If you missed the videos

We watched three videos in this unit, Kant and Categorical Imperative, Romanticism, and Hegel.

See below.

Kant.


Romanticism


Hegel


Enjoy!

Blog #58 - Take one thing away from our world...

After watching The Invention of Lying on Thurs. and Fri., we discussed what the true intentions of the movie were.

• Was it trying to show us that lying has its good points (little white lies, brutal honesty that numbs us to those in trouble around us, insults that should be better left unsaid)?;
• Was it a critique of religion as false hope? When Mark was on a TV interview show for a brief second at Anna's house, he looked and sounded like just another televangelist;
• Or did it show, even if religion may be a false hope (in the moviemakers' eyes), that hope is worth believing in b/c it gives the people in this world that their lives weren't for nothing (you're a loser on Earth and now you'll be rotting in the ground - geez, what's the point of life then? Look at Jonah Hill's character and his insistent research into suicide);
• Did the filmmakers add deliberate philosophical tie-ins with Nietzsche (bending reality to fit to one's will and lying creatively) or Christianity w/ Mark acting as a stand-in for God when he gave Anna the chance to love him on her own accord a few times (much like the Christian scholars have said that God gave mankind free will so that we can love Him on our own accord)? Though, I'm not sure what Mark sees in Anna...

So, your job is to think about something, just one single thing, that you would remove from our world in order to create a parallel world like the one in the movie so that this parallel world would somehow be better than our world.

Explain how your new world would be different, and try to be imaginative by thinking of both the positives and negatives. Don't be discouraged if someone has already taken your idea. Build on what they've already written or go off in a different direction or rethink your approach.

Try to stick to one thing - I know it will be difficult, but please try. 

250 words by Monday, March 4 by class. 

Sources:

Negative review of Invention: http://www.debbieschlussel.com/9910/weekend-box-office-anti-religion-invention-of-lying-awesome-zombieland-butch-feminist-whip-it-mikey-moore-agit-prop/

Another review of Invention from the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2009/10/12/091012crci_cinema_lane

Another one from the L.A. Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/02/entertainment/et-lying2