Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s sonnet sequence Sonnets from the Portugeuse, explores the experence of idealised love in the patriarchal confines of the Victorian era, juxtaposed against F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, which comments on the unatanability of idealised love due to the corruption of the American dream. Through an exploration of love, both composers subvert societies preconcieved attitutdes to love through the reccurring motif of ‘Plato’s ladder of love’. Barrett-Browning’s poems highlight the realities of a spiritual, connected love, contrasting to Fitzgeralds commentary on the illusionary goals of ‘true’ platonic love in the post WWI hedonistic, materialistic society. Barrett-Browning conveys the Romantic ideals of platonic love, against the prudish rationalism of the Victorian era. The Petrarchan sonnet form has an inbuilt dialectic structure, enabling her to have a progressive narrative, which follows the path of the Platonic system.
The poems “Ozymandias” by Percy Shelley and “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning are very different. However they do have something in common – both poems are representations of ones power. “Ozymandias” represents power as poem shows that human life is insignificant compared to the passing of time, even for egotistical kings such as Ozymandias, time is very powerful. “My Last Duchess” represents power through the narrative technique, which makes it seem as if the Duke is speaking directly to an audience, powerful as it captures the reader. Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" is about a ruined statue of a powerful ruler who once controlled an ancient kingdom.
Another person who also criticized some of the religious views was Pierre Bayle. Bayle argued that religion and morality were not necessarily linked. The Enlightenment also developed around the belief that scientific thought and expression should be free from religious interference and that the foundations of society should be human reason and logic. The Enlightenment’s relationship with God and the individual was more rational and distant leading to the idea of Deism. Deism became very popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries during the Enlightenment.
Disinterested rational Will is a matter of having no personal attachments or motives. It is important to Stoics, because to them wisdom consists in thinking of things that happen to you as you would any other even in the World as a necessary part of the world. Chapter 8: 1. Compare & contrast the classical worldview with the
Moore would say we can see these self evident truths when, in an argument, we are reduced to “it’s just wrong,” they require no further explanation, proof or justification. This seems a fairly logical conclusion, in order to justify what we do we look at it in basic terms, but such a process could not take place indefinitely without coming to a base truth which could not be broken down further. It’s the classic “it just is” situation in an argument, where the statement cannot be further simplified nor justified. The problem however is agreeing on what these basic moral truths are. Moore and WD Ross a fellow intuitionist agreed that pleasure, knowledge and virtue are all intrinsically good, and pain, ignorance and vice are intrinsically bad.
Existentialism is a philosophical theory that states that each individual has absolute freedom of choice and each has the responsibility to regulate one’s own actions. Existentialists believe that life has no universal meaning thus the pursuit of any greater truth is unnecessary and trivial (Existentialism). In slight contrast, absurdists believe that in the trivialality of a universal meaning, but that the pursuit itself may contain greater truths (Belanger). However, both believe that the world as a whole is purely nonsensical and illogical (Existentialism). Camus’ philosophical beliefs are evident throughout his first work, The Stranger.
He also believes the philosopher is able, through using his intellect, to achieve true knowledge of the abstract Forms without using his senses. Plato’s theory of Forms can be seen as unconvincing to some who believe that abstract ideas e.g table, horse, beauty are actually names that have been invented to help people describe their experiences of the physical world. This is a materialistic view as it suggests that objects in this world are the real reality and our ideas can develop based on experience of things. Aristotle agrees with this and believes knowledge is gained through experience and that there is not an eternal World of Forms that is a priori to us. However, in Plato’s defence some believe that each variety of a Form shares a likeness for example each horse is slightly different yet they all share something that makes it resemble a horse.
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.”
This dichotomous experience is evidently illustrated in the work of John Keats, particularly in his poems Ode to a Nightingale, in which Keats grapples with the transcendent beauty of the nightingale’s song versus the bleak reality, and La Belle Dame sans Merci where the allure of imagination is set against its depleting quality. Although not of Romantic context, the novel Possession by A.S. Byatt explores the quest for artistic liberty whilst dealing with the qualms of contemporary life. Eugene Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People depicts the upsurge of idealistic passion in the French Revolution, while expressing also the reality of revolution. In his poem Ode to a Nightingale, Keats is both enchanted inspired by the ethereal beauty of the nightingale song. For the Romantics nature was ‘a stimulus for the poet engage in the most characteristic of human activity, that of thinking’.
“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection”, George Orwell. It is clear that many people strive for perfection, but it is impossible and unrealistic to live life like this. Perfection is unattainable because it is in the eternal real, along with the world of art. Although both realms are beautiful, the eternal realm is a realm of perfection and flawlessness that will in immortality. In comparison to the temporal realm, this is composed of true beauty of imperfections and flaws.