Self Preservation Is Not The Bee 's Knees Essay

Self-preservation is the act of protecting one’s self. It is often correlated with pain and fear and it is regarded as a basic human instinct. People often use self-preservation to protect their image and reputation in society, thus potentially having to lie and hurt someone else’s status in the process. In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, many characters demonstrate self-preservation to avoid the consequences of their own actions. This results in prolonging the witch trials in the town of Salem, causing the destruction of the community.

The Importance of Being Earnest shows morality through all the characters in various ways. Each person teaches a different lesson that readers should take away in their everyday lives. For instance, comedy and deception are two ways that Wilde tries to show characters acting immorally. In the Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde satirizes morality through the characters Algernon, Jack, and Cecily.

Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is about the people of 17th century.Salem, Massachusetts situated in a dangerous and dynamic period. The Puritans of Salem joined the bandwagon of the witch hysteria that was first caused by girls falsely accusing others. The inhabitants of Salem feared for their lives as the people who were accused were subjected to death. However, the accused have a chance to save themselves by admitting to a crime they did not commit. Many took the opportunity for self-preservation because it is a human instinct of survival. However, there others who chose to uphold their ideals, name, and reputation. Self-preservation is the motivates the characters to behave and act when they are situated in a compromising situation about the involvement of witchcraft, but there are also times when it is abandoned.

In her book ‘Natural goodness’, Philippa Foot shows that ethical evaluation has the same conceptual structure as the evaluation of living things. This essay will extend from that and focus on how, in fact and practical reason, that I am human sets what is good for me to do. In doing this, it will further show how ethical naturalism can claim ethical facts are both descriptive and action-guiding. The essay will take the form of five main sections. Firstly, I will lay out the Footian view of a thick notion of how a plant or animal should be based on where we see it aiming at and how it characteristically gets there sets our evaluation of those subjects. Secondly, I will distinguish between internal and external reasons for acting in order to disambiguate the following section in which I discuss John McDowell’s view of how at least some internal ethical reasons for acting do not need further internal justification to be correct reasons. In order to relate this to the first section, I will look at Steven Hendley’s argument that correct reason is rooted in first nature and argue that human telos must be seen as what both rational second nature and first nature is aiming at, a la animal Telos. Finally, using John Hacker-Wright as a springboard, I will argue that taking ourselves to be acting on correct internal reasons requires and discloses a picture of how people should be which connects human telos to correct action in the spheres of practical and theoretic reason.

Ethical dilemmas are at the heart of society, forcing people to stretch themselves to the ends of the earth to meet both humane and society’s criteria. In To Kill a Mockingbird’s courtroom saga, the struggle to find balance in social norms and moral law engulfs the town’s perspective on race, poverty, and ignorance forcing its people to choose between the two. The enlightenment of empathy can not only be used to alleviate society from its own ignorance, but it can also solve the rhetorical clash of morality and social norms. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem and scout use their childish innocence to spark a moral reformation within the small town, centralized in the Tom Robinson case, and carried out through the acceptance of Boo Radley,

For this phantasmagorical problem could be solved in two-fold a sense, through the application of the incumbent dogma ‘trialism’ (Cottingham, 1998) coined by Cottingham or conversely appealing to Spinoza’s account. The dogma of ‘trialism’ appends that there is third realm involved, so perhaps for all the blandishment encompassing the two selves, this could all be rather vague. Moreover, perhaps an auspicious place to disambiguate this obliqueness is if we turn our attention to Spinoza’s thesis. Spinoza dismisses the ‘air of paradox’ found in Descartes paradigm, condemning it as nihilistic and confers that the mind and body are one and the same substance; but nevertheless to be looked at in two dimensions-thought and extension. Viz, thought is the realm of consciousness of the body and body is the manifestation of thought, they are mirror images, acting simultaneously. Perhaps in this sense Descartes paradigm can be repudiated as being an erroneous and myopic account of the nature of the mind and body and thus does not suffice as strong enough claim to bear the hallmark. May this essay bring delight and affection to the present reader encompassing them throughout this rich-tapestry

Following orders unquestionably is one of the traits that the military wants their soldier to have; this quality, however, has caused controversy throughout time. Rob Reiner captures this struggle in his film A Few Good Men. In this film, two men, Lance Corporal Dawson and Private First Class Downey are charged with the murder of fellow Marine, Private First Class Santiago. Dawson and Downey claim that they did not commit a crime but rather, were following orders to perform a “Code Red”. A “Code Red” is defined as a disciplinary action performed inside the Marines by Marines. Stanley Milgram’s article, “The Perils of Obedience” delves into the issue of obedience. His experiment consisted of subjects being told to electrocute other people

In this week’s discussion we are asked to analyze, form an opinion, and explain the actions we would take on two different ethical dilemmas.

When film was just taking off in the early 1900’s, a prominent and harmful set of guidelines was introduced by the Motion Picture Production Code. These industry censorship rules, entitled the “The Don 'ts and Be Carefuls," included restrictions ranging from not allowing a woman and man to be in a bed together, to forbidding the deliberate seduction of girls (Haynes, 2000). Unsurprisingly, the topic of abortion was severely stigmatized, and only to be depicted as a “personal and moral tragedy”. By 1956, the guideline was further altered: “the subject of abortion shall be discouraged, shall never be more than suggested, and when referred to shall be condemned. It must never be treated lightly, or made the subject of comedy. Abortion shall never be shown explicitly or by inference, and a story must not indicate that an abortion has been performed. The word ‘abortion’ shall not be used” (Haynes, 2000). In fact, films did not dare going against the strict abortion rules. For instance, in Clark Gable’s film, Men In White (1934), a woman gets impregnated after sleeping with a married doctor. At the end, the woman gets essentially punished during an illegal back-alley abortion, and dies on the operating table. Many critics at the time claimed her death was a “divine retribution of sexual transgressions” (IMDB, 2009). Her choice as a woman to go through with what was widely considered immoral, ultimately claimed her life.

In becoming a successful artist, one must acquire self-pride both in themselves and in the work they produce, as the connotation of art is for one to self-express the beliefs they have on particular issues. With the expression of their imagination and emotional power in the form of a unique creation, artists challenge our traditional views of art, influencing the opinion we have on many social issues. In the quote:

The depth of human emotion is frequently overlooked. People often attempt escaping from their feelings

As society members, we should applaud the efforts of individuals who attempt to succeed in times of hardships. However, we need to categorize them by the way in which they achieve these successes and not solely on the results. In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, A father and son are on a quest for survival after a catastrophic event wiped out most of the population and turned the land to ash. While struggling to survive in such a desecrate landscape, the father walks a fine line amongst the morals of a good guy vs a bad guy and often finds himself in precarious situations that test the moral codes of his good guy persona. By using the father’s willingness to use violence as a first resort, McCarthy argues that morals often change when faced with high leverage situations and as a result, the so called “good guys,” can no longer be identified as reliable sources when determining right from wrong.

I am a firm believer that Ignorance and freedom is incompatible. Likewise I accept that my folk, including the members of the House and Senate are just as ignorant as well. Last night in a unique move the Senate grandstanded and passed their version of a financial market stabilization act – this time, 450 pages of feces. Fuck bailing out banks (although I do feel that Paulson messed up when he did not attempt to save Lehman) the truth is that market fundamentalism – the idea that the market can do no wrong, will exist no more Jones.

The Harm Principle states that the actions of an individual should only be limited if it creates harms for other individuals. In other words, an individual can do whatever he wishes given that his actions do not bring harm to others (Nowaczyk, 2015). An individual would not be harmed unless the food producer’s actions results in the individual being worse off. But what exactly constitutes to being “worse off” and to what extent of being “worse off” is sufficient for it to justify government intervention? There are multiple ways to be worse off as a result of certain actions. For example, sitting on a roller coaster can make us feel worse off if we are not very comfortable with heights and high speeds. A terrorist can also make us worse off

This essay will highlight the advantages of Spinoza’s monism over Descartes’ dualism by looking at Spinoza’s response to these issues.