To what extent does a comparative study accentuate the influence of context on Frankenstein and Blade Runner? While issues change throughout history, values are often similar but presented from the perspective of an era. Mary Shelley's 1800's Frankenstein and Ridley Scott's 1982 Director's cut of Blade Runner essentially explore the same themes. The messages of ambition and science to usurp God and the loss of humanity reflect the time and contexts of the texts. Frankenstein depicts the ambition to use science to usurp God, influenced by the eighteenth century Enlightenment movement (encouraging reasoning to understand the universe), advancements in science in the nineteenth century and the concept of restoration of life through electricity, known as 'galvanism'.
Postmodernism IHAB HASSAN.. There is a lot of disagreement over the meaning of these terms but the bottom line is that postmodernism is against almost all the tenets of modernism. For example, modernism believes in rational thought while postmodernists believe everything is irrational. Modernism places a strong emphasis on science, whereas postmodernists are anti-scientific. Modernists believe that there are universal values and tend to be somewhat optimistic whereas postmodernists believe that only local values have importance.
Wink sees these institutional intelligences as "fallen angels" -- having forsaken their life-affirming mission in order to promote their own interests. Supporting all of the fallen institutions is "The Domination System," a cultural vision in which a dominating hierarchy is the only conceivable source of order and "good" violence is the only defense against "bad" violence. The Domination System plays the role of Satan in Wink's mythological interpretation. The mission of Jesus, according to Wink, is the overthrow of the Domination System. He sees a nonviolent "Third Way" in Jesus' teachings, a way that is neither passive acceptance of domination nor an (ultimately self-defeating) violent revolution against it.
Sophists were extremely practical in their way of thinking and lacked emphasis on the typical virtues of more allegorical thought of the time. Their religious views are best described as agnostic or Atheist. Considering their very core way of argumentation was based on their desire to prove, win, or academically triumph, religion was such a relative and ambiguous subject, that essentially the only way for Sophists to feel fulfilled in a type of “semi-victory” of their religious intellect was to claim no definitive side at all, and instead force people to prove their belief (ultimately showing that nothing is definitive or readily proven with religion). Famous Sophist Gorgias believed that “if something does exist, we cannot know it, even if we can know it we cannot communicate it.”
Weekly Analysis: Kant, Duty and Reason 1. What is the author trying to argue? According to Kant, nothing is good because good can always be attached to some bad or used for bad. The only thing that can be called good is good will. Good will is not good because of what it does, although it can make good things happen.
Shelley’s use of Galvanism and Genesis, with the support of biblical allusion to criticise humanity’s disregard for nature during the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century is used to exemplify the detrimental consequences of science on individuals. The struggles face by the Creature in an attempt to live peacefully, supported by the Creature stating: ‘You gave me life…but left me to die’, emphasises on Victor’s lack of responsibility for his own actions, the repetition of first person narration ‘I’ and ‘me’ and the use of oxymoron capture the responders’ sympathy and leads to the conclusion that the Creature is possibly more human than Victor. The Creature also struggles to gain companionship from his creator and other individuals due to his grotesque physical appearance: ‘When I became fully convinced that I am the monster that I am’, this is supported by his statement: ‘My heart yearns to be known…’, the use of personification emphasise on the Creature’s desire to be ‘loved’ by
He uses scientific reasoning to back up his findings. He shows the constant theme of how humans can’t get enough of anything verses the higher animal that can be satisfied. We see the highest animal is not how much you can take, but the ability to know when to stop. That’s seen clearly here, “[B]ut the earl wantonly destroys what he has no use for, but the anaconda doesn’t. (Twain 181)” Twain goes on to confirm his second find by saying “[T]he passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animal.
His stance is against this proposition and feels Philonous would agree with him. However Philonous disagrees and a battle of wits ensues in which Philonous systematically destroys Hylas’s views of materialism. Philonous spends the rest of the Dialogues making the case that his idealist view is the most commonsensical view in the world. His goal is to prove that, not only is his theory simpler and better supported by the evidence, but it is even immune to
This is because Transcendentalists believe the only way to find peace is by being self- reliant. This opinion is repeated in Thoreau’s, “Civil Disobedience Part 1”: “All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil… I say, let us not have such a machine any longer” (4). The “friction” Thoreau talks of represents the lack of self-manning that becomes present in society when machines are brought in. This would be an important issue to Transcendentalists as self-manning is key to living life. When the author voices his
Mill later struggled with the concepts of utilitarianism because it was too unemotional and failed to capture or understand the ‘higher’ pleasure of happiness without pain. Bentham’s theory failed to acknowledge the complexities like emotion. However, Mill did not reject Bentham’s ideas of pleasure fulfillment; he created a more complex version of utilitarianism, yet one that still embraces the most basic premises of Bentham and of his father, James Mill. Mill defines utilitarianism as a theory based on the principle that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness." Mill defines happiness as pleasure and the absence of pain.