Explain what is meant when people say that “we are not free to make moral decisions”. (30 marks) To believe in the statement of “we are not free to make moral decisions; one must acquire the understanding of determinism and to some extent, predestination. Rousseau summed this belief as a ‘man is free but everywhere he is in chains’. Determinism is the belief that choices are influenced by factors other than the will of the individual. A hard determinist believes that one does not have the free will to act morally and that all moral decisions have uncontrollable prior causes.
According to him there should be a part of mystery in the things. This is also an unveiled criticism of Locke. For Coleridge, there aren’t just primary or secondary qualities but there is also a part of unknown in the things. The language that defined the abstract idea is, for Coleridge, part of nature and thus submitted to this spiritual link that binds God, nature and human being. A spiritual part that cannot be reached and that should remain unknown in order to preserve this transcendent link between the world of divine and the world of men.
What does this mean? Duty simply means responsibility. So does this mean responsibility for the sake of responsibility? No, what Kant meant by this philosophy was that each one should determine for themselves how to live, or their own standards of life. No one should tell an individual how to live, unless what a person says to do is simply what you believe about your way of life.
But unlike earlier philosophers, such as Socrates who were concerned with how to live a good/ethical life, and famously said ‘the unexamined life is hardly worth living’, both Nietzsche and Sartre are concerned with being and existence. The first and most important tenet of Existentialist thought is that Man Is Free. Nietzsche believed that the ‘will to power’, was the primary drive and the source of all creative activity and the key to human freedom. It was the all-important way to achieve freedom of the individual and that absolute objective truth of the world was an illusion and our search for such a truth is bred from fear. While having much in common with Nietzsche, both are atheistic existentialists, Sartre proposed that man is nothing but what he makes of himself and therefore by taking responsibility for his actions he can change his life and create a new Man.
Ethicists use these two theories to argue whether the community or the individual is more important, question whether we should follow distributive justice should society just focus on protecting themselves without harming other people? An individualist believes that one has no responsibility to look after others but recognise the obligation to avoid harm. Hobbs lived during a period of social chaos, a revolutionist party were persecuting people for what they believed, including Hobbs. During this time, Hobbs wrote Hobbes Leviathan, which in he described what be believed to be the Hobbesian state of nature, something that all humans are if placed somewhere without social organisation, like a desert island. He quotes life to be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Hobbs also states that as humans we are also motivated by selfish desires between the interests of different groups and this is because of the human state of nature.
Rather, he believed his truest identity would be found in differentiating himself from the common herd of humanity, which he saw as mediocre, morally lazy, and cowardly. He was an individualist; he held that each person’s responsibility is to follow the highest leadings of personal conscience. Ultimate moral authority emanates from individual judgment, and getting “out of its way” is one of the most important things a just government can do. Civil law and the power of the democratic majority are secondary to the higher moral law as it is discerned by the individual. In cases in which civil government conflicts with personal conscience, Thoreau advocates withdrawing all support from that government immediately, without waiting to
INTRODUCTION Existentialism is concerned with man and his existence. It is a philosophy that takes off from the individual’s standpoint and it is opposed to any objective, rationalistic and system building approach in providing solutions to the problems of the absurdities of life in which man is enmeshed. Existential thinking defines itself in opposition to the philosophical tradition-Greek philosophy- from which we have learned to think that the only access to truth is by means of detached and disinterested contemplation, so truth is objectivity, that the universal is higher than the individual, so each person must subordinate his or her selfish interests to universal moral principles and that ultimate reality is being not becoming, and to reach eternity you have to get out of time. Existentialism also defines itself in opposition to other received views such as that emanating from culture, for instance religious views which have caused us to believe that truth is involved, personal commitment to something or someone specific, and so is essentially subjective; that each person must do what God requires of him or her so the individual is higher than the universal; and that time is the locus of all that is meaningful so that eternity must somehow be achievable in time. For existentialists, these ideas slaves and prevents the individual from self-realization because it forces the individual to define himself through them.
Person-centred approach is that it is highly reactive and not terribly proactive. Question 4 This course teaches a number of therapeutic techniques. Considering any other qualifications or experience you may already have, discuss briefly how you would describe yourself in practice (you may refer to your 'letter' if a copy is enclosed). As a Life Coach Practitioner, my greatest aspiration is to help people live their dreams and reach their goals.
Psychodynamic counselling tries to get the client to bring to the surface their true feelings which are present in the subconscious. It is very directive, analytical and clinical method of counselling. The humanistic
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