Philosophical Theories Essay Examples and Topics

These principles are the principles of social justice; they provide a way of assigning duties and privileges in the basic institutions of society and they define the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens of [...]

It is possible to note that Rawls' philosophy can be applicable in the contemporary world as it addresses major issues associated with unequal distribution of resources.

The article "The Challenge of Cultural Relativism" by Rachels explores the issue of ethics. According to Rachels, cultural relativism fails to support the existence of universal moral standards.

Without the body of the argument, the title expresses that there is a form of lying that is not considered immoral.

It confirms the close relationship between certainty and doubt, namely that the absence of one gives rise to the other. To conclude, the concepts of certainty and doubt are close and intertwined in many things [...]

On the other hand, the teleological ethical perspective states that the results for all actions matter in determining the nature of the undertaken decisions.

In this passage, Confucius addressed the role of the family in the growth and development of a nation. Being the smallest unit in the nation, the family plays a vital role in ensuring the stability [...]

Based on this, Karl Marx stated that the products produced by the communally owned means of production should be divided equally to avoid classes and ranks in societies.

The positive legal norm which does not correspond to the high-frequency behavior of the living law is the one that ought not to be.

Therefore, it seems that the Glorious Revolution was more of a revelation for the people of their power to choose and to change.

The first aspect of Aristotelian defense of justice, which is crucial to discuss, is the fact that, according to the philosopher, justice is relative to others.

The contribution of Immanuel Kant to the modern philosophy made him be considered as one of the greatest and the most remarkable philosophers existed in the 18th century.

Kant indicates that the goodness has not to contain a meaning of the consequences and results, it is good in itself.

Theories such as rationalism the Intuition/Deduction thesis and Innate Knowledge thesis which support the notion that there is the existence of intrinsic or instinctive knowledge or the subsistence of a priori knowledge, knowledge of necessary [...]

Kant argues that, "a person is good or bad depending on the motivation of their actions and not on the goodness of the consequences of those actions".

The main aim of this paper is to look into the arguments presented by Rene Descartes and David Hume on the issue of the self.

It is necessary to underline the fact that the thinker strived to clarify common features of his Divided Line and the allegory of the Cave; the analysis of his philosophy gives an opportunity to realize [...]

Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to discuss theory of Forms as one of the main contributions of Plato.

1 This is a classless principle calling for justice equality promoting mutual understanding; nevertheless, taken the way it is, this principle would confuse people on some issues and this is why Rawls compliments it with [...]

Although Barthes had not contemplated anything of the sort, his efforts and the efforts of others led to the establishment of the structuralism movement in the 1950s and the 1960s.

He asserts that the duration of an activity and the intensity of pleasure are very important in measuring the levels of pleasure.

The feeling of empathy comes up when there is a clear difference between the person being empathetic and the one who is the subject of empathy.

Cartesian developed the Cartesian Dualistic Theory of Pain to explain the relationship between physical and psychological types of pain. Therefore, Descartes developed the Cartesian Theory of pain to explore pain in the context of mind [...]

I have seen that Rene Descartes contribution in philosophy and natural science stood the test of time; therefore, he became a hero' on the other hand, Karl Marx's contribution in social science did not stand [...]

Hume's argument gets interesting when he postulates that regardless of the number of times we witness a succession of events, we cannot predict the succession of events.

For harmony to prevail, human beings have to live in accordance to the two kinds of order; that is nature and convention.

The world of The Matrix is one of the examples of the precarity of that, which may be called the real world as perceived by the beholder.

Weiss argues that Plato used the argument by Socrates that true philosophers hate the pleasures of the body, for example, drinks, sex, and food.

The main concern of Foucault consists in the way technology has influenced quest for power among the ruling class in the society, and also the reason as to why the society is violating the rules [...]

As they argue with Socrates on the issue of injustice, Thrasymachus says that justice "is nothing more than the advantage of the stronger". According to them, the cardinal aim of Thrasymachus is to prove that [...]

In the context of marriage as a social institution, the performative statement said to fulfill the action is "I do", which fulfills the action of marrying.

Kant explains genius as the ability that is bestowed upon producers or artists of fine art whereby the origin of the idea of creating the work cannot be explained such as a scientist's discovery path.

The essence of the avocado vs.artichoke debate lies in the dynamic of opposing ideas of essentialism and proteanism in philosophy. Both views present quite polarizing extremes and have outdated pre-conceived notions, as in the case [...]

Generally, peace is achieved by creating a government and forsaking individual rights in favor of one entity to ensure humans' chaos-less existence.

This idea is based on the supposition that it is impossible to be the one and the other at the same time.

In other words, his theory of utility is based on the principle of moral obligation: the greatest pleasure for the greatest number of people who are involved or affected by the action performed by one [...]

The only way the truth will be concealed and still lead to happiness is when the truth is substituted with a lie.

It can be noted that in all cases suffering was seen as evil in some quarters of the ancient world as is seen today.

Inception has a philosophical argument in the plot which resonates with Rene Descartes' reasoning on the nature of reality and the mind's interpretation of its experience.

The ideas which do not resemble the objects that caused them are the ones of secondary qualities: sound, color, odor, and taste.

The allegory of the cave can serve in revealing some of the key reasons to mistrust the views of the majority.

As Plato recounts the episode "Myth of Er" found in the republic dialogue phaedo and the story of time reversal in the statesman, a clear view of the hierarchical arrangement of the cosmos is illuminated.

The Entitlement Theory of Justice is intended to submit an explanation of what justice necessitates in relation to property and is divided into three doctrines which are; the principle of justice in rectification, justice in [...]

In order to comprehend whether Nietzsche kept to such an idea of the dead God in all his works, and Beyond Good and Evil in particular, it is better to analyze his original works, written [...]

The Confucian gentleman is the one who lives by the highest moral standards and aims to help others achieve the realization of this goal.

Overall, it is possible to argue that the philosophy of ancient Greece is mostly associated with the names of such prominent thinkers as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.

The emergence of new transcendental ideas reshaped the American literature introduced in the works by Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman in such a way that it contributed to the excellence and maturity of the literary world [...]

From the above discussion, it is notable that Plato connects the idea of "justice" to the "Form of Good". Such kings will apply practical theories and ideas in order to address the needs of the [...]

Real justice, according to Nozick, consists in the appropriation of holdings or their original acquisition, their fair and consensual transfer and the protection of the right to their property.

According to the Bible, a tree of life was created by God in the middle of the Garden of Eden. In the Iroquois Creation Story, a tree was growing in the middle of the floating [...]

The main problem that makes the difference between nominalism and realism is the question of the existence of properties beyond objects.

Can it happen that truth is a kind of agreement between a belief and a real life fact, or is it possible that a true belief should cohere with other true beliefs, or is it [...]

In summary, Descartes implies that since we do have an idea of a being that is all powerful and perfect, and since we can distinctly and clearly assign the attribute of necessarily existence to this [...]

He gives life to a new human being, body, and soul, which is the form of the body. If we believe in the soul's immortality, death will not seem such a great tragedy.

According to Holinger, a world class citizen relates well with other groups, and all human beings: Cosmopolitan is about justice, which should be evident in all aspects and it must be the one governing the [...]

Partridge investigates the film's fundamental coherence with Plato's text and the numerous superficial connections between Plato's cave-dwellers and the humans trapped in The Matrix.

Main Kant's idea was in the necessity of both reason and experience for human beings. In his opinion, Synthetic judgments are opposite to analytic and are not sufficient to decide the importance of proposition.

The first doctrine is that the more recondite phenomena of the mind are formed out of simple parts. Associationism is the theory of psychology explaining the connection between thoughts and past experiences.

The life of Socrates is explained in the conversation between Plato and Xenophon and also in theater performances of Aristophanes. Additionally, Socrates is perceived to be the artist who designed the statue of the three [...]

This paper discusses how both Daoism and Legalism differ from Confucianism on the issues of family, human nature, education, role of ruler, role of government, and role of individual.

The author says that the scholar should explore the nature in themselves, and "he shall see, that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part.

An example, of a group of people who have not mastered the concept of Li, may be judges who make their decisions based on their understanding of the law and not the prevailing special circumstances [...]

Through this, he learned that it was impossible for him to deny the existence of God. In the chapter, he argues that the lack of God's existence was impracticable.

Socrates and Euthyphro show that the application of justice in different societies is not always fair. Plato's arguments are ambiguous because they do not offer a rational basis about how religion can be used to [...]

The possible way to think about the relationships between consciousness and the physical world is by considering the understanding of the traditional relationship between nature and consciousness.

In response to the skeptics, it can be argued that although sources of knowledge may be fallible, they are still helpful and allow people to function in the world.

The concept of social constructivism gives people the power to create and encourages them to create a positive world that they will exist in peace.

This is the study of value that surpasses the ability of a man to reason over the universe and its state on the whole.

The framers had in mind the preservation of the public good, and not the promotion of private interest. The notation that the motivation to maintain a position of power can be destructive was addressed by [...]

Also, his philosophy conveys the importance and the beauty of the life of faith in the midst of a discouraging world.

This essay examines Descartes' principle ideas of the utility of doubt for arriving at truths and the concept of dualism between the mind and the body.

In the end, both Hobbes and Locke come to agree on a rather plan ground that, in the state of nature, human behaviors are supposed to be guided by the laws of nature.

Consequently, the outcome of a course of action that is on the course of being undertaken or is to be undertaken lies in the value of the outcome.

Instead, it underlined the logical explanations of the world existence as well as attempted to ground the idea of reality processes as the evictions of changing procedures in a never-changing space.

He claimed that the sophists were selling the wrong education to the rich people. The methods of teaching that the sophists portrayed in Athens were in conflict with Plato's school of thought.

Compatibilism is closely linked to causal determinism in that it agrees with the fact that past events affect future events. In essence, people are not locked to determinism only but also to the fact that [...]

The ideas of the Polish novelist in the Heart of Darkness aimed at unraveling the issues that faced ivory traders in the Congo basin meaning the author attempted to look beneath the surface.

Heidegger concludes that authenticity is temporary as opposed to inauthenticity because we are born with the former and achieves the later after some time Nietzsche on his view argues that authenticity is the elementary mode [...]

In particular, Diotima deliberates on the concept of love and refers to other related notions, such as wisdom, knowledge, truth, and divinity to define the place of love in the material world.

Platonic philosophy, precisely the concept of world of forms, had dominated the medieval era that subjected the human body, as a shadow of a real body in the world of forms, to little or no [...]

Geertz's and Weber's argument is that religion influences the actions of various group members because it is larger as compared to the actions of any individual in a group.

From this point, beauty can be discussed as the attribute of things and as the independent form, and deja vu is the example of the reality as illusion because the life is only the reflection [...]

The task of the social leaders is to orient to interests of the majority in order to avoid the opposition of the public which can lead to revealing the negative qualities of people living in [...]

Chaos theory explains the rationale of chaotic events in the world. Chaos theory explains the rationale of chaotic events in the world.

Rawls asserts that for equality to take place, the activities have to better lives of people who are worse off in terms of improvement of living standards and empowerment of disadvantaged members to levels which [...]

Nietzsche in the seventh maxim asks whether man is a result of the erroneous work of God or God is the error of man.

This examines the foundation of the position, his understanding of the nature of thought and the body, the essential certainty, and its conception.

As a result, a tragedy's focus should be on the heroic deeds of its protagonists and the various factors that contribute to the tragic ending.

He said that the fabric of the universe makes us susceptible to producing life, consciousness, and reason. The people who object to Nagel's arguments claim that the theorist makes a lot of assumptions.

The open question argument is an attempt of George Moore, an English philosopher, to prove that natural properties cannot be reduced to moral ones.

It would not be an exaggeration to state that Plato's allegory of the cave only makes perfect sense if one views it in the light of the theory of forms.

The theory of forms of Plato portrays to us that abstract non-material forms have the highest kind of fundamental reality as compared to this material world that is known well to us by sensation.

This great thinker had conducted a research on the issue and stood on the idea of physical inexistence due to the fact that is clearly detailed in his Meditations, in which he sought to establish [...]

The question that enters my mind when I read the Republic is in regards to the fact that Plato considers education to be the defining act that separates those who do not know from those [...]

If the mind does not need the physical body to exist, it means that the state of unconsciousness due to injuries and other objective reasons is impossible.

Although the Platonic view of value has gained much acceptance since its emergence, it has failed to address some of the underlying issues that deter the universality of things and the need for associative rules [...]

In the entire essay, Hick attempts to justify the existence of sin in the world. From the reasoning of Hick, the relationship between God and human beings is compared to the relationship between a child [...]

In its turn, this is the direct consequence of the fact that, in order for this civilization to remain on the path of progress, in the linear sense of this word, it may never cease [...]

The behavior of Meursault proves he was an outsider to his own family since he never wanted to be involved in anything.

The fact that there is a long tradition involving the slaughter of animals for food does not justify the killing of animals.

The structure of this paper analyzes the service to God and the perception of the afterlife, as highlights of the differences and similarities about the Christian and Islamic perceptions of life.

Spinoza believed that since everything in the universe is in existence due to the power of God, it is unlikely to find something that is lacking anything.

It is the epitome of thinking and as it was described by the London times, "the great virtue of philosophy is that it teaches not what to think, but how to think".

The moderate philosophical inclination anchors on the role of reason in the acquisition of knowledge. The extreme standpointthe posits the relevance of reason as the sole gateway to the acquisition of knowledge.

The theory is the opposite of utilitarianism in the sense that it considers both the means and the end, as opposed to utilitarianism which focuses only on the end.

Epicureanism constitutes an interdependent system that harbours the following views: the main purpose of human life as being the achievement of happiness as a result of absence of physical "pain and mental disturbance"; empirical approach [...]

My reply to the objection above is that the results may be determined by reason. The outcome is highly, if not, parallel to reason.

He recognized that the freedom of people in modern society was limited when compared to their existence in the state of nature due to the presence of laws and property, though he observed that the [...]

And as lying is a form of communication, and people know this fact, the only way out in order not to be defrauded is stop communicating.

As the sense of independent and development sunk in peoples mind, the aspect of communism disintegrated and in its place individualism and the sense of "I" was adopted that is embraced world-wide.

In philosophical terms, the concept of matter advances the fact that all things are made up of matter and all thoughts are created as a result of the interaction of matter.

The test for universal acceptance involve: determining the agent's maxim; imagining that everyone in the same position as the real-world agent observed that maxim; deciding if there is any contradictions generated from the maxim; if [...]

The perceptions that influence the validity of the direct realism theory have a great impact on understanding the reality. Through the information that is relayed from the material object to the mind through sensory nerves, [...]

The doctrine of stoicism is also prevalent in the book, a philosophy that he was deeply fascinated in and applied in his solving daily challenges in life.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze critically the concept of the sublime as presented by Immanuel Kant in his work 'The Critique of Judgment'.

The first clause calls for distribution economic and social disparities in a way that, "they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society".

Plato thought the world of appearances, which was less significant and real than the world of ideas, was reflected in art.

Hobbes' philosophy of morality is based on his knowledge of the social compact and human nature. Hobbes' morality, in contrast, is based on self-interest and the requirement for social order.

Personally, I like the literal reading of this question, according to which there was an egg first, and only then a chicken.

His speech has a somber tone and tells the fabled story of the beginning of love. Aristophanes creates the notion that the earliest humans were androgynous a combination of both male and female using his [...]