In my personal (and anything but humble) opinion, reading and writing satire is one of the greatest pleasures known within the literary realm. This in no way implies that satire is easy to write because nothing could be further from the truth. Many people think that satire and comedy are synonymous. They are again off ...
The Enlightenment, which usually is described as having taken place during the 18th century, helped to fabricate the momentum which led to so many of today’s modern ideologies. The theme of reform, and individualism greatly led the way through these times, helping the individual spirits of Europe to break free from the medieval customs, but, ...
With the news at the time of this writing that even ubiquitous bookseller chain Borders is having problems in America’s sagging economy–you know that booksellers in general are in big trouble in the age of Walmart eating up the world…one store at a time. And Walmart doesn’t even have a comprehensive collection of books (and ...
Heidegger begins pages 43-102 of Parmenides by continuing with his lecture on the essence of pseudos. He claims that there is much more to the oppositional nature of alathea than a mere positive and negative relationship. Rather, both truth and falsity must be thought in terms of a reciprocity with one another. He reiterates that ...
Candide is a story of the forlorn misadventures of a Baron’s illegitimate nephew. At an early age, he adopts an unconquerable optimistic view of the world from his tutor, the obdurate Pangloss. Throughout the insufferable torment of their lives, Candide and Pangloss manage to retain their oft-discredited philosophy. Voltaire, the author of the book, wrote ...
In pages 135 through 163 of Parmenides, Heidegger takes up his pursuit of the Fourth Directive presented by alethea. He begins by discussing the law of proximity, claiming that normal vision overlooks what is immediately closest and sees first what is the next closest. The brightness shining from alethea is overlooked as what is closest. ...
This paper is a short essay addressing the protagonist of Voltaire’s conte, Candide, and his (Candide’s) enlightenment to the fallacies of the philosophy of Optimism. This relatively short novelette provided Voltaire a platform to satire Leibniz’s Optimism as well as incorporate some of Voltaire’s other views on life. The key questions addressed by this paper ...
The world was a tumultuous place in the 1700’s. Wars were fought, corruption was rampant, and a wave of philosophers were beginning to question the social order in a barrage of thought which we now know as the Enlightenment. Most men, while picking out their own convictions from the torrent of ideas swirling about in ...
The tone and theme of Candide, a classic work of literature, make the novel relevant to today’s modern world. These two elements of the story bring the classic to life for new generations to relate to as they read it. The satiric story unites a new generation of modern readers to a distant past as ...
Candide, is a philosophical book by Voltaire published in Geneva in January 1759. It was reissued twenty times the lifetime of Voltaire making it one of the most successful French literary works. Candide was first published anonymously in 1759, Candide was then attributed to a “Mr. Doctor Ralph” in 1761, following the reshuffle of the ...
