Understanding Violence: Structural, Moral, and Divine
Structural Violence (Paul Farmer)
Definition:
Structural violence refers to the harm caused by social and economic structures that distribute power and resources unequally, resulting in the suffering of marginalized groups.
Key Concepts:
- Poverty and Inequality: Root causes of structural violence where unequal distribution of resources leads to suffering.
- Institutional Policies: Government and institutional actions that perpetuate marginalization and inequality.
- Manifestations: Lack of access to essential
Moral Action and Ethical Reflection in Human Behavior
Read MoreDefining Moral and Ethical Terms
Both terms refer to the character or mode of being that people acquire throughout life, through habit, as well as norms or values that guide us as people. However, we can qualify this a bit.
The term Moral (Latin mos moris) we apply to human behavior. In fact, our own behavior is regulated, as already noted, for certain values or norms that guide us in our relationships with others (person to person) or to live in society (as individuals within the social group). For
Kant’s Critique of Traditional Metaphysics
**Critique of Traditional Metaphysics**
Metaphysics and the Natural Tendency Toward Illusory Knowledge. Kant delivers a devastating critique of dogmatic metaphysics, which sought to present itself as science. Based on the aforementioned theory of knowledge and science, he demonstrates how metaphysics is not, nor can it be, knowledge, much less science, but rather an illusion. However, this illusion is inevitable; it originates in the nature of human reason, which, as it is, will always tend to engage
Read MorePlato’s Philosophy: Insights into Knowledge, Reality, and Ideal Society
Plato: A Philosopher of Ancient Greece
1. Plato lived in the 5th-4th century BC. In his youth, he wrote drama and poetry, but his primary interest was the philosophy of Socrates.
2. Plato was extremely impressed by Socrates’ death. He refused to engage in social policy and instead focused on theoretical activity.
3. He traveled to Sicily and met the Pythagoreans. He tried to implement their form of social organization and government in Syracuse but was unsuccessful.
4. Plato founded a school called
Read MoreKey Philosophical Concepts: From Aristotle to Modern Thought
Abstraction
Abstraction: The process by which the right ideas are formed from things. An operation that separates or isolates the understanding of reality. In philosophy, it has an Aristotelian sense, according to which abstraction is the process of forming universal intellectual concepts (tree, man, etc.) from individual beings (trees, men, etc.).
Accident
Accident: Literally, what happens. What may or may not occur, inherent in a substance. All non-essential features of a substance. Aristotle defined
Read MoreDescartes’ Cogito: Understanding Innate, Adventitious, and Factitious Ideas
Thoughts and Ideas
Thoughts and ideas, as the cogito deduces, suggest that we always think. Because if you stop thinking, there would stop what we think. Ideas should be the object of our knowledge. There are thousands of different types of ideas. First, there are innate ideas, born with me and coming from the faculty of thinking itself (the lumen naturale rationis). These are known by intellectual intuition, are evident, and therefore true (like mathematical truths). Then there are ideas that seem
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