× Didn't find what you were looking for? Ask a question
Top Posters
Since Sunday
5
o
5
4
m
4
b
4
x
4
a
4
l
4
t
4
S
4
m
3
s
3
New Topic  
Catracho Catracho
wrote...
Posts: 529
Rep: 2 0
4 years ago
You have read about Jean Paul Sartre and Peter Singer, philosophers who look at freedom from their own personal perspectives. Which one do you think makes the most sense today? Will they hold up over the years?
Then think about how they view religion. Which one do you think matches your own beliefs the best?
Submit your answer giving equal weight to both men. If you completely disagree with one, say why you feel that way.
Read 149 times
1 Reply

Related Topics

Replies
wrote...
Valued Member
Educator
4 years ago
Hi Catracho, I accumulate some information that may help you formulate an informed response.

For Jean-Paul Sartre, life was absurd and made no sense at all (he lived through WW2). Nothing was forbidden to people — as World War 2 showed. Every individual life made its own rules, and chose to follow a dictator or the French Underground. There was no right or wrong — no morality or immorality. Life is always Total Freedom — we always have a Free Choice. Whoever denies this is "inauthentic" and lives in "bad faith" and is a "coward."

According to Jean-Paul Sartre, "even if God existed, that would make no difference." It wouldn’t change the fact that people must choose their own actions in absolute solitude, with no excuses. He believed that if God exists, humans are not free, and that if humans are free, God does not exist. If there is no god then as Sartre pointed out we are condemned to be free - our actions are entirely our own. I don’t happen to think we are 100% free to see (& therefore do) exactly what’s appropriate or the opposite: doomed to be unaware of what’s appropriate at every opportunity. Most of us occupy a place somewhere between these two possibilities and the more we accept our own self-actualization, the more free we become.

For Peter Singer, if the cost of charitable giving is "morally insignificant" to our own standard of living, then the Benthamite calculus of "great gain" for the other, "insignificant pain" to us, applies. In other words, if a terrible event causing suffering occurs, say in the tsunami of some years ago, and the cost to U.K. people would each be insignificant (a less expensive latte for a month, permitting a $5 contribution, for those whose standard of living includes daily lattes), and the U.K. contributions would resolve the material suffering, then the people of the U.K. ought help the people caused suffering by the tsunami. (Obviously, this is an idealized case: one tragedy, one affluent country.)

His views on religion can be summed up with this quote: "The evidence of our own eyes makes it more plausible to believe that the world was not created by any god at all. If, however, we insist on believing in divine creation, we are forced to admit that the god who made the world cannot be all-powerful and all good. He must be either evil or a bungler."
New Topic      
Explore
Post your homework questions and get free online help from our incredible volunteers
  1057 People Browsing
Related Images
  
 1639
  
 361
  
 603
Your Opinion
Do you believe in global warming?
Votes: 370