The Problem of Workplace Stress

Data Use Essay In today’s business condition data is the most significant resource a business has, this data assists with supporting, keep up, create and track its day by day exercises. The following sensible advance is actualizing a framework that is favorable and equipped towards this objective. With the assistance of its data framework, and its data innovation office, supervisors, sales reps, the tasks division and others with access to this data have a convenient device to assist them with accomplishing their work every day. The structure of the data framework is foremost on how open this data is to the individuals that rely on it to finish their typical workday. The chiefs and IT office work intently together to concur upon and settle on a data framework that will be practical to the business itself, in this manner setting up a framework that will be gainful to the business itself. In my past work environment, this was a land organization that concentrated on short deals and advance changes. Our data was given by the property holder, this data comprised of their home loan proclamation, bank records, difficulty letters portraying why they required the short deals or the credit change, and a rundown of their obligation pay proportion and any abandonment data. The database we chipped away at was a framework called Salesforce; this framework empowered us to monitor the calls we needed to make and report all subtleties of that call. It contained the entirety of the data we expected to achieve this assignment, it held customers appropriate information, the banks that we managed and a technique to follow the objectives we needed to achieve every week. This framework was additionally an ERM (electronic records the board database) we had the capacity to examine and transfer appropriate customer data, for example, a quarter of a year of bank explanations, paystubs, and difficulty letters, dispossession notification and current home loan proclamations. It was very easy to understand and had the capacity to be adjusted towards the necessities of the organization utilizing it. That being said the board requested that we make proposals on what augmentations we saw or felt that would help make our employments simple and progressively proficient. The short deal group caused a few recommendations to add To salesforce, along these lines making it progressively determined for our day by day undertakings. The short deal group was not by any means the only ones utilizing Salesforce, our business group that produced the leads or customers were the primary line of protection; they needed to enter the client’s data into Salesforce and sweep all the reports identified with a homeowner’s circumstance. The business group was additionally liable for reaching the mortgage holders to send refreshed and current records appropriate to their short deals or credit changes. Basically Salesforce was additionally utilized as an information the board framework, it had the capacity to store all information, create deals reports, handling, coordinating, appropriating, making sure about, and chronicling information adequately for current and future use. Getting to Salesforce was promptly accessible on the off chance that we were out of the workplace also, we had the capacity to sign in and see reports, or if another customer was included, and on the off chance that we required data to set up an evaluation that was mentioned by the bank before the short deal was endorsed. This capacity was exceptionally helpful for the realtor and the processor taking care of the record, the capacity to get to the principle database with all appropriate data about the customer away from the workplace was an amazing apparatus that Salesforce advertised. Upkeep of Salesforce was overseen by our little IT staff, any issues with the framework was remedied or fixed rapidly, as the licenses held by Salesforce empowered the IT staff to deal with the database as an in-house framework, in this manner they didn't need to contact anybody with any issues. Simultaneously the consents on Salesforce were exceptionally exacting, a person’s client id and secret word just permitted access to specific parts, the short deals group couldn't adjust or transform anything, particularly any customer data or access the business offices info and the other way around. This appeared well and good, on the grounds that there was significant data on the database, the client’s budgetary information and home loan data, exceptionally delicate data. Generally, the database that the organization utilized as I would see it was easy to use and appeared to address the necessities of the business, for this situation a land office that held significant and touchy budgetary information, credit reports and home loan data. The framework empowered us to deal with the progression of data and every day exercises simple, made access to running reports rapidly and effectively. Further, the executives had the option to view and track consummation of day by day assignments and week by week objectives to create reports rapidly.

Mexican Drug Cartel (Many vs Few) Essay Example

Mexican Drug Cartel (Many versus Few) Essay Name Educator Course Date We will compose a custom exposition test on Mexican Drug Cartel (Many versus Few) explicitly for you for just $16.38 $13.9/page Request now We will compose a custom article test on Mexican Drug Cartel (Many versus Few) explicitly for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Recruit Writer We will compose a custom article test on Mexican Drug Cartel (Many versus Few) explicitly for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Recruit Writer Mexican Drug Cartel The medications issue is one of the essential issues confronting the Mexican culture in its political, financial, and social angles. Mexico holds a tight grasp on the $400 billion worldwide illegal medication exchange, with the nation enduring monetary misfortunes of about $4.3 billion every year (Rios 1-2). At the focal point of this medication issue are the Mexican medication cartels, controlling the exchange at the national and worldwide levels. The incapacitating impacts of the unlawful medication exchange on Mexico show the requirement for conversations on the issue. The current investigation thinks about the idea of Mexican medication cartels to the significance of cartel, before dissecting the ascent of Mexican medication cartels and related spikes in murder rates. A conversation of whether it is smarter to have a couple of enormous cartels than a few dozen littler cartels at that point finishes up the investigation. Cartel Definition: Comparison to Mexican Drug Cartels The business conceptualization of the term â€Å"cartel† is that it is a conventional understanding between autonomous firms that are in the equivalent or fundamentally the same as regions of financial movement, undertaking a conscious understanding among themselves to smother rivalry (McGowan 30). In a cartel, the organizations favor coordinated effort to rivalry with each other. The things of the understanding incorporate fixing of costs, assurance of complete industry yield, and portion of clients and pieces of the pie. Cartels normally rise in oligopolistic financial divisions, where barely any makers produce comparable items and need to acquire substantial expenses to separate their items, which lead to diminished overall revenues. Brux (255) refers to instances of cartels as including OPEC and De Beers, working in the oil and precious stones industry, separately. Passage into the tricky understanding that embodies cartels speaks to a move to a monopolistic market, which obstructs rivalry, forestalls new contestants, and may hurt the client through changes in costs, flexibly, and quality. Thus, cartels have taken a negative hint, drawing in light of a legitimate concern for rivalry specialists. The Mexican medication cartels share various similitudes and contrasts with the previously mentioned meaning of cartels. The majority of the cartels started as leagues of dealers who united their endeavors to subdue adversaries and control tranquilize exchange their regions (International Crisis Group 7). This landing in a consent to expand advertise force and turf portion is like the idea of a cartel. Notwithstanding, different parts of the Mexican medication cartels negate the portrayed definition. For example, intra-cartel clashes and fighting demonstrate that the understanding among the dealer bunches isn't operational. The cartels are additionally unfit to set costs, other than participating in changed crimes including grabbing, human carrying, coercion, robbery, vehicle burglary, oil burglary, and weapons dealing (8). These exercises challenge the idea of comparative financial movement and demonstrate that the alleged Mexican medication cartels are a greater amount of transnati onal criminal associations than conventional exchange cartels. The combination of endeavors and criminal tendencies makes the Mexican gatherings a greater amount of criminal cartels that don't comply with all the normal parts of typical business cartels. The Rise of Mexican Cartels: Link to Increase in Homicides in Mexico The medication exchange industry Mexico is about exceptionally old, however has encountered its most critical development inside the last quarter of a century. Dignitary et al. (9) follows the spike in the job of Mexico in the universal unlawful medication exchange to occasions during the 1980s. At that point, Colombia was the significant player in the worldwide medication dealing exchange. Be that as it may, exceptional implementation by the U.S. Coast Guard obstructed the fundamental course of shipping cocaine to the USA, which was through Florida utilizing airplane. The Colombian medication dealers looked for elective courses, setting up unions with Mexican dealers. This is on the grounds that Mexico rose as the most proper purpose of section for the Colombian medication exchanging associations, offering a course to Texas and Southern California. The partnerships included installments made in kind, which gave the Mexican dealing bunches control of their own stock (Beittel 8). With their own stock, Mexican medication exchanging associations continuously assumed control over the medication dealing business, advancing from being insignificant dispatches subcontracted by the Colombians to wholesalers who could hotspot for their own stock by the 1990s. The political scene of Mexico likewise permitted the ascent of medication exchange associations Mexico. During the 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that finished in 2,000, Mexico was under tyrant, one-party rule. The PRI government settled in medicate exchange Mexico on the grounds that the specialists endured and even ensured sedate creation and dealing in certain areas. Senior member et al. (8) contends that there was a working connection between the PRI and medication exchanging associations. The current medication exchanging associations at that point tried to work together in different collusions that would permit more control and regional parts, prompting the age of different cartels. Expanded rivalry for control of the medication exchange was the purpose for the strengthening of existing cartels and jumping up of new ones. The International Crisis Group (7) takes note of that the money spilling into the Mexican opiates business has prompted the quick ascent in influence of cartels during the 1990s and the 21st century. At the point when the one party rule under PRI finished, preventing existing cartels from claiming the solidness they once delighted in, the cartels fragmented much further. Accordingly, the most recent two decades have seen changes in the scene of Mexican medication cartels, from a couple of huge ones during the 1990s to including a lot more players other than the huge associations. Some portion of the purpose behind splinters in sedate cartels has bee n the crackdown by the legislature inside the most recent decade, where the demise of pioneers has left cartels in disorder and disarray. Senior member et al. (9) depicts the adjustments in number and size of the medication cartels in Mexico after some time. Mexico’s seven fundamental medication cartels by 2006 were Sinaloa, Gulf, Tijuana/AFO, Juarez/CFO, Beltran Leyva, Los Zetas, and La Familia Michoacana (renamed Knights Templar). Nonetheless, a closer examination uncovers that the Juarez cartel was once part of the Sinaloa gathering while Los Zetas is the previously military wing of the Gulf cartel. The war on medicate cartels has prompted passings, for example, those of the pioneers of the Beltran Leyva cartel. Therefore, neighboring gatherings have attempted to move in into the regions deserted. Occasions of disarray have prompted the rise of new cartels from realignments inside existing exchange gatherings and pioneers, prompting cartels, for example, La Familia Michoac ana. Ascend in Cartel Power and Link to Homicides Today, the seven principle cartels have divided into 9-20 with numerous reconfigurations proceeding to unfurl. The Mexican medication cartel scene uncovers two significant gatherings, Sinaloa and Los Zetas, with the remainder of the cartels and auxiliaries adjusting between the two previously mentioned cartels. The following in size and force after the two biggest ones incorporate Beltran Leyva, Knights Templar, and La Linea. The adjustments in arrangement have acted close by an expansion in the stakes and government paramilitary endeavors to disturb the cartels in making the most recent decade witness a spike in crimes. For this situation, the Mexican opiates business blasted as Mexican medication cartels dealt with the worldwide unlawful medication exchange industry, providing up to 93% of all opiates entering the USA (International Crisis Group 6). As the cartels began battling for control in the 21st century, the cash streaming into the business empowered them to buy weapons that are all the more impressive and pay expert contract killers. Inside a similar time, the Mexican government’s reaction to the medication issue has experienced sending of around 10,000 administrative cops and about 50,000 Mexican warriors to battle the cartels (Dean et al. 10). The mix of these three elements has prompted a spike in tranquilize related viciousness and crimes as caught in the accompanying charts. a b Figure 1: Estimates of medication related savagery for a) Baja California and b) Chihuahua states somewhere in the range of 2000 and 2009, demonstrating a spike in the viciousness in the last piece of the decade (Rios 8). The savagery is either between cartel, involving battles for power over regions and dealing courses among different cartels, or intra-cartel, where viciousness ejects because of progression battles (Gonzalez 72-73). There were a disturbing 47,500 manslaughters somewhere in the range of 2006 and 2011 identified with Mexican medication cartels. In 2007 alone, there were 2,800 manslaughters, which dramatically increased in 2008 and afterward expanded by 40% in 2009. Somewhere in the range of 2009 and 2010, medicate cartel-related murders expanded by 60%, with 2011 recoding as much as 12,903 manslaughters by the second from last quarter of the year (Beittel 24-25). Figure 2: The medication cartel-related murder inclines somewhere in the range of 2007 and 2011, demonstrating a disturbing spike emerging from intra-cartel, between cartel, and government on cartel viciousness (Beittel 25). Scarcely any Large Cartels than Several Dozen Smaller Cartels As per Dean et al. (9), the administration intercession on the Mexican medication cartel issue may follow two methodologies that have diverse present moment and long haul suggestions. In the main methodology, the legislature may focus on the biggest medication coalitions, for example, the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels. Disb

Taxtion Profect Literature review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Taxtion Profect - Literature survey Example Be that as it may, the effect of expense goes to the end purchaser in a VAT conspire a lot of like other tax collection frameworks since products and enterprises suppliers will in general move the burdened add up to the end consumer’s last value receipt (Ebrill et al., 2001). Tank Implementation in the United Kingdom VAT is definitely not another idea to the United Kingdom (UK) and was set up before the UK pursued the European Union. The underlying usage of VAT in the UK goes back to 1973 when it was presented by the national government as a section condition to join the European Union (EU) (Warren, 1993) (IFS, 2009). Tank isn't demanded all around on all merchandise and enterprises in the UK. Rather, VAT is relevant to specific merchandise and ventures at different rates in the UK. Orders concerning the measure of VAT and its application to products and enterprises are given both by the UK government and certain EU rules and rules. In addition, VAT rates will in general shift for specific merchandise imported from outside the EU (HMRC, 2013). Tank Rates Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) accommodates three diverse VAT rates that are delegated (HMRC, 2013): Standard 20% Reduced 5% Zero 0% Standard VAT rates apply to most products and ventures devoured in the UK while diminished rates apply to specific things, for example, powers, vitality savers, power things and so forth. Then again, zero rates apply to certain different things, for example, certain nourishment things, open transportation, books, children’s garments and so forth. (HMRC, 2013). It must be remembered that zero rate VAT things are separated from things excluded from VAT. Any things that are excluded from VAT can't have VAT based burdened concerned them under the law, for example, on protection, altruistic gathering pledges, life sparing administrations and so on. Interestingly, zero rate VAT things are available however are charged for at 0%. The retailer may hold up a recover with the HRMC for zero rate VAT things yet not for VAT absolved things (HMRC, 2013). Likewise, VAT law gave by the EU orders that the base standard rate for EU individuals must be 15%. Part states are additionally permitted to apply a limit of two distinctive diminished rates that ought to be at any rate 5% on specific merchandise (European Commission, 2006). In addition, any adjustments in VAT particularly changes concerning diminished VAT rates must be endorsed by the EU alone (Victor, 2010). Provincial Comparisons VAT is relevant all through the EU and certain part states show extraordinarily high VAT rates. Territorial correlations of VAT rates are introduced in the table gave beneath. Table 1 - VAT provincial examination sourced from (Victor, 2010) Country VAT Rate (%) UK 20 Denmark 25 Hungary 25 Sweden 25 Iceland 25.5 Criticisms against VAT is gathered at each worth expansion stage in the arrangement of products and ventures so in a perfect world VAT’s weight ou ght to be borne by these stages and their stewards. In any case, for all intents and purposes VAT bets on the end customer much like different types of tax collection. This will in general make VAT similarly as unwieldy for the normal shopper as different types of tax collection. Likewise, it has been contended that VAT is basically a backward type of tax collection however advocates of VAT think about it as dynamic. The chart introduced underneath presents how extraordinary duties on customers in the UK will in general change by the salary quartiles. Figure 1 - Tax composiitons and their disparities as per salary bunches in the UK sourced from (Murphy, 2010) Tax assortment through VAT is for the most part lower than anticipated

The Devil’s in the Details Aesthetics, Epistemology, and Religion in Beckett’s ‘Malone Dies’ - Literature Essay Samples

‘Accordingly, he took the paper and lowered his spectacles, measured the space at his command, reached his pen and examined it, dipped it in the ink and examined it again, then pushed the paper a little way from him, lifted up his spectacles again, showed a deepened depression in the outer angle of his bushy eyebrows, which gave his face a peculiar mildness (pardon these details for once you would have learned to love them if you had known Caleb Garth), and said in a comfortable tone – ’ (George Eliot, Middlemarch) Typically one expects of an item of fiction a certain degree of world-building, a certain vividness and depth within the fictional world that eases the suspension of disbelief and allows the reader to access the story. To build a vivid world necessitates the inclusion of detail and to include detail is to run the risk, as Eliot’s narrator suggests, of overburdening the reader with detail that is unnecessary to conveying the point of the story. Beckett’s ‘Malone Dies’, however, serves as a counterpoint to the notion that a fictional world should be breathed into existence as if it were a real one through its philosophical references and literary technique. The novel presents a myriad of views on what it means to create fiction, or as Beckett puts it ‘Live and cause to live’ which I have simplified down to three fundamental counter-positions to the traditional stance of fiction writers. The first is that the entirety of aesthetics is self indulge nt and childish, and that, rather than simply apologise for detail, one should apologise for fiction entirely, this view being championed by Malone’s allusions to Kierkegaard and his theories regarding aesthetics. The second stance of misanthropic nihilism presents fiction and, indeed, all other facets of mundane human existence as nothing more than ‘tedium’ which is to be endured only for the sake of continued existence: ‘What am I doing now, I wonder, losing time or gaining it?’. This reading demonstrates aesthetics as not necessarily sinful, as the previous suggests, but merely a necessary evil and to include superfluous detail is merely to ‘play’ badly, a crime so menial as to not be worth apologising for. The third view is that, while the suspension of disbelief and the notion of building a fiction world apart from our own is a mere pretension and there is no objectively right way to tell or interpret a story, since a story is so fu ndamentally subjective a thing, a story can still be held to have meaning. The difference between this view and the traditional stance espoused by Eliot’s narrator lies, as it were, in the details. For Beckett, accepting this reading of the text, to over-build your world is to defeat what allows the story to have meaning, that being the reader’s ability to interpret it and to see meaning where he or she wishes. In short, Beckett says it best himself: ‘but to hell with all this fucking scenery.’ One of the central ideas regarding Beckett’s presentation of the concept of detail is the idea that the act of creating fiction is quite simply an act of childish escapism. Malone refers to what he is doing by recording his tale of Sapo as ‘a game’ in the same way he refers to all acts of socialising as ‘play’ or ‘coming and going’: something which is done merely to the point of surviving. In fact, Malone treats the entire exercise of what he is doing as little more than futile escapism: ‘I knew there would be an end to the long blind road†¦ No matter. It is playtime now.’. Malone finds something within this act of survival to be childish, however, in attempting to remain alive through his old age by means of play, forces himself to be subject to it. This is evidenced by his reference to old age as ‘second childishness’ and his description of the book in which he is recording his story as ‘this big chi lds exercise-book’. This attitude towards aesthetics as being something naive and meaningless is again suggested by Beckett’s repeated allusions to the works of Kierkegaard and, specifically, the three stages of existence. According to Kierkegaard, the first stage, the aesthetic stage, is the stage of naivety and childishness, within which the being is attached to nothing more than the world around it and holds no attachment to moral or religious belief. Beckett directly references the first stage of existence when Macmann is interned into the asylum: ‘Let us then first consider this first phase of Macmanns stay†¦ We shall then pass on to the second, and even to the third’. Malone later describes this stage as that of the bed, referring to the relationship between Moll and Macmann, a superficial and, by Kierkegaard’s definition, aesthetically minded chapter in a superficial and aesthetic story of no greater purpose than to continue the existenc e of Malone. In other words, the only purpose of the detail, with regards to this view presented by the novel, is to ‘cause to live’ in the most mundane sense. One cannot survive without ‘play’ and so it is very easy to mistake play as something of value, when it, in fact, is nothing more than what it is: play. Therefore, to apologise for detail is only as absurd as to write fiction in the first place. There is no measure of importance to separate the important details from the wastes of time; No specific part of the story is ‘fucking scenery’, simply put, the whole thing is. Beckett, however does not leave this extreme view of fiction unchallenged. Still using Kierkegaard’s stages of existence as a guideline to explore this idea, Malone describes a personal view of what it means to reject humanity, or ‘play’, in favour of the divine through a chapter in the life of his own character, Macmann: ‘And without knowing exactly what his sin was he felt full well that living was not a sufficient atonement†¦ as if there could be anything but life, for the living’. This description perfectly mirrors Kierkegaard’s conception of the rejection of aestheticism and the, as Kierkegaard puts it, ‘leap of faith’ required to reach the third and final stage of existence, the religious stage. In his book ‘Fear and Trembling’ (which Beckett references in this part of the book: ‘And it was often in fear and trembling that he suffered’) Kierkegaard describes the ascension to the third stage of e xistence as an ultimate surrendering of all earthly things, body included, to a greater power motivated only by faith, and links this leap of faith to Abraham sacrificing Isaac. However, the religious stage of existence is characterised by more than surrender, it is also characterised by the recognition of sin and, as Kierkegaard himself puts it when he says ‘suffering is the religious category’, suffering for sins beyond the human comprehension, as reflected by Macmann seeking to atone for sins he does not recognise. This conflict between the human, as espoused by the act of creating fiction, and divine, as espoused by the act of indiscriminate suffering, and not the greatness and self-understanding Kierkegaard predicts, puts the question of detail into a new light; The life above and beyond the superficial is no life at all and yet the world of the mundane leaves Malone ‘groaning with tedium’ and so Malone finds himself caught between divine apathy and a humanity that is, in and of itself, entirely uninteresting. And yet somehow, caught between these two extremes, Malone seems convinced he had a meaningful existence: ‘yet it sometimes seems to me I did get born and had a long life and met Jackson and wandered in the towns’ and despite the fact that Jackson (who Macmann and Sapo are likely analogues of) was only a man like any other, for some reason Malone attaches great importance to him, venturing so far as to spend two pages describing his clothing after acknowledging ‘clothes dont matter, I know, I know’. But by what standard does Malone decide that clothes don’t matter when they evidently matter to him and what principle leads him to this contradiction? In other words, since Beckett seems to be suggesting that life can have meaning, the mundane details like clothing included, what is the source of this? One theory Beckett explores as to what importance the mundane can have is the concept that what lends a story meaning and quality is not the content of the story, in other words the reality of the fictional world, but what can be taken away from it by a reader. One way this is done is by challenging the objectivity of reality. One sees evidence of this in his scathing and comical mocking of concept empiricism (the philosophical notion every concept within the human mind has its genesis in the outside world). The character of Jackson is described as having a parrot whom he attempts to teach the peripatetic axiom (‘nihil in intellectu nisi prius in sensu’ or ‘there is nothing in the mind which was not first in the senses’) however the parrot is only able to repeat back the first three words, ‘nihil in intellectu’, literally meaning ‘there is nothing in the mind’. What Beckett seems to mean by this quip is that the view of the world wh ich thinks of reality as the only source of knowledge leaves us with no knowledge that is certain or meaningful. This appears to be a very bold stance to take, however Beckett explores too the psychology behind this notion; Often Malone hypothesises and invents an imaginary world around him, only occasionally able to tell what is real and what he has convinced himself of: ‘Perhaps she is dead’ he muses about his carer, later he presumes that a man in a black suit came to visit him, stood by his bed for ‘several hours’ and then hit him on the head and left, he speaks frequently of a french pencil ‘in the bed with me somewhere I think.’ which, despite his other pencil being reduced to a nub of lead and being lost for forty-eight hours he never considers using. The list continues, but, in short, Malone’s relationship with reality is complicated and, where he lacks knowledge, he is much more entertained by filling in the gaps than only permi tting himself to believe what he knows, despite insisting that he is ‘done with feelings and hypotheses’. This philosophy, that the details should not serve the reality of the fiction but should only serve the imagination of the reader is further demonstrated in the fiction of Malone himself who often directly asks the reader to substitute whatever description has the makes the most sense to him or her. One example of this is Malone’s account of the grey hen with which Sapo becomes acquainted who is described as being ‘the grey hen †¦ or one of the grey hens if you prefer.’ This detail, which entirely changes the meaning of this chapter of the life of Sapo, is left entirely in the hands of whatever the reader would find more compelling. There is no reality in this fiction for in the story the grey hen is both one and many identical hens and only becomes one or the other in the mind of the reader. The grey hen(s) either symbolise(s) individuality and the pursuit of something beyond the mundanity of normal life, or it/they symbolise(s) the futility of trying to liv e something more meaningful than life and the onus is left entirely on the reader to decide what the story is. Another case of this is his reference to the story of the Penitent Thief from the Bible, one of two thieves who were crucified with Jesus who, by repenting on the cross was saved: ‘For why be discouraged, one of the thieves was saved’. What is interesting about the story of the Penitent Thief is that, in the gospels of Matthew and Mark both of the thieves mocked Jesus and neither were saved, in John they are not mentioned, and only in Luke is the Penitent Thief saved. Much like with the grey hen(s), the story is only so much as whatever is made of it. Whether the thief is saved or not is a matter of taste and so even in the Bible there is no objective reality in which the fiction exists. These stories can be taken as symbolic of the idea that the objective reality of a work of fiction existing solely in the mind of the author (or even existing at all) is a fals e construct. Therefore the act of overbuilding one’s world seems entirely futile. The story which gives the greatest meaning seems not to be the one which forces its minutiae and meaning upon readers, but, in fact, the one which presents enough to relate the basic concept cogently and lets the reader interpret and ‘hypothesise and feel’ whatever he or she chooses to. ‘Malone Dies’ presents many conflicting views of what it means to mean something. One might ascribe to it Kierkegaardian apathy towards the entire notion of fiction and the rest of the novel and claim that the suffering of Malone is a metaphor for the act of trying to find meaning in play and mundanity where there is none to be found. One may then follow this to its logical conclusion and declare that, not only should one apologise for detail but one should apologise for fiction in and of itself, since it is merely the recounting of that which is intrinsically meaningless, since meaning can only come from surrender to that which is greater than the petty mundanity of human life. One might ascribe to it a more nihilistic, misanthropic apathy that concludes not that fiction must be surrendered in favour of God but instead that, if fiction is what is needed to pass the time and hence survive, to add or withdraw superfluous detail from a work a fiction is largely irrelevant, since death is inevitable and therefore to apologise for it is similarly irrelevant. Or one may read from it what I choose to read from it; The book that lets the reader write it is the book which the reader will feel is best written and that a well written book may be nothing of value intrinsically, but its ability to convey meaning is somehow important, if only by virtue of the importance it can have to the individual reader. Therefore to burden the reader with detail for one’s own sake or to burden oneself with detail for the apparent sake of a reader when it is not necessary to conveying the story serves only to hem in the imagination of the reader and waste time constructing a reality that intrudes on the reader’s view of the meaning of the story, resulting only in overwriting and ‘tedium’.

The Lotus by Toru Dutt - 1493 Words

THE LOTUS A poem by Toru Dutt Love came to Flora asking for a flower That would of flowers be undisputed queen, The lily and the rose, long, long had been Rivals for that high honour. Bards of power Had sung their claims. The rose can never tower Like the pale lily with her Juno mien-- But is the lily lovelier? Thus between Flower-factions rang the strife in Psyches bower. Give me a flower delicious as the rose And stately as the lily in her pride-- But of what colour?--Rose-red, Love first chose, Then prayed,--No, lily-white,--or, both provide; And Flora gave the lotus, rose-red dyed, And lily-white,--the queenliest flower that blows. An Analysis of the Poem The†¦show more content†¦After converting his family to Christianity, Govin took them to France and then England before returning to India in 1874. During these travels, Dutt’s writing began to develop. Although she was educated extensively in Europe, Dutt does not abandon her Indian heritage. Instead, she weaves her own culture with the English language, producing a tapestry of lyricism and imagery. Her sonnet, â€Å"The Lotus,† is just one example of this young woman’s ability. Notes; 1) As Dr. Mary Ellis Gibson notes in her recent tudy of Toru Dutt, Dutt’s father published most of her poetry after her death, but if she herself titled this poem, the appearance of â€Å"Sonnet† in the title plays an interesting role. Because she is writing in English, the declaration of the poem’s form is curious—an English audience would have recognized the poem as a sonnet without her naming it in the title. Poetically, however, the appearance works in several ways: I) it claims the form as hers, thereby making her a â€Å"bard of great power,† such as she references in the poem; II) it juxtaposes the most beautiful form of English poetry with the lotus flower itself, reinforcing its unrivaled beauty; III) it poetically expresses both the hybridity of the color of the lotus as well as that of the poet. Toru wrote â€Å"Sonnet.—The Lotus† as a Petrarchan sonnet, a form whose structure often informs its content. Petrarchan sonnets are comprised of 14 lines which are divided into an octave andShow MoreRelatedSarojini Naidu1131 Words   |  5 Pageshad begun to dream that it had a soul. ( â€Å"Introduction† The Bird of Time ) Such a revelation of the heart of India began with the poems of Toru Dutt. Greatly influenced by the puranas and the religious culture of ancient India, she interpreted Indian life before the Western world by recapturing the legendary past of India in her verses. Following Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu wrote poems rooted in Indian folklore, myths and legends thus showing the West the soul of India. Sarojini Naidu’s poetry can

Short Story - 997 Words

There wasnt a thing on television. I shut off the TV and lay back on the bed with a sigh. Youd been in the bathroom for over twenty minutes, making me wonder what could be keeping you. As if in answer to my unspoken question, the bathroom door opens, and the sound of footsteps approaches. I glance to the doorway and spot you. I sit straight up in bed. You lean against the door frame seductively, one knee straight, one bent slightly. You are wearing a red satin teddy, complete with garter belt and red lace-top stockings. I eye your body hungrily, a silly smile spread all over my face. See anything you like? You ask, almost purring. Everything, I reply, getting out of bed to approach you. Not so fast, Loverboy, You say, holding†¦show more content†¦Your fingers find your clitoris, you begin gently rubbing in slow circles. I cant tear my eyes away from your hand, through the red lace as it is, moving over your clit like that. I want to place my hands upon you, to caress you the way you are caressing yourself†¦ but this was something you had been working up to, and I was certainly enjoying it. Let me touch you, I whisper to you. Do you want to touch me? You ask, not opening your eyes as you continue to rub your hard clit. Yes. A simply, short reply. Beg me, You command. Now this is something new to me! I smiled, feeling my body respond to this new idea. Please, let me touch you, I say, as seductively as I can. You smile, and that smile quickly turns mischievous. Stand behind me, You instruct, not stopping your hand, Massage my breasts. I follow your instructions, moving to stand behind you, slipping my arms around you, and cupping your breasts through the red satin. You lean back against ma as I do, your eyes closed and your breathing growing more and more labored. Harder, You say. I comply, applying a bit more pressure, but not too much. I didnt want to hurt you†¦ just make your feel good. I watch you slide your other hand beneath the soft red fabric, and move it toward your pussy. Your hands begin to move quickly, one massaging your clit, the other working in and out of your pussy. I am spellbound just watching you†¦ but my handsShow MoreRelatedshort story1018 Words   |  5 Pagesï » ¿Short Stories:  Ã‚  Characteristics †¢Short  - Can usually be read in one sitting. †¢Concise:  Ã‚  Information offered in the story is relevant to the tale being told.  Ã‚  This is unlike a novel, where the story can diverge from the main plot †¢Usually tries to leave behind a  single impression  or effect.  Ã‚  Usually, though not always built around one character, place, idea, or act. †¢Because they are concise, writers depend on the reader bringing  personal experiences  and  prior knowledge  to the story. Four MajorRead MoreThe Short Stories Ideas For Writing A Short Story Essay1097 Words   |  5 Pageswriting a short story. Many a time, writers run out of these short story ideas upon exhausting their sources of short story ideas. If you are one of these writers, who have run out of short story ideas, and the deadline you have for coming up with a short story is running out, the short story writing prompts below will surely help you. Additionally, if you are being tormented by the blank Microsoft Word document staring at you because you are not able to come up with the best short story idea, youRead MoreShort Story1804 Words   |  8 PagesShort story: Definition and History. A  short story  like any other term does not have only one definition, it has many definitions, but all of them are similar in a general idea. According to The World Book Encyclopedia (1994, Vol. 12, L-354), â€Å"the short story is a short work of fiction that usually centers around a single incident. Because of its shorter length, the characters and situations are fewer and less complicated than those of a novel.† In the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s DictionaryRead MoreShort Stories648 Words   |  3 Pageswhat the title to the short story is. The short story theme I am going conduct on is â€Å"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ by James Thurber (1973). In this short story the literary elements being used is plot and symbols and the theme being full of distractions and disruption. The narrator is giving a third person point of view in sharing the thoughts of the characters. Walter Mitty the daydreamer is very humorous in the different plots of his dr ifting off. In the start of the story the plot, symbols,Read MoreShort Stories1125 Words   |  5 PagesThe themes of short stories are often relevant to real life? To what extent do you agree with this view? In the short stories â€Å"Miss Brill† and â€Å"Frau Brechenmacher attends a wedding† written by Katherine Mansfield, the themes which are relevant to real life in Miss Brill are isolation and appearance versus reality. Likewise Frau Brechenmacher suffers through isolation throughout the story and also male dominance is one of the major themes that are highlighted in the story. These themes areRead MoreShort Story and People1473 Words   |  6 Pagesï » ¿Title: Story Of An Hour Author: Kate Chopin I. On The Elements / Literary Concepts The short story Story Of An Hour is all about the series of emotions that the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard showed to the readers. With the kind of plot of this short story, it actually refers to the moments that Mrs. Mallard knew that all this time, her husband was alive. For the symbol, I like the title of this short story because it actually symbolizes the time where Mrs. Mallard died with joy. And with thatRead MoreShort Story Essay1294 Words   |  6 PagesA short story concentrates on creating a single dynamic effect and is limited in character and situation. It is a language of maximum yet economical effect. Every word must do a job, sometimes several jobs. Short stories are filled with numerous language and sound devices. These language and sound devices create a stronger image of the scenario or the characters within the text, which contribute to the overall pre-designed effect.As it is shown in the metaphor lipstick bleeding gently in CinnamonRead MoreGothic Short Story1447 W ords   |  6 Pages The End. In the short story, â€Å"Emma Barrett,† the reader follows a search party group searching for a missing girl named Emma deep in a forest in Oregon. The story follows through first person narration by a group member named Holden. This story would be considered a gothic short story because of its use of setting, theme, symbolism, and literary devices used to portray the horror of a missing six-year-old girl. Plot is the literal chronological development of the story, the sequence of eventsRead MoreRacism in the Short Stories1837 Words   |  7 PagesOften we read stories that tell stories of mixing the grouping may not always be what is legal or what people consider moral at the time. The things that you can learn from someone who is not like you is amazing if people took the time to consider this before judging someone the world as we know it would be a completely different place. The notion to overlook someone because they are not the same race, gender, creed, religion seems to be the way of the world for a long time. Racism is so prevalentRead MoreThe Idol Short Story1728 Words   |  7 PagesThe short stories â€Å"The Idol† by Adolfo Bioy Casares and â€Å"Axolotl† by Julio Cortà ¡zar address the notion of obsession, and the resulting harm that can come from it. Like all addictions, obsession makes one feel overwhelmed, as a single thought comes to continuously intr uding our mind, causing the individual to not be able to ignore these thoughts. In â€Å"Axolotl†, the narrator is drawn upon the axolotls at the Jardin des Plantes aquarium and his fascination towards the axolotls becomes an obsession. In

Modern Education Changing for the Future Essay Thesis Example For Students

Modern Education: Changing for the Future Essay Thesis During the past few decades we have seen a shift from Industrial work to Information technology work. Recently our country has just recovered from an economic depression. This depression was a wake up call for many people, as they saw highly educated professionals loosing their jobs. Why, were these educated people loosing their jobs?-Did they break the rules, not get along with their bosses, or loose their cool? No, they did not have the flexibility, versatility, and cooperative skills that are needed in business for a changing economy. They were educated in a time when liberal art educations, and individualized work skills were taught at colleges. Layoffs were also due in part to the globilization of the economy. Cheaper labor can be found in other countries, which results in the closing of American factories or a drastic cut in pay for workers. Corporate downsizing, atomization, and an aging population have also contributed to this change in the type of work available (Rifkin 177). As most Americans used to be in the same economic bracket regardless of their line of work, today a workers real competitive position in the world economy depends on what kind of job they have (Jacobus 253). Education is the key to creating the workers demanded from businesses today.In aviation and other workplaces today, employers are not only looking for highly skilled workers, but for people who are flexible, work well with others and have good problem solving skills. Colleges must implement new teaching approaches and offer specialized degrees now, to prepare students for the needs of employers in the information-technology age. A workers must be flexible to be able to change and grow with the economy and the needs of employers is very important in todays job market. With corporate downsizing and restructuring so prevalent, employers are demanding more of their employees. They must be more versatile and multi-task oriented (Schmiedl 29). Employees must be able to move from one job to another, and learn new tasks quickly. The more education they have the easier it is to adapt to these changes (Carnoy 123). Continuing education is also becoming more prevalent for todays workers. To stay at the top of their fields in knowledge and technology, employees must constantly be up-dating their education (Schmiedl 29). Flexibility also ties in with the skill of working well with other people. To listen and interact with others in your profession, you must be flexible or open minded to their opinions, ideas and insights. Interaction with other employees and being a people person enforces cooperative skills. These cooperative skills can benefit the company as a whole, just as the Nobel Prize winner James Watson said Nothing new that is really interesting comes with out collaboration (qtd. in Johnson 26). These cooperative skills once taught only to management, now must be integrated to the employees, as many management positions have been eliminated. Workers must now possess a management mentality, so that they can co-exist and work beneficially together (Carnoy 123). Problem solving skills are a necessity for even the simplest of jobs. A high order of problem solving skills are needed for more advanced positions jobs such as in aviation (pilots), and in computers and other technical jobs. Having the ability to work through problems to come up with a positive end result can be a long and arduous task. The people who have these problems solving skills can organize more learning, and help others to succeed in solving problems (Carnoy 123). Group cooperation heightens and speeds up the time in which it takes to solve problems. .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0 , .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0 .postImageUrl , .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0 , .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0:hover , .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0:visited , .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0:active { border:0!important; } .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0:active , .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0 .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u0012bda57929592d337fba2489cbf4a0:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: The Road Not Taken Essay It makes for an easier and more efficient approach to problem solving.As you can see the three main qualities of flexibility, working well with others and problem solving are very closely linked. Workers must be flexible to work well with others, which is important in having better problems solving skills. Missing just one of these qualities dampens the ability of a worker to be the productive employee, which employers are looking for. These skills are not inherent and are difficult to learn. That is why they must be implemented early on in college.For years colleges have been ignoring the power of teamwork and the achievements that could not have been made with out it (Johnson 26). The problem lies itself within the faculty. It is their job to implement cooperative learning into classes, and make it work. This is not an easy task, which is why many professors have opted to stick with lecturing. Lorenn Walker president of Business Learning Strategies Inc, says, Every time I am at school or attending training seminars, I am struck by how inactive students are expected to be. Most of the time students simply sit, while the teacher lectures them (27). It is much easier for students to experience the learning rather than having the answers told to them. Cooperative learning is the heart of problem based learning (Johnson 26). Group work allows students to network their thoughts and ideas, which than can be expanded with-in the group. They motivate each other by sharing their ideas and findings. The flexible gr! oup which works together can find solutions to problems quickly and efficiently, which is key in todays workplaces.Specialized degrees and education provide students with the expert skills needed in todays top jobs. Businesses and companies do not want people with general liberal arts degrees they want specialist in their field. A pilot needs special skills to fly an airplane that he/she can not get through a liberal art degree. Employers are only going to hire a pilot with the most and best qualifications. This is true in most all jobs that require a college degree employers want only the best.Some may argue that group work is not good because some people do the work and others take the easy road doing little. This can sometimes be true in college classes, but in the work environment, it is rare. Professionals are not going to carry the load for the whole group, and likewise most responsible adult will not let others do all the work. Professional adults do not have enough time to let their co-workers not do their share of the work, they will take action by speaking with the boss. To combat these problems in colleges, professors must set the parameters for the group: The professor must ensure that the student knows he/she is linked with others in the group, so that he/she cannot succeed unless the others do. Individual accountability however will be judged by tests and teacher observation of the group. The professor will teach the students how to socially interact with each other. Students will have to help others, contribute their own ideas and offer suppor! tive advice. Lastly and very importantly is teaching the group to engage in group processing. This exercise will help the students to find ways to improve their group efforts (Johnson 26). Being taught these group problem solving skills during college better prepares students for the type of work they will have to do in the workplace.To prepare workers for the information-technology age the starting point will have to be colleges. Colleges educate the school teachers and college professors. The sooner colleges begin to use cooperative learning the sooner it will trickle down into elementary and secondary schools. .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c , .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c .postImageUrl , .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c , .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c:hover , .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c:visited , .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c:active { border:0!important; } .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c:active , .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u91523da70140a2a03f3372ee3edd318c:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Bhavesh.Amin Essay Thus making cooperative learning a part of students lives earlier, so they will sooner adjust to its style. College professors must implement cooperative learning now, to teach flexibility and working well with others. This change is imperative not only to the success of workers but the entire economy. Workers with out these skills are at a serious disadvantage in getting jobs, and keeping them. Works CitedCarnoy, Martin. The Changing World of Work in the Information Age. New Political Economy 3.1 (1998): 123-129Jacobus, Lee. Why the Rich Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer. A World of Ideas. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford Books, 1998. 251-267.Johnson, David Johnson, Roger Smith, Karal. Cooperative Learning returns to College Change 30.4 (1998): 26-36Rifkin, Jeremy. A Civil Education for the Twenty-first Century: Preparing Students for a Three Sector Society. National Civic Review. 87.2 (1998): 177-182Schmidl, Joe. Changing the Face of Higher Education Pacific Business News 35.19 (1997): 29Walker, Lorenn. Hands-On Learning will Produce better Problem Solvers Pacific Business News 33.20 (1995): 27

Violence in the Movies Should Be Restricted free essay sample

Do you think a movie without any violence is less popular to capture audiences’ attention? There are a large number of movies come to the audiences everyday. For both movie producer and audiences’ benefit, violence in movies seems to be necessary. However, it is necessary for us to restrict violence in movies because teenage audiences will be easily influenced in bad ways; people will become apathetic in society while they have repeated exposure to violence in movies; this kind of movies can encourage people to have wrong lifestyles and values. Firstly, violence in movies will influence teenagers’ behavior and mental health. When we search â€Å"school shooting† on Google, there are 304,000,000 results within 0. 15 seconds. All of these tragedies happened in recent years after our media developed in a high speed. Such as the Winnenden school shooting in 2009. In this tragedy, Tim K. was a quiet boy who liked violence on computer games and movies. We will write a custom essay sample on Violence in the Movies Should Be Restricted or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page People may say violence in movies gives people a lot of visual enjoyment and make people relaxed after work and study. While most Hollywood famous action movie cannot be popular without the violence in it, historical movies cannot move people without any scene with blood. However, while violent movies are only for adults to feel relaxed, it is for these teenagers to find their role models in their life, and it has a big effect on teenagers’ behavior. Violence in movies not only encourages teenagers to do illegal things but also make those teenagers who are considering those violent crimes seem cool and makes them feel outstanding; on the other hand, teens are also imitating negative attitudes and behaviors when they feel accustomed to the violence in their real lives, ? and become scared of being victimized by others. Secondly, violence in movies will make people feel apathy to the society. Movie producers make violence to be a tool to draw audiences’ attention because people feel relaxed when they see these portrayals. There are lots of movies with violent previews to promote themselves; and in recent years, the success of this marketing tactic encourages thousands of moviemakers to increase violence in their movies. As this face shows, movie market cannot develop so rapidly without the violent elements. Lots of people may lose their jobs and movie market may lose its attraction while the violence in movies being restricted. Many people may think it is over reacting to restrict the violence in movies, because they think the violence in movies s only exist for art of movie or just fun. Unfortunately, the truth is people feel less sympathy to the victims of violence and felt more interested in the violent actions after they spend a lot of time watching violent movies. Thinking of school shootings, most of the murders were used to normal and quiet schoolboys, unfortunately, they get addicted to violence in video games, televisions and movies. Consequently, they do not notice differences between the vi olence in screen-based media and violence in real-life; they are apathetic to crimes in real life. Desensitization prevails like a disease in our society: â€Å"desensitization may also be inferred by examining related processed which are affected by desensitization. For example, when the desensitization occurs, the process of moral evaluation is disrupted because the individual does not perceive or respond to the cues that are necessary to initiate evaluative process. As a result, actions may be taken without consideration of their moral implications. Empathy and attitudes towards violence are important components of the process of moral evaluation, which may be affected by exposure to violence in real life or in the media† (Funk, Baldacci, Pasold and Baumgardner, 2004, p. 25). People are used to seeing violence; therefore, they will not response immediately when they physically face these kinds of situations; what is worse, they may just standby and ignore it. Imagine a society without any care; no one gives a hand to people in trouble, and that is the last thing we want to see. Lastly, violence in movies will influence people’s value. People become more frustrated than before, take drugs, abuse their children, alcoholics and many other social problems. Somehow, these stresses come from people’s wrong values about the wealth and celebrity. It is good for people to have ambitious while they want to be successful, sometimes, people will easily lose their determination without a strong mind. But nowadays, people are all eager to be the winner, while these kind values gradually change people’s mind, individuals become overly strict to themselves, giving too much pressure to themselves and easily get hurt from failures. One of the worst things about the violence in movies mentioned by Crisis Connection (2011) is that criminals are still at large after they break the law for most time. From what happened in movies, people learn to solve conflicts by violence and consider that the violent behavior is cool. Then, people’s values of justice are affected by movies, people considers Superman and criminals in Fast both as role models, whereas the second one is much easier to imitate. Almost half of all violent behavior on media without showing the hurt on victims, and there is only sixteen percent of the media products show the negative long-term consequence from criminal to victims, so that audiences will easily think the violence is nothing hurt but the short cut to success Violence in movies should be restricted. Violence in movies makes people violent and feels apathetic to other people’s lives and toward the whole society. All in all, violence in movies may attract bigger audiences, but the harms done are larger than any benefit. Reducing violence in movies is necessary.

Free Essays on The Impact Of Irony In Oedipus The King

â€Å"Sons and daughters of Thebes, behold: this was Oedipus, Greatest of men; he held the key to the deepest mysteries; Was envied by all his fellow-men for his great prosperity; Behold, what a full tide of misfortune swept over his head, Then learn that mortal man must always look to his ending, And none can be called happy until the day when he carries His happiness down to the grave in peace.† (77) The last lines in the Exedos presented here from Oedipus the King, which was written by the tragedian Sophocles, explicitly reveals the theme to be learned from this tragedy. Sophocles taught that the way to human happiness was through reverence and humiliation; he reminds the audience that the aim of man’s existence is to achieve the highest possible individual development within limits, which Oedipus does not. This theme can be applied universally to man today; everyone should strive to be the best that he can be and this is an idea portrayed in almost every society in the world. Oedipus believes that he is the best that he could ever be when in fact his destiny reveals the opposite. Irony is uniformly employed throughout the play to prolong dramatic tension, dramatacize the climax, and heighten the catharsis in the resolution. Dramatic irony is consistently implemented within the text which easily allows the audience to feel fear and pity for Oedipus. Oedipus’ incognizance to his fate maximizes the dramatic tension throughout the play. Swegles 2 The beginning lines in the First Episode sets the stage for dramatic tension within the play. Oedipus’ opening speech to the gathered audience is consumed with dramatic irony. â€Å"Until now I was a stranger to this tale, as I had been a stranger to the crime† (10). The audience knows that Oedipus killed his father and therefore being aware of his fate, the audience can distinguish the horror of Oedipus’ threat against the murderer of King Laius. Th... Free Essays on The Impact Of Irony In Oedipus The King Free Essays on The Impact Of Irony In Oedipus The King â€Å"Sons and daughters of Thebes, behold: this was Oedipus, Greatest of men; he held the key to the deepest mysteries; Was envied by all his fellow-men for his great prosperity; Behold, what a full tide of misfortune swept over his head, Then learn that mortal man must always look to his ending, And none can be called happy until the day when he carries His happiness down to the grave in peace.† (77) The last lines in the Exedos presented here from Oedipus the King, which was written by the tragedian Sophocles, explicitly reveals the theme to be learned from this tragedy. Sophocles taught that the way to human happiness was through reverence and humiliation; he reminds the audience that the aim of man’s existence is to achieve the highest possible individual development within limits, which Oedipus does not. This theme can be applied universally to man today; everyone should strive to be the best that he can be and this is an idea portrayed in almost every society in the world. Oedipus believes that he is the best that he could ever be when in fact his destiny reveals the opposite. Irony is uniformly employed throughout the play to prolong dramatic tension, dramatacize the climax, and heighten the catharsis in the resolution. Dramatic irony is consistently implemented within the text which easily allows the audience to feel fear and pity for Oedipus. Oedipus’ incognizance to his fate maximizes the dramatic tension throughout the play. Swegles 2 The beginning lines in the First Episode sets the stage for dramatic tension within the play. Oedipus’ opening speech to the gathered audience is consumed with dramatic irony. â€Å"Until now I was a stranger to this tale, as I had been a stranger to the crime† (10). The audience knows that Oedipus killed his father and therefore being aware of his fate, the audience can distinguish the horror of Oedipus’ threat against the murderer of King Laius. Th...

The approach to disclosure in the Companies Act 2006 is preoccupied Essay

The approach to disclosure in the Companies Act 2006 is preoccupied with one audience, shareholders - Essay Example The obvious way for companies to prove legitimacy to the wider class of stakeholders is through reporting requirements. Unfortunately, the Companies Act 2006, while recognizing the social contract between the company and stakeholders, does not make social and environmental reporting mandatory. A close reading of the relevant sections of the 2006 Act reveals that environmental and social reporting are entirely voluntary. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the Companies Act 2006 has shifted momentum in favour of stakeholder theory to the principle of shareholder primacy. Clark and Knight argue that the disclosure requirements contained in the Companies Act 2006 appear to meet the needs of shareholder and while they may appear to meet the needs of stakeholders, the disclosure requirements are motivated by the market value of the corporation rather than expanding the concept of corporate social responsibility. In this regard, the disclosure requirements of the Companies Act 2006 speaks to informing the shareholders of the company rather than to all stakeholders. Essentially, companies, may if they wish, inform stakeholders of their social and environmental activities and policies, while they must inform shareholders of their financial activities and policies. This is symptomatic of the ambiguous approach taken by the Companies Act 2006 to stakeholder and shareholder primacy.

Customer portfolio and Strategic Account Management 04255 Essay

Customer portfolio and Strategic Account Management 04255 - Essay Example This paper is focused on the concept of customer portfolio and its relevance to the strategic account management. Storbacka (2012) mentioned that the concept of strategic account management is based on the â€Å"co-creation of value†. The term strategic accounts or the key accounts indicate to the most valuable customers of the company (Ford et al, 2003). The process of value generation lies in the centre of the corporate goals that allows the firms to deeply focus on understanding the customers’ value creating process and how the firm’s strategies are responsible for it. Homburg et al (2002) opined that the value generation through strategic account management program involves a long list of activities including product development, pricing, distribution, offering services along with manufacturing and sales. The integrated effect of these factors yields value for the customers, which creates a long term relationship between them and the firms. Piercy and Lane (2006) argued that there are significant levels of risks involved with the implementation of the strategic account management process. There must be a proper alignment of the internal organizational activities and the organizational goals. To put it simply Guesalaga and Johnston (2010) described that the organisational activities of different departments must be holistically aligned to the goals and objectives related to the customer value generation. Sherman et al (2003) proposed that the strategic account management should be viewed as a process of conducting business and not simple a selling process. The concept of inter-organizational alignment suggests that the organizations should increase its overall understanding of the business concerns of the customers and creating value proposition through a â€Å"joint venture†. Eid and Trueman (2002) have mentioned that the strategic or key accounts management has

Western philosophy Essay Example for Free

Western philosophy Essay Philosophy is the discipline concerned with questions of how one should live (ethics); what sorts of things exist and what are their essential natures (metaphysics); what counts as genuine knowledge (epistemology); and what are the correct principles of reasoning (logic). The word is of Ancient Greek origin (philosophia), meaning love of wisdom. Definition of philosophy: Every definition of philosophy is controversial. The field has historically expanded and changed depending upon what kinds of questions were interesting or relevant in a given era. It is generally agreed that philosophy is a method, rather than a set of claims, propositions, or theories. Its investigations are based upon rational thinking, striving to make no unexamined assumptions and no leaps based on faith or pure analogy. Different philosophers have had varied ideas about the nature of reason. There is also disagreement about the subject matter of philosophy. Some think that philosophy examines the process of inquiry itself. Others, that there are essentially philosophical propositions which it is the task of philosophy to answer. Although the word philosophy originates in Ancient Greece, many figures in the history of other cultures have addressed similar topics in similar ways. The philosophers of East and South Asia are discussed in Eastern philosophy, while the philosophers of North Africa and the Middle East, because of their strong interactions with Europe, are usually considered part of Western philosophy. Branches of philosophy: The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. To give an exhaustive list of the main divisions of philosophy is difficult, because various topics have been studied by philosophers at various times. Ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and logic are usually included. Other topics include politics, aesthetics, and religion. In addition, most academic subjects have a philosophy, for example the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of history. Metaphysics was first studied systematically by Aristotle. He did not use that term; the term emerged because in later editions of Aristotles works the book on what is now called metaphysics came after Aristotles study of physics. He calls the subject first philosophy (or sometimes just wisdom), and says it is the subject that deals with first causes and the principles of things. The modern meaning of the term is any inquiry dealing with the ultimate nature of what exists. Epistemology is concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge, and whether knowledge is possible. Ethics, or moral philosophy, is concerned with questions of how agents ought to act. Platos early dialogues constitute a search for definitions of virtue. Metaethics is the study of whether ethical value judgments can be objective at all. Ethics can also be conducted within a religious context. Logic has two broad divisions: mathematical logic (formal symbolic logic) and what is now called philosophical logic, the logic of language. Greek philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy: Ancient Greek philosophy may be divided into the pre-Socratic period, the Socratic period, and the post-Aristotelian period (or Hellenistic period). The pre-Socratic period was characterized by metaphysical speculation, often preserved in the form of grand, sweeping statements, such as All is fire or All changes. Important pre-Socratic philosophers include Pythagoras, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Democritus, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles. The Socratic period is named in honor of Socrates, who, along with his pupil Plato, revolutionized philosophy through the use of the Socratic method, which developed the very general philosophical methods of definition, analysis, and synthesis. While no writings of Socrates survive, his influence as a skeptic is transmitted through Platos works. Platos writings are often considered basic texts in philosophy as they defined the fundamental issues of philosophy for future generations. These issues and others were taken up by Aristotle, who studied at Platos school, the Academy, and who often disagreed with what Plato had written. The subsequent period ushered in such philosophers as Euclid, Epicurus, Chrysippus, Hipparchia the Cynic, Pyrrho, and Sextus Empiricus. Though many of these philosophers may seem irrelevant given current scientific knowledge, their systems of thought continue to influence both philosophy and science today. Medieval philosophy History: Medieval philosophy is the philosophy of Western Europe and the Middle East during what is now known as the medieval era or the Middle Ages, roughly extending from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance period. Medieval philosophy is defined partly by the rediscovery and further development of classical Greek philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate sacred doctrine (in Islam, Judaism and Christianity) and secular learning. Some problems discussed throughout this period are the relation of faith to reason, the existence and unity of God, the object of theology and metaphysics, the problems of knowledge, of universals, and of individuation. Philosophers from the Middle Ages include the Muslim philosophers Alkindus, Alfarabi, Alhacen, Avicenna, Algazel, Avempace, Abubacer and Averroes; the Jewish philosophers Maimonides and Gersonides; and the Christian philosophers Anselm, Peter Abelard, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Jean Buridan. Early modern philosophy History(c. 1600 c. 1800): Modern philosophy is usually considered to begin with the revival of skepticism and the genesis of modern physical science. Canonical figures include Montaigne, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Chronologically, this era spans the 17th and 18th centuries, and is generally considered to end with Kants systematic attempt to reconcile Newtonian physics with traditional metaphysical topics. Later modern philosophy History(c. 1800 c. 1960): Later modern philosophy is usually considered to begin after the philosophy of Immanuel Kant at the beginning of the 19th-century. German idealists, Fichte, Hegel, Hoelderlin, Schelling, expanded on the work of Kant by maintaining that the world is rational and it is knowable as rational. Rejecting idealism, other philosophers, many working from outside the university, initiated lines of thought that would occupy academic philosophy in the early and mid-20th century: Contemporary philosophy History(c. 1960 present): In the last hundred years, philosophy has increasingly become an activity practiced within the modern research university, and accordingly it has grown more specialized and more distinct from the natural sciences. Much of philosophy in this period concerns itself with explaining the relation between the theories of the natural sciences and the ideas of the humanities or common sense. It is arguable that later modern philosophy ended with contemporary philosophys shift of focus from 19th century philosophers to 20th century philosophers. Realism and nominalism in Philosophy: Realism sometimes means the position opposed to the 18th-century Idealism, namely that some things have real existence outside the mind. Classically, however, realism is the doctrine that abstract entities corresponding to universal terms like man have a real existence. It is opposed to nominalism, the view that abstract or universal terms are words only, or denote mental states such as ideas, beliefs, or intentions. The latter position, famously held by William of Ockham, is conceptualism. Rationalism and empiricism in Philosophy: Rationalism is any view emphasizing the role or importance of human reason. Extreme rationalism tries to base all knowledge on reason alone. Rationalism typically starts from premises that cannot coherently be denied, then attempts by logical steps to deduce every possible object of knowledge. The first rationalist, in this broad sense, is often held to be Parmenides (fl. 480 BCE), who argued that it is impossible to doubt that thinking actually occurs. But thinking must have an object, therefore something beyond thinking really exists. Parmenides deduced that what really exists must have certain properties for example, that it cannot come into existence or cease to exist, that it is a coherent whole, that it remains the same eternally (in fact, exists altogether outside time). Zeno of Elea (born c. 489 BCE) was a disciple of Parmenides, and argued that motion is impossible, since the assertion that it exists implies a contradiction. Plato (427-347 BCE) was also influenced by Parmenides, but combined rationalism with a form of realism. The philosophers work is to consider being, and the essence of things. But the characteristic of essences is that they are universal. The nature of a man, a triangle, a tree, applies to all men, all triangles, all trees. Plato argued that these essences are mind-independent forms, that humans (but particularly philosophers) can come to know by reason, and by ignoring the distractions of sense-perception. Modern rationalism begins with Descartes. Reflection on the nature of perceptual experience, as well as scientific discoveries in physiology and optics, led Descartes (and also Locke) to the view that we are directly aware of ideas, rather than objects. This view gave rise to three questions: Is an idea a true copy of the real thing that it represents? Sensation is not a direct interaction between bodily objects and our sense, but is a physiological process involving representation (for example, an image on the retina). Locke thought that a secondary quality such as a sensation of green could in no way resemble the arrangement of particles in matter that go to produce this sensation, although he thought that primary qualities such as shape, size, number, were really in objects. How can physical objects such as chairs and tables, or even physiological processes in the brain, give rise to mental items such as ideas? This is part of what became known as the mind-body problem. If all the contents of awareness are ideas, how can we know that anything exists apart from ideas? Descartes tried to address the last problem by reason. He began, echoing Parmenides, with a principle that he thought could not coherently be denied: I think, therefore I am (often given in his original Latin: Cogito ergo sum). From this principle, Descartes went on to construct a complete system of knowledge (which involves proving the existence of God, using, among other means, a version of the ontological argument). His view that reason alone could yield substantial truths about reality strongly influenced those philosophers usually considered modern rationalists (such as Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and Christian Wolff), while provoking criticism from other philosophers who have retrospectively come to be grouped together as empiricists. Empiricism, in contrast to rationalism, downplays or dismisses the ability of reason alone to yield knowledge of the world, preferring to base any knowledge we have on our senses. John Locke propounded the classic empiricist view in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1689, developing a form of naturalism and empiricism on roughly scientific (and Newtonian) principles. During this era, religious ideas played a mixed role in the struggles that preoccupied secular philosophy. Bishop Berkeleys famous idealist refutation of key tenets of Isaac Newton is a case of an Enlightenment philosopher who drew substantially from religious ideas. Other influential religious thinkers of the time include Blaise Pascal, Joseph Butler, and Jonathan Edwards. Other major writers, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke, took a rather different path. The restricted interests of many of the philosophers of the time foreshadow the separation and specialization of different areas of philosophy that would occur in the 20th century. Skepticism in Philosophy: Skepticism is a philosophical attitude that questions the possibility of obtaining any sort of knowledge. It was first articulated by Pyrrho, who believed that everything could be doubted except appearances. Sextus Empiricus (2nd century CE) describes skepticism as an ability to place in antithesis, in any manner whatever, appearances and judgments, and thus to come first of all to a suspension of judgment and then to mental tranquility. Skepticism so conceived is not merely the use of doubt, but is the use of doubt for a particular end: a calmness of the soul, or ataraxia. Skepticism poses itself as a challenge to dogmatism, whose adherents think they have found the truth. Sextus noted that the reliability of perception may be questioned, because it is idiosyncratic to the perceiver. The appearance of individual things changes depending on whether they are in a group: for example, the shavings of a goats horn are white when taken alone, yet the intact horn is black. A pencil, when viewed lengthwise, looks like a stick; but when examined at the tip, it looks merely like a circle. Skepticism was revived in the early modern period by Michel de Montaigne and Blaise Pascal. Its most extreme exponent, however, was David Hume. Hume argued that there are only two kinds of reasoning: what he called probable and demonstrative (cf Humes fork). Neither of these two forms of reasoning can lead us to a reasonable belief in the continued existence of an external world. Demonstrative reasoning cannot do this, because demonstration (that is, deductive reasoning from well-founded premises) alone cannot establish the uniformity of nature (as captured by scientific laws and principles, for example). Such reason alone cannot establish that the future will resemble the past. We have certain beliefs about the world (that the sun will rise tomorrow, for example), but these beliefs are the product of habit and custom, and do not depend on any sort of logical inferences from what is already given certain. But probable reasoning (inductive reasoning), which aims to take us from the observed to the unobserved, cannot do this either: it also depends on the uniformity of nature, and this supposed uniformity cannot be proved, without circularity, by any appeal to uniformity. The best that either sort of reasoning can accomplish is conditional truth: if certain assumptions are true, then certain conclusions follow. So nothing about the world can be established with certainty. Hume concludes that there is no solution to the skeptical argument except, in effect, to ignore it. Even if these matters were resolved in every case, we would have in turn to justify our standard of justification, leading to an infinite regress (hence the term regress skepticism). Many philosophers have questioned the value of such skeptical arguments. The question of whether we can achieve knowledge of the external world is based on how high a standard we set for the justification of such knowledge. If our standard is absolute certainty, then we cannot progress beyond the existence of mental sensations. We cannot even deduce the existence of a coherent or continuing I that experiences these sensations, much less the existence of an external world. On the other hand, if our standard is too low, then we admit follies and illusions into our body of knowledge. This argument against absolute skepticism asserts that the practical philosopher must move beyond solipsism, and accept a standard for knowledge that is high but not absolute. Idealism in Philosophy: Idealism is the epistemological doctrine that nothing can be directly known outside of the minds of thinking beings. Or in an alternative stronger form, it is the metaphysical doctrine that nothing exists apart from minds and the contents of minds. In modern Western philosophy, the epistemological doctrine begins as a core tenet of Descartes that what is in the mind is known more reliably than what is known through the senses. The first prominent modern Western idealist in the metaphysical sense was George Berkeley. Berkeley argued that there is no deep distinction between mental states, such as feeling pain, and the ideas about so-called external things, that appear to us through the senses. There is no real distinction, in this view, between certain sensations of heat and light that we experience, which lead us to believe in the external existence of a fire, and the fire itself. Those sensations are all there is to fire. Berkeley expressed this with the Latin formula esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived. In this view the opinion, strangely prevailing upon men, that houses, mountains, and rivers have an existence independent of their perception by a thinking being is false. Forms of idealism were prevalent in philosophy from the 18th century to the early 20th century. Transcendental idealism, advocated by Immanuel Kant, is the view that there are limits on what can be understood, since there is much that cannot be brought under the conditions of objective judgment. Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason (1781-1787) in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting approaches of rationalism and empiricism, and to establish a new groundwork for studying metaphysics. Kants intention with this work was to look at what we know and then consider what must be true about it, as a logical consequence of, the way we know it. One major theme was that there are fundamental features of reality that escape our direct knowledge because of the natural limits of the human faculties. Although Kant held that objective knowledge of the world required the mind to impose a conceptual or categorical framework on the stream of pure sensory data a framework including space and time themselves he maintained that things-in-themselves existed independently of  our perceptions and judgments; he was therefore not an idealist in any simple sense. Indeed, Kants account of things-in-themselves is both controversial and highly complex. Continuing his work, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schelling dispensed with belief in the independent existence of the world, and created a thoroughgoing idealist philosophy. The most notable work of this German idealism was G. W. F. Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit, of 1807. Hegel admitted his ideas werent new, but that all the previous philosophies had been incomplete. His goal was to correctly finish their job. Hegel asserts that the twin aims of philosophy are to account for the contradictions apparent in human experience (which arise, for instance, out of the supposed contradictions between being and not being ), and also simultaneously to resolve and preserve these contradictions by showing their compatibility at a higher level of examination (being and not being are resolved with becoming) . This program of acceptance and reconciliation of contradictions is known as the Hegelian dialectic. Philosophers in the Hegelian tradition include Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, who coined the term projection as pertaining to our inability to recognize anything in the external world without projecting qualities of ourselves upon those things, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and the British idealists, notably T. H. Green, J. M. E. McTaggart, and F. H. Bradley. Few 20th century philosophers have embraced idealism. However, quite a few have embraced Hegelian dialectic. Immanuel Kants Copernican Turn also remains an important philosophical concept today. Pragmatism in Philosophy: Pragmatism was founded in the spirit of finding a scientific concept of truth, which is not dependent on either personal insight (or revelation) or reference to some metaphysical realm. The truth of a statement should be judged by the effect it has on our actions and truth should be seen as that which the whole of scientific enquiry will ultimately agree on. This should probably be seen as a guiding principle more than a definition of what it means for something to be true, though the details of how this principle should be interpreted have been subject to discussion since Peirce first conceived it. Like Rorty many seem convinced that Pragmatism holds that the truth of beliefs does not consist in their correspondence with reality, but in their usefulness and efficacy. The late 19th-century American philosophers Charles Peirce and William James were its co-founders, and it was later developed by John Dewey as instrumentalism. Since the usefulness of any belief at any time might be contingent on circumstance, Peirce and James conceptualised final truth as that which would be established only by the future, final settlement of all opinion. Critics have accused pragmatism of falling victim to a simple fallacy: because something that is true proves useful, that usefulness is the basis for its truth. Thinkers in the pragmatist tradition have included John Dewey, George Santayana,W. V. O. Quine and C. I. Lewis. Phenomenology in Philosophy: Edmund Husserls phenomenology was an ambitious attempt to lay the foundations for an account of the structure of conscious experience in general. An important part of Husserls phenomenological project was to show that all conscious acts are directed at or about objective content, a feature that Husserl called intentionality. In the first part of his two-volume work, the Logical Investigations (1901), he launched an extended attack on psychologism. In the second part, he began to develop the technique of descriptive phenomenology, with the aim of showing how objective judgments are indeed grounded in conscious experience not, however, in the first-person experience of particular individuals, but in the properties essential to any experiences of the kind in question. He also attempted to identify the essential properties of any act of meaning. He developed the method further in Ideas (1913) as transcendental phenomenology, proposing to ground actual experience, and thus all fields of human knowledge, in the structure of consciousness of an ideal, or transcendental, ego. Later, he attempted to reconcile his transcendental standpoint with an acknowledgement of the intersubjective life-world in which real individual subjects interact. Husserl published only a few works in his lifetime, which treat phenomenology mainly in abstract methodological terms; but he left an enormous quantity of unpublished concrete analyses. Husserls work was immediately influential in Germany, with the foundation of phenomenological schools in Munich and Gottingen. Phenomenology later achieved international fame through the work of such philosophers as Martin Heidegger (formerly Husserls research assistant), Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Indeed, through the work of Heidegger and Sartre, Husserls focus on subjective experience influenced aspects of existentialism. Existentialism in Philosophy: Although they didnt use the term, the nineteenth century philosophers Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche are widely regarded as the fathers of existentialism. Their influence, however, has extended beyond existentialist thought. The main target of Kierkegaards writings was the idealist philosophical system of Hegel which, he thought, ignored or excluded the inner subjective life of living human beings. Kierkegaard, conversely, held that truth is subjectivity, arguing that what is most important to an actual human being are questions dealing with an individuals inner relationship to existence. In particular, Kierkegaard, a Christian, believed that the truth of religious faith was a subjective question, and one to be wrestled with passionately. Although Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were among his influences, the extent to which the German philosopher Martin Heidegger should be considered an existentialist is debatable. In Being and Time he presented a method of rooting philosophical explanations in human existence (Dasein) to be analysed in terms of existential categories (existentiale); and this has led many commentators to treat him as an important figure in the existentialist movement. However, in The Letter on Humanism, Heidegger explicitly rejected the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre became the best-known proponent of existentialism, exploring it not only in theoretical works such as Being and Nothingness , but also in plays and novels. Sartre, along with Albert Camus and Simone de Beauvoir, all represented an avowedly atheistic branch of existentialism, which is now more closely associated with their ideas of nausea, contingency, bad faith, and the absurd than with Kierkegaards spiritual angst. Nevertheless, the focus on the individual human being, responsible before the universe for the authenticity of his or her existence, is common to all these thinkers. Structuralism and post-structuralism in Philosophy: Inaugurated by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, structuralism sought to ferret out the underlying systems through analysing the discourses they both limit and make possible. Saussure conceived of the sign as being delimited by all the other signs in the system, and ideas as being incapable of existence prior to linguistic structure, which articulates thought. This led continental thought away from humanism, and toward what was termed the decentering of man: language is no longer spoken by man to express a true inner self, but language speaks man. Structuralism sought the province of a hard science, but its positivism soon came under fire by poststructuralism, a wide field of thinkers, some of whom were once themselves structuralists, but later came to criticize it. Structuralists believed they could analyse systems from an external, objective standing, for example, but the poststructuralists argued that this is incorrect, that one cannot transcend structures and thus analysis is itself determined by what it examines, that systems are ultimately self-referential. Furthermore, while the distinction between the signifier and signified was treated as crystalline by structuralists, poststructuralists asserted that every attempt to grasp the signified would simply result in the proliferation of more signifiers, so meaning is always in a state of being deferred, making an ultimate interpretation impossible. Structuralism came to dominate continental philosophy from the 1960s onward, encompassing thinkers as diverse as Michel Foucault and Jacques Lacan. The analytic tradition in Philosophy: The term analytic philosophy roughly designates a group of philosophical methods that stress clarity of meaning above all other criteria. The philosophy developed as a critique of Hegel and his followers in particular, and of speculative philosophy in general. Some schools in the group include 20th-century realism, logical atomism, logical positivism, and ordinary language. The motivation is to have philosophical studies go beyond personal opinion and begin to have the cogency of mathematical proofs. In 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which gave a rigidly logical account of linguistic and philosophical issues. At the time, he understood most of the problems of philosophy as mere puzzles of language, which could be solved by clear thought. Years later he would reverse a number of the positions he had set out in the Tractatus, in for example his second major work, Philosophical Investigations (1953). Investigations encouraged the development of ordinary language philosophy, which was promoted by Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, and a few others. The ordinary language philosophy thinkers shared a common outlook with many older philosophers (Jeremy Bentham, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Stuart Mill), and it was this style of philosophical inquiry that characterized English-language philosophy for the second half of the 20th century. Ethics and political in Philosophy: From ancient times, and well beyond them, the roots of justification for political authority were inescapably tied to outlooks on human nature. In The Republic, Plato declared that the ideal society would be run by a council of philosopher-kings, since those best at philosophy are best able to realize the good. Even Plato, however, required philosophers to make their way in the world for many years before beginning their rule at the age of fifty. For Aristotle, humans are political animals (i. e. social animals), and governments are set up in order to pursue good for the community. Aristotle reasoned that, since the state (polis) was the highest form of community, it has the purpose of pursuing the highest good. Aristotle viewed political power as the result of natural inequalities in skill and virtue. Because of these differences, he favored an aristocracy of the able and virtuous. For Aristotle, the person cannot be complete unless he or she lives in a community. His The Nicomachean Ethics and The Politics are meant to be read in that order. The first book addresses virtues (or excellences) in the person as a citizen; the second addresses the proper form of government to ensure that citizens will be virtuous, and therefore complete. Both books deal with the essential role of justice in civic life. Nicolas of Cusa rekindled Platonic thought in the early 15th century. He promoted democracy in Medieval Europe, both in his writings and in his organization of the Council of Florence. Unlike Aristotle and the Hobbesian tradition to follow, Cusa saw human beings as equal and divine (that is, made in Gods image), so democracy would be the only just form of government. Cusas views are credited by some as sparking the Italian Renaissance, which gave rise to the notion of Nation-States. Later, Niccolo Machiavelli rejected the views of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas as unrealistic. The ideal sovereign is not the embodiment of the moral virtues; rather the sovereign does whatever is successful and necessary, rather than what is morally praiseworthy. Thomas Hobbes also contested many elements of Aristotles views. For Hobbes, human nature is essentially anti-social: people are essentially egoistic, and this egoism makes life difficult in the natural state of things. Moreover, Hobbes argued, though people may have natural inequalities, these are trivial, since no particular talents or virtues that people may have will make them safe from harm inflicted by others. For these reasons, Hobbes concluded that the state arises from a common agreement to raise the community out of the state of nature. This can only be done by the establishment of a sovereign, in which (or whom) is vested complete control over the community, and which is able to inspire awe and terror in its subjects. Many in the Enlightenment were unsatisfied with existing doctrines in political philosophy, which seemed to marginalize or neglect the possibility of a democratic state. David Hume was among the first philosophers to question the existence of God, circa 1700. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was among those who attempted to overturn these doctrines: he responded to Hobbes by claiming that a human is by nature a kind of noble savage, and that society and social contracts corrupt this nature. Another critic was John Locke. In Second Treatise on Government he agreed with Hobbes that the nation-state was an efficient tool for raising humanity out of a deplorable state, but he argued that the sovereign might become an abominable institution compared to the relatively benign unmodulated state of nature. Following the doctrine of the fact-value distinction, due in part to the influence of David Hume and his student Adam Smith, appeals to human nature for political justification were weakened. Nevertheless, many political philosophers, especially moral realists, still make use of some essential human nature as a basis for their arguments. Consequentialism, Deontological ethics, and Virtue ethics in Philosophy: One debate that has commanded the attention of ethicists in the modern era has been between consequentialism (actions are to be morally evaluated solely by their consequences) and deontology (actions are to be morally evaluated solely by consideration of agents duties, the rights of those whom the action concerns, or both).