Writer Choice

382201. Discuss how Susan Bordo’s challenge to Descartes’ rationalism might impact the empirical criterion of meaning presented by David Hume. Clue: Hume was focused on “sense perception” but Bordo raises a challenge to how perception takes place between males and females.

2. Do women “see” things differently than men? Can you provide any evidence? This is powerfully related to the answer to the number 1 above. What about the title of a book like Men are from Mars; Women are From Venus (I am not supposing you have read it, but what does the title suggest)? What does this suggest about differences between men and women? If we can only know what our senses tell us (as Hume suggested) are men and women living in the same universe?

3. Explain what Kierkegaard means by “Give me a reason for which I can live and die.”

4. Kierkegaard was a fan of the subjectivity of knowledge (somewhat kin to the relativism of Protagoras, but not quite that). In our world where Science and Technology are shoved in our faces daily as THE answer to all of life’s ills, what might Kierkegaard have to say about such confidence in these two human-determined endeavors?

5. In what way did Kierkegaard anticipate the post-modernist movement (defined by suspicion of authority and objective truth)? Clue: Kierkegaard preferred subjectivity (read this in light of the rallying cry of science to be “unbiased”).