This synthesis paper involves four texts read in class based on the predominating historical moment. The main class texts used in the synthesis essay includes Homer Odyssey, Plalto’s Apology & Crito, and The confessions of St. Augustine. All the three texts trace their basis from a common historical moment. The most outstanding concept in the text dwells on past instances of evil. At some instances, the authors have concentrated at pointing out cases of human torture by some few individuals in history. As observed in such instances, the few individuals who imposed torture on the societal inhabitants were in leadership positions. Additionally, the texts expound more about cases of repentance and apologies. In case of any apology, there must …show more content…
He confesses his sins, followed by a confession of faith, and praise confession (John Ryan 29). Although his confession is all to do with religion, it can be noted that he made efforts soon after realizing how injustice he was. Indeed, Augustine realizes that the life lived by man under the sun is just facilitated by God’s divine power. The greatest striking point in his case is capitalized on the new realization. For a long time, human beings live without really honoring God with their lives and possessions. In respect to this synthesis paper, such a form of living can be treated as a form of injustice to God. Augustine makes an attempt of not only realizing, but making a right confession of his unjust deeds, showing gratitude to God and praising his …show more content…
The followers observed before Socrates had no distinct sect as well as peculiar doctrines and practices. In his history, Anaxagoras’ sect was quite deceptive and served as a scheme of drifting people away from the truth. In this case, it can be realized that history had various forms of injustice. Of all the information that people thought to know, it was later on proved wrong by Socrates. It is additionally wrong to impart people with incorrect information. Historically, there used to be a sect of people who were solely interested in leading others a stray. As can be observed in the Plato Apology, Anaxagoras served as one of the people who mislead many people
From the beginning of creation to the fictitious lands created by J. R. R. Tolkien himself, the distinctions between good and evil rise from the shadows and into the light. Specifically, in the Confessions of St. Augustine all things created through the light of God are seen as wholly good, while the absence of such light and goodness is considered evil. Tolkien’s novel elaborates on the work of Augustine and establishes the differences between forces of good and evil in the land of Middle Earth. Augustine and Tolkien in their works Saint. Augustine Confessions and The Fellowship of the Ring address the issues that arise from an individual 's struggle to escape the temptations of evil and succumbing to their lust for power rather than asserting
Unlike other texts of the time, Augustine’s confessions are less of an epic tale or instructive texts, both of which soug...
For these two articles that we read in Crito and Apology by Plato, we could know Socrates is an enduring person with imagination, because he presents us with a mass of contradictions: Most eloquent men, yet he never wrote a word; ugliest yet most profoundly attractive; ignorant yet wise; wrongfully convicted, yet unwilling to avoid his unjust execution. Behind these conundrums is a contradiction less often explored: Socrates is at once the most Athenian, most local, citizenly, and patriotic of philosophers; and yet the most self-regarding of Athenians. Exploring that contradiction, between Socrates the loyal Athenian citizen and Socrates the philosophical critic of Athenian society, will help to position Plato's Socrates in an Athenian legal and historical context; it allows us to reunite Socrates the literary character and Athens the democratic city that tried and executed him. Moreover, those help us to understand Plato¡¦s presentation of the strange legal and ethical drama.
In “On Free Choice of the Will”, Augustine indicates the importance of his beliefs and opinions of human nature and of God. He thinks as greatly of God as possible and centralizes his thoughts of goodness with the concept of being/form (God); he also gives a description of how God’s rightness can be interpreted clearly through the evil doings of the world. One of the biggest and most difficult problems facing people is the problem of doing evil. If God is being, unchanging, eternal and all-powerful, then how is it that people do evil? Augustine tries to solve the problem by examining the “source of evil” and “what evil is”. He explores the ways in which to live a happy life and an evil-free life by having a perfectly ordered soul—a life willed by the virtues—through free will. In the pursuit to find out how it is that evil exists, Augustine explores how people sin with inordinate desire as the driving force and free will. He lists the things we need to possess in order to sin and to live a happy life—goods of the will and temporal goods—that is, one cannot sin without temporal goods, inordinate desire, and free will. In the same way, one cannot live a happy life without goods of the will and free will.
During this essay, the trail of Socrates found in the Apology of Plato will be reviewed. What will be looked at during this review is how well Socrates rebuts the charges made against him. We will also talk about if Socrates made the right decision to not escape prison with Crito. Socrates was a very intelligent man; this is why this review is so critical. In Plato’s Apology, it seems that overall Socrates did an effective job using the 3 acts of the mind.
without you [God]” (1.2). God is the creator and source of all things. Again “
It was because of the Oracle that Socrates began to question his wisdom and the wisdom of others. He was not trying to corrupt the youth nor did he believe in false gods. Socrates was a man who believed that the Oracle’s message, “There was no one wiser than Socrates.”, was misguided and tried to prove it wrong. He went about doing that by questioning people. Socrates realized that he truly know nothing, of importance. So he tried to seek the truth. To be able to do this he ahd an open mind, and told his followers they should also have open minds. This is why Socrates was falsely accused by a culture that was both strict and hypocritical.
Socrates was accused of bringing false gods into the polis and corrupting the youth. The only false god was himself. For he might have presented himself in such a way to his many followers. These followers were mostly, as he says, wealthy young men with not much to do. This I could imagine is where a good deal of his conceitedness comes from, being almost worshipped be others. These men followed all of his teachings and practices, including the condescending cross-examinations, which were probably the worst of his acts.
In the books of the Confessions, Augustine praises God and confesses his sins while telling the story of his journey. The first half of the Confessions describe his journey away from himself, which include giving into his personal pleasure. The fifth book is when he has a revelation, and the rest of the Confessions gives the account of the process of getting back to himself, or being fully human. It is a path that took a large part of his life, but it in the end, he accepts his vocation of “being”.
Plato. "Apology." The Longman Anthology of World Literature. Ed. David Damrosch and David L. Pike. Compact ed. New York: Pearson, 2008. 559-75. Print.
St. Augustine is a man with a rational mind. As a philosopher, scholar, and teacher of rhetoric, he is trained in and practices the art of logical thought and coherent reasoning. The pursuits of his life guide him to seek concrete answers to specific questions. Religion, the practice of which relies primarily on faith—occasionally blind faith—presents itself as unable to be penetrated by any sort of scientific study or inquiry. Yet, like a true scientist and philosopher, one of the first questions St. Augustine poses in his Confessions is: “What, then, is the God I worship” (23)? For a long time, Augustine searches for knowledge about God as a physical body, a particular entity—almost as if the Lord were merely a human being, given the divine right to become the active figurehead of the Christian religion.
... of sainthood requires an excess of self-restraint that makes it impossible to attain the moral mean. The saint may tell himself that the denial of worldly pleasures will bring him true happiness, but in fact he is pursuing a kind of perverse pleasure in self-restraint. Saint Augustine is looking for happiness from beyond life; but happiness, as Aristotle says, comes from achieving the moral mean in life. If we aspire to the moral mean, we must consider moral martyrdom to be like any other excess. In this view, the denial of worldly pleasures is not a virtue; rather, it is a vice that leads us away from the balance that we seek in our lives.
W. Andrew Hoffecker. Building a Christian World View, vol. 1: God, man, and Knowledge. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., Phillipsburg, New Jersey : 1986. William S. Babcock. The Ethics of St. Augustine: JRE Studies in Religion, no. 3.
Critics have for a long time argued that there is no way that philosophy and religion can come together. In their argument, they find many a religious group conflicting with the sound doctrine purported by the philosophy arena. For those who have tried to harmonize the two disciplines, they have been met with complex questions on the authenticity and their grounds of arguments. However, the works of ancient (middle-age philosophers) and religious thinkers and scholars has had challenges too but there are two outstanding works that have gained credit from most, if not all, of the scholars and modern philosophers. In this Essay, the researcher takes a keen look at the works of Aristotle and that of St. Thomas Aquinas. To be able to tackle the essay well, it is important to ask at this stage, using Aristotle’s philosophy and Thomas Aquinas’s philosophical insights, is it possible to establish a connection between the warring sides of philosophy and religion? In this essay, the researcher will start by giving a perceived basic definition of magnanimous man, and then proceed on to the subject of power in relation to Aristotle’s Philosophy and Aquinas’s religious inclinations. This will then be followed by Pity and Mercy that will also be referred as the previous section too. Please follow through as the subject is dealt with in depth.
In the beginning, God created the world. He created the earth, air, stars, trees and mortal animals, heaven above, the angels, every spiritual being. God looked at these things and said that they were good. However, if all that God created was good, from where does un-good come? How did evil creep into the universal picture? In Book VII of his Confessions, St. Augustine reflects on the existence of evil and the theological problem it poses. For evil to exist, the Creator God must have granted it existence. This fundamentally contradicts the Christian confession that God is Good. Logically, this leads one to conclude evil does not exist in a created sense. Augustine arrives at the conclusion that evil itself is not a formal thing, but the result of corruption away from the Supreme Good. (Augustine, Confessions 7.12.1.) This shift in understanding offers a solution to the problem of evil, but is not fully defended within Augustine’s text. This essay will illustrate how Augustine’s solution might stand up to other arguments within the context of Christian theology.