Letter to Francesco Vettori and The Prince Essay

Letter to Francesco Vettori and The Prince - Essay Example Alternatively, we can choose to act, and discover our own truth behind the layers of apparent realities. Different approaches to reading into events in our lives have been described down the ages, one of the most dramatic being that of Machiavelli, who suggested an alternative concept of truth, in terms of a philosophy of power, an "effective truth". According to him, reality was much opposed to the idealistic Greek and Christian concepts, and it was not primarily moral or ethical , but political, to be manipulated in order to gain power. He recommends in the fifteenth chapter of The Prince: And many have imagined for themselves republics and principalities that no one has ever seen or known to be in reality. Because how one ought to live is so far removed from how one lives that he who lets go of what is done for that which one ought to do sooner learns ruin than his own preservation: because a man who might want to make a show of goodness in all things necessarily comes to ruin among so many who are not good. Because of this it is necessary for a prince, wanting to maintain himself, to learn how to be able to be not good and to use this and not use it according to necessity. (Machiavelli,1513) Not only does Machiavelli feel that manipulation and distortion of facts is not just a part of reality, he also claims that one who truly worships power as the only truth can bend his destiny to his designs, and fate herself would comply. He clarifies this in Chapter 25 of The Prince: Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less....So it happens with fortune, who shows her power where valor has not prepared to resist her, and thither she turns her forces where she knows that barriers and defenses have not been raised to constrain her.(Machiavelli, 1513) In stark contrast is Jorge Luis Borges, for whom the reality of destiny is inescapably omnipotent, and the only way to deal with it is to fashion alternate realities, understand it in terms of myth, an opinion for which he has often been criticized : Borges takes away the "real" weight of history, situating it in a mythic horizon, negating it. When he places the whole episode (and, we might say, the whole period) in a place outside of the concrete and the factic, outside of the historical, he deprives it of all concrete importance, of every possibility of influencing reality, of forming part of the historical process.... Once again, Borges negates reality. ( Borello, 1991) Despite creating commentaries on books that did not exist, historical events that never took place, and practicing literary forgery, his concept of reality was very much accepting, in creating myths he sought not to negate reality but to pause its triumphal march so as to grasp it better. Our destiny (unlike the hell of Swedenborg or the hell of Tibetan mythology) is not frightening because it is unreal: it is frightening because it is irreversible and ironclad. Time is the substance of which I am made. Time is a river that sweeps me away, but I am the river; it is a tiger that tears me apart, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. ( Borges, 1946)

Women in Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Women in - Essay Example In 1932 Woolf wrote her own innovative tome: â€Å"The Pargiter An article based upon a essay thesis interpreted to the public civilization for women’s service.† This work was available by 1937. The treatise written at this juncture ponders on that Victorian phantom also identified as the â€Å"seraph in the domicile† (scrounged from Coventry Patmore’s couplet celebrating domestic bliss). Namely, this is an altruistic, forfeitable lady in the nineteenth era whose solitary principle in life was to pacify, to compliment, and to console the men of the planet. Virginia Woolf next wrote, â€Å"Killing the Angel in the House,† This book featured betrothed in a lethal clash for mutual and monetary parity. When her secretary requested Virginia Woolf disembark, she was enlightened that her culture was bothered with the service of women. She recommended that she might tell them something regarding her individual proficiency practices. It is factual she is a w oman and also right that she is employed; but what certified skills did she have? This was extremely hard to articulate. Her occupation is writing and with that aim of work there are smaller amount of jobs for women than in any supplementary profession. Many legendary women and numerous unfamiliar women had come before her however; giving her opportunities that weren’t there before. Therefore, when she came to write, there were fewer impediments to her approach than there might have been in past eras. Writing was a decent and risk-free career. The scuff of a pen did not wreck the family serenity. No command was made upon the family incentive. One could purchase a paper costing ten and six pence that was sufficient to inscribe all the plays of Shakespeare. Pianos and models, Paris, Vienna and Berlin, masters and mistresses, were not necessities by a writer. The shoddiness of inscribing a paper was obviously