Compare and contrast the idea of Descartes and Kant on epistemology Essay

Compare and contrast the idea of Descartes and Kant on epistemology - Essay Example Descrates’ definition of knowledge is, however, specific to scientific knowledge and certainty is defined, in the theorist’s perspective, as absence of doubt. With cognition as the fundamental to scientific knowledge, two levels of certainty on cognition are identified to define knowledge. With absolute level of certainty, no single doubt exists that an alternative idea or subject can be found while moral level of certainty involves conviction on a subject even with the knowledge that the subject could be false. Moral certainty however identifies possible doubt and according to Descrates, does not therefore define knowledge.1 Kant’s idea on epistemology is based on three factors that further identify opinion and faith. People’s affirmative decisions exist in three levels that distinguish between knowledge, faith, and opinion. There is a subjective basis to affirmation and an objective cause. Affirmation that is devoid of conviction, when conviction is not sufficient, is based on opinion. however, subjective factors to affirmation may be sufficient but a person lacks objective basis. Under the circumstance, affirmation is based on faith and not on opinion. Sufficiency of both subjective and objective factors into affirmation defines existence of knowledge. Opinion and faith are therefore, and according to Kant, elements of knowledge in which sufficient objectivity defines opinion while sufficient subjectivity defines faith and existence of both opinion and faith defines knowledge.2 Theories of Kant and Descrates identify both similarities and differences. The two ideas converge to existence of knowledge beyond definitions because experiences and observations inform certainty. In addition, Kant discusses sufficiency of subjectivity and objectivity as essentials of knowledge and such sufficiency are consistent with Descrates’ ideas of levels of

Analyze Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Analyze - Movie Review Example The setting of this book spans the time before and during the colonization of Nigeria. Things Fall Apart demonstrates how the colonizer conquers the colonized through hegemonic apparatuses, particularly, appropriating natural resources and political systems, feeding inter- and intra-tribal cultural conflicts, promoting the colonizer’s ideology as morally superior, and subverting African ideology by rewriting African history and identity. The colonizers are the European Christians who use hegemonic measures to conquer Nigerians, the colonized, one of which is through appropriating the latter’s natural resources and political systems. Hegemony refers to ideological domination wherein one worldview dominates or represses another ideology (Said 7). Stuart Hall defines ideology as the images, concepts, and principles that build the worldview by which people represents, understand, and make sense of one aspect of their social existence (271). The colonizer refers to a social group that dominates the colonized because of economic and political advantages in controlling the people and the resources of the latter. Gramsci talks about a social class that dominates others by force and consent because of political and economic outcomes (211), and the Europeans in Nigeria are examples of a dominating social class. The colonized suffers from the appropriation of their economic, political, and social resources and systems f rom colonizers who use them and their resources as means to self-serving ends. In Things Fall Apart, the Christians appropriate the natural resources of the tribes by taking away their lands, either by violence or through their missionaries. The Umuofia clan, for instance, has an Evil Forest that people fear and where the Christian missionaries build their church to prove that the former’s gods and goddesses are false. In other tribes, the novel narrates how the Europeans simply