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4 pages/≈1100 words
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Religion & Theology
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English (U.S.)
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Sartre Reflection Essay. Religion & Theology Essay

Essay Instructions:

This essay is a bit longer (1000-1200 words or about 3-4 pages). I have provided a long introduction for this assignment. The prompt is at the end:
Sartre Reflection Essay
Why does Socrates tell the jury in the Apology that a person who wishes to live a truly good life cannot be a public person (a "politician”), but rather must focus on a private life? Format your essay according to the following three requirements.
At the end of the final play of his trilogy (The Eumenides), Aeschylus has Athena make the following two points to Orestes, the Furies, and the people of Athens.
A. “I open on this rock [the Areopagus opposite the Acropolis] the pure springs of my laws. Do not taint them by an expedient shift for advantages. Protect this court which will protect you all from the headstrong license of any man’s will and from slavery. Above all, remember the power of fear and cherish it in your ministry of the laws… I give you this court and I bless it— Like heaven, not to be violated. Like heaven, holy.”
B. In response to the Furies outcry against the verdict she says, “You call for justice. But God speaks through me. Only I, Pallas Athene, possess the key that unlocks the thunderbolt of Zeus. But the time for brute force is past. The day of reasoned persuasion, with its long vision, with its mercy, its forgiveness, has arrived.”
Sartre, in his play, the Flies, has this confrontation between Zeus and Orestes: Zeus: “Orestes, I created you, and I created all things…. For the world is good; I made it according to my will, and I am Goodness… Return to Nature, Nature’s thankless son. Know your sin, abhor it, and tear it from you as one tears out a rotten noisome tooth…. Come back to the fold. Think of your loneliness; even your sister is forsaking you. Your eyes are big with anguish, your face pale and drawn. The disease you’re suffering from is inhuman, foreign to my nature, foreign to yourself. Come back. I am forgiveness, I am peace.” Orestes, however, responds as follows: “Foreign to myself—I know it. Outside nature, against nature, without excuse, beyond remedy, except what remedy I find within myself. But I shall not return under your law; I am doomed to have no other law but mine. Nor shall I come back to nature, the nature you found good; in it are a thousand beaten paths all leading up to you—but I must blaze my trail. For I, Zeus, am a man, and every man must find out his own way. Nature abhors man, and you too, god of gods, abhor man.”
THE QUESTION: Aeschylus praises the power of the gods, especially in the persons of the Zeus (god of justice) and Athena (goddess of wisdom or reason) and the divine order they provide—a very ancient belief. He also sets the stage for the emphasis on reason that becomes central to philosophy. For Aeschylus, Orestes finds comfort and justification in conforming to the pronouncements of Athena and the arguments of sweet reason. Sartre, on the other hand, has Orestes reject such comforts.
PART ONE OF THE ESSAY: Why does Sartre, given his situation at the end of Modernity, come to such a conclusion? Note important changes introduced by modern thinkers we have studied to make your point (2-3 paragraphs).
PART TWO OF THE ESSAY: As a reflective Christian, state your position on how the modern notion of freedom and the demand to love and serve God and others fits together. (1 paragraph)
Develop your ideas and defend them being sure to engage Sartre's and other modern ideas about freedom and the possibility of modern community. Avoid Biblical proof-texting or platitudes. Yes, we could call this "servant-leadership" or "freedom in Christ," but what do these things mean? You need to explain and justify what you claim. For Sartre, freedom is by definition the right and ability to decide for oneself and to judge for oneself what one will do. Any moral decision must originate in the self in order to be authentic; that is, it can't be commanded (3-4) paragraphs).

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Sartre Reflection Essay
Part One
Why does Sartre, given his situation at the end of Modernity, come to such a conclusion?
Civilization accounts for the continuous evolution of human beings owing to the evolving changes in the social, political, cultural, and economic aspects of the society in correspondence to the subsequent modernizations. Consequently, an array of ideologies and standpoints on matters of faith in religion, the principles or concepts of freedom, and the morality of certain actions or lifestyles in the social realm, are replacing the ancient beliefs upon which relied the early or traditional societies. In essence, with modernization or the various civilizations, human being’s quest to free themselves from the existing social constructs and their restrictions continues to reveal itself. Sartre’s play, Flies, is articulate in capturing the outlined human aspect of freedom and man’s quest to exercise their will without accountability to any superior power or authority but based purely on their individual choices and determination of the suitability of the said choices. The orderly state of nature and the society’s endeavor to maintain the status quo based on the ancient beliefs, religious or otherwise, are restrictive to the modernized man and thus the increased calls for respect of personal decisions and choices in matters relating to the social, cultural, religious, political, or economic aspects of an individual. Sartre calls out for this independence of the self in exercising one’s freedom and liberties to live their desires without the restrictions of any form of authority, spiritual or otherwise.
Sartre’s witnessing and partaking of the rampant exercise of human freedom and fulfillment of the normally restricted desires of human beings during the World Wars reaffirms his position on human’s solitude in the objectivity of their choices and actions. He reiterates god’s abandonment of human beings through Orestes declaration of freedom from the constructs of the metaphysical entity regarding man’s conduct in the society or on earth in general CITATION Jea93 \l 1033 (Sartre). Failure by the institutions deemed to have the authority or being representative of the gods, and which should be revered by all, to intervene during the World Wars and bring to an end the anarchy and animosity in the world further depicts the anguish of human beings for their choice of action or inaction in under given circumstances. Freedom from all forms of authoritative bounds on the conduct of human beings, according to Sartre, facilitates the weighing of the repercussions for one’s actions or choices and thus effective in addressing the social, political, and cultural challenges and changes facing the society.
According to Aeschylus, the metaphysical entities in Athena and Zeus, have installed and advocate for an orderly world through various institutions deemed to be acting under their divine authority CITATION Jea93 \l 1033 (Sartre). Obedience to the higher authority demands conformity to the regulations and guidelines of such ordained institutions, which are a representation of the power and peaceful nature of the...
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