Philosophy Essay Examples

“Your destiny is in your hands brother” To what extent do the characters in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ have control over their own fate? Throughout the course of the film, each character displays differing amounts of control over their lives. Latika has limited influence over her destiny unlike Salim who has the most. Jamal however, experiences a […]

Raised in a middle class family, my parents worked hard to make me empathetic and hard-working individual who stood at his own feet but also one who can stand for others. I was born and raised in Alaska, though my parents hail from Arizona. My father never complained about his fate; he considered every opportunity […]

Based on my interpretation of friendship ethics, I place great importance on acknowledging the limitations of my beliefs, vulnerability in my disposition, and imperfections in my personality. This is critical as it allows me to work towards improving these areas and fostering stronger friendships. Additionally, it is not the responsibility of my friends to identify […]

Moby-Dick is a fiction novel about whaling occurring between the 1830s to early 1840s. Moby-dick is a white whale in the story that caused the destruction of a ship named Pequod and the death of several sailors. The focus of the paper will be on Ahab, Starbuck and Ishmael the only survivor of the ship. […]

Sophocles, a Greek play writer puts it clearly in his ‘Oedipus the King’ that people’s fate and destinies are prearranged by God. This literary piece can be used as a witness to the Christian belief that God predestines every person’s life and however much one can struggle to change their fate, they are deemed to […]

Structuralism was introduced to the United States by Titchener, with his own twist on Wundt’s structure of psychology. It is the study of the fundamentals of consciousness: sensation and perception, memory, attention, emotion, cognition, learning, and language. Structuralism focuses on breaking down mental processes into the most crucial components, or basic terms. Titchener hoped “to […]

The work discusses the comparison between Structuralism and Functionalism, which are two approaches exploring human mind and concerned with conscious self. Though they share some similarities, there are also several differences between them. Wilhelm Wundt founded Structuralism as the first major school of thought in psychology that focused on breaking down mental processes into basic […]

The intellectual roots of functionalism can be traced back during the era of Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Vilfredo Pareto and Emile Durkheim, Comte, Spencer, and Pareto emphasized the interdependence of parts of social system, while Durkheim stressed on integration or solidarity (Wolf, 2006). Structural-functionalism focus on the functional requisites or needs of a social system. […]

Explain what is meant by ‘upwardly mobile’. Being ‘upwardly mobile’ can relate to either a person or a social group whereby they are moving or aspiring to move to a superior social class or to a position of elevated status and/ or power, usually in a job. Suggest 3 criticisms of ‘new vocationalism’. The main […]

Progressive education promotes the idea that learners should be come independent thinkers but also creative individuals who can also express their feelings. It is not only about putting accumulating knowledge but it also about learners knowing how to think for themselves and not only rely on rote learning. Continuity and interaction are embedded in the […]

The growth of private Christian education, encompassing Christian day schools and homeschooling, has been extraordinary in the last thirty years. This endeavor has yielded notable outcomes, as indicated by standardized test scores consistently revealing that students in private Christian education outperform their counterparts in public schools. Reports indicate that all homeschool students who applied to […]

Having no background on what the article “The Six Hour D… and How to Avoid It” by Professor Dewey is about leaves your mind guessing until you get around to reading it. This article is about study habits amongst college students. It discusses how many students claim to have spent a substantial amount of time […]

For John Dewey, education and democracy are intimately connected. According to Dewey good education should have both a societal purpose and purpose for the individual student. For Dewey, the long-term matters, but so does the short-term quality of an educational experience. Dewey criticizes traditional education for lacking in holistic understanding of students and designing curricula […]

The Ethics of Democracy was a short article written by John Dewey. He wrote was an extraordinary thinker and provided us today with ideas that are still in action. I decided to write on this article specifically because I am very interested in the founding of the United States and how our founding fathers chose […]

Would Dewey’s advice for correcting a bad habit work for you? How would you go about reforming one of your habits? According to John Dewey, Habits are inevitable. We are empowered by both good and bad habits. In his essay, “Habits and Will”, Dewey states that we envision bad habits as such acts of “foolish […]

Albert Bandura is a philosopher who came up with the Social Learning theory which states that people learn from each other in a social context through observation, modeling and imitation. Bandura’s theory is considered to be a bridge between the cognitive learning and behaviorist’s theory. The central values of Bandura’s theory are based on the […]

What does Michele Foucault mean by deployment of sexuality? Part four of the book on History of Sexuality speaks of the deployment of sexuality (HS 75ff). It is said here that deployment of sexuality is a disciplinary apparatus which concerns power. Many regard this work as a straightforward extension of the genealogical approach of Discipline […]

Max Weber has claimed that power arises when given two people in a social relationship one will try to get himself in a better position to enforce his will on the other despite any form of resistance.   This then assumes that there is conflict between these two parties in the social relationship as both try […]

Panopticism Michael Foucault’s essay Panopticism was written much differently than other essays that I have read. Panopticism is intended to be, as mentioned by Hunter, a “meticulous tactical partitioning” (pg. 212). Foucault writes in such a different style then most of the authors that I have studied. He uses unique grammar and sentence structures that […]

Although Foucault’s work exhibits both consistent themes and shifts in direction and development, some critiques have highlighted disruptions, divergences, and gaps within his body of work. After the Archaeology of Knowledge and the cultural and political event known as May 68 in France, there appears to be a shift of emphasis in writings. Archaeology is […]

The general belief that scientific analysis is a means by which the world is to be known ‘truly’, ‘rationally’ and ‘progressively’ come to eminence during the late 18th century with the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ (Giddens 1987; Foucault 1970). This meant that as on the one hand, the biomedical model of explaining disease rose and became […]

The Enlightenment has frequently provided the context or impetus for a number of contemporary analyses in critical theory. The period of the Enlightenment, perhaps above any other, has been an attractive topic to a number of different theorists from various European countries and theoretical schools. Brewer, writing about Diderot, identifies “[w]hat is contemporary about the […]