Assignment 3 - Admission/Application Essay Example

Assignment 3 Problems in the thinking planning and acting of Ivan Ilych a. Ivan is seen to be involved in some problems due to his thinking, perception and actions. At the beginning of the book, Ivan Ilych is viewed as young man who is loved by people and has a lot of potential as he is making the right connections and pursuing a career in law. He is perceived to have it all; he even has affairs with different women and occasionally visits prostitutes. He is living according to the society’s expectations therefore he even goes ahead to marry a woman he does not love just because she was the “right” woman to marry.

When he gets married, Ivan Ilych starts having problems with his wife but instead of facing them he devotes himself more fully to work. As he gets older, he detaches himself from life by totally indulging in his work. The book described it as “a kind of exercise, detached from human realities "at work, he is not getting paid well therefore, he goes ahead and starts living beyond his means at the age of 43. He is bitter because he expected to be promoted but he didn’t. This makes him leave his work and go to Petersburg to look for a better work that pays better against his family’s advice.

He succeeds in getting one, and immediately moves to Petersburg with his family. Contrary to their expectations, their joy is short-lived because they realize life in Petersburg is a little more expensive making his salary seems little less. They even get to realize that the apartment is a little too small.b. Contribution of Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy.Immanuel Kant emphasizes in his book that, morality is the situation in which personal happiness is determined. Ivan ilych, in his life we can assume that he did not have a morality ground since he was never happy in his life.

Though he was a well known and loved judge his life was not a happy one as it was dominated by conformity to what was expected of him by the society. He even goes ahead to marry a woman he did not love just because she was the right kind of woman. He even went ahead to live beyond his means. Immanuel Kant on the other hand explains in his philosophy that, art, skills and nature can never replace morality.2. Immanuel Kant’s response to the charge “Bottom line, humans are nothing more than significant creatures with an animal nature”.

He agrees to the fact that humans share common value with other animals, he goes ahead to explain that being a human is not to be valued as just “a means to the ends of others, nor even as a means to his own ends but is to be esteemed as an end in itself”. This was meant to explain that, human beings have an ability to perceive things and respect each other in order to serve every other human being. A human being has been empowered with dignity and reason hence distinguishing him from other animals.