Subodh Bhattarai (English & Communication Notes - BBA/BBS/BBBS/BHM/BIM/BMS/MBA/MBS & +2)

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) From The Descent of Man (1871) In his masterpiece  The Origin of Species  he declared that human beings had developed from monkeys through a long gradual process of evolution. The Descent of Man  shows many points of similarity between the mental powers of man and lower animals. Due to man's extraordinary mental power, he differs from animals. There is a vast difference between the two members of the same species of humans. One may be savage and the other kind and civilised. Like humans, animals also express feelings of pain, pleasure, and misery. Like human beings; some animals too have a good memory. Man is supposed to be the crown of whole creation because of the power of reasoning. Many naturalists believe that some animals also show a certain amount of reason. This essay claims that there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties. Summary : The text  Comparison of the Mental Powers of M...

Jean Jack Rousseau Jean Jacques Rousseau in his essay The Origin of Civil Society , writes about an ideal form of government. In his essay he attacks several other proposed or existing forms of government by carefully destroying their claims. This essay has been taken out from Rousseau’s book The Social Contract . Rousseau addresses freedom more than any other problem of political philosophy and aims to explain how man in the state of nature is blessed with a desirable total freedom. This freedom is total for two reasons. First, natural man is physically free because he is not constrained by a repressive state apparatus (set up) or dominated by his fellow men. Second, he is psychologically and spiritually free because he is not enslaved to any of the artificial needs that characterize modern society. This second sense of freedom, the freedom from need, makes up a particularly insightful and revolutionary component of Rousseau’s philosophy. Rousseau believed modern man’s enslavem...

Francis Bacon <<aphorism:  a concise statement of a scientific principle, typically by a classical author. >> In the essay Aphorism Concerning the Interpretation of Nature and the Kingdom of Man Francis Bacon has discussed about human understanding of nature. According to him, human being is the servant and interpreter of nature. The major concern of the essayist in this essay is to develop an objective approach to science. According to him, human mind is the instrument of observation. So it must observe minutely. Man , being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything. As humans are only servant and interpreters of nature, it is not possible to change the nature or to understand subtle form of nature. Science doesn’t help to find new works, same is the case of logic. Due to the cause of th...

Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince  is an extended analysis of how to acquire and maintain political power. In The Qualities of a Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli discusses the attributes that he believes make for a good leader. Although Machiavelli wrote The Qualities of a Prince centuries ago, some of the qualities he advises a prince to have can be adapted to the leaders of today. Some of these qualities include being generous and being feared by the public. Machiavelli’s philosophy is basically to become a good leader you must do anything even it is immoral and wrong. He first writes that a prince’s duty concerning military matter must always think of war only, even in times of peace. They must know their surroundings exactly so they can defend and make effective strategies to counter the enemy’s attack. They must also know historical battles so they will be able to learn their tactics and improve on it. He then talks about the prince’s path: should the prince be genero...

-Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.) Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. in a small town called Stagria . His parents died when he was still young, and he was raised as an orphan. He is considered as one of the greatest and most influential of Plato’s students. He established his own school at Athens. Philosophically, the works of Aristotle reflects his gradual departure from the teachings of Plato and his adoption of a new approach. Unlike Plato, who delighted in abstract thought about a supra-sensible (supra=above) realm (region/a domain in which something is dominant) of forms, Aristotle was intensely concrete and practical, relying heavily upon sensory observation as a starting-point for philosophical reflection. In his famous book Poetics (330 B.C.), Aristotle defines tragedy as an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude . Tragedy is an imitation of such average human world that is full of problems and struggles. It is a depiction of such human ...