Moral Reflection Essay

The first unit on our textbook Interactions by Ann Moseley and Jeanette Harris talks about the self-concept. It is hard to find a definition for the self-concept because it is certain beliefs about ethnicity, religion, and personalities combined. This unit has a number of readings by various authors where it shows struggles with the self. Self-identity, ethnic backgrounds, and self-esteem are the major aspects of those readings. After reading their writings I found that I could relate to their experiences. The three readings that got my attention were “Zero” By Paul Logan, “I’m Just Me” by Lylah Alphonse, and “The Jacket” by Gary Soto.

Indeed there is a huge difference between being oneself and identifying who you are? The debate on Nature versus Nurture has been a mystery for years. What is mean by Nature and Nurture? Nature is a word often used to describe the biological aspects which shapes one’s behavior. Nurture is the word often used to describe the social aspect that shape one’s behavior. Every human being was born into this world with no ideas or expectations. As they grow older they eventually developed their own identity. Indeed it is crucial to know about the identity we get was really developed or was it already exists within oneself? Such question will subsequently lead to the great debate in the concept of Nature and

Soren Kierkegaard is a Danish philosopher and theologian who attempted to deliver his existentialist point of views. Specifically, Kierkegaard emphasizes the need for humans to take responsibility for their actions and go beyond their “socially imposed identities” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). According to his earliest major work “Either/Or,” he suggests humans are reluctantly stuck between two spheres of life that they must choose between: aesthetic or ethical. He delves into what constitutes a life as either and suggests the practicalities associated with each choice. He stresses the importance of being responsible for the truth and living according to the truth we’ve committed to. In addition, the existential choice can be

In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard differentiates between the subject as the knower, and the world (object) as the known: the only way we know the world is through ourselves. Kierkegaard emphasizes the importance of "how" the subject is related to the truth,

Hegel’s and Kierkegaard's philosophies can be attributed to the Romantic influences of the late eighteenth century. Each were also opposed to their predecessor; aspects of Romanticism were criticized by Hegel, while Kierkegaard had a negative disposition to Hegel’s ideas as he deemed them inapplicable to one’s personal life. In Sophie’s World, Hegel’s “world spirit” is described as “the sum of human utterances.” In the same context, Kierkegaard’s existentialism is described as “the only important thing [is] each man’s ‘own existence.” It is also worth noting, though Kierkegaard rebuked Hegelianism, the man himself was dead a decade before Kierkegaard was thirty years old, so it could not be said the two men were direct contemporaries.

My sense of self started to develop when I was a child and growing up, I was surrounded by a large family and friends while I developed

     Two things can happen when we are required to base our definition of “self” on others.  One can take others’ ways of living and thinking, process them, and formulate his or her own definition, independent of anyone else.  Or, one can use the relationships he or she has with other people on which to base their own definition of self, thus making him or her dependent on those other people.  As young people, we learn and take in all we can through the world, our experiences, and relationships with other people.  From there, we grow and establish our own identities, our own “selves”, in response to those interactions with others.  This definition is continually growing and progressing as we evolve as people, interacting with different people in different environments and

Starting with Kierkegaard, it is best to understand that he has a deep fulfillment to God and that he feels is the absolute. This absolute is to live in the realm of a paradox and that paradox is proving the existence of God and experiencing it for yourself. To understand this is to go through the different stages, of aesthetic, moral and religious. The aesthetic is all about the individual and focuses on oneself as an individual. The moral is having to be antagonistic towards yourself in

Søren Kierkegaard’s (1813-55) pertinence to the discipline of psychology has, in general, been explored in two ostensibly conflicting regards: both as a source of profound psychological insight and as a psychological case study—a potentially neurotic subject for psychological analysis and speculation. In other words, as either a physician or a patient. In 1958’s Young Man Luther, the Danish-American psychoanalyst Erik Erikson (1958/1993) referred to “Hypersensitive Kierkegaard, another melancholy Dane” (p. 240) as “a kindred homo religiosus” (p. 13) to Martin Luther and therefore a potentially suitable subject for a future case study in his own right. Erikson never followed through on this famous ambition, but such a study would seem, ostensibly

Ethical and unethical situations occur on a daily basis and are seen all around us. Being ethical requires one to take responsibility for their actions and doing what is right in any given circumstance. Every person has the power to dictate their actions on how they are going to handle any situation they are put in. I have experienced numerous amounts of situations that have tested my ethical behavior and actions. Throughout my experiences, I have realized that ethics has a great impact on many different aspects of life such as society, career, and personal life. Understanding the meaning of ethics allows me to grow as a person and to truly do what is right with any issue I am faced with.

So it is the HOW which is important to Kierkegaard, not the WHAT. The strongest example of his reasons for this comes in his

As presented in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the aim of Life is to free itself from confinement "in-itself" and to become "for-itself." Not only does Hegel place this unfolding of Life at the very beginning of the dialectical development of self-consciousness, but he characterizes self-consciousness itself as a form of Life and points to the advancement of self-consciousness in the Master/Slave dialectic as the development of Life becoming "for-itself." This paper seeks to delineate this often overlooked thread of dialectical insight as it unfolds in the Master/Slave dialectic. Hegel articulates a vision of the place of human self-consciousness in the process of Life as a whole and throws light on the role of death as an essential

In this essay, I will try to summarize, analyze and discuss several pages of Søren Kierkegaard’s Training in Christianity. I will try to focus on his approach to sacred history, a general Christian history and Christianity, which he discusses in this work in relation to faith in God. In other parts of this essay I will attempt also to relate these pages of his work to some key ideas of Kierkegaard’s theology and philosophy and support this with some concrete quotations from the text. In the end I will very briefly compare different philosophies of Hegel and Kierkegaard and try to relate Kierkegaard’s work to a few topics, which

Defined as “the entire person of an individual” (Merriam-Webster, 2017), it is interesting to consider the different ways ‘the self’ has been interpreted through different societies. In Foucault’s Societies of Discipline (S.O.D), a previous economy of power, it would have been simple to define the self – discipline “’makes’ individuals” (Foucault, 1977, p.170) and in doing so this intrinsic sense of the self. However does this hold true in our current social scenario? Deleuze states that the

Kierkegaard's works are not straightforward proclamations of his philosophy: he wrote under pseudonyms and assumed the persona of these fictional characters in his writing. Thus, one must be careful when attributing a particular position to Kierkegaard -- often the view is advanced by a pseudonym, so various inferential processes must be applied in order to substantiate a claim that Kierkegaard really meant any statement.