The Analysis of “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee Essay Example for Free

The Analysis of â€Å"To Kill a Mockingbird† by Harper Lee Essay The text under study belongs to famous American writer Harper Lee. It’s a passage of her novel â€Å"To kill a mockingbird†, but as the extract is rather complete we can define it as a short story. The extract under analysis depicts a trial of Tom Robinson who is accused of assaulting a white girl. So we can easily define the following theme: the trial of a Negro man who has supposedly raped a white girl. The problem raised by the author is an issue of justice. The main idea the author tries to reveal is in spite of the fact that people are different according to their age, sex, education, social status, colour of skin etc., all should be treated equally and honestly when they go before court. The main conflict is between the defence and the prosecution. It’s obvious and external. We observe the events through the eyes of Jean Louise, seven years old daughter of Atticus, who is present at trial. Though Jean’s observations and views are important, the essential part of the passage is dedicated to Atticus’s speech which is worth considering as it’s a bright example of an oratory. Public speeches in general are being given by all kinds of people to many kinds of audience. But the aim of the speech is always the same — the speaker must win the audience heart, must make it believe him, support him, and stand by his side. Logically organized speech, which would sound convincing, is the only way to succeed. And such oratory has certain features that are also present at Atticus’s speech. Throughout Atticus’s speech the author uses different CDs of different language levels to make the speech coherent, convincing, and emotionally appealing. As the most features of the oratory are present at Atticus’s speech, we can conclude that it has an argumentative power and is logically built. I think this was achieved due to that fact that Harper Lee herself studied law at university so she knew full well what she was writing about. As for the main character we can say that even he didn’t win this trial he made everybody, both black and white people, respect him. We can say beyond all the reasonable doubt that at the introduction to the story Atticus was by rights called an experienced lawyer and a smart and wise person.

History Of The Spanish Inquisition Of The 15th Century Essay Example for Free

History Of The Spanish Inquisition Of The 15th Century Essay The Spanish Inquisition is usually synonymous with persecution, brutality and tyranny; and it is thought to be the forerunner of the covert regulatory bodies of contemporary autocracies. Yet how accurate is this picture of an establishment set up in the late 15th century to route out deviation and agnosticism in that land? This report aims to place the Spanish Inquisition in its correct historical context. BACKGROUND The conception of inquisitions to eliminate religious heretics was not new when, in 1478, Pope Sixtus IV sanctioned the formation of Spanish Inquisition. The monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, decided to establish a body (which began its work in 1480) chiefly to deal with the issue of the huge numbers of converted Jews (Conversos) who were alleged of continuing to carry out tenants of the Jewish religion after apparent conversion to Catholicism. Following the formal expulsion of all non-converted Jews from Spain in 1492, the problem of the Conversos increased. The roots of the Spanish Inquisition can therefore be traced quite clearly back to anti-Semitism. In 1518, the Inquisition became a permanently unified body under one head, the Inquisitor-General . Tomas de Torquemada was appointed by the Monarchs as Grand Inquisitor of the Inquisition. The Catholic Church, under the rule of the pope in Rome was a powerful force in Europe during the Middle ages. The decrees of the church provided the basis of law and order. Christians who disagreed with catholic principles were regarded as heretics, and heresy was considered an crime against the church and the state. The â€Å"inquiries† into a person’s faith to determine whether or not one was a heretic, was branded as the inquisition, with the inquisitors being priests or bishops who subjected a suspect to long grilling followed by terrible tortures. Death by fire was often the punishment of those who did not repent. The heretic’s property was then claimed by the church. Between 1478 and 1502, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon took three complementary decisions. They persuaded the pope to create the Inquisition; they expelled the Jews; and they forced the Muslims of the kingdom of Castile to convert to Catholicism. All these measures were designed to achieve the same end: the establishment of a united faith. The Christian, Muslims and Jewish communities existed tolerantly throughout the first centuries of Muslim domination and continued to do so in the Christian Spain of the 12th and 13th century. Tolerance presupposed an absence of discrimination against minorities and respect for the point of view of others. This tolerance was nowhere to be found in the Iberia of the 8th century to the 15th. Spanish archdeacon named Ferran Martinez was busy delivering a sequence of sermons in the diocese of Seville. It was his remarkable eloquence rather than the novelty of his subject which attracted an audience: for he spoke only on a single theme, one that in every age has provided an easy stalking horse for demagogues religious and civil- the iniquities of the Jews. Their veins had venom that poisoned whatever contribution they made. The Jews, he argued, had been guilty, as a body, of the greatest crime in history. They adhered to a faith that had been rejected in no uncertain manner by the Deity. Their ceremonies were outmoded and impious, rendered those who performed them capable of the most heinous misdoings and doomed them to eternal punishment in the hereafter . ORIGIN AND AIMS Jews weren’t newcomers in Spain. They had been settled there since the 1st century. Documentary and archaeological evidence demonstrates their numbers at the beginning of the fourth century, long before the coming of the Arabs or the Visigoths. The latter had persecuted them, but under the moors they had flourished as nowhere else in Europe. They were an important and influential minority. Every Spanish city had its prosperous juderia, or Jewish quarter, comprised of craftsmen and weavers, goldsmiths and carpenters . The Jews had been expelled from England in 1290 by Edward I En masse. His example had been followed in France sixteen later, by Philip the Fair. The Spanish Jews considered themselves secure from anything of the sort. The activities of Martinez disturbed them but didn’t alarm them. Month after month passed without any untoward occurrence. They fell into the error of imagining that nothing would happen. It came as a shock to them when at the close of 1390, just before Christmastide, Martinez succeeded in having some synagogues in the diocese partially destroyed and closed down, on the plea that they had been built without authorization. The community, alarmed, applied for protection to the council of regency then governing Castile in the name of the young king Henry III, which ordered steps to be taken for the protection of the petitioners. Martinez was defiant, however, and his sermons were as violent as ever. On Wednesday, March 15th, 1391 his harangue was particularly effective, and his audience was roused to a high pitch of frenzy. On its way from the church, a turbulent crowd, thirsting with zeal and greed, surged towards the Jewish quarter, which seemed to be in imminent danger of sack. The civil authorities were at last awakened to the necessity of stern measures. Seizing two of the most turbulent members of the mob, they had them flogged, turned them into martyrs overnight. After some further disturbances, order was outwardly restored: but the spirit of unrest still simmered and Martinez continued his unbridled invective from the pulpit. These seemingly unimportant disorders are to be traced some of the greatest tragedies in history – the darkest page in the dark record of the Jewish people, one of the saddest episodes in the history of human thought, and the ultimate decline of sprain from the high status to which her achievements and her genius entitled her – everything, in a word, which is associated with the term, â€Å"the Spanish Inquisition†. On June 6th, a storm broke out. An infuriated mob rushed upon the juderia of Seville and put it to sack. An orgy of carnage raged the city. The dead were numbered by the hundreds, if not by the thousand. Every ruffian in the city flaunted the finery sacked from Jewish houses, or boasted the ravishing of a Jewish maiden . Through some curious psychology of mass psychology, the infection spread from one city to the other, and throughout Spain onslaughts on the Jews became the order of the day. The fury raged that summer and autumn, and at several places the entire Jewish community was exterminated. At Cordova, the ancient Jewish quarter, where Moses Maimonides had first seen the light, was reduced to ashes. Toledo was witness to a similar horrifying carnage. 70 other towns in Castile were doomed to similar incidents of terror. In Aragon, in spite of measures put into force by the authorities to suppress the mayhem, the case was commonly adhered. In Valencia, within a few days, not a single professing Jew was left alive in the entire kingdom. In Barcelona, despite a half hearted protection given by the civic authorities, the whole community was wiped out. From Catalonia, the disorders spread to the Balearic Islands, where a massacre took place on August 2nd at Palma. Outbreaks were prevented only in the kingdom of Granada thanks to the efforts of the crown, in Portugal. Elsewhere in the peninsula, hardly a single community escaped. The total no of victims was estimated as many as 50,000 . The Inquisition did not begin in Spain, but did gather notoriety there. Shortly after commencement, the Spanish Inquisition was accused of numerous abuses. Accusations of heresy ran rampant, and innocent, faithful people were unjustly punished by public trials and condemnation. This usually took the form of strangulation or burning at the stake. The Inquisition, although vastly changed and more humane, remained a strong force in Spain until the early 19th century . By about 1750 the Inquisition had lost its power. It had been created to eradicate all traces of Semitism in Spain. The Jews had long been expelled and two and a half centuries of persecution had eventually eliminated the Judaisers. Yet the statues of blood purity still did not disappear; in fact, in the course of the eighteenth century, they tended to multiply. They no longer constituted a serious obstacle to a career in the Church, the official administration, or civic society. By the end of the eighteenth century, essentially the Inquisition was operating as a political policing force devoted to opposing the introduction of revolutionary and liberal ideas. By this time, it seemed to have softened its attitude. It no longer published edicts of faith encouraging the faithful spontaneously to denounce their neighbors and their relatives. Nor did it any longer torture its prisoners. CONCLUSION The Spanish Inquisition was one of the most powerful organizations used to eradicate heresy and safeguard the unanimity of Christendom. Begun in 1478, by 1512 the Inquisition was under review for a wide range of issues – from corruption, patronage and bribery. The Spanish Inquisition, first established under Queen Isabella was finally suppressed 356 years later under Queen Isabella II, leaving its mark in the annals of Western civilization. The onset of the Enlightenment slowed down the Inquisition. It, however, wasn’t until the Spanish invasion of Napoleon that the Inquisition finally came to an end in 1810, being completely abolished in 1836. It is estimated that more than 20,000 people were killed because of the Inquisition. Numerous more were subjected to torture and others had their possessions confiscated. John Paul II’s teachings are an ever present reminder of how to learn from history: â€Å" †¦we must take account of the complexity of the relationship between the subject who interprets and the object from the past which is interpreted†¦. Events or words of the past are, above all, â€Å"past. † As such they are not completely reducible to the framework of the present, but possess an objective density and complexity that prevent them from being ordered in a solely functional way for present interests. It is necessary, therefore, to approach them by means of an historical-critical investigation that aims at using all of the information available, with a view to a reconstruction of the environment, of the ways of thinking, of the conditions and the living dynamic in which those events and those words are placed, in order, in such a way, to ascertain the contents and the challenges that precisely in their diversity they propose to our present time . On 12 January 2000, to mark the Catholic Church’s Jubilee, Pope John Paul II issued a document entitled Memory and Reconciliation in which he asked for forgiveness for the errors of the Church over its 2,000 year history. ? BIBLIOGRAPHY Kamen, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision. London, 1997. John Paul II, Memory and Reconciliation, 2000. Finkelstein, Louis. 1970. The Jews: their history. New York: Schocken Books. Kohen, Elizabeth, Elias, Marie Louise. 2004. Spain. New York: Benchmark Books/Marshall Cavendish. Lea, Henry Charles. A History of the Inquisition of Spain. 4 vols. New York, 1906–1908. Lemieux, Simon. The Spanish Inquisition. History Review 7. 44 (2002): 44-49

Nokias Marketing Strategy

Nokias Marketing Strategy Marketing is typically seen as the task of creating, promoting, and delivering goods and services to consumers and businesses (Kortler, 2005). Marketing is about stimulating demand for a companys products. Is this sense, marketing can be defined as the art of selling products. However in the modern economies, marketing is more than selling. According to Peter Drucker, a leading management theorist, the aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or the service fits him and sells itself. In this respect, the focus of marketing shifts from convincing people to buy a companys products to discovering the needs of the people and designing products that satisfy these needs. Thus marketing activities should result in customer who is ready to buy. At this point all that is needed is to make the right product available to consumers. A company that is going to be successful in the market place will be that company that will correctly discover the needs of c onsumers and produce products that satisfy them. This is what is called right product based on careful marketing research. Based on the above, marketing is well explained by the definition provided by the American Marketing Association. Thus marketing is defined as the process of planning and executing conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals. Marketing deals with identifying and meeting human and social needs. Indeed marketing can be defined as simply meeting needs profitably. Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders. It is the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping Marketing management is the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping, and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value. It is the conscious effort to achieve desired exchange outcomes with target markets. MARKETING STRATEGY A companys marketing strategy will be influenced by the chosen target market and the marketing philosophy being practiced by the management. Target Markets A single company or product can rarely satisfy everyone in a market. People have different tastes and preferences. People differ in terms of age, gender, beliefs, income, religion, and location. All these factors have a bearing on the products that appeal to them. Therefore, marketers must start by dividing or segmenting the market. A company must identify and profile distinct groups of buyers who might prefer or require varying product and services mixes. A companys marketing strategy should target that segment that promises the greatest opportunity. The developed market offering is then positioned in the minds of the target buyers as delivering some central benefits. Marketing Orientations or philosophies A marketing philosophy is an orientation or principle that guides a companys marketing activities or efforts. It defines the relative weights that are given to the interests of the organization, the customers, and the society. It is imperative that marketing activities be carried out under well thought out philosophy of efficiency, effectiveness, and social responsibility (Kortler, 2005). Organizations can conduct their marketing activities under different marketing philosophies. They include: the production concept, the product concept, the selling concept, the marketing concept, and holistic marketing concept. Production concept This concept holds that consumers will prefer products that are widely available and inexpensive. Such a business will concentrate on achieving high production efficiency, low costs, and mass distribution. The assumption is that consumers are primarily interested in product availability and low prices. This orientation is more often applied in developing countries, where it is assumed, consumers are more interested in obtaining the product than its features. However with the rapid globalization and more informed consumers, this philosophy is rapidly loosing its meaning. Product concept Product concept holds that consumers will favor those products that offer the most quality, performance, or innovative features. Managers in these organizations focus on making superior products and improving them over time. The assumption is that buyers admire well made products and can evaluate quality and performance. Companies that are product oriented believe that their engineers exceptional products that will meet customer expectations. Normally no customer input is sought and competition is not a consideration. This is a make and sell philosophy that does not focus on the customer. Selling concept The selling concept holds that consumers and businesses, if left alone, will not buy enough of the organizations products. Aggressive selling and promotion effort is needed to make sales. According to this concept, consumers typically show buying inertia or resistance and therefore must be coaxed into buying. Money is spent on television and radio advertising, posters, mailings. The selling concept is ideal for unsought goods, goods that buyers normally do not think of buying. Companies that are experiencing overcapacity also engage in aggressive marketing techniques. Their aim is to sell what they make rather than make what the market wants. Marketing concept This is a customer centered philosophy. Instead of hunting for customers, marketing is seen as gardening. The task is not to find the right customers for the company products but the right products for the target customers. According to this concept, the key to achieving organizational goals consists of the company being more effective than competitors in creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value to its chosen target markets. The marketing philosophy is preoccupied with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering and finally consuming it. The customer is the king. The marketing concept rests on four pillars: target market, customer needs, integrated marketing, and profitability. Companies do best when they choose their target markets carefully and prepare tailored marketing programs. Nokia has segmented its market in six regions; Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, and North America. Each region has unique needs addressed by the company in terms of product quality, features, pricing, and durability. Customer concept This involves shaping separate offers, services, and messages to individual customers. The company is forced to collect information on each customers past transactions, demographics, psychographics, and media and distribution preferences. They hope to achieve profitable growth through capturing a larger share of each customers expenditures by building a higher customer loyalty and focusing on customer lifetime value. Societal marketing concept This concept holds that the organizations task is to determine the needs, wants, and interests of target markets and to deliver the desired satisfaction more effectively and efficiently than competitors in a way that preserves or enhances the consumers and the societys well being. It requires marketers to build social and ethical considerations into their marketing practices. In the modern world that is faced with environmental deterioration, water pollution, resource shortages, hunger, poverty, explosive population, and mushrooming slums, marketing practices should consider the long term benefit of the society or public. COMPANY PROFILE Nokia is the world leader in mobility, driving the transformation and growth of the converging internet and communications industries. The company has operations in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, and North America. In brief the company has a world wide presence. Nokia began as a paper mill company dealing in paper, rubber, and cables in 1865 in South Western, Finland. The company changed to Nokia Corporation in 1968 and positioned itself for a pioneering role in the early evolution of mobile communications. The period 1992 to 2000 experienced a boom in mobile phone use. Nokia made this sector as its core business. By the turn of the century, Nokia had become the world leader in mobile phones. Vision Nokia is a consumer led company. There is a progressive and continuous increase in consumer involvement with technology and communications globally. People are broadening their modes of communication to include the web and, social networks are becoming central to how people communicate. People want to be truly connected, independent of time and place, in a way that is very personal to them. And Nokias promise is to connect people in new and better ways. Strategy Nokias strategy is to build trusted consumer relationships by offering compelling and valued consumer solutions that combine beautiful devices with context enriched services. Corporate Business Development The Nokia Corporate Business Development has the responsibility to manage Nokias Strategic growth areas. Their aim is to look for breakthrough ideas that are industry shakers. These are innovative business concepts and technologies that integrate with and expand beyond Nokia core business. Nokia aims to connect people with new services that are meaningful to them and offer greater benefits by enabling more transactions on the device. New services stem from the local needs of consumers and local expertise. Marketing strategy in place The company heavily depends on advertising and promotion activities to popularize its products. In addition, the company through its research unit is continuously involved in searching for product features that meet the evolving needs of diverse customers. There are different types of Nokia phones in the market ranging from a cheaper to expensive models. The aim is to satisfy the needs of diverse markets. Advertising Program Advertising is any paid form of non personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. It is important to start by identifying the target market and buyer motives. An advertising program has five components: mission, money, message, media, and measurement. Advertising objectives must flow from prior decisions on target market, market positioning, and marketing mix. Advertising objectives may be to inform, persuade, remind, or reinforce. OVERAL BUSINESS STRATEGY A strategy is the direction and scope of an organization over a long term, which achieves advantage for the organization through its configuration of resources within a changing environment to the needs of markets and fulfill stakeholder expectations. This is the highest strategy level. It is concerned with overall purpose and scope of the firm (Jelassi and Enders, 2009). Corporate strategy addresses issues such as allocation of resources, acquisition, and products to produce. Marketing strategies of the firm are meant to contribute to the realization of the corporate objectives. Incorporating the global environment into marketing planning Business and competition is increasingly taking a global perspective. Goods manufactured in foreign countries are easily finding markets in distant countries thanks to the improved means of communication and transport. Use of e-business in marketing management Marketing activities can now be conducted online. Customers are able to determine the type of merchadize they require on the internet. Communication between suppliers and customers can be done via the internet. CONCLUSION Nokia has adopted the Marketing philosophy or orientation in its marketing activities. The company has also produced a variety of cell phones to meet the diverse market needs. The company has a strong research department that is charged with the responsibility of determining the consumer needs and finding innovative products to meet those needs.

Patient Transition into Hospice Care Essay -- Analysis of Care Transit

I. Introduction The patient presented in this paper is Ms. H an 83 year old African American woman that appears younger than stated age with a history of Multiple Myeloma. The patient chart was reviewed and an interview conducted. Interestingly the patient had retained every note, lab, hospital H&P and discharge summary in a file folder in her possession. Ms. H was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in April of 2008 when she was being worked up at her dentist for a toothache. X-rays performed revealed she had bone lesions in her zygomatic process and in her skull above her right eye. She was referred to Oncology Hematology Care for further work-up. A bone marrow biopsy revealed she had Multiple Myeloma. During the course of treatment the patient received Thalidomide, Revlimid, Velcade, Aredia, Zometa, and Decadron. Remission was achieved and the patient underwent stem cell transplant in February of 2009. The transplant was successful and the patient was cancer free until August of 2012 when she receiv ed news that her cancer had recurred. Current meds are Lisinopril 20 mg PO daily for HTN, Omeprazole 40 mg PO for GERD, Topamax 25 mg BID for headaches, Calcium 500 mg PO TID for osteoporosis, Zofran 4 mg every 6 hrs/prn for nausea, Vicodin 5/325mg every 4 hours/prn for pain control. Ms. H has 3 adult children and 4 grandchildren that are in their early 20’s. During the initial treatment phase Ms. H was employed part time at J.C. Penney. Once she was sent to Jewish for bone marrow transplant, she retired. She is on traditional Medicare with Medicaid due to reaching the cap on her secondary Humana plan. Ms. H is divorced but has a supportive friend Mr. P that has been at her side throughout her diagnosis and treatment. He... ... benefit. V. Analysis of Transition Admission Forms Admission forms include Consent, HIPPA Acknowledgement Form, Patient and Family Rights Statement Receipt, Permission to Bill Medicare. Forms required for hospice admission are few and concisely written to reflect the Medicare Hospice Benefit. Patients who are compromised enough to sign their own forms are usually ill enough that the number of forms needed are appreciated. Ms. H and family were amazed and happy with the need for fewer signatures to admit. References (1.)Blood. 2008 March 15; 111(6): 2962–2972. doi: 10.1182/blood-2007-10-078022 PMCID: PMC2265446 (2)ASH 50th Anniversary Review Article on Multiple Myeloma†¦(look up) (3)Publication Date: 2008-03-18Medicare Benefit Policy Manual Chapter 9 - Coverage of Hospice (4) JOURNAL OF PALLIATIVE MEDICINE Volume 9, Number 6, 2006

Do Special Education Children Benefit From Inclusion? Essay -- Educatio

Do Special Education Children Benefit From Inclusion? Many children have had learning disabilities for many years. Each year more and more of these children are being helped. Schools are working to improve their special education programs and to have all kinds of students work together in the same classroom. The practice of inclusion was started because educators felt that special needs students would achieve more in traditional classrooms with non-learning disabled students than they would in special education classes. However, research findings suggest that there really is no difference in academic achievement levels for special needs students when they are placed in regular classrooms. Inclusion can be defined as a term, which expresses commitment to educate each child, to the maximum extent appropriate, in the school classroom he or she would otherwise attend. Inclusion involves bringing the support services to the child as opposed to bringing the student to the services. Inclusion requires only that the special needs or learning-disabled child will benefit from being in the regular classroom. The term â€Å"full inclusion† means that all students, regardless of their handicapping condition or the severity of it will attend a regular classroom all the time. All the services, such as instructional aides or assistive technology, will be provided for the child in that classroom setting. The terms inclusion and mainstreaming are often used interchangeably; however, they are different methods for educating learning disabled students. Mainstreaming is the selective placement of special education students in one or more regular education classes (Special Education, 2001). When the decision to place a child in a mains... ...ith special education students. It provides definitions of inclusion and mainstreaming. It also gives information about IDEA and section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Wildrot, K, & Claybrook, S. (n/d) Effects of Inclusion on Academic Outcomes. Retrieved April 12,2003 from http://ebsochost.com This article is about a study that compared math and reading achievement between regular and inclusion classrooms. They used the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills to find the results. Zigmond, N & Jenkins, J. (1995) When Students Fail to Achieve Satisfactorily. Phi Delta Kappan, 77, (4) Retrieved April 11,2003 from http://ebsochost.com This article looks at how students fail to achieve satisfactorily because of their learning disabilities. They did some research on students with learning disabilities and came up with a design for inclusive school.

Complexities of Dr. Martin Luther King Essay -- Civil Rights

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s impact on the civil rights movement was nothing short of monumental. To say anything less may be considered sacrilege in the history of the United States. King’s liberal and Christian upbringing, comfortable and educated childhood, and his theological education all played a large part in his contributions to civil rights in America. Perhaps one of his most sustained acts was his ability to represent the plight of African American rights while simultaneously portraying a palatable character to White America. In addition to leading various civil disobedience campaigns, he served as the movement’s main â€Å"strategist, theorist, and symbol maker† while also becoming the â€Å"movement’s chief interpreter to white Americans.† Stewart Burns actually goes so far as to suggest King, early on, realized his destiny was to be both a black Moses, delivering his brothers from the injustice of Jim Crow, as well as a Christ-like figure, offering equal measures of love, compassion, and forgiveness. This of course caused him to be disliked and criticized amongst some of the more nationalist and militant black leaders of the time, but inversely, allowed many Americans to sympathize with the movement’s main goals. Perhaps one of the best pieces of evidence showing King’s ideology is found in his â€Å"Letter from a Birmingham Jail† written in April of 1963. In it, King writes a response to other black civil rights leaders. He responds to the consensus that his current activities may be â€Å"unwise and untimely.† King rebukes this sentiment, outlining many important tenets of his belief structure, including the connection between all human beings, his non-violent civil disobedience strategies, his extremist love, and most import... ...Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration. University Of Chicago Press, 1991. Howard-Pitney, David. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and the Civil Rights Struggle of the 1950s and 1960s: A Brief History with Documents. First ed. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. Kennedy, Randall. â€Å"Martin Luther King’s Constitution: A Legal History of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.† Yale Law Journal 98 (1989 1988): 999. King, Jr., Dr. Martin Luther. â€Å"Letter from a Birmingham Jail.† Martin Luther King Jr. Online, April 16, 1963. http://www.mlkonline.net/jail.html. Mikelson, Thomas J. S. â€Å"Cosmic Companionship: The Place of God in the Moral Reasoning of Martin Luther King, Jr.† The Journal of Religious Ethics 18, no. 2 (October 1, 1990): 1-14. Sturm, Douglas. â€Å"Martin Luther King, Jr., as Democratic Socialist.† The Journal of Religious Ethics 18, no. 2 (October 1, 1990): 79-105.

Marx’s Theory of Human Nature Essay

Marx’s conception of human nature is most dramatically put forward in the excerpts from the Economic Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 that I have assigned to you. But this work is very difficult and obscure. I have tried to select those passages that are most straightforward. But, as you will see, they are by no means very clear. Let me give you some guidelines for reading them. These passages talk about four kinds of human alienation or estrangement: (1) from our product, (2) from our productive activity, (3) from our species being and (4) from other human beings. What I would like you to do in your first essay is to give a brief explication of three of these four types of alienation, all except (3), alienation from our species being. I will explain the third type of alienation here, which, I hope will, help you understand the other three types. To be alienated or estranged is to be distanced, or in opposition, or somehow not in the proper relationship to something. In saying that we are alienated, Marx is claiming that we do not stand not in the proper to certain products, activities, people or features of our lives. And, for Marx, this means we are fundamentally dissatisfied and unhappy. For our basic ends or goals or wants include being in a proper relationship to these things. All four phenomena from which we are alienated are related, in one way or another, to what Marx took to be the central feature of human life, our productive activity. Human beings are, for Marx, quintessentially beings who must be productive, who, that is, must interact with nature and other human beings to make things and effect changes in the world around us. By â€Å"species being,† Marx means our essence as a species. Thus to be alienated from our species being is to be distanced from our fundamental nature as productive beings. Now how is this possible? How can we, or our lives, be in opposition to or not in the proper relationship to our very nature? To understand this, we must look a little more closely at what our nature or species being is. Why is productive activity central to our nature? And what, precisely, does Marx mean by productive activity? For Marx, our productive activity has four essential features. First, productive activity is necessary if human beings are to survive. We must be productive in some respect in order to live, unless we are so rich that we simply spend our time counting the proceeds of our investments. But doing this is (minimally) productive activity. And buying and eating food, clothing and other goods is, for Marx, partly productive. The necessity of productive activity in our lives is, of course, is not distinctive to human beings. It is a trait we share with animals. Second, we are unlike animals in that we engage in â€Å"free, conscious† productive activity. Our productive activity is distinct from animals in a number of ways. First, we make our productive activity itself a product of our will. We can make choices about what and how to produce. Animals produce only when doing so is necessary to their survival. And they produce only in ways that are fixed by their nature. But human beings can produce many kinds of goods and in many different ways. As Marx puts it, â€Å"man is capable of producing according to the standards of every species and of applying to each object its inherent standard; hence, man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty. † This is very important, because our capacity to choose how and what to produce enables us to choose what kind of individual and political and social life to live. The great diversity of forms of human life over time and space is made possible by our capacity to freely and consciously engage in productive activity. Third, human productive activity is social in nature. This is true in a number of different respects. Much of what we produce is produced with other people either directly or indirectly. We produce with other people directly when we work with them to produce a particular good. We produce with other people indirectly when we use the products of their labor in producing goods ourselves. In addition, we produce what we do only because other people are willing to consume what we produce. As Marx puts it in the Grundrisse, â€Å"no production, no consumption; no consumption, no production. † Fourth, human beings find productive activity intrinsically satisfying. In part this is because productive activity allows us to develop and exercise our capacities, faculties, and abilities. Central to Marx’s account of human nature is the notion that human beings are not slugs. We enjoy work that challenges and stimulates us to more effectively produce better products. And, when we can do work of this sort, we prefer work to rest. Indeed, the forms of recreation we most enjoy? when we are not entirely tired out? also challenge and stimulates us. The highest forms of consumption involves the development and exercise of our faculties and capacities and, for this reason, is a kind of productive activity. Think, for example, of how much more we enjoy music that we know and understand or how much more watching a basketball game means to someone who understands the game. In listening to music and watching a basketball game we are also developing and exercising our capacities, faculties, and abilities. Human productive activity is also intrinsically satisfying because it transforms our environment, making what is sometimes a difficult natural habitat into a partly human creation, one that is both fitted to us and our own. We work on nature, what Marx calls â€Å"man’s inorganic body,† transforming it to suit our purposes. In doing so we â€Å"objectify our powers† or realize our capacities, faculties and abilities in concrete phenomena around us. Given this account of human productive activity, we can understand what alienation from our species being is. In the conditions under which most human beings have lived? certainly under capitalism? we do not understand ourselves as Marx says we should. We do not think of productive activity as something enjoyable or as a means by which we transform our own way of life. Rather we think of it as a necessity and as drudgery. That is why Marx says that â€Å"The result is that man (the worker) feels that he is acting freely only in his animal functions?eating, drinking, and procreating, or at most in his dwelling and adornment? while in his human functions, he is nothing more than animal. † We don’t think of ourselves as free, conscious, social producers but rather as being bound by the necessity to do unpleasant work that bring us into conflict with other people. Alienation from species being, then, is essentially misunderstanding our fundamental nature. This general account of alienation from species being should help you to explain the other three kinds of alienation. Indeed, in understanding the three other kinds of alienation, you will in large part be explaining why we misunderstand our fundamental nature. You will be explaining what it is about our life that makes it hard for us to see just how central productive activity is to us. To understand the first kind of alienation, alienation from one’s product, it would be helpful to know one more thing about Marx’s argument. Marx holds that in capitalist society, worker’s are likely to become relatively poorer as their productive capacity increases. I give an account of Marx’s argument here in the notes on Transition from Capitalism to Communism. Understanding this point will help you grasp why men and women become increasingly alienated from the product of their labor. By the way, we now know that Marx was wrong about this. Productivity increases lead to increases in absolute, if not relative wages, as we will in the notes on The Failure of Revolution. Yet it might be worth thinking about why Marx could still argue that we are all alienated from our product, at least to some extent.