P1+Cory+B,+Rema,+Regine

The Stranger Terms:

1. Modernism 2. Cory Bull 3.



4. Modernism is the era of change. The Modernism era started in the mid 1910’s on the eve of World War One. It started as people began to think and prosper for themselves. Modernism is the, “Modern character or quality of thought, expression, or technique” (Oxford Dictionary). Modernism emerged in the art industry by artists like Pablo Picasso and Hans Hofmann. The era started and branched off of the Enlightenment era, rejecting the “All Powerful-Creator”. Modernism is believed to have started in Europe during the Romanticism Era. Although its roots began here, it did not flourish until the early 1900’s. Modernism is created by the examination and reexamination of all aspects of the world. It is based on trial and error of all experiments of every day life. The rejection of the Enlightened thinking was one aspect of Modernism, another "focused on Modernism as an aesthetic introspection. This facilitates consideration of specific reactions to the use of technology in The First World War, and anti-technological and nihilistic aspects of the works of diverse thinkers and artists spanning the period from Nietzsche to Samuel Beckett " (Cambridge University). One influential Modernist was Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Nietzsche specialized in religion and moral perspectives, particularly the Death of God, and perspectivism. Nietzsche was a hedonist. Hedonism flirts with the views of Existentialism, a part of Modernism. It means to do what pleasures you, and do what is needed to make you happy. This view was taken up in Modernism and help flourish throughout the years, as seen in the hippie era: i.e. drug experimentation, and casual sex. This view is main belief of Modernism.

5. Works Cited

Lee Oser. "The Ethics of Modernism: Moral ideas in Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett."

__Cambridge University Press__. 2007: pp234-247.

"Modernism." Def. The Oxford English Dictionary. 1st ed. 2008. Web.

1. Existentialism 2. Rema Hamdan 3.

4. As a disputed term for what it is it describes, existentialism is both a philosophical theory and the basis for a historical and cultural movement. The ideals of Jean-Paul Sartre and his colleagues developed to describe that “the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determin[es} their own development through acts of the will” (“Existentialism”).

1. Free Will 2. Regine Arenas 3.

4. Free will is commonly seen as the independent choices of a person; it is that fate or external forces do not determine human actions itself, but through personal choices (“free will”). However, defining what exactly this ‘free’ in free will has caused philosophers to address two different questions: ‘can humans be free agents?’ and ‘can humans be morally responsible for actions?’ (Galen). Now we have divided beliefs as to how to answer those questions. For example, people who are defined as Determinists question whether or not free will exists: what about biological inheritance, habit, and moral inhibitions? Do they not affect human choices? According to Batt, “Real choices, it’s often supposed, require that you intervene in the causal stream from an undetermined vantage point… very much like God, or as Daniel Dennett so wonderfully put it, a moral levitator”. Until humans are seen as purely unaffected by opinions and irrevocable outside forces, then free will cannot be considered real. Other anti-determinist beliefs include that if humans are born with permanent external factors, then they technically cannot be morally responsible because everything has been determined for them already. Therefore they do not truly have the liberty of free choice. And others simply believe in determinism, but that people still have the ‘freedom’ to choose how they act even if they are born with set circumstances, as is the common view (Galen). There are many more beliefs out there, but all in all, people still question the existence of free will. The real issue lies in just believing whether humans are morally responsible vs. why humans believe we are morally responsible.

5. Works Cited:

Batt, Ken. “Fully Caused: Coming to Terms with Determinism”. __Naturalism.__ 

“Free will". Dictionary.com. Random House, Inc. 19 Aug. 2010. Web.

Strawson, Galen (1998, 2004). Free will. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge.

1. Fate 2. Regine Arenas 3.

4. Fate is the inevitable outcome, a set of predetermined final events, of a person’s life despite their actions and choices (“Fate”). Fate is demonstrated in many different forms of literature and religion throughout history. In classical mythology, there are three goddesses who weave knots together as points of a human life with the thread being cut once the life ends (Kuth). These three Fates were called Parcae to Romans, Norns in Norse, and Moirae to the Greeks. In Greek mythology these three goddesses control the destinies of human beings. The goddess Clotho spins the thread of life (destiny); the goddess of Lachesis measures it to each man; and the goddess of Atropos cuts the thread, symbolizing death (Kuth). The process of fate in this mythology illustrates that a person can have control over where their actions take them (known as destiny), but are in actuality following through a set path that has already been “woven” for them. Therefore fate is a plan, a final and irrevocable ending of a person's life.

5. Works Cited:

"Fate." __Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary__. 2010. Merriam-Webster Online. Web.

Kuth, Frederick John. “The Fates, Weavers of Destiny”. __RWAAG.__ 19 Aug 2009. 

1. Freedom