An archetypal hero is respected for their good moral character, maturity, and courage. In J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and Diablo Cody’s Juno there are excellent examples of antiheros, characters who lack heroic qualities, but are still considered to be protagonists. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye features Holden Caulfield, a sixteen year old teenager from New York, who has been expelled from school multiple times. Holden deals with the phoniness of his classmates, roommates, and teachers, and tries to come to terms with the fact that society is superficial and materialistic. The main character in Diablo Cody’s Juno is a sixteen year old girl by the name of Juno, who becomes pregnant and now regrets having intercourse in the first place. She suffers from general pregnancy sickness, emotional stress, and public humiliation. The protagonists in both pieces act as antiheros. Both Holden and Juno are ashamed of their actions, as they reflect poorly on their characters. Though they are embarrassed, both protagonists fail to improve their situations and instead behave like antiheros. Holden and Juno demonstrate cowardice, are irresponsible, and try desperately to preserve their childhood innocence.…
Have you ever wanted to escape from your old life and start a new one? Well Chris McCandless did. Chris McCandless was a transcendentalist (a person that analyzes the process of nature) that wanted to forget about his past . McCandless didn't want to live the same life anymore, he was set out to show his love for nature. McCandless travelled through North America living with harsh necessities and off the land. Throughout McCandless’ adventures of “Into the Wild” he shows how he forgets the past and moves on to be a transcendentalist while he sets out to show his love for nature.…
Christopher McCandless was a bright young man who had graduated from Emory University, and was an avid outdoorsman. An article was written after his death, “Death of an Innocent” that discussed his time in Alaska as well as his motives for traveling there. A movie was later made about his adventures in 1992 and 1993 titled “Into The WIld”. Chris’s journey was all in an effort to achieve a higher level of transcendental thinking, transcendentalism being the belief that in order to understand the nature of reality, one must first examine and analyze the reasoning process that governs the nature of experience. Christopher McCandless had a generous heart, and was a good person which is to be admired, but he was also a fool for thinking that he…
Secular Humanism, alternatively known as humanism, “involves an affirmation of immanent, this-worldly realities, alone with a denial or exclusion of transcendent, other-worldly realities”. Secular Humanism is its own belief system of rejecting God when man chooses to no longer be a subservient to a higher, supernatural authority. It is noted as a worldview and lifestyle oriented to the ungodly rather than the spiritual. Norman Richard describes man as “piece of work” which is ultimately called humanism. “If a human being is ‘a piece of work’, this suggests a workman who fashioned us – presumably a divine creator”. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of secular humanism, followed by an evaluation of objective criteria of…
In chapter one, The Nonrational Foundations of Rationality, Collins explains that humans in society act on more than rational thinking. Being considered as a superior race, human beings pride themselves on their capacity to use reason in order to problem solve and create new science and technology. However, if this was a completely rational world, Collins argues, no social contracts would exist and thus, society would not exist at all, the world would just be composed of isolated individuals. It is not rational to trust that other people's actions will benefit the individual. Collins alludes to people having their self-interest as their main concern. So how does a society form or stick together as a cohesive unit? To help explain this, Collins use the free bus example, in which he concluded the rational thing for an individual to do is to expect or encourage everyone else to be to contribute to the fund of the bus, while the individual just rides on for free. The system could work if people felt a sense of duty…
Often people have to endure tests of character in order to prove who they are. It is when people have to face great opposition that their character is truly shown; we see whether people are heroes or cowards. Those who are heroic always stand up for their morals and never back down and do selfless acts for the good of others. When people encounter moments where they have to face opposition they can do either of two things; they can stand up for what they believe in and do what they think is the right thing to do, or they can sit back and let someone else do it and simply try to ignore the problem. The ones who always stand up for what they believe are the people who are true heroes. People who have a heroic character will constantly rise up and speak out loud when they see that something wrong is going on. The people who are heroes are incredibly important to society, because they are the people who work for a better tomorrow; they are the people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for something better.…
A hero is “a person, typically a man, who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities,”(Google). There are many examples of heroes in literature, such as Odysseus or Harry Potter. There are, however, some characters in stories that do not fit this category as well as others. This group of people is called “antiheroes.” An antihero is like a hero, although this person may not have the same qualities as a hero, or may display non-heroic actions. In Lois Lowry’s The Giver, the main character, a boy named Jonas, is an antihero. Jonas does not act particularly heroic in the novel, and does not fit the definition of a true hero in his qualities.…
After learning from and studying your philosophical view of man-kind, I understand that it is believed by you that because there is no God, there are no maker of man and no such thing as a divine conception of man in accordance with which man was created. This is defective for the sole fact that without a God, we (as a human) would not be here today. It has always been known the one individual is born from another from generation to generation into this land. Our God is the first one to be known to our creation, and therefore the first “being” of man-kind. It is our God that has brought us here to this day and age. Furthermore, it has been made known that the individual, in effect, has been thrown into existence without any real reason for being. This has been mistaken. Man is here today to create today for what will be of existence tomorrow. Part of our existence includes restructuring, improving, and revolutionizing the world around us. The world we have today is the one that will exist for our next generation.…
Today, it is much harder to detach the concept of heroism from morality; we only call heroes those whom we admire and wish to emulate. But still the concept retains that original link to possibility. We need heroes first and foremost because our heroes help define the limits of our aspirations. We largely define our ideals by the heroes we choose, and our ideals -- things like courage, honor, and justice -- largely define us. Our heroes are symbols for us of all the qualities we would like to possess and all the ambitions we would like to satisfy. A person who chooses Martin Luther King or Susan B. Anthony as a hero is going to have a very different sense of what human…
The idealistic heroic figure is the foundation of moral values and genuine deeds. A hero is a person in one’s life whom is commended in greater admiration than the average civilian. Throughout history, there has always been heroes, whether famous or not, who stand out among the crowd in a positive way. Good and bad people in the world all have at least one individual who inspires daily actions and decisions that mold the person they desire to be. Mankind needs heroes to ignite the flame of inspiration and aspiration to rise above the mundane endless craving for immoral power and seek the essential social progression.…
tragic hero". he is neither good nor evil, but rather a man whose concept of…
An anti-hero is, in most cases, the main character of a film or novel. In this case the previous statement is true. Randle Patrick McMurphy is the main character in “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”, written by Ken Kesey. The anti-hero is either physically or morally flawed and tends to base his actions on the benefits it will have on him, rather than those surrounding him (Nebuchadnezzar, 2017). R.P McMurphy is not the only antihero in existence. For example, Walter White from ‘Breaking Bad’ as well as Dexter Morgan, Achilles and a more modern antihero being Deadpool. McMurphy is portrayed as an anti-hero through his appearance, his attitude, his actions and through his eventual downfall. His main motivation for helping people is to prove his intelligence and all of his heroic deeds were for selfish reasons. He is a greatly flawed character and…
First I will discuss ‘divine command theory’, one horn of the dilemma (2). Next, I will talk about the other horn, which includes all theories about ethics (or meta-ethics) that aren’t related to God’s will (1). After examining the weaknesses of each option, I will consider – and argue against - the alternative options presented by theists. Finally, I will state the reasons why the arguments for divine command theory aren’t strong enough, and why (1) is the most sensible option to choose.…
Transcendentalism is a societal movement that focuses around the conscious and purity. The world today is a completely different place than it was during the transcendental era. Society today has smartphones, airplanes, and quantum computers, all of which actually go against transcendentalist beliefs. Despite its age, the transcendentalist values still affect society today. Through growing environmental awareness, self reliance, and the optimistic outlook people have today, transcendentalism can still be seen in today’s society.…
The Problem of Evil coined by Epicurus states that: “Either God wants to eradicate evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can but does not want to he is wicked. If God can eradicate evil, and He wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?” This problem has long bothered many theologians and philosophers, even St. Thomas Aquinas stated that it is a major objection to the existence of God. Undoubtedly, evil exists and its mere existence is so evident that it would be preposterous to deny it and since we cannot deny its existence, we must then try to prove that its existence would not oppose the existence of God. In this paper, I will try to explain the problem of evil through our free will, and the causes and consequences that are brought by natural evil then I will also attempt to enumerate the root causes of evil and the possible purpose of its existence. On the first part of this paper, I will explain that moral evil is just a byproduct of our wrong choices and it will be followed by the relation of natural evil to the design of our world. Writings of post-modern philosophers were mainly my guide in conducting this research because their studies are applicable and relevant in our modern world, and the books that I referred to were compilations regarding the existence of God and not primary texts of ancient or medieval philosophers.…