Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - HCJ

Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer was a German philosopher and one of the great pessimists and he was known for his philosophical clarity. Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation, claimed that the world is fundamentally what humans recognize in themselves as their will. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fully satisfied. He became a student at a University in 1809. There he studied metaphysics and he studied under a man who advised him to concentrate on Plato and Immanuel Kant, which is where he draws some of his influence from - Schopenhauer accepted Kant's double-aspect of the universe — the phenomenal (world of experience) and the noumenal (the true world, independent of experience).

Nietzsche: Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher. He wrote critical texts on religion, philosophy and science. Nietzsche's influence comes notably from existentialism. His style and radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth have resulted in much commentary and interpretation, mostly in the continental tradition. His key ideas include the death of God, perspectivism, the Ubermensch, and the will to power. Central to his philosophy is the idea of "life-affirmation", which involves an honest questioning of all ideas that drain life's expansive energies.

Nietzsche is renowned for saying that “god is dead” and that all that will follow this is violence – which in turn will lead to the end of mankind, Nietzsche also tries to find a “super-man” person. Nietzsche now shows his true pessimism about life, he says that there won’t be humans forever, so he believes that we will all die and that nothing we do matters at all, but he says this as a good thing... crazy right? In 1872 Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. However, his colleagues expressed little enthusiasm for the work. He renamed his book “Hellenism and Pessimism”. Nietzsche criticises Schopenhauer and calls him a Nihilist – he believes that Christians are the worst, they merely wait for death when we have just one life, we must live it to the fullest and ensure we die with no regrets, he believes that the Ubermensch does not apologise for its actions and therefore has no regrets.

Well that’s all for now, just for my revision purposes really, plus my notes are sort of bare for these two which isn’t good! Anyway, more to come sometime soon, so...

Stay classy :) x

Reinvented Blog :)

So I thought that it’s about time my onyx-cceptable blog has its much needed makeover, with that in mind I think im going to post more about stuff that isn’t just my work (paha let’s see how long this will last), but yeah thats happening. Anyway! As you can see, my blog is now completely (somewhat) different, I initially thought that I needed lasers but before I married myself to the idea of it I stumbled across robots and rocket ships, two of the coolest things in the world, and they just seem like a perfect fit for my completely academic blog *cough*

Now that I’ve said I want to blog more for fun and not because I need to I can’t actually think of much to say, managed to get media essay done...? Revision makes me want to die? Just the usual really, but yeah I guess if anything I’m getting more into the swing of uni life again, especially after a whole month off of doing literally nothing around the house in sleepy little Kenilworth. I am pleased to note that things felt far more normal today as it marked our traditional trip to maccies, even though we didn’t even plan on going there, we weren’t even hungry... so good at this life business. So yeah, planning on getting my revision started and continued tomorrow up until the exam. Then its money saving mode im afraid, gotta make sure I don’t need to dip into my savings too much to afford going to Japan, though I’ll obvs be hitting up Bop, the greatest night out ever – which is a common known fact, just like how the park swings in Kenilworth are the best in the county, true story.

All I can think of right now, truth is im just so bored and I really can’t sleep so instead of reading Arbok (yeah thats right, Ekans-ee this going on for a long time) I thought hey why not get back into blogging? It’s a sad time when I need to be hideously bored to want to blog, but this’ll change in no time! Now I know you’ve loved reading this so im sorry it has to end, yeah I know devastating, but I’d like to announce that you’re all gonna be seeing a lot more of my blog nowadays, might be a bit Slowbro so deal with it.

I’ll Raichu another blog post soon x

Karl Marx - HCJ

Karl Marx: Marx was a German philosopher who had a profound impact upon the world, he was born 1818 in Germany, studied law, philosophy and then revolution, and he met his best friend, wingman and bro Friedrich Engels 1844 in Paris. Marxism came from Karl Marx and it is renowned as a conflict theory, which is the conflict between the social classes A conflict theory such as Marxism is somewhat useful to our understanding of society, however it tends to be too deterministic.

Marxists see society as divided solely by class – how the ruling class exploit the working class, Marxism is a structural perspective, so it analyses society as a whole system made up of different parts that all blend together. In opposition to functionalists, Marxists do not see the state and its policies as benefitting all of society. Marxists instead say the state represents the ruling class, and its social policies serve the interests of capitalism, not those of society as a whole. The state provides ideological legislation to mask capitalist exploitation. For example, the welfare state makes it seem that the system cares about the poor people in society. Moreover, a Marxist would say the state maintains the labour force for further exploitation, an example of this is the NHS – it serves capitalism by keeping people healthy enough to work. Most importantly, the state is a means of preventing revolution. Marxists say that to stop a revolution the state will introduce policies that only have the intention to keep the working class happy with their situation and position in society.

According to Marx, man is a productive animal; mankind creates the environment it inhabits, for example we all make our own clothes and so on. Marx believes in technological determinism, which is a teleological view (history has a purpose, it is going somewhere), his process comes from the Hegelian philosophy (history and dialectics), British empiricism (economics of Adam Smith) and the French Revolution (revolution is the very best way to achieve the overall goal of equality). Marx followed the scientific method, he believed that he was using the same methods as Darwin – researching every aspect of society in order to understand it, he did countless hours of research. He highly valued the idea of achieving change through violence and conflict – which is an idea from Hegel that he actually liked – and Marx believed wholeheartedly that is was always a case of poor (proletariat) vs. the rich (bourgeoisie).

Marx sought the explanation of the historical process between man and the physical world (material) and its existence, so therefore Marx’s theory is called dialectic materialism. In terms of alienation, Marx believed that capitalism alienates man from themselves and each other; this is very much akin of Rousseau because they both talk about capitalism placing too much emphasis on material things which in turn leads to avarice – money is seen as the most important thing.

Marx talks about the inevitable fall of capitalism, however I believe that the Marxist theory of capitalism’s inevitable collapse is not very realistic; only to some extent though. Marx himself, in his later work, looked into capitalism but this was more in terms of class conflict, division and exploitation. Marx defined class in accordance to economic power, with emphasis on where people stand in relation to the ownership of the ‘means of production’.

Marx believed that capitalism was creating a very noticeable gap between two large powers of people; the affluent Bourgeoisie and the exploited Proletariat. For Marx, the analysis of the class system provides a deep insight into historical understanding and it enables predictions to be made about the future of capitalism. This encouraged Marx insofar as it helped him feel he could comfortably predict that the fall of capitalism is inevitable and that heralding that we will revert into a classless and equal system of government, otherwise known as Communism, and prior to this the brief period called the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Marx believes that this is to be achieved by a full scale revolution conducted by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, this was because Marx believed that the proletariat would no longer accept being exploited; they would overthrow capitalism.

Marx feels that this revolution is inevitable; he portrays this certainty of revolution through explaining ‘surplus value’. Surplus value is a Marxist term that explains how the ruling class, in their striving for improvement in a capitalist society, will always have to make a profit at the expense of the proletariat; it is the value that is extracted from the labour of workers by the mechanism of capitalist exploitation. Capitalism’s quest for profit can only be achieved through paying the workers a lot less than the value of their labour. This overall makes capitalism very unstable, though it is still debated whether or not the subordinate class would ever rise up as the working class are more than alright with continuing with their routines.

Stay classy :) x

The Dreyfus Affair - HCJ

I think it’s about time I start blogging again, I cannot  believe it’s taken me this long to blog up these notes, I suppose it will help towards revision, however, the Dreyfus affair will be my big (mediocre) return to the stage... It’s kind of a stage alright, jeeze way to rub that one in. Enjoy!

Background information: Picture it, The Franco-Prussian war and the growing influence of Prussia under Bismarck who tried to unify Germany, they tempted Napoleon III into war by using media propaganda and by provoking them – they essentially humiliated the French into war, without any allies.

1871 – France suffered a savage defeat and their leader, Napoleon was captured this was a very humiliating for the French as they were very proud of their army. While all other places in France fell, Paris is the only one to resist and would not surrender. Paris eventually fell in the siege of Paris to the Germans/Prussians. There were roughly two million odd people in Paris at this time and they were surrounded by German forces, they had a massive problem feeding people and so if it wasn’t enough already the French people left had to live off scraps from the trash and they even broke into the Zoo and eat any animals they could find, the Germans really wanted to prove their dominance it would seem and they definitely succeeded. Furthermore, the people in Paris tried to reach out to other places but to no avail.

The Paris Commune: The people of Paris eventually gave in and the land lords started to return to Paris and began to charge the poor people rent and interest – the new government had a majority of royalists who wanted to restore the monarchy. The people didn't want to have a monarchy because they didn’t want a repeat of Napoleon III’s actions or to be charged while they had to suffer and so they rose up and this is what is known as the Paris commune, it was essentially what Marx spoke about – the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The commune was established March 18^th – May 28^th 1871 – Lenin called it the ‘festival of the oppressed’, the people who joined the commune were radicals, they were highly socialist, Marxist and anarchists, furthermore, women played an important role in the commune and they were highly influential. The Commune introduced social reform, nurseries so women could work and so on and they also improved working conditions (so no night shifts). However, this was short lived because the commune was pretty much obliterated in a cruelest way possible, thousands of people were executed, women, children and men all killed for being part of the commune.

The Dreyfus Affair: Even thought the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 was still lingering, France managed to rebuild and consolidate its safety but when this happened they randomly started hating bad on Jewish people in France - blaming them for all the problems that France had encountered as they were seen as the "money people" (good job France) this all flourished from politicians being bribed to stay quiet about company's financial problems, these bribes were organised by two Jewish people and this is believed to be what sparked off anti-Semitism in France.

The Dreyfus Affair was a political scandal that divided France in the 1890s and the early 1900s. It involved the conviction for treason in November 1894 of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French artillery officer of Jewish descent. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly having communicated French military secrets to the German Embassy in Paris, Dreyfus on trail for a Court Martial and they found him guilty of treason and sent him to Devil's Island for almost 5 years. They looked into the evidence of this case some time down the road and found it to be wrong, the real culprit who leaked military secrets was a man called Esterhazy - however the superiors decided to leave it alone, they would better to blame it on a Jew (just cause everyone was now doing it... followers) than have the French military be hilariously humiliated yet again. However, they put Esterhazy on trial in a military court but he was found innocent, this lead to the famous French Journalist, Emile Zola to write his article "J'accuse". This article accused the government of anti-Semitism and the unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus. He pointed out errors and lack of evidence. The letter was printed on the front page of the newspaper, and was very controversial. Zola was prosecuted and found guilty of libel so he fled to England.

That's all for now friends, however I have many more blog posts to catch up on, just as well its before my exam as well cause lord knows I could do with the revision :)

Stay classy, Winchester x (I've missed saying that)