Machiavelli's treatment of ethics and morality is amoral. This is so because he simply talks about what it takes to be an effective leader. In no way is Machiavelli promoting immorality. He speaks of immorality acts in order for a ruler to serve the greater good of his people. He looks at polit...

Selfishness, Bad or Good? When someone calls another person selfish, it is usually taken in a negative sense. But why? Is it truly bad to be concerned with yourself before anyone else? If I'm crossing the street with my friend and I see a car coming at us, would I be wrong to save myself...

As a general rule, children love fairy tales. We grow up being read Grimm's or watching Disney remakes of classics. Parents love telling children fairy tales not only because they have an opportunity to spend time with their sons and daughters, but also because fairy tales, like fables, always conta...

Abuse of power has been known through the history. In Webster's dictionary, morality is defined as "principles of right and wrong in conduct; ethics." The principles of morality have countless times evolved over the ages. In earlier times, death was an easy penalty for many c...

The Pardoner's Tale is arguably the finest short narrative in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The tale of three men that attempt to kill Death, but instead die themselves is a story of exceptional intellect, moral, and humour. These three qualities are quite unsurprising considering the act...

As you may have read in my history article, my school routinely made us listen to teachers and speakers tell us why sex was a bad thing. Now, if you're a Christian proponent of the "no premarital sex" stance, I've probably just triggered you to say, "We don't think that sex is bad! We think that it'...

Jonathon Swift's A Modest Proposal Jonathon Swift assumes a few key ideas throughout A Modest Proposal. It is unquestionably assumed through the essay that anyone would be willing to give up and sell his child as nourishment. It is presumed that the reader would not hesitate to accept the id...

Duality The theory of duality of personality is exhibited clearly in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment by the character Raskolnikov: Svidrigailov represents the cold, intellectual side of his personality and Sonia is a clear example of his humane, compassionate side. Let us examine these s...

Niccolo Machiavelli's work The Prince is a letter he wrote, while he was in exile to Lorenzo Medici. In his work he sought to establish a state capable of resisting foreign attack. His writings are concerned with the principles on which a state is founded, and how they are maintained. He des...

"The man who, in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today would have wanted to live had he a week."(Voltaire) In the U.S. assisted suicide has become all too common. Mr. Jack Kevorkian, otherwise known as Dr. Death, might be the reason for this unethical uprising. Assisted suicide in ...

Lord of the Flies by William Golding portrays society giving into their savagery by lacking the restraints normal to civilized human beings. Without order and self-restraint, man changes into "man the destroyer", a shocking form from lacking moral sensibility. However, the animal in human nature doe...

Into the Abyss Marquis de Sade and the Enlightenment We are no guiltier in following the primitive impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her flood or the sea for her waves" - La Mettrie The eighteenth century embraced a secularized France in which the idea of ut...

The Contribution of Mise-En-Scene to the Central Conflict within Crimes and Misdemeanors by Chris Faris In Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), two parallel stories revolve about a central conflict portraying the human dilemma of making moral or spiritually guided choices versus e...

Shelley's Counsel At the heart of mankind, there are certain rules by which society runs. These timeless laws or ethics cross cultural bounds in order to preserve life's order and maintain a righteous standard. For example, almost all societies agree that it is immoral to kill another...

The point of view from which a story is told positions the reader to perceive experiences in the novel from a certain perspective. This is particularly true for Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Conrad uses two first person narrators within the text, one within the other; the nameless frame...

When Joseph Conrad wrote "Heart of Darkness" he could not have envisioned director Francis ford Coppola's version of his work. Coppola transformed a story of a man sent to Africa to find a missing trader to the story of a Vietnam soldier sent to kill a rogue marine. He did so without...

Hobbes' state of war is the basis for his philosophical discourse on human nature. Where Rousseau says that man is compassionate and good to others in his nature, Hobbes argues that man is only out for himself. When the point comes where two men want the same thing, they become enemies of eac...

Moral Universalism should be a worldview. I believe that it would be better for the human race to live in a world where moral universalism is the accepted worldview. I believe this because moral universalism almost offers the world a moral view that has no conflicts, no differences and has no bias...

The Justification of a Life-Centered Perspective Santa Cruz is a city known for its beach access and huge redwoods. These redwoods have lately come into an environmental debate regarding their co-existence with the lime kiln, and the subsequent new growth dominance of the redwoods over the kil...

Philosophy 1) Aristotle's theory of happiness states that happiness is the highest good. There are many items that are good, but goods pursued for their own sake are of a higher good than goods pursued for the sake of something else. The highest good cannot be improved by the addition of an...

Robert Louis Stevenson's famous, dark, haunting and terrific short novel, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" was first published in 1886 and is still absorbing, relevant and deeply disturbing in this twenty- first century. Stevenson explores not only the theme of duality, ...

From where is the nature of morality derived? Is it in a universal theory that applies to all or is morality rather distinct to each culture? The former is referred to as the Universalist theory, and the latter is known as the Moral Relativist theory. Moral relativism is the view there is no univ...

Although both Jay Gatsby and Willy Loman have admirable ambitions and dreams, the ways in which they strive to achieve their goals follow principles that lack any moral compass. The young, adventurous Jay desires a lifestyle of ambiance, prestige, wealth, and status. Most importantly Jay hopes to re...