tab.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The all-time greatest scholar of mythology

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Worked closely with Carl Gustav Jung, whom many call the most important of all psychologists and psychiatrists

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Campbell has had a profound impact on the storytelling arts (film, TV, fiction) and thus influenced millions of people – see “The Writer’s Journey” - a book read by nearly every screenwriter

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">His work is the basis for George Lucas’ “Star Wars”

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Humanity has been telling one story over and over: the story of the “Hero with a Thousand Faces”

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">This hero is called out of his/her Ordinary Reality into an adventure

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">In the adventure, he/she must face adversaries

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">The adversaries completely stop his/her quest

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">A messenger comes to get him started again

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">When he wins, he brings something new and precious back to the Ordinary Reality

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">If he loses, he’s an “anti-hero,” yet he still wins wisdom

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">This story exists in every culture through history

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">It contains truths that people identify with and live by

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">It is part of our “collective unconscious” – it is written in our DNA

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Campbell presented and analyzed these ideas in many books and interviews

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Studying him can help you become “the hero of your own journey.”