Monthly Archives: March 2012

1) When Shakespeare or Aphra Behn allude to misogynist or racist attitudes, are they endorsing them? Why, or why not?

2) Satire plays heavily in the works of Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Jonathan Swift. Choose two authors’ works and describe both a target of their satire as well as the target audience.

3) Learning and education are present as themes in all the works read thus far. What sort of value judgements are made by the authors? Is education presented as inherently valuable, or is it presented as an institution that often conceals as much truth as it may reveal?

1. Discuss how humans treat others with cruelty once they feel ownership over other humans.
2. Discuss the powerlessness of humans under superseding circumstances.
3. Regardless of how different ( or degrading and inhumane) a society may seem to an outsider, it is considered normal to those who live in it.

Suggested Topic:

Self-interest and temptation to use the power over those who are powerless.

Each text has the heroes more or less powerful and the ability to use the power sometimes makes people to do unfair and egoistic things.

As I study the Social Contract theory, and can’t stop to see the similarities in the medieval thought and logic of Hobbes and other thinkers that almost try too hard to convince their target audience of;

a) People give up their natural rights and freedom for governance

b) Self-Interested, Rational Individuals agree that they should abide by rules in order to live in a given society.

Why?

People are often brought into the world and subject to rules they did not help establish, or have the opportunity to change them in their lifetime.

People are doctrined, and civilized, and institutionalized, in order to learn values, morals, culture and tradition that they would better not dare to question, or criticize.

People are taken advantage of, by the same agents that police and control them, the rulers, the government, a more or less coercive force they can call family, state, church, employer, or the system, or the man, and the man is usually that who promises one thing and does another, demands trust and delivers deceit to those who had no other choice but to accept the ruling or else.

I believe people do have a choice to their natural rights and freedom, and that no system allows for such choice, but self-government. Allowing a Self-Interested Agent such a Government to make up rules and regulations, has often failed to allow individuals to exercise their rights and freedom. Coercive, oppressive, and biased are the governments, even in our nation, which supposedly is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The ideal government of the people, by the people, for the people, of which we hear of, is nothing but an oxymoron. The idea to expect the government to act in the people’s best interest is a joke.

Now, the theme of liberty is a constant in all the three texts, and I am not sure to make all the connections yet, but I hope to do so.