Between the two perspectives that were presented in this class, I definitely find the enlightenment point of view more appealing. As someone without a religious background, my understanding of the world has always been through the lenses of reason. Thus, I found myself often agreeing with enlightenment thinkers such as Hume who criticizes the rationally of religious belief. However, one area where I do agree with romanticist is political theory. I find Rousseau ideas of the body politic and social contracts to be more compelling than the existence of natural rights. The enlightenment figures’ justification of natural laws that govern humans in a state of nature seems contrived and despite being inspired by scientific laws, the two are very different.

This course has changed how I view modern-day society by making me think about how the government gets the right to govern. It is something I’ve never really thought about before this but only had a vague sense. This class has allowed me to solidify my beliefs.

A surprisingly interesting part of the class was the art showdown tournament. It was weird to compare two different pieces of artwork and feel that one is better than another, even if you can’t express why. It was not surprising at all to find out that Monet won previously because something about it makes it stand out among the others.

To me, Enlightenment ideals are more important than Romantic ideals. I feel it serves human-kind more purpose, both on an individual and a social scale, to go through life’s decisions and struggles by using reason and personal betterment as the discerning standard as well as motivation. However, when the Romantic ideals of listening to one’s heart and heeding natural impulses are involved, the human experience becomes complete in my opinion. One becomes able to handle situations safely and profitably using reason, without losing himself to a siloed, specialized trade asked of in purely Enlightenment-led society. The Romantic aspects allow a diversity of trade and interest, and this is why it works well as a right-hand man to Enlightenment ideals.

I view Western Culture as a society as something that gives you hope that you can have the best of both worlds in terms of Enlightenment and Romanticism, although this is mostly untrue. It tells you you can make money and still have time for your family, love life, hobbies, and interests, but this becomes more untrue the more you need money or pursue money, which is the leading motivation in Western Society. Moreover, in this capitalist society, the necessity of money is stressed top-down and bottom-up, so the Romantic ideals are viewed as detrimental unless they get you money, such as being a musician despite low success rates. Therefore, I believe learning about these 2 schools of thought has given me a better perspective of Western Culture, allowing me to expand my understanding using the ideals of each to describe today’s lifestyle.

The most important takeaway from this class is that many scholars and authors strongly ponder societies and how to best exist in them, choosing greatly different methods to describe their beliefs. Voltaire’s satirical stories, though contain strongly clash with the styles of Locke and Kant, who structure their arguments in a bullet-point essay, in my opinion. There is merit to all of these clashing opinions and we need more deliberate argumentation questioning leadership and society as such as we face increasingly challenging times.

I recently found myself conversing with a family member on the topic of illicit drug use. And since this interaction was of some interest, I thought it appropriate to write about it here in this forum. The crux of the issue was that they were concerned about the prevalence of harmful illegal drugs. Living in the country Canada, they thought the penalty for trafficking and using drugs was far too lenient, and that this ensures the continued prevalence of contraband. They proposed that harsher punishment would discourage these villains from their villainy. I greatly disagreed with this notion and told them such. I thought that we ought to learn from the mistakes of the past and realize that we must not be so quick to employ such drastic punishments. After all, it is unclear if such measures deter crime in the slightest. It would be a great shame if the only thing we did for victims of drug epidemics was to hang them. It is as is said on page 33 in the Discourse on Inequality, “great evils are often introduced in order to correct the lesser ones”. We must be conscious of the various effects that our laws much have.

Hume is critical of religion and discusses how one needs to experience something in order to validate it is true. Evidence: In Section 11, talks about how God built the world and that it is not rational to believe God exists.

Voltaire is also critical of religion since there is so much bad in the world, how can this be the best possible world? Evidence: Page 43–Voltaire is critical of being too optimistic.

I writing this post at 6AM in the morning because I am so good at planning my assignments. Anyways, my name is Michael Fernandez. I’m a third year student from Revelle majoring in Microbiology. Gonna spit out some cool facts about me. First, I love to practice martial arts- mainly Taekwondo and Kickboxing. Second, I am trilingual (kinda quadlingual). My three fluent languages are, English, Tagalog along and an island specific dialect. For my fourth language, I’m currently learning French, but I’m really bad at it.

My favorite book in the Humanities series is probably the Holy Bible because it is so open to interpretation. It is also an interesting book when looking religious history since the Old Testament is back before Jesus arrived and the new Testament is during or after his arrival. It’s an interesting contrast as to how people used to view God since the Old Testament has a lot of sacrifices and deaths while the New Testament is mainly about being a good person.

Anyways, maybe someone will read this and if you do- you’re cool and thank you. Hope everyone has a chill winter quarter. Lastly, here is a picture of something I found on the way to Vegas.

This is the section website for HUM 4 A07 with Eric Watkins. I will discuss details on the blogging assignment in class on Friday. For now, focus on reading! – Rosie.