In the preface of Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant declares that all moral philosophy rests entirely on its pure parts. With this premise, an acknowledgment that he is unconcerned with a teleological approach to morality, Kant tethers the moral philosophy he is about to erect....

Common Sense: Our Innate Foundation of Knowledge The human brain, as we know it, was created within the parameters of metaphysical laws, which were then built into the architecture of the human mind. Using this theory as a premiss, one could hypothesize that the brain itself, recognizes the param...

David Hume was one of the greatest thinkers in Western History. He was an 18th century philosopher who looked at the world in logical terms. He was a realist who, through philosophy, sought to distinguish between the impression of human experience and the ideas, which are ch...

The Problem of Evil, and Free Will as the Primary Source Some people view the problem of evil as the most serious challenge to the Christian tradition. "How can God exist when there is evil in the world?" This question arises due to the nature of God. God is understood to be benevolent, omniscient,...

In "Universal History," Kant proposes nine theses that creates an idea of universal history-- history which allows people to discover freedom of the will and to develop and progress to each specie's capacity or each human's "unknown natural end." (Kant, 17) Hegel, in ...

In this paper, I plan to discuss what can account for moral goodness according to the Natural Law Theory, and the modern philosopher Immanuel Kant. Each has different views on how to judge whether a person is morally good. Each has its own standards of measurement, which will be explained throughout...

In Descartes' meditations, Descartes begins what Bernard Williams has called the project of 'pure enquiry' to discover an indubitable premise or foundation to base his knowledge on, by subjecting everything to a kind of scepticism now known as Cartesian doubt. This is known as found...

ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY On the time scale of the history of the Earth an individual human lifetime is a mere blink of an eye. We're born, we live, and we die. What is the point of living? If we're all going to be dead in the end anyway, what difference does it make what we do with our lives? Does the f...

Jason Wolf WR150, Villano 3/2/2004 In Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance," the importance of the individual apart from the masses is continually stressed. Emerson clearly states that a human's full potential is only achieved when his or her thoughts and desires are u...

For 2,500 years, the West has progressively developed its philosophical analytical methods to answering questions concerning ultimate reality, the nature of knowledge, and the principles of being. While this approach led to vast scientific advances, global communication , and legal foundations for i...

"Blot out that day when I was born and the night that said 'a male has been conceived!" (3:1, p.57) The conventional, moralistic reading of the skeletal story of Job tends to take into consideration only the frame narrative of the tale. The framing Job prose fragment suggests a r...

The moral argument only 'works' in the framework of practical reason. Critically discuss the meaning and implications of this claim. Immanuel Kant was instrumental in demolishing the traditional philosophical arguments for God's existence. In Critique of Pure Reason (1781) ,his ...

Early Sartrean philosophy is one of a pursuit of being. It is an attempt to grasp being through an investigation of the way being presents to consciousness - phenomenological ontology. Phenomenological ontology refers to the study of being through its appearances. This simplistic definition needs fu...

David Hume is most commonly known as one of the most important philosophers to ever write in the English language. His development of extreme skepticism in philosophy, and rejection of traditional metaphysics, has been integral to the development of modern philosophical thinking. Although philoso...

Friedrich Nietzche, a 19th century German philosopher and writer, was one of the most influential modern thinkers. He was the first major thinker to take seriously the full implications of the historical critique and to apply it to all of a culture's most cherished possessions. He attempt...

Friedrich Nietzche, a 19th century German philosopher and writer, was one of the most influential modern thinkers. He was the first major thinker to take seriously the full implications of the historical critique and to apply it to all of a culture's most cherished possessions. He attempt...

Foundations of Ideology China's ideology is greatly due to Confucius. His views and teachings started the Chinese ideology in China and he is the first self-conscious philosopher in the Chinese tradition (Mote, 1989, p31). Confucius lived from 552 B. C. To 479 B. C.; his teachings gr...

Utilitarianism is often defined as "the greatest good for the most people." It is also considered to be "the greatest good with the least amount of pain." John Stuart Mill was amongst the few who thought this way. His utilitarian ideas advocate a hedonistic ethical theory. In thi...

To Cheat Or Not To Cheat? A Philosophical Decision Utilizing Kantian Reasoning Basically, this student's choice, if he copied his roommate's paper, would not be consistent with the Moral Law as understood by Immanuel Kant through his work, "Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals&...

When questioning the issue of our existence one must go to the basic question of "If we exist, then who created us?" Many religious and spiritual people would have a very simple answer: God. So this leads the questioning philosopher to ask how do we know that God exists? This is a question that ...

Raphael's "School of Athens" is considered by many art historians to be the absolute masterpiece of the Renaissance. It is the perfect pictorial counterpart to the enormous changes in thinking that came about in the 1300s as a result of economic and technological developments. Its rational perspe...

John Locke, the foremost English philosopher of the early period of modern post-Cartesian philosophy, published in 1689 his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In this paper I shall look a little at the life of John Locke and the Essay¾ the work for which he is best known. JOHN LOCKE Not a...

Page 1 Plato is one of the most famous and influential philosophers of all time. Writing several books, pertaining to many different topics. He learned his skill from the father of modern philosophy and learned it well. Effecting countless minds of his time, and many more extending all the w...

Individuals who possess the ability to lead the thought patterns of the masses shape culture and society and are responsible for the way philosophy is viewed and lived presently. A figure in the history of classical Greek philosophy is Aristotle. Some of his major contributions to Western philosop...

When I was born, I did not know the difference between right and wrong. Now, I do. The word philosophy means the love of knowledge. One type of knowledge is propter quid, which ask the question why or how. In this paper, I will demonstrate how Socrates, Hume and Aristotle, three well known philo...