Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

An existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, biographer, and literary critic. He was a key figure in the philosophy of existentialism and Marxism. Also influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory and literary studies.


Sample Sentences

• Jean-Paul Sartre was born in Paris as the only child of Jean-Baptiste Sartre, an officer of the French Navy, and Anne-Marie Schweitzer.
• As a teenager in the 1920s, Sartre became attracted to philosophy upon reading Henri Bergson's essay Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness.

Usage
Biography
Camus and Sartre


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In the first listed article the author illustrates Sartre's life in a nutshell: how he became an existentialist philosopher, etc. He was very influential and many believed in what he had to say. In the second article, the author focuses on one of Sartre's friends by the name of Camus. The author shows how Camus and Sartre were the best of friends but that all ended in a quarrel because of the difference in how each of them viewed violence.

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Abraham Maslow

Abraham Maslow

Most famously known for his hierarchy of needs which consisted of five different levels: Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem, and Self Actualization. Maslow was also an American Psychologist who focused on the positive qualities in people.

Sample Sentences

• Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Maslow was the oldest of seven children and was classed as "mentally unstable" by a psychologist.
• Beyond the routine of needs fulfillment, Maslow envisioned moments of extraordinary experience, known as Peak experiences, which are profound moments of love, understanding, happiness, or rapture, during which a person feels more whole, alive, self-sufficient and yet a part of the world, more aware of truth, justice, harmony, goodness, and so on. Self-actualizing people have many such peak experiences.

Usage

Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow

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Maslow was a very important figure of his time and he most definitely left his mark one the world with his "hierarchy of needs". In the first article, the author gives an in depth analysis of the Hierarchy of Needs and what each level needs in order to be fulfilled in order to move on to the next level. One major point of this Hierarchy is that many individuals do not ever reach the Self Actualization stage, rather they remain within the  Safety, Love/Belonging, and Esteem stages. In the second article, Maslow, there is a really good criticism part where the author points out that Maslow in creating the Self Actualization stage made it almost impossible for any human to achieve because it only favors few individuals and over time views change on what exactly Self Actualization can be considered and some consider Maslow's requisites of Self Actualization to be out of date.

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Believed in Christianity and later in his life he started following Humanism. He provided us with epic and lyric poetry, literary and aesthetic criticism as well as four novels and many scientific discoveries.


Sample Sentences

• A literary celebrity by the age of 25, Goethe was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Carl August in 1782 after first taking up residence there in November of 1775 following the success of his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther.
• Goethe studied law in Leipzig from 1765 to 1768.

Usage

Goethe

The Sorrows of Young Werther

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Goethe was a lawyer, a writer and a mastermind of literature. In the first article, Goethe, he is compared to Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci in his writings and literature because he was interested in and wrote about any and everything. In one of his 130 unfinished articles, he attacked Newtons theory of light! In the second article, The Sorrows of Young Werther, the author translates the play so that it is easily understandable and the whole synopsis behind it is a fruitless romantic infatuation which was based on Goethe's experiences however, there is one major difference: at the end of this play, the hero commits suicide.

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Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

He is considered one of the last modernists and also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, usually with black comedy and gallows humor.


Sample Sentences

• Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".
• Samuel Beckett was born on Good Friday, 13 April 1906 to William Frank Beckett, a 35-year old quantity surveyor, and May Barclay (also 35 at Beckett's birth) a nurse.

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Nobel Prize

Godot

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In the first article titled, Nobel Prize, the author states that Beckett won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969.With that Nobel Prize, there was a cash reward of $73,000. On this win, Beckett never commented and could not be contacted. Reading about him, he was a very distant individual with no one really knowing his personal life, one critic even claimed that even in his death, he is still as distant as ever. In the article titled Godot, the author writes about one of Beckett's famous works which consisted of a bewildered child suffering an intolerable identity problem from having his peers forever arguing about what he ‘means.’

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Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal

Pascal believed in a splinter group from Catholicism. Before this he was a major scientist of the time with important contributions to the study of fluids and clarified the concepts of the pressurized vacuum. 


Sample Sentences

• Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand; he lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three.
• His father, Étienne Pascal (1588–1651), who also had an interest in science and mathematics, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe".

Usage

Pascal

Pascal's Triangle

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In the first article above titled, Pascal, the author sums up Pascal's life in a short little biography. He was a great scientist of his time but also a committed religious individual who believed in Christ the Redeemer. He created such items as the first calculating machine (which would come to help the latter calculators and computers) and Pascal's Triangle. The second article focuses mainly on Pascal's Triangle in which the author points to other races (the Persians and the Chinese) knowing long before Pascal about these coefficients which are used. However, we refer to it as Pascal's triangle because he was the first one to make sense of the coefficients and write them down in one of the many books he wrote.

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Christianity

Christianity

the Christian religion, including the Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox churches.



Sample Sentences

• The religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
•  Christians rely on the Bible as the inspired word of God.

Usage

"Fake" Christians

Christianity in Crisis

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In the first listed article above, one Minister by the last name Dean writes about how teens are "fake"Christians. She talks about how parents may be the cause and how churches do not adequately involve the teenage youth with the church or religion itself. She namely states that teens see God as a therapist figure and are somewhat driven away. Meanwhile in the second article the author speaks about how corrupt the Christian faith is. He speaks about how money and Evangelists have hurt Christianity and how people should just embrace Him (God) and ignore the rest.

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Paganism

Paganism

A member of a group professing a polytheistic religion or any religion other than Christianity, Judaism, or Islam.

Sample Sentences

• Individuals who believe in paganism are sometimes called "heathens".
• Paganism comes from the late Latin word of pāgānus which means "worshiper of false gods". 

Usage
Christianity vs. Paganism
Paganism


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Paganism is a belief in many Gods. This area encompasses people such as Wiccans, Druids, Shamans, etc. In the first article, Christianity vs. Paganism, the author outlines the differences in the two religions but he also states important common elements between the two. In the second article, Paganism, BBC does a whole representation of what Paganism actually is; this includes, Beliefs, Rites and Rituals, Holy Days and many other categories. These individuals primarily belief in organic vitality and spirituality of the natural world.


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