Crime and Punishment is considered by many to be the first of Fyodor Dostoevsky's great books. Crime and Punishment is a psychological account of a crime. The crime is double murder. A book about such a broad subject can be made powerful and appealing to our intellectual interests if there ...

Socrates is considered the top philosopher of all time. He has influenced more people in history than anyone other than Jesus. Socrates worked hard throughout his life to try to make people think deeper beyond the everyday thought, to look inside and really ponder on different subjects, none more ...

Romanticism is categorized as "a preference for simplicity and naturalness, a love of plain feelings and truth to common place reality, especially as found in natural scenes". Nathaniel Hawthorne was an anti-transcendentalist and believed in the dark side of man, hence his dark romant...

Why does one choose to obey the speed limit, wait on line for their turn, or confess to murder' Is it the consequences of ones actions that keep one from going too far astray, or is it a higher set of principles that guide one's choices' The American Heritage Dictionary defines ethics as...

In this essay, I will discuss the beliefs of J.S. Mill, Patrick Devlin and Ronald Dworkin. These three men hold different, yet similar positions on freedom of speech, privacy and society. First, I will illustrate how Dworkin's idea of a free society includes more details than Devlin's. ...

The moral dilemma's presented in The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible are predicaments distinctly connected to early American society. The Puritan church, America's first community forum and system of social organization, provided a strict rule of individual lifestyle that encompassed dai...

The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze the works "A & P" by John Updike and "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allen Poe. Specifically it will identify a character in each work that conforms outwardly while questioning inwardly the conventions of their society, and analyze ...

JUSTICE - NOT DEATH! I, Judge Brady, am sentencing Paula Pretty to life in prison with no Possibility of parole for the murder of a 16-year-old female. My decision to oppose The death penalty is based on moral, practical, as well as constitutional grounds. I realize that many of my voters do...

Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor is evidently an extremely divisive text when one considers the amount of dissension and disagreement it has generated critically. The criticism has essentially focused around what could be called the dichotomy of acceptance vs. resistance. On the one hand we...

Fyodor Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment follows the main character Raskolnikov as he attempts to prove his theories on the possibility of a "superman" having the power to transgress the law and morality because he is more "extraordinary" than the common man. Throughout his...

The American Heritage Dictionary defines law as "a rule of conduct or procedure established by custom, agreement, or authority." Since even the most primitive forms of life have been known to live by some "rule of conduct," by definition, law has existed before the dawn of the h...

Michael Levin is a Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York and the Graduate center, City University of New York. He is well known in Libertarian circles and has written much about social issues in the US, especially feminism, race, crime, and other unorthodox issues. In Levin=s e...

A Clockwork Orange The freedom of choice and the rehabilitating form of corrections encase the realm of A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess. It produces the question about man's free will and the ability to choose one's destiny, good or evil. "If he can only perform good or only perf...

The Obligation To Avenge Is Truly A 'Cursed Spite' He Who Ignores It Is A Coward He Who Accepts It Is A Murderer Whilst an audience would feel Hamlet must follow his visceral feelings and exact a bloody revenge, there is also the moral issue that both a viewer and Hamlet must wrestle...

Moral Questions in Hamlet Conscience and Responsibility Hamlet the play and Hamlet the character have always attracted the attention of critics with a strongly moral bent. This is inevitable. The play deals with crime and its punishment, with complex questions of right and wrong, moral decisio...

We often think of morality in terms of right versus wrong or good versus evil. If a person chooses wisely and makes good decisions, they have morals, but if a person is evil then they have no sense of morality. Phaedra's situation is complicated and cannot easily be characterized in terms of good ...

Many theists have claimed that morality and obedience to their version of "god" must walk hand in hand or one cannot be considered as a "moral agent". Altruism, they contend for instance, is an inborn motivation placed within the human genetic construct by "god" (Rachli...

"Perfect Paradise" As Aaron rode home from his duty of accounting, he sat back on the sky-tram and thought about what his next week's duty would be. In Paradise, work, or a job, was not an aspect of life. All citizens - man or woman over the age of eighteen was sent into training t...