The Enlightenment From A Dualist s View - 1512 Words

In the first half of the class, we mainly focused on the enlightenment from a dualist’s view. From a dualist’s point of view, the world can be divided into two: the state of being and becoming. The state of being is full of eternal, spiritual, ideal forms, and perfectly good knowledge. In contrast, the state of becoming is full of transitory, sensual, material objects, and imperfect opinions. Advancing from the world of becoming to the world of being is called enlightenment, which can only be accomplished through reasoning. Furthermore, Kant claimed that enlightenment can be achieved by a group activity, the public reasoning. Public reasoning is a freedom to argue or disagree in public about issues. Anyone can join the public debate, but†¦show more content†¦He thinks that God is a fake idea that was made out of human fear of death. And then he tells death, who he believed to be the priest, that he’s only playing chess with the death because he feels like he has to do one meaningful thing in his life; he feels alive by playing chess with the death. Like this, existentialists claim that we don’t know the true purpose of life nor can decide what the right way is. We are born, not knowing anything about the purpose of life, and then as we grow up, we start to from ideas about our purpose. We didn’t choose to be born, but we choose to define ourselves after we’re born. Therefore, the meaning or purpose of life is highly subjective; before we contemplate about ourselves, nothing exists. We are anything before we act, and we will only attain existence as we propel ourselves to the future. Consequently, existentialists claim that our existence precedes our purpose. Then, what are the effects of existence preceding essence? It means that we are responsible for our existence. We encounter ourselves only because we have other people around us. When we choose to be ourselves, we also choose for all of humanity, because what we choose is the image of humanity that we want it to be. For example, we are creating a certain image of humanity as we would have them to be by fashioning ourselves. According to Sartre, we constantly externalize the cause of our actions because we don’t want to be responsible for it,Show MoreRelatedThe Self Impact Self Esteem And Self Image1148 Words   |  5 Pages Self is described as a person s essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflexive action. From a psychological viewpoint, the concept of the self impacts self-esteem and self-image. But happens to that definition when we look at it from a religious aspect? In Buddhism and Hinduism, although there are many similarities, there are also key differences in the fundamentals of their teachings and texts, such as the Bhagavad-Gita andRead MoreEssay on Secularization588 Words   |  3 PagesSecularization The word secularization is derived from the Latin word saeculum(world) it was first used to refer the transfer of property from the church to the civil princes. Now it denotes the process by which religion loses some or all of its power, dominance and authority. Secularization as a concept refers to the actual historical process whereby this dualist system #8220; this world; and the sacramental structures of mediation between this world and the other world progressively breakdownRead MoreSoc2303421 Words   |  14 Pages -These paradigms I take to be universally recognized scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners. -Provide models (in law, theory, instrumentation, application) from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research. -Ex. Copernician revolution, Newtonian dynamic (new version of the world-the change of paradigm ) -Ex. Theory of light -today (in the 1960): light is photon