I need help with Philosophy

J

JujU

Guest
Alright, so I thought this course would be interesting considering the fact that it deals with life, God and so on and I was excited that I selected it as a general course...I am now regretting it!! I HATE PHILOSOPHY!! I was getting a 85% before mid-term and I am now getting a 61%!!!!! :mad:

HHHHHHHHHEEEEEEELLLLLLPPPPPPPPP!!

I failed my Rene Decartes test :( sille ardouh!! I got 6/20 AND it was multiple choice!! (I guessed everything and I am surprised that I got six right!) Actually, the WHOLE class failed!! Every test paper had red writing on it and plenty of Xes! My teacher was having a heart attack when giving us the answers lmao! The book is just difficult to understand and I have an exam on him which is worth 25%....So can anyone give me the fastest way of committing suicide?? ANYONE?!?!?

I have an essay which is also worth 25% and I am writing my essay on Sigmund Freud--The Future of an Illusion and Jean-Paul Sartre--Existentialism and Humans Emotions and I am comparing their philosophical views on the nature of the self, existence, and God. If anyone knows anything or has a website that is helpful please reply.

You would be of extreme help!

Thank you for reading...
 
JooJ..

Firstly:

I got 6/20 AND it was multiple choice!!
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Wtf, how did you manage that. :blink: LOL.. ok that aside..

Freud as you know was a psychologist at heart. If your essay is going to about Existentialism, I suggest you definetly include Kierkegaard, as he is the founder of modern Existentialism. In relation to God, he created a very individualistic Christianity. So a lot of his work would involve the fusion of Existentialism and God/Theology. In addition to this, Nietzsche should also be mentioned as be was a devout believer in earthly delights over eschatological ones. He denied God, and pronounced 'God is dead' as you know.. so his work is of vital importance as variation from the common theme. You might even include some metaphysics in this, because the nature of self was first touched upon as early as the Greeks.. Sartre as you said is pretty good material for such an essay, but he implemented some Marxism in his work when reviewing society. Heideggar did a lot of work on self, all the work with oneself among society etc.. and the whole 'masks' concept he had. This can be tied in with Sartre.

These are all pretty much starting points, pick what you will to elaborate.. and research...

bart.gif


Btw.. the fastest way of commiting suicide is breaking your own neck sideways, if your interested :) Ancient far eastern ritual.
 
My test was on Rene Decartes. I read half of the book and I didn't understand it so I gave up and I studied off of my teacher's powerpoint notes (obviously it did not help) lol

I am going to be talking about Freud's Freudian psychoanalysis and Sartre's Sartrean existentialism

This is my essay question...

Which philosophical view -- Freudian psychoanalysis or Sartrean existentialism -- do you think best describes and explains the nature of human existence and the human condition? Why? Compare and analyze Frued's and Sartre's ideas on the nature of the self, existence, and God. Discuss and analyze.

I do know that Freud's idea on the nature of the self deals with the id, ego, and superego and according to my teacher Sartre's idea on the nature of the self is that we have free will.
 
This is what we learned in class LOL a bit disturbing :bangin:

Freudian psychoanalysis

The Oedipal crisis

Each stage has certain difficult tasks associated with it where problems are more likely to arise. For the oral stage, this is weaning. For the anal stage, it's potty training. For the phallic stage, it is the Oedipal crisis, named after the ancient Greek story of king Oedipus, who inadvertently killed his father and married his mother.

Here's how the Oedipal crisis works: The first love-object for all of us is our mother. We want her attention, we want her affection, we want her caresses, we want her, in a broadly sexual way. The young boy, however, has a rival for his mother's charms: his father! His father is bigger, stronger, smarter, and he gets to sleep with mother, while junior pines away in his lonely little bed. Dad is the enemy.

About the time the little boy recognizes this archetypal situation, he has become aware of some of the more subtle differences between boys and girls, the ones other than hair length and clothing styles. From his naive perspective, the difference is that he has a penis, and girls do not. At this point in life, it seems to the child that having something is infinitely better than not having something, and so he is pleased with this state of affairs.

But the question arises: where is the girl's penis? Perhaps she has lost it somehow. Perhaps it was cut off. Perhaps this could happen to him! This is the beginning of castration anxiety, a slight misnomer for the fear of losing one's penis.

To return to the story, the boy, recognizing his father's superiority and fearing for his penis, engages some of his ego defenses: He displaces his sexual impulses from his mother to girls and, later, women; And he identifies with the aggressor, dad, and attempts to become more and more like him, that is to say, a man. After a few years of latency, he enters adolescence and the world of mature heterosexuality.

The girl also begins her life in love with her mother, so we have the problem of getting her to switch her affections to her father before the Oedipal process can take place. Freud accomplishes this with the idea of penis envy: The young girl, too, has noticed the difference between boys and girls and feels that she, somehow, doesn't measure up. She would like to have one, too, and all the power associated with it. At very least, she would like a penis substitute, such as a baby. As every child knows, you need a father as well as a mother to have a baby, so the young girl sets her sights on dad.

Dad, of course, is already taken. The young girl displaces from him to boys and men, and identifies with mom, the woman who got the man she really wanted. Note that one thing is missing here: The girl does not suffer from the powerful motivation of castration anxiety, since she cannot lose what she doesn't have. Freud felt that the lack of this great fear accounts for fact (as he saw it) that women were both less firmly heterosexual than men and somewhat less morally-inclined.
 
Sorry honey, I haven't had a chance to read all the posts, but if I were you, I'd go with Freud. And no, it's not because of my Psychology background, but my experience with writing philosophy papers. PM me later and I'll send you some of my essay on Freud that I did in m my own philosophy class, but I used his "Civilization and Its Discontents" text because it is GREAT for thinking and writing "human condition" papers. It might help if you read the first few chapters; he goes into depth about the pain and pleasure principles and how they guide nearly ALL of our actions.

I don't believe in about 95% of Freud's theories, but that doesn't mean they're not interesting, or that at basic value, they hold some truth. Good luck khayee and please ask me any specific questions if you have them!

:bigarmhug:
 
You're being given multiple choice tests in a philosophy course? Isn't that kind of, how do you say, feckin retarded?

I took philosophy for a while, too and hated it. It wasn't until I read it on my own that I started to enjoy...but teaching it would be a headache.

Shamirum, even Freud's descendants think he was full of ikhreh. He's fun to read though!
 
Juju

Msg Renee, i sure she can help u :wink:

or Shamirum could aswell, same thing lol
 
this is gona sound so nerdy of me but here goes..

i never really was into freud, he gave me the creeps. anyone studied heidegger?


sartre was way too deep thats what made him interesting. He thought that if there is an intelligent divine creator the ideas in His mind would obviously precede His actual acts of creation. This is the reason why sartre believes that in the world created and governed by God essences necessarily precede existence. If God exists, then essence precedes existence for everything in the world except for God himself. God is the only exception to the rule since He is by definition an identity of essence and existence.

even if God does not exist there is at least one realm in which essence necessarily precedes existence: the realm of technological production. so does the technological model of production appropriately explain human action in its entirety? If the answer is "no" then id say there is a chance that human self-generation displays its own legislation/rules along the idea that human essence rather follows than precedes human reality. Of course, everything depends on whether God exists or not la?

if existentialism "makes human life possible" , it cant treat the question of God as a purely theological or academic issue. the way how we resolve the question whether God exists determines the character of human self-understanding and the general attitude of man in the world. note that in his essay sartre says that the problem of God's existence is not "the issue" for existentialism. But he means this only with regard to the already adopted stance that "man needs to regain himself" and realize that "nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of God's existence". i think this is at the end of his essay

so if we believe that God has created man in his own image then, according to sartre, we have to admit that human essence, as conceived by God, precedes existence. also, one could be prompted to assert that if human essence precedes existence, then God, as its bearer, must exist. sartre is ready to accept this kind of argument from design assuming that its premise is true, but its implication is not valid (the priority of natural substantial forms can exist spontaneously without any God). It is therefore safer not to convert the hypothetical proposition which establsihes the priority of essence based on the existence of God

sartre said "man is nothing but what he makes of himself" isnt that simliar to the advice we give some people? like we say to them "life is what you make it" or if we see someone depressed we say "you gotta take charge of your life be in control make something of it"

sorry if im off track
 
namelessnarrator said:
You're being given multiple choice tests in a philosophy course? Isn't that kind of, how do you say, feckin retarded?

I took philosophy for a while, too and hated it. It wasn't until I read it on my own that I started to enjoy...but teaching it would be a headache.

Shamirum, even Freud's descendants think he was full of ikhreh. He's fun to read though!
Click to expand...

We are given multiple choice questons for tests but essay questions for exams.
 
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