The Self Is A Sickness Of The Spirit

By their very nature, a mortal sin cuts our relationship off from God and turns man away from his creator. (Saintaquinas.com: 1)

His philosophies began with the three stages that every man goes through. The first stage was the aesthetic stage, in this stage, each person pursues sensuousness, fulfilling their selfish desires. This is where the majority of people dwell for their entire lives. The second stage is the ethical stage, it is found by man choosing out of their will to leave the aesthetic stage. In the second stage, people move from personal preference to embracing universal conduct rules. They acquire a sense of moral sense responsibility and submits himself to the law. He also becomes guilty and is aware that he is finite and estranged from God. Next comes the highest stage, a stage that cannot be reached by mere thought, but by a decisive act of commitment, this must be reached by the leap of faith, this subjective matter in which the person exercising passion is necessary. This is the religious stage. In taking the leap of faith, the person lands in the lap of God. Kierkegaard’s views of God are basically the exact views of the Christian God, a God who is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, and loving, just to name a few of His attributes. Kierkegaard most beautifully says of God, “God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but He does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of

Kierkegaard goes on to define what it means to experience despair. Only the “lowliest, least endowed person can despair” (E/O Handout). In other words, the one that abandons commitment to their own life is the one that experiences despair. He goes on to explain that to choose absolutely is to choose despair and he “chooses himself, not in his immediacy, but chooses himself in his eternal validity” (E/O 78). By choosing despair, the person realizes there is a disruption between how one truly absorbs the world they live in and how our perception is used in pursuit of happiness and pleasure. Despair can be understood as the vehicle for an aesthetic person to get back to an ethical life. Specifically, given the right means, the aesthetic person can be more conscientious of the disconnect between one’s absorption of the world and how they pursue happiness. To an extent,

In the novel, Person Vs. Illness is the main conflict which is not resolved throughout the story. Hazel Grace, the main character, suffers from cancer and it determines the way she lives her life. The ِanother conflict that is Dissident from Person Vs. Illness is Person Vs. Self. Hazel Grace decides to keep people away from her because of her illness. She compares herself to a grenade because she believes that she can harm her beloved ones when she dies because of cancer. This conflict is solved throughout the story when she falls in love with a guy she meets at Support Group, Augustus Waters. She becomes unable to control her feelings towards him, and soon she becomes his girlfriend. Getting in love with Augustus later brings another conflict,

Rezzori’s Memoirs of an Anti-Semite is the story of an individual searching for his identity. As Deborah Eisenberg, the book’s introducer, so concisely phrases it, “What impels the book’s first section towards […] the last [… is the narrator’s] longing for something to believe in […] to be loyal to […] to be”(xi). Notions of who and what he should become (as well as who and what he is not) vie for the narrator’s inner personhood. All the while, this same narrator, whose name changes over the course of the memoir (perhaps as a reflection of the diversity of his character), is forced to confront the external personifications of these forces – the Germanhood of his ancestors acted out by his family’s biases against Jews, and the relationships

     The descriptive claim made by Psychological Egoists is that humans, by nature, are motivated only by self-interest. Any act, no matter how altruistic it may seem on the outside is actually only a disguise for a selfish desire such as recognition, avoiding guilt, reward or sense of personal ‘goodness’ or morality. For example, Mother Teresa is just using the poor for her own long-term spiritual gain. Being a universal claim, it could falter with a single counterexample. And being that I believe this claim to be bunk I will tell you why!

Kierkegaard means for that reason that God told Adam to not eat the fruit that lets him know good and bad, Adam does not know what God means about the fruit. Adam does not know what is good or bad and by knowing it, the fruit can lead him to freedom or discover other things he was not aware of. It makes Adam question if there are things God is prohibiting him from. This induces a state of dread because then it will make Adam question everything about God, and deciding if God is trying to take care of him or making him a slave.

Chapter four was a difficult read mostly because it describes in great detail our natural sin nature and our tendencies to naturally disconnect from God’s intention for our lives. The authors start out the chapter discussing what sin is, or as the authors put it “we are a mixture of good and evil” (Grenz and Smith, 60). As humans, we miss the mark of what God intends for all Christians, which is to live in community and make the conscience choice to be Christ-like in all of our dealings and encounters with humankind. Instead, born in sin, we can quickly find ourselves making moral choices that causes us to sin. This comes from an innermost desire for something or someone that we give control over to and inevitably become

At the present many comments that self -theory is becoming popular in the secular and humanistic cult or shall we say religion that it is not a branch of science. Selfism concentration on one’s own interest or self-centeredness There is a lot of controversy on self-theory. Society wants to label this theory important, yet no evidence is out to support it. Selfism also refers to any Philosophy, theory doctrine that will hold up one selfish principle. Fromm to weigh in on these findings and gave his definition on the functions of what the meaning of religion is he said “ any system of thought and action shared by a group which gives the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion.

My life experiences in the past with hard work and death, doesn't support  the "law of karma" determining the course my life takes.The "law of karma" doesn't support the course my life takes, because the actions from my past has not yet determined my  actions of the future from these life experiences. It is important first to understand and explain what is meant by "the law of karma".

Our sinfulness is not just our many sins, but it is so much more. It is the orientation of our hearts and minds. We are complete sinners. From the beginning of time our mindset has been rebellion against Him. It is through our sin that we reject God and that all acts of sin orgininate.

In the poem “Spirits of the Dead” by Edgar Allan Poe, he is trying to make the reader understand two different perspectives. One being psyche, and the other being alive. Psyche is referring to how the person has died, and is going through the process of death. The alive category is referring to how the person is alive and imagining this.

When Kierkegaard made this statement he was saying people had to take a blind leap of faith by believing in their own thoughts and convictions and make decisions that God would approve of. He also believed this was the only way to become an “authentic human being” (Teachme, 1997). Another of facet of his position was his belief that we as humans just exist and their may or may not be a meaning for that existence. To me this was his way of answering the great life questions that we all struggle with such as, why am I hear and what is my meaning in life. He is telling us we may never know, but the best way to find out is to develop our own nature and purpose in life. Make good decisions (to stay in God’s good graces), base those decisions on what we, as individuals feel is right or wrong, utilize our freedom (individuality) and have convictions in life.

We sense that separation, that distance from God because of our sin. Deep down, our attitude may be one of active rebellion or passive indifference toward God and his ways. The result of sin in our lives is death -- spiritual separation from God. Although we may try to get close to God through our own effort, we inevitably fail. Just knowing what Jesus has done for us and what he is offering us is not enough. To have a relationship with God, we need to welcome him into our life...

Stage one is the Aesthetic stage. Here an individual is ruled by senses, impulses, and emotions. The individual does not live by “universal moral standards” or religion (374). The Aesthetic existence is a “poor quality” existence filled with the pursuit of pleasure and the freedom to be self-indulgent (375). In the Aesthetic stage an individual may be consumed by “sensuousness” but is also aware that there may be more to existence (375). This is when the individual is faced with a decision between the sensuous and the spiritual. Kierkegaard believes the spiritual is in opposition to the sensuous. Like an addict, realizing one has more to live for than pleasure of the drugs, the Aesthetic existence yields to the next stage when the individual realizes they have a choice to make. Either, accept the “fatal attractions and inherent limitations” of your currently poor existence, or move on (375). You make this transition by committing to and acting on your