Civil Rights Movement Essays - , Term Papers

Civil Rights Movement African Americans have overcome many struggles as well as obstacles in the early years which have still not been terminated. African Americans have fought for freedom from enslavement, the right to earn a living, have land and a job, have equal justice, good quality education, to escape from oppression, the right to self pride and an end to stereotyping. Blacks everywhere got fed up with being treated as if they were inferior and slaves, so they banded together to form a movement. Not just any kind of movement, but a movement that would see victories as well as violence and death. That movement was the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement had a major goal, and that goal was to end discrimination based on race, creed, color, and gender, and to put an end to segregation. Its' supporters aimed for equality of all people and for the integration of society. The previously mentioned goals were achieved by many different means. The movement had its share of leaders, events, and strategies that helped to reach its' goals. There was a fair share of success and failures that accompanied the Civil Rights Movement. I believe that there were a few amendments that helped blacks to gain some of their rights in the future. Some of those amendments were the 13th and 14th amendment. The 13th amendment abolished servitude everywhere in the U.S. and declared that congress shall have power to enforce this outcome by appropriate legislation. The 14th amendment conferred citizenship on the freedman and prohibited states from abridging their constitutional privileges and immunities. It also barred any state from taking a persons life, liberty, and property without due process of law and from denying equal protection of laws. When these amendments were passed I think it gave many blacks the courage to express themselves and stand up for what they believe in. The rise of the modern civil rights movement was when a group of first- year students from North Carolina and Agricultural and Technical College decided to seat themselves at a segregated lunch counter and refused to leave until the were served. They took the advice of nonviolence from a great leader named Martin Luther King Jr.(who will be talked about in later paragraphs). With these four men doing this each and every day they gained support of many other black students as well as some white students. These boys' actions started sit-ins in hundreds of cities. In the result of this act many blacks were arrested, beaten, jailed, deprived of their jobs, intimidated, and some even killed. With all this happening the government was forced to protect many black Americans and to guarantee them their rights. In order to enforce these rights federal legislat ions were passed, public facilities such as transportation and waiting rooms were now desegregated and blacks finally gained back their access to the polling booth. There have been some white people who have been involved in the civil rights movement such as a man named John Brown. He led a slave revolt and was considered a fanatic by other whites and a martyr by the people whose cause he campaigned. 1 A lot of whites that did help blacks in their struggle for freedom were intimidated and abused by others, but that never made them give up. In the Supreme court cases Plessy ?vs- Ferguson and in the Brown case many of the decisions that were made combined to produce the Montgomery movement, which will be talked about in the following paragraph. Supreme Court decisions, as in the case of Brown vs. Topeka board of education of 1954, also helped in bringing the blacks one step closer to achieving their goals. The separate-but-equal doctrine was first established in 1896, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy vs. Ferguson that the separation of races is constitutional as long as equal accommodations are made for each race. The ruling in the Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education overturned the Plessy ruling. It stated that separate educational facilities were unequal and unconstitutional. Schools all over the country then began to integrate their student body. The Supreme Court had ruled that deliberately created segregation would place a psychological inferiority on the black

The Sorrows of Young Werther and the effect it had on people of that time.

The Sorrows of Young Werther and the effect it had on people of that time. Free Online Research Papers â€Å"The Sorrows of Young Werther† by Johann Goethe was first published in 1774, and very quickly spread across Europe in the 18th century. The novel and the â€Å"Werther Fever† it unleashed show us that Germany during that time was a very cultural, but easily persuaded place. Many people took hold of the story and related it to themselves, their lives, and soon everything that they did. The people were artistic and knowledgeable, but Werther also was. Werther was just like your everyday person during that time period, so this made it very easy for people to relate with his character. In the book, Werther meets Charlotte and in spite of knowing that Charlotte is already engaged to a man, he falls in love with her. He spends months forming a close relationship with the couple until it becomes too unbearable, and he leaves. Upon realizing there’s no hope for romance with Charlotte, Werther could not deal with the heartache and disappointment in his life, so he commits suicide. Werther was an important novel of the Sturm und Drang period in German literature. It is also said that it influenced the romantic literary movement. Soon after the book was published, it started the phenomenon known as the â€Å"Werther Fever†. â€Å"Werther Fever† reportedly led to some of the first known examples of copycat suicide; it also spawned a fashion trend of wearing yellow trousers and blue jacket combination. When this book was published Germany was going through an Enlightment period. During this time, the people were very artistic, cultural, knowledgeable, but also easily persuaded. The people respected life and had strong morals and beliefs. They also believed in freedom; the freedom to think, live, and create. â€Å"The Sorrows of Young Werther† was very similar in nature to the people of Germany during this period of time. The book time frame is based on the period of romanticism, where Werther is very complex, literary, and an intellectual noble person even as the German people of the time were. The period of time mentioned in the book was similar to the time of the people reading the book. Therefore, the people of Germany considered themselves very like a young Werther. Werther, like the people of the time, was down to earth and just like the average man that lived during that period of time. The men saw themselves reflected in Werther. His sorrows and disappointments were theirs. It was as though everyone had a piece of Werther inside of them. Men began to idolize him. Werther seemed to resemble all men, this made it very easy for ‘Werther Fever† to come into effect. Men became so obsessed with his story that they began to think that they were him. This caused concern with the authorities and other authors. Everyone has disappointments and heartaches, due to the fact that people closely related themselves to Werther, they felt that if suicide was the only way out for him, then it seemed like it was the only option for them to use also. Based upon the fact that the suicide rate among young men increased in those that read this book, it appears that the people of this time were more open to persuasion. Young men were open to suicide after reading this book, showing that the people of this time were more open and embraced the idea of using suicide as a way to deal with disappointments and heartaches in their lives. â€Å"The Sorrows of Young Werther† left a mark in German literary that will not be forgotten. Germany was going through a weak stage during the enlightenment period. The people needed inspiration, and someone to look up to. â€Å"The Sorrows of Young Werther† just happened to be everything that the people of the time needed. He was the everyday man, that all could relate to in some way. Not all followers of the book committed suicide, but they made others options for their self. The ones that did commit suicide were people looking for someone to tell them what to do; this is where Werther and the â€Å"Werther Fever† came into effect. This book touched the lives of many, and it also left is place in the history of German literature. Research Papers on "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and the effect it had on people of that time.Assess the importance of Nationalism 1815-1850 EuropeEffects of Television Violence on ChildrenAppeasement Policy Towards the Outbreak of World War 2Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Essay19 Century Society: A Deeply Divided EraArguments for Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS)Where Wild and West MeetThe Masque of the Red Death Room meaningsMind TravelCapital Punishment

The Company Report. Astra Zeneca Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Company Report. Astra Zeneca - Essay Example AstraZeneca was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in London. It has 27 manufacturing sites in 19 countries. The company's portfolio of marketed medicines include Arimidex, Crestor, Nexium, Seroquel, Symbicort, Pulmicort, Zoladex, Seloken/Toprol-XL, Diprivan and Merrem. Across all activities, AstraZeneca continued to work closely with all stakeholders to provide medicines that meet patient needs and add value for society, within the scope of existing therapy areas and beyond. 1. Strengthening pipeline of new medicines: To bring the most benefit for patients and those who treat them, one must continue to understand what makes a difference for them - and apply that insight across all activities to remain targeted on their changing needs. For the future, sustainable long-term success depends on further strengthening the flow of new products - whether from own laboratories or from outside AstraZeneca. 2. Marketing: Understanding the customer requirements and inventing a product that solves customer problems will not generate revenues for any organization. Success of any product depends on the way it is projected, marketed and on its lifecycle. This not exempt to pharmaceuticals industry. So, constant efforts have been made by the company on Marketing and delivering the full potential of all marketed medicines, through rigorous life-cycle management and excellent customer support. 3. Investment:. That investment is focused on life-cycle management of key marketed products, developing new products with an emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness improvements, and intelligent acquisition and licensing of products and technologies that will supplement our internal efforts. Major investments were also announced during the year in new R&D facilities that will support this strategy, notably in the UK and China. Company's recent performance: Strengthening pipeline of new medicines: Enhancing in-house discovery and development: During 2006, the company continued to improve the efficiency of internal R&D processes and the effectiveness of decision-making so that we can quickly eliminate weaker drug candidates. The results of drive to improve productivity are reflected in the sustained size of the early development portfolio. During 2006, 21 candidate drugs were selected for development (compared with 25 in 2005 and 18 in 2004).We have a number of compounds in the later stages of

Assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 59

Assignment - Essay Example Consequently, employees within an organization should be sufficiently equipped with skills relating to these elements of communication, in order to attain competence. The employees input these acquired and inbuilt skills towards company activities, thus showing that organisational communication competence significantly influences other company operations (Williams, 2009). This paper provides insight into the concept of organizational communication competence and its impact on technology usage within a firm. In order to increase organisational communication competence, firms focus on increasing the input variables that match its goals. Boosting employee motivation is one successful way of increasing organisational competence. Respectful strategies, which determine new talents amongst employees’, also boost interactivity and positive communication. In addition, factors such as team work and matching of abilities determine a company’s competence in regard to organisational communication (Sanchez, 2004). This enables the company to seal any information conveyance loopholes that may hinder successful operation. Through improving organisational communication competence, this acts as a guarantee for consistent review on the company’s workforce tendency to account for prevailing conditions in the market and emerging technologies (Sanchez, 2004). By ensuring that there are open communication channels traversing across the organization, an establishment can be adequately informed about relevant technology developments. As a result, it becomes possible to source relevant technologies from the most qualified yet most affordable suppliers. Additionally, such communication proficiency makes it possible for the workforce to operate in unison, in the course of determining the direction to be followed while striving to achieve company goals through advanced technological platforms (Heene, 2004). Flexibility and creativity fostered by

Choose ONE of the topics below Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Choose ONE of the topics below - Essay Example Of the two, perhaps it was Voltaire who did not mince any words when it came to criticizing the work of Rousseau. For example, when he received Rousseau’s The Social Contract, Voltaire wrote a letter to Rousseau in which he notes, â€Å"Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it (Nosotro, 2007, Pg. 1)†. These words also form the basis of their disagreement since Voltaire had very different ideas about society and government as compared to the very democratic ideals of Rousseau. The high society and the aristocratic manners of Voltaire would certainly put him at odds with Rousseau who had a lower class beginning and could only find patrons to help him in paying for his living expenses as he continued to write and give the world philosophical ideas. However, they were both forced into exile largely through the force of their own ideas. Voltaire frank criticism, as exemplified by what he told Rousseau about his book, angered many French aristocrats and he was eventually forced into exile to England. On the other hand, Rousseau’s ideas were widely rejected by the French and he too had to spend some time in Switzerland and then England. In terms of ideas, Voltaire emphasized individual tolerance and a person’s right to be able to express him/herself freely. The religious and personal freedoms given by the English government were much respected by him and he wanted to change French society to bring them closer to the freedoms enjoyed by the English. Voltaire was also against the church since he believed the message of the church was one of intolerance. Duffy (2008) notes this as an interesting dichotomy since Voltaire was disdainful of religion itself but supported religious tolerance. It seems that blind faith was unacceptable to Voltaire since he

Do You Call That Art? a Conversation

Do You Call That Art? a Conversation T: Do you call that art? I just dont see how something like could be called art, I just dont see it. Where is the form, where is the beauty? Is that not what art is for; to hint at universal truths, to uncover answers to fundamental questions about our human condition? To make us experience a kind of immortal truth, Beauty is truth, truth beauty that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. (Keats, 1908: 14) Is that not what Keats said? To be honest I fail to see how an unmade bed surrounded by the detritus of a good night out can be classed as either. It is just sensationalism, pure sensationalism and should not be allowed into an art gallery. S: I suppose it has some merits doesnt it? T: No, none at all as far as I am concerned. What does it say? What does it mean? Where is the skill in its construction? Why, anyone could make that, look, it is only made out of every day items, theres no paint, no clay, no stone, none of the traditional tools of the artist. My six year old child could have made that, in fact he does every morning after a restless night. S: I read some interesting reviews on it. T: What do reviewers know? Listen to this: La Giaconda is, in the truest sense, Leonardos masterpiece, the revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. In suggestiveness, only the Melancholia of Durer is comparable to it; and no crude symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery (Pater, 1948: 264) That is both a reviewer and artist coming together in a perfect symbiosis of artistic appreciation, Walter Pater was a man of great intellect and understood the genius of Da Vinci in an intimate way. What is spoken of here lifts the everyday into the world of aesthetics and art, it transforms the daily life, it consoles and palliates, it makes the hardships seem worthwhile and the little pains of life worth bearing. S: Yes, I see that, but does that not apply to artists like Tracey Emin and Damian Hurst too? T: Do you feel palliated by this unmade bed? Do you feel as though your pain is soothed by a bisected sheep? These images serve only to make us feel worse, to highlight our pain, to capitalise on our misfortunes. These are the things that modern art work on, these are the emotions that they stir up; depression, sadness and alienation. Is that art? Is that worth bothering about, buying or funding? S: I dont know, perhaps if we were to look at them more carefully. Isnt art just a matter of taste anyway? T: Ah but taste is a complex thing and has been hotly debated in art history and philosophy. In some ways it goes right to the heart of our experience of art and literature as a whole. Two of the most interesting and most important theories concerning taste come, of course, from the English thinker David Hume and Immanuel Kant, both of these philosophers, in their own way, asserted the existence and importance of the notion of taste and aesthetic judgment. Hume saw that education and experience would enable men (and women) to acquire taste; the more art we see, the more books we read, the more films we see and the more music we listen to the more we learn about what is good and what is bad in art. For instance, if I had only seen one picture in my entire life, say of a cottage in a mountain glade surrounded by pink and blue flowers, then it goes without saying that this must be the best painting I know and, ipso facto that I must be of the opinion that this is the best painting in the world. The same, I suppose, goes for a situation where the only sculpture I had seen was this unmade bed, then I would naturally think it was masterpiece and hail it as the finest work of art ever made. Well, according to David Hume, the more I see the more educated I become, the more my taste develops. Therefore if I were to view, say, Eugene Delacroixs Massacre at Chios, that depicts a scene from the Greco-Turkish war of 1824 and is painted with both subtlety and strength, I would automatically think this was better than an unmade bed. If I then chanced to view a Renoir or a Rossetti then I might think that these were better. You see how this works? You see how, through education and experience my taste broadens and becomes more refined. S: But I still do not see who defines what is good and what is bad for the rest of us? Taste is relative isnt it? T: To an extent, says Hume, but taste as a benchmark and as a standard is set by those who are educated most. It stands to reason, does it not, that those who are educated and experienced most will know the most about a particular given subject. When your car needs a service what sort of mechanic do you choose? S: A good one? T: Yes, a good one, but what is a good mechanic? Is it a good mechanic someone who has had no or very little experience with cars, is it someone who has only ever seen or worked on one car the whole of their lives? No, you would choose the mechanic with the most experience, the mechanic who has worked on hundreds, perhaps thousands of cars. S: Yes, I suppose I would. T: So, could we not say that that mechanic is an expert, at least over the other mechanic who has seen very few cars? S: Yes. T: Well, it would that mechanic who sets the standard. What if he told you your engine needed replacing? S: I would believe him. T: Exactly, and if the inexperience mechanic told you it didnt, who would you believe? Who would you think was telling you the right thing? S: Probably the experienced mechanic, he after all is more educated and more experienced so he must know what he is talking about. T: So why is it so different with taste? Why is it so difficult to believe that those with most experience set the taste for the rest of us? Taste is intersubjective, it is founded on agreement and consensus. This was Humes great notion. It does not exist as an objective notion nor purly subjective but somewhere in between. Joshua Reynolds encapsulates it well when he says The arts would lie open for ever to caprice and casualty, if those who are to judge of their excellencies had no settled principles by which they are to regulate their decisions, and the merit or defect of performances were to be determined by unguided fancy (Reynolds, 1992: 182). Although, of course, Reynolds himself saw taste as being intrinsically fixed and established in the nature of things. S: So, what about Kant? How did he see taste and aesthetic judgement? T: For Kant, taste came secondary to the notion of beauty. There was, he thought such a notion as intrinsic beauty; a beauty that existed outside of taste, outside of the capriciousness of fashion, a beauty that is, to quote Keats again A Joy forever. Kants philosophy extended far and wide, his works like The Critique of Pure Reason and The Critique of Practical Reason sought to classify and quantify exactly what it was to be human, not just in an ontological sense but in the sense of how we experience the world; how we perceive things and, most importantly, how we reason about these things. In fact Bertrand Russell says in his A History of Western Philosophy that According to Kant, the outer world causes only the matter of sensation, but our mental apparatus orders this matter in space and time, and supplies concepts by means of which we understand experience. (Russell, 1979: 680) In order to experience the world, thought Kant, we label many of the things we sense, often in ways that are unconscious or arbitrary. Take this bench, for instance, we both know this is a bench and that it is for sitting on but we only know this because it has certain characteristics as distinct from, say, that fire extinguisher over there. It is made of wood, it is flat, it has four legs etc. etc. The bench is out in the world (Cummiskey, 1996: 78) and thus our experience of it informs our idea of what it is. For Kant there was no such thing as an a priori knowledge; nothing, he said could be divorced from our experience of it. S: But how, then, if we know this is a bench through our perception of it out in the world can we ever know beauty. Beauty, after all is not out in the world, it is surely a priori? We must have an idea of beauty before something can be classed as beautiful. I understand that, for Hume this is based on consensus, but this does not fit in with Kants ideas. T: For Kant, beauty does exist in the world but not, perhaps in the way that we might assume. He noticed that we classify and label things according to the purpose they have for us as human beings. We have a notion of the bench because it is good for us to sit down on and take a rest every now and then. Beauty on the other hand can not be eaten or smelt or even touched, however it is in every culture every civilisation known to man so, in some ways at least, it must be intrinsic to our needs. Beauty and art have a purposeless purpose. S: How can a purpose be purposeless? T: Let me explain: when I see a picture by Monet for instance, it inspires feelings in me of contemplation and of emotion. I am touched by the delicate brushwork, I am moved by the images. If I see a beautiful flower I feel the same thing. I do not find the flower beautiful because I want to eat it or because it gives me an actual benefit in the real world but because it promotes a kind of internal pleasure, a psychological harmony. This is what Kant thought of the beautiful. If we begin to attach meaning to art by deliberately making it ugly or adapting it for our own psychological or socio-political ends we ruin its initial purity and lose a valuable part of its nature. Kant said Taste is the faculty of estimating an object or mode of representation by means of a delight or aversion apart from any interest. The object of such a delight is called beautiful(Kant, 1972: 479). This is why Kant regarded Nature as representing a higher plain than man made art, simply because it does not have the other aspects, the poetic, artificial meaning. This unmade bed is neither of these situations, it is neither a depiction of the sublime in Nature not does it evoke a universal response. It simply is, like the unmade bed that it mirrors, because of this is can not be art. However, if we take a picture from the Romantic movement of Nineteenth century, for example, such as Turners The Fighting Temeraire (1838) or Landscape with a Distant River and Bay (1840) we can see that what the artist is striving for is a universal achievement of beauty; a beauty that is invested in the very paint he uses, a beauty that arises from the purity of the image; the colours, the brushwork, the setting. S: So, for Kant, the artist is the translator of that sense of beauty? T: Yes, for Kant, only the artist or the man of genius can truly be said to be a translator of these universal truths. His theories gave way to the march of the Romantic movement in Europe and artists like Turner, William Etty and Landseer and writers like Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley. Let us think, for example, of the painting The Leaping Horse by John Constable (1825). What do we see in this painting? We see the majesty of Nature, not only in terms of the visual images of the sky, the clouds and the trees but in the way that this is translated through the human experience. The figure in the foreground is pictured not merely against Nature but in it, existing within it and being a part of it. There is a directness of vision here that reflects Kants assertions on the place of the artist within society. The artists role, he said, was to translate the experience of the sublime, of the beauty of Nature, into the synthetic medium of art. This unmade bed, or the bisected sheep of Hurst or even the daubings of Jackson Pollock do not attempt to do this and so, in my opinion at least, are not art in the slightest. A: I beg to differ with you. They turn to see A standing behind them. A: What do you see there? S: I see an unmade bed, I see rubbish, I see magazines, tissues, cigarette butts. A: I see an idea, a concept, a representation of truth. As you said, truth is beauty, right? T: No, actually what I said was Beauty is truth and truth beauty there is a world of difference between those two ideas. A: Yes perhaps, and I would agree with you, maybe this work is not about beauty in the Kantian sense, it is not about a universal notion of what is beautiful, what is sublime but it has everything to do with what the world means to us and how we interpret our own experiences of life. In his first manifesto on Surrealism, Breton says The marvellous is not the same in every period of history: it partakes in some obscure way of a sort of general revelation only the fragments of which come down to us: they are the romantic ruins, the modern mannequin or any other symbol capable of affecting the human sensibility(Breton, 1990: 16). All we have now are shards of aesthetic philosophy that have made their way down to us. S: So you are saying Kant and Hume were wrong? A: No, I am saying they were right in their time. We have been let down by their structures; the notions of truth and beauty no longer mean anything to us in this postmodern age. T: Postmodern? Does that word even mean anything? A: Well, yes, Modernism as a philosophical construct can be seen to stem from the Enlightenment of the mid Eighteenth century. S: I thought Modernism happen just after the First World War? A: Yes in a way, the artistic and literary movement hails from then but, in terms of philosophy and, of course, aesthetics, Modernism can be seen to be founded much earlier with thinkers such as Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes, Bishop Berkely and others. Later, of course, this manifested itself in philosophies of Kant, Hegel and Marx. S: So, what do these thinkers tell us about what art is and why this work should be called art? A: Well it was not so much what they said about art that is of importance as how they say it. Modernism, as Jean Francois Lyotard says in his study The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, relied on metanarratives, all encompassing notions like truth, beauty, the body and even the self to provide a foundation for its philosophies. The Enlightenment is considered the birth of the modern because it asserted the primacy of the individual consciousness and the reason upon which it was based; it signalled a split from the religious dogma and the superstition of the Renaissance and Middle Ages. The art, the music and the literature all reflected the birth of this new idea. Postmodernism is not so much the rejection of this as a melancholic outcome of its demise and failures. I am sure there is not one thinker in the whole postmodern canon who would not find it agreeable to rely on concrete notions like beauty and truth, but what are they? That is what postmodernism asks us, they have failed us. Foucaults poetic evocation at the end of his history of human sciences is as good as any at expression this idea: As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end. If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared, if some event of which we can at the moment do no more than sense the possibility without knowing either what its form will be or what it promises were to cause them to crumble, as the ground of Classical thought did, at the end of the eighteenth century, then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea.(Foucault, 1997: 387) The postmodern condition recognises no hierarchy of taste; it does not see taste as being universal or being classifiable in any meaningful way. With technological advances like the internet and reprographics what now is beautiful? What can even be considered original? This is the point that Walter Benjamin makes in his seminal essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. S: So, the Modernist artists were the beginning of this, after all they experimented with style and content didnt they? As Ezra Pound said, they sought always to Make it new. A: Could we not see artistic Modernism as not so much the beginning of something new as the end of something old? Its theoretical foundations are clearly based in a number of thinkers all of which assert the importance of teleological thinking: Freud, Marx, Hegel etc. If we examine, for instance Guillaume Apollinaires series of essays and articles on the Cubists, we can see that we characterises both Cubism and Apollinaire is the sense of revolution; in both art and in conceptions of beauty. He says Greek art has a purely human conception of beauty. It took man as the measure of perfection. The art of the new painters takes the infinite universe as its ideal, and it is to the fourth dimension alone that we owe this new measure of perfection.(Harrison and Wood, 1997: 178) We can see here how, even though the nature of the artists vision has changed, his or her place hasnt. The Cubists and, indeed the Moderns as a whole (especially in terms of its literature) asserted the validity of the artist in exactly the same way as our friend here has pointed out that Kant did. T: Which I see as being a testament to the correctness of Kants vision. A: It was this that the Moderns desperately strove to cling on to, all of their experimentation, all of their theorising, all of their invention can be seen as merely an attempt to cover up the fact that what was dying, what was losing its validity was them; their special place as artists, writers and thinkers. In the postmodern age all things are equally valid as art, all things are equally worthy even an unmade bed. How does a painting like David Bombergs The Mud Bath (1914) or even Picassos Guernica (1937) reflect the ideals of Kant? They are obviously beautiful pictures and yet they have the power to terrify and to inspire awe, they do not palliate or console so much as remind us of our own death and mortality. How do they fit in with your scheme? T: You have answered your own question, they are sublime paintings. They remind us of our own place as human beings. I agree with you, times change and so does art but the notion of the artist as a translator of human emotion is an important one. Picasso was a visionary, his art was beautiful, it made one think, to cogitate, to realise ones own humanity. OK, not in the same representative way as, say Constable or Rossetti but, then again, neither did Turner, Monet or any of the Impressionists. The subtle play of colour and light, for instance in La Promenade (1875) or even the famous Waterlilies (1905) is nothing but the distillation of experience both in terms of the artists heightened sensibility and training. The same can be said of Picasso or Braque or any of the so called Moderns that you speak of. The form is of no importance, forms and fashions change, what matters is the importance of the artist. There are recent artists who manage to combine both an artistic brilliance with a clear understanding of exactly what art means. Take someone like Lucien Freud, for instance, his paintings do not inspire one in the traditional sense of the word. They do not remind one of beauty in the same way Botticelli does or Poussin, however he asks questions about the human condition whilst displaying an artistic talent, or skill if you will. Freuds pictures are about what is like to be human, about what it is like to have a body that is constantly dying, that is betraying the young person that you still are on the inside. His naked self portraits are concerned with my point exactly: with the place of the artist in society. It is their role to exorcise the ghosts. A: Art should not be a religious experience. T: You are wrong, thats exactly what it should be. A: Art is about reflecting whats here and now not what is eternal. The work of Tracey Emin is as valid as Lucien Freud, as valid as Picasso as valid as Turner and as valid as Rembrandt because it is a product of a time that recognises no universal truths, no absolute hierarchies and no metanarratives. T: But how, then do you judge? How do you decide what should be in an art gallery and what isnt? Do you simply open the doors and let everyone in? A: Yes. T: But thats absurd, where would that led us? A: What are you afraid of? What have you got to lose? S: What is there to lose by the destruction of the discourses of truth and beauty? A: Well, this is at the heart of the question of whether this work is a work of art. What is there to lose by saying it isnt? We have seen the failure of realism in describing the truth about the human condition and we have seen the failure of abstraction in describing the truth about human emotions and mind. The only thing left for us to do is to suggest that it is the truth itself that is non-existent. S: So there is no truth left. A: There is no universal truth, the same as there is no universal sense of beauty. What is beauty after all? The Japanese have a notion they call Wabisabi, it makes up almost all of their aesthetic appreciation. Roughly translated it means imperfect or incomplete, modest or humble. It is as far from our traditional notions of Western aesthetics as we could get. There is none of the grandeur of the sublime, none of the intricacies of Vermeer or Zoffany just the simplicity of line and the imperfection of creativity. S: You mean Wabisabi actively encourages imperfection? A: Yes, it is an intrinsic ingredient of the Japanese aesthetic, but the important point is that aesthetic notions change from country to country from time to time, therefore it is an impossibility for them to be a universal ideal as our friend here seems to think. S: But is it art, this unmade bed? A: Is it in an art gallery? S: Yes. A: It must be art then. T: So you are saying anything that is in an art gallery is art, how ridiculous. That means anything I bring into this gallery could be called art. My dog? The shoes on my feet? The flask I have in my bag? At least we know where we are with the universal notion of beauty. It may not be perfect, in fact it may far from perfect but it is solid, it is not ever-changing or open to this mumbo jumbo that you are talking of. You speak as though everyone were an artist, as though everyone could lay claim to being a Picasso or a Matisse. A: Well, in a way, yes, I am. For postmodernism to work we must adopt a number of responsibilities and positions as well as reject old ones. We must be aware of our actions, Of course that means realising that, perhaps, the whole system of aesthetics needs re-evaluating. Media such as the Internet and increased access to cheap means of publishing means that it is becoming easier and easier to publish ones work and get it to a wide audience. Many musicians have found this out and have started making their work available for Internet downloads and many artists are using technology to challenge the boundaries of the traditional routes into the art world. This has got to be a good thing hasnt it? S: So, what you are saying is that because of changes in society, because of this postmodernism thing the old ideas about what is beautiful, what is true, what is art become irrelevant. In their place is a series of individual judgements based on context. If I put a light switch into a gallery a s a light switch it is not art, if I put it in as art then it is? A: Exactly. S: So it has a linguistic base your argument? If I say something is art, it is? T: This all sounds like rubbish to me. Art has a function in the real world, to be beautiful or at least to make us realise our own humanity or humanness. If we do not draw boundaries, if we dont make distinctions between art and the rest of the world we cheapen art. A: Or we elevate life! T: Take for example Hegels aesthetics theory. For Kant, existence, and along with it art and culture, could only be witnessed in a subjective sense, in other words only bits of the larger picture could be seen by anyone at any one time. It would be impossible to see the whole. Hegel disagreed with this and stated that, if we used reason, we could look at the entire universe at once. S: But thats clearly impossible isnt it? How can we look at anything other than through subjectivity? T: Think about the philosophy of science, physics, chemistry, do they not claim to be able to look at the entire world at once? There is no suggestion in medicine, for instance that we find a cure for TB in a subjective way. An integral part of the truth of the discovery is that it is reproducible, objective and quantifiable, in other words that it is being viewed in some kind of universal way. Israel Knox has a fine quote about Hegels method Hegel exalted reason to an eminence from which it could have an adequate and coà ¶rdinated knowledge of the whole of reality of reality as the incessant temporal forward march of the Absolute, of Spirit, of God.(Knox,1958: 81). It is reason that is at the basis of scientific discovery so why can not reason be at the heart of Aesthetic theory? A: Because reason is an outmoded construct. T: Let me finish! For Hegel, art is a reflection of Geist, which can be translated as either spirit or mind. In Hegel the two are much the same thing the mind and the spirit could be thought of as the defining entity in man; it is the thing that distinguishes him from anything else. His humanness, if you will. Geist is a manifestation of the order of the universe, the phenomenology of Geist is existence and its highest expression is art and philosophy. In this Hegel disagrees with Kant who, as we saw, thought that Nature was the most beautiful of all things. If art is an expression of Geist and Geist itself is a manifestation of the orderliness or reason of the universe, then it follows that the greatest art must be that which mirrors most succinctly this universal sense. For Hegel, art transcends nature precisely because it is a manifestation of mans spirit. You see, Hegel believed in a system he called dialectics. In the Preface to his Phenomenology of Spirit (1977) (or mind, of c ourse) he outlined his grand scheme of things and one that he was to go on to relate to art in his Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics (1993) of the 1820s. The dialectic is the grand working of history, it describes how progression can be achieved by thesis, antithesis and synthesis rather than relying on the idea of a continual advancement. In art, as in everything, first an antithesis establishes an idea, say the classical period of art; here we have a number of philosophies, ways of seeing and ideas that go up to making what we know about the world. However this is very rarely enough, this is never would we call exhaustive. Our culture, in order to progress, needs an antithesis. The classical period of art then, gave way to a period of Romanticism whereby artists and writers developed startling new ideas and notions that would transform art into something completely new. This second notion is the antithesis, it describes not a backward movement but a negation that can propel things forward; that can ensure a synthesis is formed that unites the two and causes forward momentum. For Hegel, this happens in all walks of life, from ideas and science to art and literature. He takes the great periods of art and shows how they interacted with each, succeeding schools challenging preceding schools and so on until eventually there will be an end to art where we have reached a final stage of enlightenment and there is no longer any need for dialectics. Hegel sees that reflected in his own age, with its use of reason and beauty and its synthesis of ideas and notions. Look at this bed, I see no spirit in this, I see no manifestation of Geist here, I see a manifestation of damp and mildew but very little else. This is not art because it does not conform to any of the notions I have been talking about, there is nothing here of the majesty of the universe nothing that lifts us above our everyday experience, in fact it is our everyday experience. S: I can see how Hegels philosophy makes art seem reasonable and structured, I can see that there is a progression from one idea to another. After all, if you look at a painting of the classical period it looks nothing like a painting of today, does it? Hegel must be right; art must be a reflection of some universal spirit that finds its expression in an ever progressing artistic movement. A: But, of course, if that is the case where is the end point? S: The end point? A: Yes, according to Hegel and the other philosophers of Modernism like Marx, the dialectical process inevitably advances, it has to lead to some end point. In Marx it was the glories of revolution and a Marxist state, in Hegel it was the enlightened mind. For their philosophies to have any form of truth in them this end point needs to taken into account but, where is this end point? Where has it gone? We have had almost 150 years of Marxism and over 200 hundred years of Hegelianism but still there is no sign of reaching the end point that they speak of. Consider this, for Hegel the crowning glory of civilization was his own, and therefore our, age. This was the time at which art and literature, music and culture reached its highest point, the point at which Geist was reflected most in societys artifacts. T: Yes, that is what I said. A: According to that philosophy there can only be progression, there can only be forward motion through dialectics; art, literature, culture can only get better. T: Yes, surly. A: But where is this enlightened society? If anything, society is getting more dangerous, more violent. The canonical image is that of Auschwitz, how can Auschwitz be a symbol of a society getting more enlightened and reflecting the reason of the universal unity? If anything it is a sign that it is getting less enlightened. What about the Russian Gulags, they challenge both Hegel and Marx and the same time! On the one hand they make us question the idealist dialectic of Hegel by suggesting that, far from getting more and more enlightened, society is getting more and more barbaric and, on the other, it questions Marxs dialectical materialism by asking where is this glorious revolution that was promised? What we have is not a series of structured progressions based around thesis and antithesis at all but an ad hoc collection of ideas that are organised retrospectively by history. S: So what does this mean for art? A: Well it means that, not only are the ideas in Hegels aesthetics challenged but also that his very methodology is as well. It was this failure that Adorno and Horkheimer traced in their ground breaking work The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1997). It is not so much that postmodernism negates modernism or reason but that it shows up its failings. In an interesting reworking of Odysseus and the Sirens in their book, Adorno and Horkheimer suggest that there is forever a socio-political aspect to art that precludes it from ever being a universal given. Odysseus plugs the ears of his sailors with wax so that they can not hear the song of the Sirens but he ties himself to the mast, fully able to hear. S: What does this mean for art though? A: Well, it means, for one thing that the experience of the Sirens song (a clear symbol for art) depends upon who you are in the ship. If you are a sailor you only know the dangers of the song, you are blissfully unaware of its terrible beauty and alluring qualities and if you are Odysseus you are know the beauty and the terror but you have the pain and responsibility of denial. The song remains the same, only the listeners change. S: So the value of art,

Jean Luc Picard as a Leader Essays -- Star Trek Essays Papers

Jean Luc Picard as a Leader If the cause is just and honorable they are prepared to give their lives--Jean Luc Picard The cares for lives, continuation of other's future, and the hope of a more successful generation are rarely the thoughts of anyone. Most individuals are self-centered, careless of others, and seek personal benefit. Although these unfortunate qualities make up the majority of the society that we live in, there are few individuals that make up what we call good leaders. Someone who has a thorough, objective, and complete view of a situation are a good leader. A good leader is also a person who considers and cares for other people's well being. Along with these qualities, a leader never allows any emotion or fears to come in the way of rational thought. Jean Luc Picard is a good leader. Picard is a good leader because he has all the attributes and qualities of a leader. When Picard has to make a decision, he is thorough and very objective. Picard always seeks to find the height and depth of the situation in hand. Picard considers his actions and all their possible outcomes to insure th e well being of his crew's future. Lastly, Picard never makes any decisions based on his or someone else's fear or emotion. He is not convinced easily and will seldom make a decision without having unequivocal reasons. Throughout this paper, I intend to further make clear that Jean Luc Picard truly is a leader. I will primarily use scenes and quote from "The Defector," an episode from the series Star Trek the New Generation, to account for all the statements. Let us consider some leaders that we have in present day. Many of us would say that the president of the United States is a leader. Every four year, millions of citi... ...omplete view of the situation at hand. Picard never allowed any fear or emotion come in the way of rational thought. Most importantly, we know that Jean Luc was always concerned for the well being of his friends and their future generations, because when he needed it his care was repaid and it saved him. Works Cited: "Interchange on the Defector." Student Works. http://www.cwrl.uexas.edu/~tonya/309m/class/defect.htmal. (30 Jan. 1996). Kernick, Phil. "The Defector." The Trekker Reviews. http://ringo.psy.flinders.edu.au:80/trekker/tng3//the_defector.html (1993). Lynch, Timothy. "The Defector." Star Trek The Next Generation, Season 3. http://cruciform.cid.com/~werdna/sttng/synopsis/defector.syn.html (30 Jan. 1996). Tong, Andrew. "The Defector." Mr. Video Productions. http://cruciform.cid.com/~werdna/sttng/synopsis/defector.syn.html. (27 May 1994).

Conduct a Stakeholder Analysis for a Planned Upgrade

As you know, my company is planning to construct a nuclear power plant in Oregon. Indeed, the conduct stakeholder analysis is important as a prerequisite of the decision approving the plan because stakeholders play an important role for the projects such as project stakeholders are involved in or affected by the project activity. The project manager must take the time to identify, understand, and manage the relationships between all stakeholders of the project. The use of four framework can help organizations meet the needs and expectations of stakeholders. And the senior member of the Board is the key stakeholders.Accordingly, to conduct stakeholder analysis for a plan to upgrade the software product successfully. We need to analyze the stakeholders are and what is its impact on the success of the project. Sets of project stakeholders include: Internal Stakeholders †¢Top management †¢Accountant †¢Other functional managers †¢Project team members External Stakehold ers †¢Clients †¢Competitors †¢Suppliers †¢Environmental, political, consumer and other intervener groups. Important tasks of the project leader are to have good relationships with stakeholders, understand correctly and meet their expectations.In addition, to the success of software projects, we should analyze the following points in order of importance: Support of leadership, The participation of users, The project management experience The explicit goal The range is reduced Standard software platform The basic requirements do not change Methodology form Reliable estimate In addition to hard skills and soft skills, more and more as the project leader of more work such as planning, organizing, budgeting, adjust the plan. etc. This work not only the project leader to implement but also to have analytical logic must have the foresight to identify the future steps of the project.

Coming of Age in Samoa essays

Coming of Age in Samoa essays Margaret Mead went to Samoa for nine months to study the differences between American culture and other societies. Through her studies, she concluded that Samoan life was not filled with as much stress due to the down play of sex and marriage. In the book Coming of Age in Samoa, she shares her experiences which act as evidence that the causes of adolescent stress is a result of our culture. The Samoan culture is more accepting of the idea of premarital sex, which reduces the societal pressures after the phase of puberty. The similarities between Samoan and American culture begin during childhood. In both cultures, this time is important in learning basic skills that will be needed in life. In Samoa, the stress is put heavily upon the older siblings to teach the younger children these skills. Mead observed, Just as a child is getting old enough so that its willfulness is becoming unbearable, a younger one is saddled upon it, and the whole process is repeated again, each child being disciplined and socialized through the responsibility for a still younger one. (Mead 1928:19). The young girls will be trusted as baby tenders around the age of six or seven until they are old enough to begin work on the plantations. During this period, the girls are at the beck and call of their elders and the children they watch. Mead wrote, These haunt them from morning until night.....It may be said with some justice that the worst period of their lives is over. (Mead 1928: 21). However, the boys will be reli eved of the younger children around the ages of eight and nine because they can help the older boys with their work. Much like in the American culture, children are often given the responsibility to look after their younger siblings and to teach them skills that they will need. When I was young, I remember spending hours playing school in my basement with my younger sister, while my parents relaxed upstairs. ...

Pros and Cons of Term Limits for Congress

Pros and Cons of Term Limits for Congress The idea of imposing  term limits  for Congress, or a mandatory restriction on how long members of the House and Senate can serve in office, has been debated by the public for centuries. There are pros and cons and strong opinions on both sides of the issue, perhaps a surprise, given the electorates less-than-flattering opinion of their representatives in modern history. Here are some questions and answers about term limits and the ongoing debate surrounding the idea, as well as a look at the pros and cons of term limits for Congress. Are There Term Limits for Congress Now? No. Members of the House of Representatives are elected for two years at a time and can serve an unlimited number of terms. Members of the Senate are elected for six years and also can serve an unlimited number of terms. Whats the Longest Anyone Has Served? The longest anyone ever served in the Senate was 51 years, 5 months and 26 days, a record held by the late Robert C. Byrd. The Democrat from West Virginia was in office from Jan. 3, 1959, through June 28, 2010. The longest anyone ever served in the House is 60 years, a record held by U.S. Rep. John Dingell Jr. The Democrat from Michigan was in office from 1955 to 2015. Are There Term Limits for the President? Presidents are restricted to only two four-year terms in the White House under the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which reads in part: No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice. Some conspiracy theorists claim that President Barack Obama was secretly plotting to repeal the 22nd Amendment and run for a third term in the white house. Have There Been Attempts to Impose Term Limits on Congress? There have been numerous attempts by some lawmakers to pass statutory term limits, but all of those proposals have been unsuccessful. Perhaps the most famous attempt at passing term limits came during the so-called Republican revolution  when the GOP took control of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections. Term limits were a tenet of the Republican Contract with America. The contract called for a removal of career politicians through a first-ever vote on term limits as part of the Citizen Legislature Act. Term limits never came to fruition. What about the Congressional Reform Act? The Congressional Reform Act does not exist. It is a fiction passed off in email chains as a legitimate piece of legislation that would limit members of Congress to 12 years of service - either two six-year Senate terms or six two-year House terms. What Are the Arguments in Favor of Term Limits? Proponents of term limits argue that restricting the service of lawmakers prevents politicians from amassing too much power in Washington and becoming too alienated from their constituents. The thinking is that many lawmakers view the work as a career and not a temporary assignment, and therefore spend much of their time posturing, raising money for their re-election campaigns and running for office instead of focusing on the important issues of the day. Those who favor term limits say they would remove the intense focus on politics and place it back on policy. What Are the Arguments Against Term Limits? The most common argument against term limits goes something like this: We already have term limits. Theyre called elections. The primary case against term limits is that, indeed, our elected officials in the House and Senate must face their constituents every two years or every six years and get their approval. Imposing term limits, opponents argue, would remove the power from voters in favor of an arbitrary law. For example, a popular lawmaker seen by her constituents as being effective and influential would want to re-elect her to Congress - but could be barred from doing so by a term-limit law.

What are the strengths, limitations and challenges of ethical and Essay

What are the strengths, limitations and challenges of ethical and socially responsible business practice - Essay Example The smaller versions of such corporations are still present and not to mention relevant in the society but they have had the doors opened in terms of the possible heights that can be scaled (Habisch et. al 2005). It is with this in mind that there has arose a need to shed light on certain issues such as control and regulation of these business entities to ensure that there is no negative backlash from their activities. It is essential that a corporation not only remain profitable, but serve the society as well so as to live in harmony within its environment. Two subjects that can be said to have attempted to breach this matter is the emergence of business ethics as well as the social responsibility. These two topics have grown in intensity as they have served to provide a viable solution in which the business community can take part in their regulation working together with independent bodies. The issue of maintaining ethical business practices by corporations has become an interesti ng subject as though the concept is appealing, the practical implications in some cases may tend to cause profit hungry conglomerates to shy away from such measures. There are two good examples that can be taken as case studies in recent years and thus portray the value of business ethics and social responsibility. One such case is that Of the BP oil spill that caused a lot of damage to the environment when it happened. The clean up and rehabilitation of the animals there was part of the company showing the Social responsibility it had to the society. The organization was also fined heavily for the part they played in the accident. Another case is that of the horsemeat scandal that was uncovered in the UK involving Tesco industries. This situation is a portrayal of what could have been avoided should the organization have decided to implement strict business ethics in their practice and operations. Doing what is best for the company does not always mean doing what is best for the society and the Tesco horsemeat scandal proves that. Business Ethics Business ethics can be described as the practice of maintaining ethical principles in the decision-m aking and operations of a company with regard to the effect that their actions may have on the society (Greenfield, 2006). It can be seen as the process of ensuring that businesses stay in line during their quest for profitability and that this objective does not hinder the advancement or progress of the surrounding community. Business ethics can be said to have been set up to ensure that companies behave in their day to day activities be they long or short term (Murphey et. al 2007). The ethics were developed in a bid to provide guidelines to the businesses on proper forms of interactions and inconsiderate trajectories. A number of external independent bodies that with the corporation of the involved corporations have strived to encourage the practice of these ethics by every business have backed the development. Business ethics can be considered to take up a wide range of issues as it deals with all aspects of a company with regard to their conduct and operations. This means that the business’Â  activities as a whole are not the only sections that will be evaluated and individual’s activities for example will be taken into consideration should they be acting as a representative of the corporation. The code of business ethics hopes to cover all scenarios in a bid to improve the interaction between the businesses and the society. This ensures a harmonic existence as mentioned earlier that allows both sides to flourish. Social Responsibility Social Responsibility refers to the relationship that an organization has with the members of the society in which they operate. A company should

Esping-Andersens Welfare Regime Model Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Esping-Andersens Welfare Regime Model - Essay Example The setting of a state’s welfare is decisive to the operation of the state and the health of the citizens. It is vital to discuss the differences in state welfare regimes. This helps in understanding the differences in state operations and the health of its population among countries. Esping-Andersen came up with the most relevant typology for welfare states. Esping-Andersen using classical European political economy approach differentiates between three types of welfare regimes (Edwards, 2003). Esping-Andersen differentiates the state welfare regimes on three major principles. These principles are social stratification, deco-modification and the public private mix. Deco-modification refers to the extent to which the welfare of the individual is independent of the market. It also refers to the individual’s ability to receive social services as a right. Social stratification describes the welfare state role in matters concerning structure of the society according to Schi ldt (2010). Lastly, public-private mix focuses on roles played by the state, the market, family and the voluntary sector in the particular welfare regimes. Espin-Andersen identifies three main types of welfare regimes: the conservative, social democratic and the liberal welfare regime models as noted by Edwards (2003). The liberal model incorporates free market maximization for the market maintenance. It makes the assumption that all people are able to participate in the market. The underlying idea in market participation leads to freedom of competition. It emphasizes on public and private sector partnership. The workers in liberal model are unlikely to be fully co-modified, however they advocate for cash compensation. According to Annamari (2009), the liberal model of state welfare regime is found in countries like England and the United States of America Conservative Welfare Regime The conservative welfare regime is popular in countries like Germany, France and Belgium among other s. It promotes social assistance and provides for extensive welfare services for all the population. This model perceives the state as a minimal interventionist. Esping-Andersen argues that categorizing the European welfare states as part of the conservative model can be viewed as pejorative (Edwards, 2003). Social Democratic Welfare Regime Social democratic welfare is popular with Nordic countries. It is also referred to as Nordic Model. The social democratic model espouses individualism thus removing individual reliance on the family and it is associated with expensive taxes. This model has an element of egalitarianism which depicts the practice of universalism. The model is also individual oriented as it promotes their well-being (Larsen, 2006). The Advantages and Disadvantages of Comparing Welfare States Using Esping-Andersen’s Welfare Regime Esping-Andersen model has been of importance in as far classification of states according to welfare regimes. The model has several advantages which makes it remain more relevant compared to other welfare regimes. In as far as the social democratic welfare regime is concerned; it is redistributive in terms of the states wealth. Universal welfare and systems of benefits are used as rights and there is public provision of the universal welfare services. Esping-Andersen’s social democratic model depends on high employment levels and thus offers women employment. It also provides less emphasis on the family’s responsibility for its members’ welfare as opposed to other models. The state therefore assumes most of the family responsibility (Larsen, 2006). The elements of egalitarianism depict in Esping-Andersen’s model the practice of universalism as suggested by Mann (2001). The advantage here is that every citizen enjoys same benefits and rights as well regardless of whether they are rich or not. This means that there is equal provision of services without