The Concept of General Will - Assignment Example

According to Rousseau, when people lived in the of nature they were ‘noble savages’, meaning they were free of various sins of contemporary society. One can hardly suggest that this is an accurate view.2. The concept of general will argues that when people formed the society, they agreed to harmonize their wills. It is not a utilitarian principle. Strengths of it lie in the protection of all the people, but the main weakness is the oppression of the minority.3. To be “forced to be free” means putting a person into a civilized society by force.4. Unlike Rousseau, Hobbes thought that human nature is evil from the very beginning,5.

History confirms that the conservative thesis on human nature is more valid.6. Copernican revolution, as it was put by Kant, focuses on the shift from a person being the center of Ethics to a person being the follower of Ethics.7. “7 + 5 = 12” is an example of synthetic a priori knowledge. It is synthetic since the idea of 12 can not be directly derived from 7+5, while it is a priory because it reflects universal truth.8. Phenomena are the appearance of things, noumena are the thing in itself.9. According to Kant, time and space are conditioned by our senses, while causality is conditioned by our understanding.10. The categorical imperative is Kant’s moral theory which urges a person to follow the duty all the time, regardless of the circumstances one is in.

It was extremely interesting to watch the video about Arthur Schopenhauer. I was surprised to learn that all the major philosophical contributions that he made were done when the philosopher was in his twentieth. I believe that this is the sign that he was extremely talented. As the presented puts it, every next text that was writer afterwards simply expanded the ideas which were created in his two fundamental works. The first one is called The World as Will and Representation and the other one is called On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

Another aspect of his life that really influenced me was the decision that he made when he was young. It is said that he could pursue many different careers, including running a business, but he knew that his accomplishments would lie in the academic field.