Concepts of Self and Selfhood Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Concepts of Self and Selfhood - Essay Example Locke shared the same ideas with Marx, believing that humans give up certain freedoms to have protection through their government. As a result, the basic nature of human self is portrayed in the light of selfhood and individuality and human nature along with its grace and flaws and it is done in accordance to the spirituality and ethical and metaphysical beliefs of the cultural environment of his time. The empiricism point of view enumerated the physical, mental and the mind/body aspect as tabula rasa by John Locke. In accordance to him, the entire nature of human self is the constant nurture of sensory experiences where the individual gathers information right from birth. On the other hand, Plato incorporated the idea of anthropology and metaphysics in defining the amalgamation of the concept of physical, mental and the mind/body aspect of the human nature. He suggested that the human nature is the combination of genitals, belly, breast and the concept of intellectuality. He also st ated the basic human nature was always uncomfortable with this coexistence and death was the only way out of this coercion. John Lockes approach to this issue of selfhood or individualism is based on the contradiction of values of his time and ethical methods available in his era (1632 - 1704). He "was directed against the principles of Sir Robert Filmer, whose books, asserting the divine authority of kings and denying any right of resistance, were thought by Locke and his fellow Whigs to be too influential among the gentry to be left unchallenged by those who held that resistance to an arbitrary monarch might be justified." (Locke, viii) Thus, it is certain that John Locke believed in the human self of man and that man should be paid his dues whereby there should be equalities in terms of ethics in the society. John Locke's approach to metaphysic and ethics is in this way very modern in nature and reading his text Second Treatise of Government yields a romantic approach towards different ethical consequences. This is because he was more of a political philosopher than an economist. Thus, a philosophical justification comes forward with his view of forceful equality of selfhood and individuality. An ardent empiricist by nature John Locke is always in favor of revolution. He conveys every opportunity to practice this approach, he feels that selfhood, and individuality is possible only by revolution. In a way, John Locke is at par with Marx but his approach is more fiscal oriented and data base where as Locke's outlook is more assumption based and romance is added to it enthusiastically. His views were based on the faith that human nature is the best judge of identifying right and wrong, that it is obvious that the population would determine correctly, what is ultimately right would eradicate differences in the process, and selfhood and individuality would prevail. (Lamb, 226-8) As such, in Marx's opinion, the alienation/duplication between the secular and religious worlds needs to be followed by a subsequent recognition of the alienation/duplication of the secular world itself for evoking the proper aspects of selfhood and individualism. The religious world is a projection of the secular world but the secular world

Empirical Project Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Empirical Project - Research Paper Example Methodology The study is based extensively on secondary research. The secondary information is from the gold reserves of gold holding IMF countries from a Book and few websites. Literature Review The gold reserve of a country is that gold held by the central bank or nation depicted as a commodity to redeem which assures for the depositors to pay and note holders. Gold is treated as a liquid money which is mainly used for trading purposes against any currency. The gold reserves as on date are exclusively helps in the settling the international transactions. The central banks by the end of 2004 and investment funds held 19% of all above-ground gold as bank reserve assets. It is predicted that the gold mined by the end of 2009 sum up to 165,000 tonnes. Fixed at US$1000/oz. as price, it exceeded in 2008 and 2009, one tonne of gold has a value of approximately US$32.15 million. The overall gold mined so far would exceed US$5 trillion. IMF gold holdings The International Monetary Fund by J une 2009 held 3,217 tonnes (103.4 million oz.) of gold, which is constant over many years. In 2009, the International Monetary Fund announced that it will disburse 12.5% of the gold holdings, a maximum of 12,965,649 fine troy ounces (403.3 tonnes) based on the recent income model as agreed in April 2008, and further declared the sale of 200 tonnes to India, 10 tonnes to Sri Lanka, and further 10 Metric tonnes of Gold was also given to Bangladesh in September 2010 and 2 tonnes to the Bank of Mauritius. These gold were sold in stages at existing market prices. The IMF reiterates book value of its gold which is far below the market value. This book value was SDR 35 in, or about US$47 per troy ounce in the year 2000. Further the resale value of gold reserve value which faced challenge for various causes. In fact, Canada no idea of revaluing the gold reserves, as it may be pushed to sell the gold on the open market and further decline of gold prices may be the result. Officially reported gold holdings Gold reserves per capita The International Monetary Fund’s data on national assets of various countries is give in the following table. The data are put into use by the World Gold Council to systematically rank and report the gold holding of countries and official organizations. The gold holdings given in the table for each country is not physically stored in the country listed, because the central banks did not allow the audits and reserves independently. World official gold holding for some important countries as of December 2010 Rank Country/Organization Gold (tonnes) Gold's share of national forex reserves (%) - Euro Area 10,792.6 60.7% 1 United States 8,133.5 73.9% 2 Germany 3,401.8 70.3% 3 IMF 2,846.7 - 4 Italy 2,451.8 68.6% 5 France 2,435.4 67.2% 6 Switzerland 1,040.1 16.4% 7 Japan 765.2 3.0% 8 Netherlands 612.5 57.5% 9 India 557.7 8.1% 10 ECB 501.4 27.9% 11 United Kingdom 310.3 16.8% 12 Spain 281.6 38.6% 13 Belgium 227.5 36.8% 14 Singapore 127.4 2.5% 15 BIS 120.0 - 16 Australia 79.9 8.1% - World 30,562.5 - Privately held gold As of October 2009, gold exchange-traded funds held 1,750 tonnes of gold for private and institutional investors. Gold Holdings Corp. a publicly listed gold company estimates that the amount of in-ground verified gold resources currently controlled by publicly traded gold mining companies is roughly 50,000 tonnes. Serial Correlation The correlation between the successive