International Foundation Programme Culture‚ Theory and Society Assignment 2 “What valid criticisms can be made of liberal democracy?” Class: F4 Student: Tzu-Han Lin What valid criticisms can be made of liberal democracy? Liberal democracy is seen as the most common political form of government which has been implemented in the contemporary world. According to the finding of Freedom in the World 2011 Survey released by the US-based Freedom House (http://www.freedomhouse.org/)‚ there
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I do agree with Bradley that the ending of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn serves as part of Twain’s criticism of American society. The fact that Huck knew that Jim was a freed slave‚ and still allowed Jim to be chased‚ chained and recaptured‚ speaks to how truly indoctrinated Tom Sawyer was in Southern racist and elitist traditions. Tom waited to share that critical information about Jim until Tom had completed his adventure‚ at a substantial personal cost and risk to both Jim and Huck. Furthermore
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Psychoanalytical criticism focuses on the characters‚ symbols‚ and images in a literary work to decipher meanings and to gain an insight into the mind of the author. The terminology used is typically Freudian‚ even though Freud has fallen into disfavor in the world of behavioral sciences. This current disaffection does not‚ however‚ invalidate psychoanalytical interpretation of many of the characters and situations that a writer may have intentionally or unintentionally constructed. The story "Young
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The Picture of Dorian Gray Criticism The Picture of Dorian Gray is a novel that depicts the evil side of human nature and is developed by motifs and the morals of the characters. There are many characters that show opposite moral believes‚ allowing the reader to judge the deterioration of a character’s virtues by comparison. This novel has also lead to many personal issues for Oscar Wilde as it was used against him in a trial for homosexuality. There are many theories to the main theme of the
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Post-Apocalyptic Hierarchies: A Marxist Criticism of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road The storm of post-apocalyptic novels has taken much of the literary world by storm in the past century or so. This does not stop just there‚ of course‚ it branches so far into other media that the storyline of a human life following the collapse of the world as we know it is not at all an unfamiliar one. Movies‚ video games‚ and the traditional books have all taken their own look at this interesting offshoot of (science)
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Authors often use their works to convey criticisms of society. Such works of literature do not directly criticize specific real people or events. They do however present a sense of the writer’s concern with issues of social injustice and misguided values. Two strong examples of social criticism through literature are Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In both novels the writers project their social criticisms to the reader through the use of characterization
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Critics of the New Deal The New Deal aroused criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. The right criticized it for not being extremely socialist. Meanwhile‚ the left believed it was not liberal enough. Before the New Deal‚ the government did not intervene with the economy massively. The conservatives were supporters of such concept because they believed in the laissez-faire economics. Nonetheless‚ when president Roosevelt proposed the New deal‚ they felt the president was aiming to impel
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In tandem with literacy‚ literature has become one of the leading vehicles for social criticism in American history. It amplifies the author’s voice‚ reverberating it throughout the nation‚ molding the history of America by changing the opinions of the people on certain issues. It can induce cries of hope and merriment‚ like John Winthrop’s sermon A Model of Christian Charity‚ which speaks about the optimistic prospect of America as the “City upon a Hill” (Winthrop‚ 84). But it can also elicit the
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Philosopher Robert Louden presented a criticism of virtue ethics. Rather than arguing that virtue ethics as a moral theory is wrong‚ Louden argues that the agent-centeredness of values ethics fails to provide adequate guidance for the action of the agent‚ thereby making the theory useless and disregardable. Louden’s first criticism is that virtue ethics does not allow for actions to be viewed separately from the agent (Louden‚ 228). This focus on virtues and not actions result poses a problem when
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spilled over the question of whether the world-view of archetypal auteur Stanley Kubrick is nihilistic or not‚ and appropriately so. To my mind‚ this is one of the most important questions we can ask about genuine artists and their oeuvres. If auteur criticism is to have any validity‚ from a philosophical perspective‚ it must address such issues. True cinematic geniuses (e.g.‚ Bergman‚ Antonioni‚ Wertmuller‚ Hitchcock and Cronenberg‚ to name only a few) have something to teach us about the meaning of life
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