Major Differencies Between Eastern and Western Philosophies as the Basis for Adult Education Essay Example for Free

Major Differencies Between Eastern and Western Philosophies as the Basis for Adult Education Essay Western philosophy has its roots in Athens, Rome and Judeo ­Christianity while Eastern philosophy is derived from Confucianism, Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism. As Greek and Latin are to Western civilisation, so classical Chinese is to East Asian civilisation. I will focus on four major differences between Eastern and Western philosophies. 1. Western Individualism and Eastern Collectivism In the Greco‑Roman tradition, the image of Prometheus powerfully illustrates the struggle for individual freedom. Prometheus had gone against Zeus, the all powerful god who ruled the sky from Mt. Olympus. Prometheus annoyed Zeus by creating human beings. To protect the human beings from Zeus, he stole fire from Hephaestos, the blackmith god and gave it to the human beings. This angered Zeus to the extent that Prometheus was chained to a rock and an eagle tore out his liver. In European consciousness, Prometheus had become the hero who: defied the patriarchy in the name of individual freedom, who brought light into our darkness. He was the saviour who sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, the benefactor who brought the gift of technology down from heaven, the teacher who taught us that we are not at the whims of the gods any more, who showed us how to use our intelligence to take control of the world. The Christian tradition has also reinforced the notion of individual rights. The Bible speaks of God creating Man in His own image and letting him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all the earth, and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth (Genesis 1:26). By comparison, the Chinese live in a world of obligations: obligations to serve the ruler, obligations to work for the family, obligations to obey elders, obligations to help relatives, obligations to do well to glorify the name of ancestors, obligations to defend the country in times of trouble, and obligations to oneself to cultivate ones own virtue. It would also seem that rights only belong to one individual ‑ the Son of Heaven. Confucianism promotes conservatism and this stifles creativity and robs the people of self‑introspection. 2. Fragmentary and Holistic According to Fritjof Capra, the emphasis of rational thought is epitomised in Descartes celebrated statement,Cognito, ergo sum ‑ I think, therefore, I exist. This has forcefully encouraged Westerners to equate their identity with their rational mind rather than with the whole organism. This division between the mind and the body has led to a view of the universe as a mechanical system consisting of separate objects, which in turn were reduced to fundamental building blocks whose properties and interactions were thought to completely determine all natural phenomena. This mechanistic conception of the whole world is still the basis of most of our sciences and continues to have a tremendous influence on our lives. Academic disciplines become fragmented and this has served as a rationale for treating the universe as if it consisted of separate parts to be exploited by different groups. The essence of the Eastern world view is the awareness of the unity and the mutual inter‑relation of all things and events, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestation of a basic oneness. All things are seen as independent and inseparable parts of a cosmic whole, as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality. The Eastern traditions refer to this ultimate, indivisible reality as Brahman in Hinduism, Dharmakaya in Buddhism and Tao in Taoism. 3. Conflict and Harmony The Marxist view of history saw change as arising from a dialectic interplay of opposites ‑hence class struggle and conflict. Western civilisation based itself on the struggle between the Good and Evil, God and Satan or Psyche and Cupid. Eastern philosophical thought is based on this notion of the Yin and the Yang. Frithjof Capra describes the Yang as the strong,male creative power associated with Heaven while yin is the dark,receptive, female and maternal element. The dark yin and the bright yang are arranged in a symmetrical manner. They are dynamic ‑ a rotating symmetry suggesting very forcefully a continuous cyclic movement.The two dots in the diagram symbolise the idea that each one of the forces reaches its extreme, it contains in itself the seed of the opposite.Life says Chuang Tzuis the blended harmony of the yin and the yang. Taoism permeates the economic and social lives of the Chinese through geomancy, qigong, Chinese medicine and idol worship. As Chan observes:Almost every hotel, office and commercial building that has gone up within the last decade adheres to certain principles of geomancy or Fengshui ‑ the art and science of harmonising man and nature. 4. Idealism and Pragmatism. The Western idea of democracy does not fit into the Eastern scheme of things easily. In an interview by the Daily Telegraph on 16 October 1989 the former Prime Minister remarked that: I think in a mainly Chinese electorate, the idea of a loyal opposition and an alternative government does not come easily. Youre either for or against the government. The Confucianistic idea of social hierarchy where a persons existence is relational, extending from his family, society and country. The pragmatism of the East is exemplied in the way Confucianism has been used to emphasize order through social hierarchy and the rules and conventions. Taoism provided the meaning of life and thus compliment Confucianism. Confucius preached the doctrine of the here and now. The emphasis is one of life and life and not life and death. The sage hoped to hear the right way in the morning, and die in the evening without regret. What lays the foundation of life for the Chinese is the family and the continuation of the family also means the passing on of experience, culture and thought. The Taoists has an equal view of life and death seeing life and death as the coming out and going back of a human form of existence. Chuang Tsu talks of coming and going . Lao Tzu said,out to life, in to death. The crux of the matter is to make the best of the present.

Threatening Relationships in Carver’s Cathedral Essay -- Carver Cathed

Threatening Relationships in Carver’s Cathedral  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚   Although many critics have written numerous accounts of Richard Carver’s "Cathedral" as being about revelation and overcoming prejudice, they have overlooked a very significant aspect: the unfolding of marital drama. The story tells of how a close outside friendship can threaten marriage by provoking insecurities, creating feelings of invasion of privacy, and aggravating communication barriers. The close outside friendship between the narrator’s wife and Robert, the blind man, provokes the narrator’s insecurities. This friendship has lasted for ten long years. During those years, they have exchanged countless voice tapes wherein they both tell each other what has happened in their respective lives. Because of this, the narrator feels that his wife has told Robert more than Robert needs to know. The narrator laments, "she told him everything or so it seemed to me" (1054). The narrator’s fear is somehow confirmed when Robert arrives and says that he feels like they have already met (1055). The narrator is left wondering what his wife has disclosed. This murky situation leaves the narrator feeling insecure, especially when he sees the warm interaction between his wife and Robert. The narrator’s insecurities unfold when it takes him almost five pages just to demonstrate how close the friendship is between his wife and Robert. It is as though he is justifying his irrational behavior or perhaps questioning if his wife could be secretly in love with Robert. The narrator assumes this because his wife only writes poems if something really important happens to her. He recalls that his wife never forgot that instant when Robert "touched his fingers to every part of her face... ...m. Ed. Thomas Volteler. Detroit: Gale Research, 1989. 23-28. Carver, Raymond. "Cathedral." The Harper Anthology of Fiction. Ed. Sylvan Barnet. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. 1052-1062. Eder, Richard. "Pain on the Face of Middle America." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski. Detroit: Gale Research Publishing, Inc., 1986. 103. Works Consulted Robinson, Marilynne. " Marriage and other Astonishing Bonds." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gale Publishing Inc., 1989. 276-278. Weele, Michael Vander. "Raymond Carver and the language of Desire." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas Volteler. Detroit: Gale Publishing Inc., 1989. 36-41. Yardley, Jonathan. " Raymond Carver’s American Dreamers." Contemporary Literary Criticism. Eds. Daniel Marowski and Roger Matuz. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1989. 63.      

Horses by Edwin Muir Essay

This poem presents us with a post apocalyptic world in which evil triumphs over good –â€Å"and their great hulk were seraphim of gold/, Or mute ecstatic monster on the mould. † Or what a child might believe to be the Apocalypses –Perhaps some childish hour has come again. This is because in the first stanza he is only looking at regular horses but as he starts to watch the â€Å"through the blackening rain† they start to turn evil; but by the by the time the last stanza come about they start to fade away and the â€Å"black field and the still standing tree† return. He also constantly uses rhymes through the whole poem, it been such a basic poetry tool; it infancies the theory that it might be nothing more than a childhood memory. I think it’s common in the civilized West to associate this sort of revelation with childhood, as part of a natural inheritance we lose as we grow up. The last stanza makes me think of Housman’s land of lost content, yet Muir’s poem is clearly suggesting something more than what one might call the everyday magic of a child’s perspective. These horses are not simply magical, they’re elemental, totemic, numinous. If we take these presences to have been part of the common life of farming in Orkney in the late 19th century, then it should be borne in mind that Muir wasn’t cut off from this particular source by time alone, but by place and culture. He said that in moving from Orkney to Glasgow he aged about 150 years, and he was not being jocular.

The Impact of the Industrial Revolution in America Essay

There is no question that the Industrial Revolution had an enormous impact on American society between 1870 and 1940, but the question is what kind of an impact did it have during this period. The overall effect of the Industrial Revolution turned out to be a positive push towards modernization in America. As Stephen Gardiner, a British architect and writer during the 20th century, said, â€Å"The Industrial Revolution was another one of those extraordinary jumps forward in the story of civilization.† While Gardiner hit the nail on the head with his quote, the part of the story that most people tend to forget is just how quickly we Americans, made that extraordinary jump forward. There were Americans, who, at one point in their life were†¦show more content†¦In the years following the war, once everything had settled down and the United States of America was whole again, technology really began to pick up. At the start of the 1870s, America was in the beginning s tages of becoming a very technologically advanced nation. Some of the key ingredients that America already had for the future were, electricity, steal, railroads, chemistry, and the most important one of all engineers of production. These engineers were innovators and wanted to be able to mass-produce anything that they could. In order to mass-produce at a high capacity, the engineers believed that America must create parts interchangeably. This enabled manufacturers to manufacture things such as, guns, clocks, bicycles, typewriters, and even engines very quickly. Whether America knew it or not, this was the beginning to something that would forever change the way the world operated. Because many manufactured goods were now being made interchangeably, the efficiency for manufacturing consumer goods was at an all-time high. Soon, the economies of scale technique was introduced and manufacturers were now able to figure out how much it cost per product depending on the supply, de mand, and actual cost of the product. It was now much easier for innovators to focus on upgrading these products, instead of having to make them one by one. Once it was easier to upgrade machines, newShow MoreRelatedThe Impact Of The Industrial Revolution On America1060 Words   |  5 Pagesanybody in America, this is shown leading up to the first half of the 20th century. During the first century and a half, the United States was focused on territorial expansion and economic growth. This led the United States to become a young vibrant nation. The next half century international and domestic events transpired which led the nation to become a world power in the 20th century. 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