Aristotle - Short Essay Essay Example for Free

Aristotle Short Essay Essay Throughout his life, Aristotle paid particularly close attention to the notion of happiness. In Aristotle’s opinion, happiness is achieved by obtaining the highest good by living a good life. However, living a good life in accordance with Aristotle’s views can be difficult. He believes that in order to live a good life, one must constantly seek to fulfill the bodily needs. To do so, one must live with moral and intellectual virtues at all times. Aristotle believed that living with moral and intellectual virtues is accomplished by developing a keen sense of rationality. He says that rational judgment is the result of living within the appropriate mean of two extremes. There are several examples he gives to illustrate this conception. One example he provides is the appropriate mean between acting bravely and acting cowardly. He proceeds to explain that if he was to act overly brave then when he was in battle he would act overzealously and cause himself harm. However, if he was to act without enough aggression then he would appear cowardly. Aristotle explains that it is reasonable to be confused with this explanation. He further explains that it is not finding the exact mean between two extremes that one must endeavor, but to assess each situation individually. He says that with each situation that arises, one must analyze it and determine to what degree of one extreme or another one must respond with. Each person, he believes, will react differently and no situation will be exactly the same. It is through one’s intelligence and practical wisdom that will allow them to live with moral and intellectual virtues. By following this conception, Aristotle believes happiness can be achieved. Although Aristotle’s conception of happiness is a sensible argument, it fails to account for a number of situations. Aristotle’s primary thesis concerns the application of the appropriate mean of two extremes. However, there are several situations which do not have an appropriate mean between two extremes. For example, there is no mean found on the issue of murder. If Aristotle’s conception was applied, would someone have to determine the mean between excessively murdering and only slightly murdering another person? In such a case as this, Aristotle argues that there are some actions which do not need any application of the mean of two extremes because some actions are always wrong. With this explanation raises the question why the concept of a mean between extremes is given if it cannot account for all situations? Furthermore, it also brings into question when to apply a mean between extremes or how to determine that a particular action is an exception because it is just simply wrong. Therefore, because Aristotle’s conception of happiness fails to account for all practicalities, it is not a good model to define happiness.

Mozart Essay examples -- essays research papers

MOZART Mozart is perhaps the greatest musical genius who ever lived. Mozart 's full name is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Most people called him Mozart or Wolfgang. Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria, January 27, 1756. Mozart is the greatest musical child prodigy who ever lived. He began composing minuets at the age of 5 and symphonies at age 9. His father took him on a series of concert tours together with his sister, Maria Anna; born four and one-half years before Mozart. She too, was a child prodigy. Both played the keyboard, but Mozart became a violin virtuoso, as well. In 1762 he and his sister, "Nannerl," as she was nicknamed, performed before the Elector of Bavaria in Munich, and at the Imperial Court in Vienna. In 1763 the Morzart's visited Mannheim. This is where Mozart, learned all about the orchestra and symphonies composed there. In London Mozart met the son of J. S. Bach. He played before distinguished audiences, and composed a sacred chorus. In 1770, he began to master the two types of Italian opera: opera buffa (comic opera) and opera seria (serious opera). In 1777, Mozart's family visited Paris. His mother fell ill and died during their visit. In 1782, Mozart married Constanze Weber against his father's wishes. In 1783, Mozart and Constanze visited Salzburg, where he helped Michael Haydn out of a difficult spo...

“Ode to a Nightingale” and “To Autumn” by John Keats. Essay

Romanticism is a movement in literature that came as a result of a revolt against the previous period â€Å"Classicism†. John Keats was an English poet who became one of the most important Romantic poets. William Wordsworth, another significant figure during Romanticism, described it as â€Å"liberalism in literature’, meaning the artist was free from restraints and rules, and was encouraged to write about his/her own experiences, rather than being a passive narrator praising an event or person. Romanticism emphasizes on passion rather than reason, imagination rather than logic, and intuition rather than science. The Romantics were drawn to the medieval past, myths and legends, supernatural being, and nature. Keats led a very tragic life. His poems can often be related back to his bitter and sad experiences in life. Many of the ideas in Keats’s works are quintessentially of Romantic nature: imagination and creativity, the beauty of nature, magical creatures or experience, and the true sufferings of human life. â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale† and â€Å"To Autumn† are two well known odes by Keats. They both reflect some of the concerns in its context. â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale† explores the sufferings of mortal life and ways of escape including alcohol, imagination and poetry, and death. The nightingale represents transcendence to a better world and its song is the means by which the narrator reaches this state. Other Romantic poets often used this type of escape. In stanza I the narrator hears the song of a nightingale and he expresses his â€Å"drowsy numbness pains† which are not the effects of alcohol, but rather, from being so happy in hearing the song that his heart aches and his senses numbs. In stanza II, the narrator longs for alcohol, so he can forget his troubles and â€Å"leave the world unseen† with the bird. This leads to stanza III, with a sombre description of the human life that the nightingale has never known: â€Å"The weariness, the fever, and the fret†, â€Å"Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies†, â€Å"Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes†. Miseri es and the true conditions of mortal life were popular themes in Romantic poems. In stanza IV the narrator feels a great desire to fly away with the bird, away from grim mortal life and into an ideal world not through alcohol, but  through imagination and the â€Å"viewless wings of Poesy† or poetry. In stanza VI, the narrator contemplates the idea of death. The narrator is attracted to the state of dying amongst ecstatic music, flowers, perfume and the soft darkness. At the end of stanza VII, the nightingale’s song portrays a completely magical and imaginary world. However, it is not like a paradise, instead, it is more like a destructive world of illusions â€Å"perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn†. Romantic poems often contained the fantasy element. In stanza VIII, the narrator is jolted back to his reality world by the word â€Å"forlorn†. He realizes the bird has deceived him by convincing him he can escape into the ideal, but temporary world, but in the end, he will always have to come back to reality. The narrator is left with one last question to ponder – â€Å"Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music: – Do I wake or sleep?† After the music of the nightingale is finally gone, he is unable to distinguish whether he heard the bird in his dream, or whether he was awake then, and asleep now. The end relates back to his drowsy state of being in stanza I. This circular structure can be found in a number of Romantic poems eg. Wordsworth’s â€Å"Tintern Abbey†, Keat’s â€Å"La Belle Dame Sans Merci†, and a number of his other odes. Circularity gives a sense of completeness without giving precise explanation to this experience. This poem has many characteristics in a Romantic ode including the poet’s involvement in the poem, the seriousness of the issue being discussed, and a further insight into life. Also many language techniques used by Keats, including alliteration, rhythm, rhyme, onomatopoeia, synaethesia, and personification, were commonly used by other Romantic poets. Like most other Romantic odes, â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale† is written in ten line stanzas. However, this ode is different in rhyme and rhythm. The first seven and the last two lines of each stanza are written in iambic pentameter, the eighth line of each stanza has only three accented syllables instead of five. The  rhyme scheme is the same in every stanza: ABABCDECDE. Synaesthesia is a poetic device where a thing associated with one sense is described in terms of another. It can be found in stanza II: wine is being described as â€Å"draught of vintage†, it tastes of flowers and the country green (normally associated with sight and smell), dance (movement), song (sound), and sunburn and mirth (feel and touch). Synaesthesia can also be found in stanza V where the â€Å"coming musk-rose† (touch and smell) is associated with â€Å"dewy wine† (taste). Keats uses alliteration to convey the tone and personification to dramatize the poem. Hippocrene (wine of poetic inspiration) is described as blushful, with â€Å"beaded bubbles winking at the brim†. The alliteration of ‘b’ sounds conveys energy and suggests fuzzy champagne. The repetition of soft sounds in â€Å"fade away into the forest dim† leads us to stanza III where the first three words â€Å"Fade far away† has the repetition of ‘a’ sounds, this lengthens and makes the tone subdued and melancholy. The alliteration of â€Å"fever and the fret† is followed by a series of phrases beginning with â€Å"Where†, this emphasizes the fact all these problems are associated with the mortal world. Beauty is personified here with having â€Å"lustrous eyes†. The first two words in stanza IV: â€Å"Away! Away!† renews energy after a grim stanza III. â€Å"Already with thee!† also quickens the pace. In stanza V , there are a lot of ‘s’ and ‘c’ sounds, which reflects the quiet mood. Death is personified in stanza VI, and the nightingale is personified in stanza VII. The bird is described as â€Å"not born for death†. The poem finishes in a regretful, quiet tone. The narrator and the reader are left to ponder the experience of they’ve just gone through. It ends with a mysterious note that many Romantic poems including many of Keats’s other poems also have. â€Å"To Autumn† is an ode about the real world of harvest, maturity, and fruitfulness, transfigured by the imagination. This poem was one of the last poems Keats wrote before his death. In this, Keats acknowledges his life is near the end and he accepts that beauty is in all things. The theme of this ode is one of the most popular themes used by Romantic poets. The narrator opens the poem and stanza I by addressing Autumn as a dear friend of the sun  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun†. They plot to load the vines with fruit, bend trees with apples, fill all fruit with ripeness, plump the pumpkins and fill flowers with honey for the bees. In stanza II, the narrator describes Autumn as a woman sitting on a granary floor, or on a half reaped grain field, watching juice from apples being squeezed by a cider press. Stanza III associates Autumn as the season on the brink of desolated winter, the songs and sounds of summer are sad and quiet. Our lives can be desc ribed in terms of seasons: spring is the beginning, summer is the peak, autumn is the maturing years and winter is the final stage in life. The form of this ode follows the same structure as other Romantic odes but it is varied. It is in eleven line stanzas, each in relatively precise iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme divides each stanza to two parts, the first four lines follows ABAB, while the last seven lines either follow CDEDCCE (first stanza) or CDECDDE (second and third stanza). This poem takes up the themes of other odes including temporality, mortality and change, but it is full of warm, rich and calm images. Keats establishes the serene tone by use of enjambment (where an idea is carried over into a new line), onomatopoeia and personification. In stanza I, Autumn and the sun are given human qualities. The sun is personified by its maturity. A feeling of plentiful and abundance is created by what Autumn and the sun are conspiring to do. In stanza II, Autumn is completely personified, it is being described as a woman, sitting, sleeping, doing the things we humans do. This creates a feeling of warmth and familiarity. In stanza III, the day is personified as the â€Å"soft-dying day†, small gnats â€Å"mourn† in a â€Å"wailful choir† and the light wind â€Å"lives or dies†. These images convey a quiet, peaceful sleep (death). Keats demonstrates that in nature, there is the constant cycle of life and death and death is a perfectly normal, peaceful process. From this poem, we can learn that accepting our fate, destiny and our mortality does not affect our ability to appreciate beauty in our mortal world. Romanticism was a period that focused on emotions, the imagination, the  mortal world, myths and legends, supernatural beings and the place of the individual in this world. â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale† and â€Å"To Autumn† are typical Romantic poems. Their structure, language features, and themes reflects those typical during Romanticism. â€Å"Ode to a Nightingale† is about transcending to an ideal world, while â€Å"To Autumn† is about the real world changed by imagination. The moral of both is that there may be temporary escape from grimness of human life, but in the end everyone has to return to reality and accept our mortality, and this acceptance won’t affect our capability to appreciate beauty.

Uncovering Value of Planning in New Venture Creation A Process and Contingency Perspective - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 2 Words: 542 Downloads: 4 Date added: 2017/09/15 Category Advertising Essay Did you like this example? Gruber article 2007: Uncovering the value of planning in new venture creation: A process and contingency perspective The topic discussed in the article is whether business planning has positive impact on firm performances. The existing view on this topic is dichotomous. One group of scholars think planning is important for successful firm creation, another group disagrees strongly. Findings from strategy research conclude there are two dominant models of strategy formulation. One is a rational paradigm, and the other one is an incremental paradigm. However, the strategy research has been done only for established firms. Findings from entrepreneurship research point out that planning process and its efforts on performance differ between emerging firms and established firms. Emerging firms face high level of uncertainty, and thus planning is more based on assumption to knowledge, while established firms can base their plans on past performance and historical trends. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Uncovering Value of Planning in New Venture Creation: A Process and Contingency Perspective" essay for you Create order Three problems with previous research have been identified by Gruber. First, contingent factors such as environmental uncertainty should be examined when evaluating the planning-performance relationship in start-ups. Second, process attributes such as entrepreneurial information search, time spent on planning, and efforts put into different activities should be studied as well. Third, functional areas should be planned differently depending on the importance to venture success. Marketing planning is the functional area Gruber focused on in the article. Gruber’s research indicates that the use of secondary information, the planning of customer relationship and marketing mix will have positive effect on venture performance without considering the founding environments. When taking the founding environments into consideration, the effect of time spent on marketing planning will be more positive in low dynamism environments than in high dynamism environments. The above results suggest that planning is valuable to emerging firms even in highly dynamic environments, but the key aspects (trade-off regimes) must be identified for planning to achieve superior outcomes. The following table illustrates the application of some selected variables from Gruber’s research to the Ockham case. Variables | Application in Ockham case | Use of primary information sources | The validation of the business idea is either from Jim’s consultancy experience with prior customers or from the feedback of potential customers and potential investors. No secondary data was used. | Planning of the marketing mix | The only P planned was Product. There is no clear information about planning price in the case, but I think the founders have their own estimation. Promotion and place were not planned. They sold thru personal contact, and took places best suited for the situation. | Planning how to establish customer relationships | Customer relationship was established through Jim’s personal contact. | Total time spent on planning and organizing | Less than a year. They could have spent more time on finding a good development team and establishing contact with more potential investors | Founding environment | High-tech, high-velocity environment | Technology areas | Technology area 1, operating in software field | Innovativeness | The offering is new from a market perspective | VC prior to market entry | No VC financing prior to the market entry | Organizational mode | Jim wanted to make strategic decision excluding Mike | The information showed in the above table indicates that Ockham needed more business planning. Finding a good development team and establishing contacts with more potential investors were the trade-off regimes at the planning phase.