In the film Groundhog Day, journalist Phil Connors finds himself waking up at the same exact time, the same exact place, and on the same exact day. Unsure of why this keeps happening to him, Phil tries new ways to spend his day in order to finally experience a tomorrow. According to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Phil is experiencing the Eternal Return, the thought that there is no beginning or end of time, and all are doomed to repeat their lives over and over again. However, Phil’s Eternal Return seems quite different from Nietzsche’s, because he not only retained memory from the repeats; he also exhibits free will and can adjust his actions each day. Does Phil experience a true Eternal Return defined by Nietzsche? Not entirely so. …show more content…
By changing his actions, Phil directly violated this rule stated by Zarathustra. The result of changing his actions also violated the notion that one does not have free will, since free will is “an invention of the lambs.” (Marks October 1) Simply put, humans do not have free will, everything one does is a reaction that has been done over and over again. After what seems like decades, Phil finally wakes up on February 3rd, the day after Groundhog’s Day, to find that he no longer must repeat the same day and escaped from the Eternal Return. He exclaims that “Today is tomorrow!” In my opinion, Phil’s final night of experiencing Groundhog Day, proved he has fully accepted amore fatti. That night he was with Rita and told her that he no longer cares about today, tomorrow, or any day after, because he is happy and in love with her. It seems as though Phil did not seem unhappy about the possibility of repeating the day and, in fact, seemed excited to spend the following day with Rita. Nietzsche states
The contradiction here is that humans cannot refrain from performing free will. Therefore, determinism cannot abolish free will. He also mentions that if determinism is true, then no one has power over the facts of the past and the laws of nature. Therefore, no one has power over the facts of the future, and, also, has no control over the consequences of one’s behavior. For example, he expresses how compatibilism has been in existence before laws were even made.
Another good example of the lack of free will would be when Billy is about to die. Normally, someone would care about their death, but Billy does not. He locks up a tape in a safe-deposit box, saying "I, Billy Pilgrim, will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth" (180). Before he dies, he is giving a speech, and he knows that he will be assassinated.
“Fate is a misconception, it's only a cover-up for the fact you don't have control over your own life.” –Anonymous. In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse-five, an optometrist named Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time uncontrollably and constantly travels between his past, present, and future. Since Pilgrim is unable to control his time warps, he is forced to re-live agonizing moments such as watching his wartime friend Edgar Derby executed for stealing or going through the Dresden bombing repeatedly. However, he is also able to visit pleasant moments like speaking as president in front of the Lions club or his honeymoon with his wife, Valencia. Vonnegut’s use of repetition and vision of war, time and death are crucial to Pilgrim as he warps through time emotionless due to the fact that he knows, and will always know what will happen next.
The people of Tralfamadore tell Billy that humans do not understand time because everything they do is in singular progression. “It is an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever,” (27). The Tralfamadorians also tell Billy that nothing can be changed because of the structure of how time works. When Billy asks one of the Tralfamadorians about free will the creature responds, “Only on Earth is there any talk of free will,” (86). The people of Tralfamadore say that, “All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is,” (86). With this in mind everything in life is left up to fate there is no chance at free will because every moment is already a moment and no one is capable of changing
This perceived ending of man is embraced through McCarthy’s use of Paul Valery’s thesis of the Assumed Infinity, theorized in his essay, Recollection. By focusing on macro-level regenerative violence, McCarthy embraces Paul Valery’s thesis. This theory of the Assumed Infinity can be conceptualized through the concept of the trend versus momentary fluctuations, and the importance of each in its own right. Specific moments in life are where there are bursts of adrenaline, feelings of emotion, etc, and are short and are encapsulated in a moment.
Phil!,Phil!,Phil!,Phil! Dang hearing my name gives me the rush, as you all know i'm Punxsutawney Phil the cutest, fluffiest,and awesomest groundhog you have ever seen i'm for sure you already know who I am. What!? You haven't well pull up a chair and listen to my story on how I became the fabulous Punxsutawney Phil.It was a quiet day, I was getting a nice healthy snack which involved clovers, and bark. All of a sudden a very large dark figure picked me up and loaded me into some big cage. I was then in a new home it was strange were I was at I was really hot, but here the temperature has been just fine, not too hot to cold, I was inkling to see where I was still a little figure came up to see me through some weird shield I was startled due
Time concept is a complex idea that resist full understanding thus we can only percept it and determinism is a belief that is adopted by whose can percept time better than the others. In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim is kidnapped by Tralfamadorians, who are aliens that can see the fourth dimension. While he was explaining the notion of time to Billy, he uses simile “seeing all time as you might see a stretch of Rocky Mountains.”(85). Kurt Vonnegut indicates that what people live in the present is just an allusion of time. He juxtaposes Billy with Tralfamadorians to show this allusion. While Billy only sees in three dimensions, Tralfamadorians can see the fourth dimension as well. And in the mountain example Billy can only see the 3 side of the mountain, whereas Tralfamadorians see 4 side of it, but they all live in an allusion, because time is such an idea that it is made of infinite sides. It is impossible to dispose of this allusion and see the whole perspective. Vonnegut uses the symbolism in order to show that free-will is jus...
The past is there for us to learn from and rethink how we're going to take our wide steps into the future. Ambition and determination are key elements needed in achieving your goals. Nathan McCall goes to hell and back, just to go to hell and back again in every stage of his life. But, without a doubt, he always regains strength and bounces back.
The Groundhog Day portrays the main theme of existentialism, by the belief that a man is in charge of his own destiny. Only by experiencing life can he become someone, Phil is forced to live the same day over and over again, until he unselfishly begins living life. Thus, he creates himself and is enable to move on. Phil gets stuck repeating this same day and he really can only exit when he understands the truth about human beings and creates his own essence. Before he creates his own essence he had no meaning to his life, this is absurdism. He really did believe that there was no reasoning behind human’s existence. After a short while, Phil starts playing his knowledge of future events to his advantage, which makes his behavior very much like a villain. He starts getting money, taking advantage of women by finding out what they like and then the next day using his knowledge, and he even commits crimes knowing that the next day everything will be perfectly fine for him. There is no tomorrow for him, so there are no consequences. No one remembers what he has done.
In Roderick Chisholm’s essay Human Freedom and the Self he makes the reader aware of an interesting paradox which is not normally associated with the theory of free will. Chisholm outlines the metaphysical problem of human freedom as the fact that we claim human beings to be the responsible agents in their lives yet this directly opposes both the deterministic (that every action was caused by a previous action) and the indeterministic (that every act is not caused by anything in particular) view of human action. To hold the theory that humans are the responsible agents in regards to their actions is to discredit hundreds of years of philosophical intuition and insight.
The argument of whether humans are pre-determined to turn out how we are and act the way we do or if we are our own decision makers and have the freedom to choose our paths in life is a long-standing controversy. As a psychologist in training and based on my personal beliefs, I do not believe that we truly have this so called free will. It is because of this that I choose to believe that the work of free will by d’Holbach is the most accurate. Although the ideas that Hume and Chisolm present are each strong in their own manner, d’Holbach presents the best and most realistic argument as to how we choose our path; because every event has a cause, we cannot have free will. Not only this, but also, that since there is always an external cause, we can never justify blame. Now let’s review Hume and Chisolm’s arguments and point out why I do not think that they justly describe free will.
Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time and is privy to what happens in his “future” as he is living out his “past” and “present”; Pilgrim’s attitude to tragedies that occur to him is indifferent, he is unable to change what is meant to happen so he will simply accept his cup of misfortune and smile. This theme is actually a counter-counterculture idea, but it contributes to the helplessness of the soldiers in war, they are ordered and do as they are told because that is their life. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference. (Vonnegut 77)” Throughout the story the illusion of free will is proven through the nonlinear view of time. A phrase repeated several times “So it goes,” gives us the truth of the fixed place of events. This theme has been popular for several centuries and reoccurs in the counterculture, in An Essay on Man, by Alexander Pope, the last line reads: “Whatever is, is right.” (Pope 351) This means that anything that happens is meant for a reason and we are unable to change it. This illusion helps us humans maintain a sense of control of our own lives and pacifies our resistance to the real control of
The repetitive songs lyrics in the song I Got You Babe by Sonny and Cher “They say we're young and we don't know We won't find out until we grow Well I don't know if all that's true 'Cause you got me, and baby, I got you Babe I got you babe I got you babe” begins each morning at 6:00 A.M., in Punxsutawney, Pa. not even smashing the radio to bits and pieces will make it shut up. The movie Groundhog Day which is was directed by Harold Ramis, released in 1993. This movie is about Phil Connors, a weatherman who is reporting the groundhog who will see his shadow which will determine if there's going to be more weeks added to winter. However, he then gets stuck in a blizzard which he was surprised by since he wasn’t expecting it. He starts to wake up on the same day over and over again and along with reliving the same events over and over again. As Phil comes to conclusion with being in a trap with time, he realizes that he needs to do something to stop the time lapse. He starts to care more for the people around him, he begins to give more respect to people, he tries to save a homeless man’s life, and starts to have feelings for Rita who will hopefully love him back. The movie Groundhog Day connects with
... eventually realizes it can only temporarily satiate his desire for knowledge and friendship, and that eventually, he like all other people, must grow up and move on to new passions and explorations. The entire book in fact returns to this idea many times as Tom has to grapple with the meaning and importance of time. In the same way that Tom must solve the problems he faces, all people must learn to answer the seemingly unanswerable questions of life. At some point or another, we all face situations that seem impossible, but as Tom comes to learn there is always a reason or some explanation for the route life takes. As Tom constantly questions the concept of time and reality versus imagination, we too must ask the same questions for, as Pearce asks many times throughout the novel, “What is time?” (Pearce 168) and how can the seemingly impossible really happen?
In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind stresses the importance of memory and how memories shape a person’s identity. Stories such as “In Search of Lost Time” by Proust and a report by the President’s Council on Bioethics called “Beyond Therapy” support the claims made in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.