00525--Paraphrase/summary of the Poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

Paraphrase/summary of the Poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

Stanza 1.

The poet thinks that he knows whose woods these are.  He also knows that the owner of these woods is a man who lives in the village.  The forester, therefore, will not be able to see him stopping beside the woods to watch them being covered up in snow.   

Stanza 2.

The poet/speaker believes that his little horse must think it odd to stop in these woods without a farm house nearby between the woods and frozen lake on the darkest evening of the year. 

Stanza 3.

The horse gives a shake to the bells of his rein to know if the poet has stood there by some mistake.  The only other sound that is heard in the woods is that of the wind and snowfall.

Stanza 4.

The woods are beautiful, dark and deep to look at.  But the poet speaker has to keep his word given to others and therefore he has to go many miles to reach the destination before he retires to bed for sleep.  

00524--ETHICS QUOTES

ETHICS QUOTES 

1. Even God cannot change the past.

--Aristotle

2. So the good has been well explained as that at which all things aim.

--Aristotle

3. We make war that we may live in peace.

--Aristotle

4. I am never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.

---Immanuel Kant

5. How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

--Herbert spencer

6. Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted.

--Herbert spencer

7. As soon as one is unhappy one becomes moral.

--Marcel Proust

8. Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.

--John Ruskin

9. To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

--Bertrand Russell

10. If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable.

--Seneca

11. Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.

--George Bernard Shaw

12. Pickering: Have you no morals, man?

Doolittle: Can’t afford them, Governor.

--George Bernard Shaw

13. Absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such a way that pain shall not be inflicted.

--Herbert Spencer

14. No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

--Herbert Spencer

15. What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.

--Alfred North Whitehead

16. We do not look in great cities for our best morality.

--Jane Austen

17. The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

--Jeremy Bentham

18 All punishment is mischief: all punishment in itself is evil.

--Jeremy Bentham

19 Food comes first, then morals.

--Bertolt Brecht

20. The end justifies the means.

--Hermann Busenbaum

21. We must have religion for religion’s sake, morality for morality’s sake, as with art for art’s sake...the beautiful cannot be the way to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what is holy; it leads only to itself.

-- Victor Cousin

22. The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

-- Charles Darwin

23. If art does not enlarge men’s sympathies, it does nothing morally.

--George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)

24 In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies of liberty.

--David Hume

24. Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.

--Immanuel Kant

25. Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s                            inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

-- Reinhold Niebuhr

26. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

--Martin Luther King

00523--The Theme of the Poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

The Theme of the Poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost.

This short lyric of sixteen lines begins with a description of the deep woods through which, the speaker is passing on a dark, snowy evening.  The owner of the woods live away in the village, hence the owner won’t be able to see the speaker at his property.  A reference to the snow occurs.  The 2^nd and 3^rd stanzas are found speculative about the little horse who is not willing to stop beside the woods because no farm house is visible.  He shakes, therefore, his harness bell to know if the master has stopped because something has gone wrong.  The 4^th stanza is a beautiful sketch about the woods but the speaker is reminded of his promise to return home.  Thus he must continue his journey to cover up the miles.  Here the journey is life.  Woods are deviations from the goals of life.  

00522--The Summary of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by S T Coleridge

The Summary of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by S T Coleridge

One evening three guests were going to a marriage party, one of them was stopped by an Ancient Mariner who insisted on telling a story which is full of supernatural interest. 

Once the ancient mariner and his companions were sailing in a ship, they were overtaken by a storm and driven to the South Pole.  The ship was surrounded by icebergs.  After some time, an Albatross came up and became friendly with the sailors.  It was a bird of good omen; the ice broke and good wind arose from the south.  The ship moved and the great bird followed in fog and snow; but then the old mariner shot the bird with the cross bow.  The sailors became angry because they believed that it would bring the curse, but then they praised the old man and became partners in the sin. 

The ship moved and they crossed the pacific and came to equator; the days became calm and the chip could not move and stood as a painted ship on a painted ocean.  The supply of fresh water ran out and they were all dying of thirst.  They were cursed, and the carcass of the albatross was hung around the neck of the ancient mariner.   

The same went on for days, the sailors were dying of thirst; there was salt water all around but not a single drop to drink.  The sun was merciless.  It became blistering hot.  The slimy creatures of the sea rose to the rotting waters.  The sailors suffered, and they accused the old mariner for their plight. 

After several days of torment they saw a sail.  The ancient mariner bit his arm and drank his own blood and shouted with joy “A sail”.  It was a ghostly ship that moved on the still sea without wind or tide.  The sailors on the ship were spell-bound, and when the ghost ship came nearer, they saw a female monster named ‘Life-in-death’ who had red lips, yellow hair and leprous skin.  She was playing a game of dice with her companion named Death-in-life.  She won the life of all sailors except the life of the ancient mariner.  The old sailor was won by Death-in-life.  Therefore he could not die but was left to suffer the life of torture. 

Death soon claimed his victims and the sailors were dying one by one, and the ancient mariner was left alone to suffer the horrors and torments of life-in-death.  He was denied the luxury of death.  The slimy creatures were alive; his companions were lying dead on the deck; he tried to pray but the fountain of prayer was dried up and the curse of the dead sailors increased his agony.  Cold sweat dropped from the dead bodies of the sailors, their eyes were open, and the ancient mariner had to pay for his sin. 

For seven days he remained in this wretched condition; he had no company except that of the moon and the stars; the water snakes played around in the water, and the moon beams shined on their bodies.  Love began to gush from his heart and he blessed those creatures.  He then realised he could pray.  The load of sin was lifted and the spell was broken.  The dead albatross dropped from his neck, and he fell into a deep sleep.  When he woke up his thirst was quenched and the wind was blowing.  The dead sailors came back to life because the troop of the angels animated the dead bodies.  The spirit of the South Pole obeyed the angels and carried the ship, and it was filled with their music and then they disappeared. 

The old sailor again fell into sleep and heard two voices in his dream; one was the voice of justice that demanded the punishment for killing the albatross; the other was the voice of mercy that pleaded for the ancient mariner and pointed out that he had suffered and done enough penance.  When the old man woke up, he found his companions alive, the ship moving, and they came to their native shore.  It was the night-time, the harbour was bathed in moonlight; and the light-house, as well as the church on the hill-top were shining, he fell on his knees and prayed.  The angelic spirits (Seraphs) waved their hands and disappeared. 

Then a boat from the harbour came; it contained a pilot, the pilot’s boy and a hermit.  When they neared there was a big noise and the ancient mariner’s ship went down.  But the old sailor was rescued; but his strange appearance threw the pilot into a fit, and the hermit was shaken.  They all began to pray for protection against evil. 

The ancient mariner took charge of the boat and brought it to the shore.  He begged of the hermit to listen to his strange story and grant him absolution.  The ancient mariner’s sin was not expiated and he felt the agony that tormented his soul.  He travelled from place to place, and became a wanderer.  He could find solace and relief when he told his story to someone. 

The ancient mariner finished his tale and pointed out to the wedding-guest the lesson from his strange story; the best prayer is that which embodies the love of all creatures, great and small, made by God, who loves us all.

“He prayeth best

All things, both great and small

For the dear God, who loveth us,

He made them and loveth all.”

END

00521-- Seven Threats to Ethics OR Barriers to Ethical Thinking

Seven Threats to Ethics

                  OR

Barriers to Ethical Thinking

We ought to think about standards of choice and conduct.  We need to engage in discourse on justice, equality, freedom, rights etc.  There are certain ideas that make us cynical and self-conscious as we approach these ethical issues.  These ideas destabilize us, and stand as barriers to Ethical thinking.  They are:

1.      The Death of God,

2.      Relativism,

3.      Egoism,

4.      Evolutionary Theory,

5.      Determinism and Futility

6.      Unreasonable Demands, and,

7.      False Consciousness

The Death of God

Ethics, for many, is based on religion.  God is the source of good.  God is the centre around which the world of Ethics is built.  For every ethical issue an individual has God or Holy Scriptures to refer to as moral authority.  But when the existence of God is questioned or disproved then there arise chaos.

Scientific discoveries in general and the theory of evolution in particular have shaken people's belief in God.  The thought that there is no God is one of the threats or barriers to Ethical Thinking.  When the centre, that holds everything together, is destroyed there comes a situation where anything and everything can be right or wrong, which in turn makes the act of critical thinking 

  

00520--The Summary of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ by Ernest Hemingway

                   

  The Summary of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ 

                         

                                               by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961), during his duty, was hit by an Austrian mortar in Italy and had to live in a Red-Cross hospital in Milan.  He fell in love with Agnes, who appears as the heroine in some Hemingway’s novels.  Then he decided to help the Republican in the Spanish Civil War in 1937.  He settled in Cuba and bought a small estate.  He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 for his novel “The Old Man and the Sea”.  He committed suicide in 1961.

‘For Whom the Bell Toll’ was published in 1940.  When the Civil War broke out in Spain many intellectuals lent their support to the cause of the Spanish Republican Government.  Hemingway also volunteered.  This background of the Spanish Civil War is the locale of the novel. 

Robert Jordan, an American has joined the loyalist army during the Civil War, and he was asked to join the guerrilla bard in the mountain, near Segovia to blow up the strategic bridges.  He arrives at a cave, where the rebels are hiding, he finds them disorganized, and not keen to fight, as they have found a safe place, and the blowing of the bridge would jeopardise their security.  Jordan finds two characters for support, Pilar, the gypsy woman, and Anselmo, Pilar’s husband Pablo was a leader of the Republican.

Then in the cave, he found Maria and fell in love with her.  She is the daughter of the Republican Mayor, saw her parents killed and was raped by the Fascists.  Her close-cropped head is the symbol of her tortures.  She was rescued by the Band; her physical injuries were healed; but psychic would still torment her.  Pilar sends Maria to Jordan’s sleeping bag and their love-making heals her wounds.  Their intensity of love is unique because of mystic quality.

A fascist soldier comes and is shot dead by Jordan.  Pablo removes detonators from Jordan’s sack, and throws them  away in the stream.  However, Jordan succeeds in blowing the bridge, the army arrives and shoot at retreating guerrillas, Jordan’s horse is hit, he sustains a fractured thigh-bone. 

Maria has become a symbol of Spain for Jordan.  Despite her entreaties to run away, Jordan declines to go with the guerrillas.  In the end, Jordan s found lying on a slope with his machine-gun aimed at the Fascist leader.  Maria and the guerrilla band went away.

                                                            END
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00519--Ethical Theories/Terminology/Definitions

Ethical Theory/ Terminology	Definition [Reference: The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy NICHOLAS BUNNIN AND JIYUAN YU]
1.Pragmatism	Is the ethical theory which states that the meaning of a concept is determined by the experiential or practical consequences of its application.  [Charles Sanders Peirce and William James]
2.Hedonism	The belief that pleasure is the greatest good and highest aspiration of humankind.
3.Individualism	An approach to ethics, social science and political and social philosophy which emphasizes the importance of human individuals in contrast to the social wholes, such as families, classes or societies, to which they belong.
4.Altruism	The view that the well-being of others should have as much importance for us as the well-being of ourselves.
5.Consequentialism	Consequentialism holds that the value of an action is determined entirely by its consequences and thus proposes that ethical life should be forward looking, that is, concerned with maximizing the good and minimizing the bad consequences of actions. [G. E. M. Anscombe]
6.Utilitarianism	A major modern ethical theory which suggests that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by its utility, that is, the good (pleasant or happy) or bad (painful or evil) consequences it produces. [Jeremy Bentham, J. S. Mill, Sidgwick, and many others]
7.Libertarianism	A twentieth-century political and moral movement. It argues that no intervention from state and government is necessary or justified. Free choice is supreme and all conflicts can be settled through the mechanism of the market. Its strong anarchist form insists that all government is illegitimate.
8.Moral absolutism	The view that there are certain objective moral principles which are eternally and universally true, no matter what consequences they bring about. These principles can never justifiably be violated or given up. Paradigms of such principles include “don’t lie,” “keep your promises,” and “don’t kill innocent people.” Moral absolutism is generally represented by various religious moral systems. Kantian deontology is closely associated with moral Absolutism. [Socrates, Plato, Immanuel Kant and many others]
9.moral psychology	An essential part of ethics, especially contemporary virtue ethics, concerned with the structure and phenomenological analysis of those psychological phenomena that have great bearing on moral behavior or action. These phenomena include cognitive states such as deliberation and choice; emotional states such as love, mercy, satisfaction, guilt, remorse, and shame; and desires, character, and personality. Moral psychology aims to improve understanding of human motivation and also has a role in the philosophy of law.
10.Paternalism	Paternalism is derived from parental caring towards one’s children. In ethics it means interfering with another person’s liberty or freedom in the belief that one is promoting the good of that person, or preventing harm from occurring to that person, even if one’s action provokes that person’s disagreement or protest. Paternalism is challenged by liberalism and is now often viewed as a violation of liberty, autonomy, and individual rights.
11.Sexism	The attitude holding that one’s own sex is superior to the other and leading in practice to limited respect for the rights, needs, and values of the other sex. The term is analogical to racism, which regards one’s own race as superior to others. Both sexism and racism are thought to be major social evils.
12.Social Darwinism	A theory resulting from the application of Darwinism to human society. By deducing norms of human conduct directly from evolutionary biology, it attempted to deal with ethical, economic, and political problems on the assumption that society is a competitive arena and that the evolution of society fits the Darwinian paradigm in its most individualistic form. According to social Darwinism, the fittest climb to dominant social positions as a consequence of social selection, just as natural selection determines the survival of the fittest. Because on this view human possession of consciousness does not have any moral implications, social Darwinism held that social inequality and the exploitation of lower classes, suppressed races, and conquered nations by the stronger were morally acceptable.
13.Suicide	From Plato and Aristotle onward, there has been controversy whether suicide is morally justified. On one view, suicide should be morally prohibited on the grounds that life is divine, that suicide causes harm to one’s family and community, and that suicide is an offense to God who created life. In contrast, suicide is claimed to be a self-regarding act that lies outside the prohibition on harming others. It is claimed that without stronger objections, the right should be recognized to determine when to terminate one’s own life. Aquinas and Kant argued against suicide, while Hume argued in favor of tolerating it. These different attitudes lead to controversy whether we should intervene if somebody has the intention of committing suicide. If suicide is immoral, then we are obliged to prevent it. If suicide is morally justifiable, the intervention beyond advice will be paternalistic interference that violates the agent’s rights. Suicide has been frequently discussed in contemporary applied ethics through its relations with the issues of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
14.Telishment	A term proposed by John Rawls to indicate a crucial problem of the utilitarian view of punishment. Utilitarianism claims that punishment is justifiable only by reference to its probable consequences with regard to promoting public good or preventing crime, rather than because the wrongdoing itself merits punishment. Rawls suggests that we can imagine a situation in which the authority knows that a suspected criminal is innocent, but still imposes a harsh punishment on him because such an action can produce better social consequences. This practice should not be termed punishment, because the subject of suffering is not a wrongdoer. Rawls names it telishment. Telishment is intuitively wrong but seems to be justifiable according to the utilitarian view of punishment.
15.Trolley problem	Ethics An ethical problem put forward by Philippa Foot in her 1967 paper “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect.” Suppose that the only possible way to steer a runaway trolley is to move it from one track to another. One man is working on the first track, and five men are working on the other. Anyone working on the track the trolley enters will be killed. Most people would accept that the driver should steer the trolley to the track on which only one person is working because the death of five persons is worse than the death of one person. Now suppose that the trolley, left to itself, will enter the track on which five men are working and kill them. If you are a bystander who can change the course of the trolley, would it be morally required or morally permissible to interfere to switch the trolley to the other track, on which only one person would be killed? According to utilitarianism, you should switch the trolley. However, if you do not interfere, you have not done anything to make you responsible for the five deaths, while if you do interfere your act does make you responsible for one death. Your own integrity or moral rules about how to act might lead you to reject the utilitarian conclusion. The trolley problem touches on both the nature of morality and concrete moral perplexity. If the driver is right to steer the trolley onto the track with one person in order to save the lives of five persons, why is it wrong to execute an innocent man to stop a riot in which five innocent people will be killed? Or why is it morally wrong to save five patients who would die without transplants at the cost of killing one healthy man for his organs? In dealing with the trolley problem and these related questions, some philosophers turn to the principle of double effect, according to which a moral distinction between the intended and unintended consequences of an action can help to decide when bad consequences of an action are acceptable.
16.Universalizability	The idea that moral judgments should be universalizable can be traced to the Golden Rule and Kant’s ethics. In the twentieth century it was elaborated by Hare and became a major thesis of his prescriptivism. The principle states that all moral judgments are universalizable in the sense that if it is right for a particular person A to do an action X, then it must likewise be right to do X for any person exactly like A, or like A in the relevant respects. Furthermore, if A is right in doing X in this situation, then it must be right for A to do X in other relevantly similar situations.

00518--The Categorical Imperative/Immanuel Kant

The Categorical Imperative

An imperative is a command, instruction or rule governing how one should act. An imperative is ‘categorical’ when it is exceptionless, that is, when it is binding on all rational agents, in all circumstances, at all times. Kant believed that what he called ‘the supreme principle of morality’ was just such a categorical imperative, and he provided a number of different formulations of it. The most important are:

1. Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

2. So act as to use humanity, both in your own person and in the person of every other, always at the same time as an end, never simply as a means.

3 So act as if you were always through your maxims a law-making member of a kingdom of ends.

The Categorical Imperative is, for Kant, an a priori, abstract law which governs the moral value of the maxims on which we act – maxims which, in turn, determine the moral value of those acts themselves. So an act is morally good if it is performed for the sake of a morally good maxim; and a maxim is morally good if it conforms to the Categorical Imperative.