Saint Thomas Aquinas and his influence on Western thought Research Paper

Saint Thomas Aquinas and his influence on Western thought - Research Paper Example Aquino has been considered by many as one of the major pillars of civilization in the west. His philosophy exerted much influence not only on the successive Christian theology, but also the philosophy of the west in general. One could only conclude that Aquino’s existence was needed at this time when Catholic politics and the events in the world needed great intervention (Aquinas and Regan 73). At this time, a decision was made in Vatican apprehensively where Aquinas was assigned the task of merging formally Christianity with carnal reason. Aquino was born in Roccasecca Sicily in a noble family of Mr. Count Landulph and Mrs. Theodora (Aquinas and Regan 22). There were expectations that Aquino would pursue his uncle’s (Sinibald) footsteps to the position of abbot in the Benedictine monastery. He started his education at five years of age in a monastery, and the later proceeded to Naples University. While in this university, Aquinas chose to pursue the Dominican Order, de spite the fact that he faced much opposition from his family. The family even went to an extent of incarcerating him in trying to compel him to follow the family footsteps. However, their efforts failed following Pope Innocent the 4th’s intervention, propelling Aquino to the position of a Dominican monk by 1242. He later studied briefly under Magnus A., then later in Paris. While in Paris he vocally distinguished himself during the University champion Guillaume de St. Amour (Aquinas and Gilby 137). After his graduation from the university in 1248 with a degree in theology, he got back to Cologne and started his literary works. Aquino was described as a humble, peace-loving and simple man who loved poetry. Aquinas and Regan (63) assert that through his great learning and personality, he maintained a great deal of self control which saw him win over his rivals. He even refused to take part in an activity known as flesh mortification, a requirement for every Dominican Friar. Fur thermore, he also declined to hold some prestigious positions such as Naples’ Archbishop. He later went back to Naples with the aim of implementing a program of theological studies in the Naples University neighborhood in 1272. During St. Nicolas feast in 1273, Aquino had a vision in which he had a voice speaking to congratulating him for his great writings. The voice asked him for the reward that he wished to be given and Thomas said all that he needed was God himself (Aquinas and Regan 92). From there henceforth Aquino wrote no more. Earlier on, the Paris Bishop had condemned Aristotle’s teachings which were offered in the university, which also aimed at Aquino’s teachings. Gilby and Aquinas (15) explains that later in early 1274, Aquino left for France on a Second Council mission, but died before reaching there after falling sick shortly. On sensing his death, Aquino said that, that was his eternal rest and he had chosen it. St. Thomas Aquinas left back great works that can never be forgotten. His works were first condemned after his death by the Paris Bishop and there was an excommunication of Aquinas in posthumously. It took quite a number of years for his reputation to be revived; in the mid 15th century, his works were revived and taught throughout Paris, and at this time he was termed as the Dr. of the church (Aquinas, Regan and Baumgarth 140). In the contemporary societies, he is recognized by the Catholic Church in particular as the grand theologian philosopher. His works and their influence on Western

Canadian Economic History The Staple Thesis Essay

Canadian Economic History The Staple Thesis - Essay Example Economic base, staple, sector, growth pole, neoclassical growth, inter-region trade, product cycle, entrepreneurship and flexible production are a few existing theories that explain economic development1. The economic history of Canada shows its dependence on fur trade, fisheries and lumbering industries, dependent on waterways transport till mid nineteenth century. Later, with the advent of steam and rail transportation, wheat and flour, paper and pulp, mining and timber industries became significant. However, the industries depended basically on natural resources with limited or without any processing. Staple thesis, as formulated by economic historians like Harrold A Innis and WA Makintosh, provides significant insight to the economic development of Canada. The thesis defines export-oriented economic growth of staple or natural products like furs, fisheries and timber and contributes towards political and cultural structuring. The works of Harold A Innis (1894-1952), a political economist, have been inspiring in the field of economic history and communication. His initial works related to the expansion and establishment of staple theory, originally conceived by Makintosh. Innis's literal works include thesis on 'History of Canadian Pacific Railways', 'The Fur Trade in Canada' (1930), 'The Cod Fisheries' (1940) and 'Empire and Communication' (1950). In the subsequent paragraphs, the thesis would be extensively discussed with regard to its definition, dynamics, merits and demerits and application to Canadian economic growth. Further, the paper would cover economic impact of the theory on other countries, followed by its critical analysis highlighting theory's credibility and relevance in past and present. Staple Theory A staple can be defined as a commodity that forms significant constituent of export material. The thesis dwells on the extent of processing of the commodities being marginal or absent. The major Canadian staple products included fur, fish, timber, grain, oil etc. The theory focuses on staple exports contributing towards economic growth. Therefore, it is necessary that the home market for the staples be negligible or limited to achieve a large export base. The theory is associated to a number of factor dependent determinants like the production function, external market demand, transportation function and staple characteristics2. The production function is the outcome of the resource base of a country and the available technologies while transportation depends on the public investments and existing communication infrastructure. External demand base is the central determinant around which the theory revolves. Staple characteristics are the measure of economic development related to its production, depending on the linkages that induce further investments. It is important to note that demand drives the model; external demand base further creates derived demand through linkages. The commodity is the centre of importance in the model and its character stimulates other activities setting up a positive or negative pace. With the known production function and assumed external demand, a number of related aspects like income distribution, additional processing

The Theory Of Parallelism

The Theory Of Parallelism Mind and body is considered as a separate form of human. By giving an example for mind such as sad, euphoria, angry or happy, it is considered as mind. A mind can be explained as what we called feeling. For our body, it can do things such as cycling, hiking, writing paperwork, and talking. We cannot see how large is our mind but we can see our body. So, we can conclude that body is a physical subject while mind is a mentally subject. Based on the older philosophy theory, the mind and body is not correlated. This theory is called as parallelism. What is parallelism? Based on thefreedictionary.com, parallelism is The doctrine that to every mental change there corresponds a concomitant but causally unconnected physical alteration. (thefreedictionary.com ,2009) The meaning is every changes that happened in our mind, doesnt affect our body while the changes in our body doesnt affect our mind. These two are independent against each other. For example, if were happy, it just a stimulation o f chemical in our body that is call endorphin. It is nothing related to our thinking. However, if we are saying that the mind and body are two different and independent things, we are no better than a machine or robot. The idea of Descartes theory has formed a mind and body problem. So what is mind and body problem? The problem is how does mind and body correlated to each other? According to Descartes philosophy, mind is a thinking thing while body is an extended thing. These two is somehow related to each other. To answer this question, Decartes has formed a philosophical theory called dualism. Based on Decartess dualism, body and mind is dependent against each other. The body needs the mind to tell them how to react and what to do and the mind needs the body as an object to express our thinking. However, if we said that there are connected to each other, but where is the connection between the mind and the body? There must some connection within the mind and body. The things that we think somehow affect our body and vice versa. Decartes solution is possible for mind/body problem. What he said was mind and body are connected and irrelevant to each other, but where is the bond that connects the mind and body? Do they even exist? We cant say that our body is connected by electrons or electromagnetic waves that generate within our body because electrons and electromagnetic waves is something that we can see and know for a long time through science. The connection between mind and body must not be visible to our naked eyes. If we use the theory of electrons as our proof of the existence; a scientist can manipulate the electrons that connect through our mind and body and extract the mind and put into someones body. The body must have a special code or something special to connect with the mind. We cant just move the mind into someones body to survive. If we can do that, we can escape the fact of death. When a person is about to die, just extract the electrons and put into someones body. According to Joseph Almog, he said that ..here is the kind of mind a mind is is stable in time. Given that Decartess Meditation is a human mind, it may not turn into an angelic or divine mind.. (Joseph Almog, 2002, pg 94). Mind provides use stability. Hence, there must be a connection that binds within a mind and a body of a person, and mind and body must be complete with each other. Besides that, if mind and body arent related just as what parallelism said, we can just live in this world without a body. The body basically is an extended thing. If I ask a normal person, what they think about mind. Basically they will just tell you something like mind is a soul, mental, or a spirit. So why dont we just live in this world just by using a soul? Isnt that our body is just a little an extra feature? When were dead, our body will be assumed as a corpse, our soul will be assumed as a spirit. Based on what I said before this about spirit and corpse, if dualism is not a solution for this, we can say that were just spirit living in a corpse body. We are no better than a zombie that doesnt have any feeling and emotion towards anything. It is basically just a walking corpse. As a result for that, to be called as a human or a living being, one must be exist with a package that contains mind and body. These two things arent divisible as they two are depending on each other. Ba sed on science, there is nothing such as zombie, spirit or recreation exists. However, the scientific reporting of the reality only provided evidence based on medical research investigating birthmarks and defects. (Casimir J. Bonk,contents pg xvii) This determines how we can deeply understand what an individual with thinking and physical are connected together. Apart from that, physical (body) must exist with mind (consciousness). A person wouldnt know what pain is, if the physical part of his body does not experience any pain before. For example, if a person touches a hot stove, he/she will feel the pain by pulling his/her hand. That person can scream too as an alert to show that we are in pain. However, the pain feeling will stays in our consciousness. For the next time, even when the stove if not hot, when we are going to touch it, there is a pain feeling in our mind. Besides that, if a person did not feel any pain before, will they know what is the meaning of pain is? They might just know the theory of pain but not exact consciousness of pain. Hence, it creates a conscious between mind and body about how we feel. In conclusion, I think Decartess dualism is the solution for mind and body problem. Mind must exist with the body and body must exist with mind to stay in what we called as a human being. Without any of them, we are just a dead corpse or a spirit. Hence, I think Decartes has one of the best solutions for this problem. Citation Joseph Almog, 2002 What am I?: Descartes and the mind-body problem, Oxford University Printing Press. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/parallelism , Access 17th February 2011, Updated at year 2000 Casimir J. Bonk, 2010, Descartes Was Right! Souls Do Exist and Reincarnation Proves It: A Challenge To Rethink Dualism

Essay --

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a disorder that affects people who have witnessed/experienced a traumatic or terrifying event that causes intense mental issues. PTSD is usually found in war veterans, rape victims, or murder witnesses. Anyone who suffers from PTSD has a large option of treatments to choose from. About 3.6% of adult Americans (5.2 million people) suffer from PTSD. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is a mental disorder in which people who have had a traumatic experience that mentally scars them, the symptoms of PTSD usually can cause intense situations in everyday life, but the victims have a whole lot of treatments they can choose from. 3.6% of adults in America suffer from PTSD in 1 year and 7.8 million Americans will or have experienced PTSD in their life. Women run a higher risk of developing PTSD more than men because they are victimized more then men in domestic violence, abuse, and rape. If PTSD symptoms are diagnosed, a doctor will evaluate medical history and conduct a physical exam. The doctor might also test for common symptoms of physical illnesses. If no physical illnesses are found, they may refer you to a psychiatrist or psychologist. Psychiatrists and psychologists use specially trained to interview and assess tools to evaluate a patient for an anxiety disorder. The doctor bases their diagnosis of PTSD on any reported problems with functioning caused by the symptoms. The doctor then determines if the symptoms and degree of dysfunction indicates PTSD. The diagnosis of PTSD is determined if the person’s symptoms have lasted more than one month. Everyone that has Witnesses a traumatic event reacts differently. Each person is unique in their ability to manage fear and stress and cope with the threa... ...and emotional conflicts caused by the traumatic event. Family therapy is useful because the behavior of the PTSD victim can have an effect on the other members of their family, so getting the family together to help cope with the PTSD. Group therapy helps by allowing the victim to share thoughts and feelings with other people who have also experienced and had PTSD. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a complex form of psychotherapy alleviates distress linked with traumatic memories but also treats phobias. PTSD is a mental disorder in which a victim can become hostile in everyday situations but they have many treatments that can help them with their disorder. Ms. Nordin is an English teacher. Treatments for PTSD can include medicine or psychology. PTSD mostly occurs in war veterans. PTSD is no laughing matter and should be treated as soon as possible.

Dividend policy decision Essay

Dividend policy decision is one of the important decisions of corporate finance. A dividend policy should be such that it maximizes the shareholders wealth and provides adequate financing to the firm. A firm with fluctuation dividend policy is considered risky by the investors. (Shim & Siegel, 1998) Usually a stable dividend payout policy is maintained by companies. Leverage which is given by total debt/total assets, is negatively related to the dividend payments, that is higher the leverage in the firms capital lower is the dividend paid. Companies with less debt and sizeable tangible assets usually pay more dividends as it is usually stable. (Aivazian & Cleary, 2003) However, this has been contradicted by the signaling theory which says that the company’s which have high dividend payout ratio tend to be financed by debt and company’s which have low dividend payout ratio are more inclined to be financed by equity. (Chang & Rhee, 1990) The agency theory and tax preference theory suggests that there is a positive relationship between the institutional ownership and the dividend payouts. (Jenson, Solberg & Zorn 1992) However, both numbers of shares owned by institutional investors as well as proportion of institutional ownership does not significantly affect the dividend payout ratio. This is because the companies will not have to enter the capital markets for additional funds if they are owned by institutional investors which mean less compliance procedures and monitoring by the external authorities. On the other hand signaling theory advocates a negative relationship between the proportion of institutional ownership and dividend payments. There is a strong positive relationship between the profitability that is the Return on equity and dividend payments. The return on equity is given by net income/ shareholders equity. The higher the income would mean firms would have more money to distribute as dividends, and this would also convey better performance. (Ho, 2003). A firm with high business risk is inclined to pay lower dividends and the firm with stable earnings and low risk would pay high dividends. This is because the firm would be more likely to go bankrupt than a firm with low business risk as the earnings and liquidity position is not predictable. The agency theory of dividend policy says that there is a negative relationship between fixed asset ratio given by fixed asset by total assets and dividend payout ratio. The more money is blocked in the tangible fixed assets, the less is available to fund short term assets, which can be used as collateral security to finance the short term borrowings. The firms would not be able to have access to short term loan and would therefore depend on the retained earnings to meet the short term requirements. Firms which have high liquid assets would pay more dividends than firms with less liquid assets. Liquidity position of a company is measured by current assets / current liabilities. High cash availability would enable firms pay more dividends. Moreover if the liquidity position is high the probability of bankruptcy also reduces. Large firms would pay more dividends as they would have easy access to capital markets than small firms. As large firms are more diversified and less susceptible to financial distress, they pay more dividends to the shareholders than the smaller firms (Gul & Kealey 1999). The higher the growth opportunities the higher is the possibility of firms distributing low dividends. The profits would be retained by the firms in order to finance the expansion plans. Market to book value ratio is used as a proxy for growth opportunities. Hence, there is a negative ratio between market to book vale and dividend payments. Thus we find that all the factors play a role in formulation dividend policy. Some have significant impact while others factors may not have a considerable effect. Reference: Aivazian, V. , Booth I. , Cleary S. , (2003) Do emerging markets firms follow different dividend policies from the US firms? Journal of financial research, 26(3) pp. 371-387 Chang, R. P. , Rhee, S. G. , (1990) The impact of personal taxes on corporate dividend policy and structural decision, Financial management, 19(2) pp. 21-31 Gul, F. A. , Kealey, B. T. , (1999) Investment opportunity set and corporate debt and dividend policies of Korean companies, Review of quantitative finance and accounting, 13(4) pp. 401-414 Ho, H. , (2003) Dividend Policies in Australia and Japan, International Advances in economic research Jensen, G. , Solberg, D. , Zorn, T. , (1992) Simultaneous determination of insider ownership, debt and dividend policies, Journal of financial quantitative analysis, pp 247-263 Shim, Jae K. , Siegel, Joel G. , (1998) Schaum’s outline of theory and problems of financial management, McGraw-Hill Professional, USA

2 Random Speeches Bob Marley and Beauty (Ideas)

Speech September 27, 2012 Bob Marley the Rastafarian I. Nesta Robert Bob Marley was born February of 1945. Bob Marley was born in Jamaica. You might know him as a singer, song writer, a rhythm guitarist, and lead singer of the Wailer’s. He stayed with the group through most of his life. Bob is the go to guy for spreading Jamaican music and the Rastafarian movement. Some of his most popular songs are: I Shot the Sheriff, No Women No Cry and Jamming to name a few, I listen to some of his music, which for me is inspirational. Gives me something to think about, what was going on in his mind mentally and the thoughts about war, peace and love.II. One of my favorite quotes from Bob is â€Å"I don’t have prejudice against white people because then I would have prejudice against myself. My father is white my mother is black. I’m not on the black men side or the white men, I’m God’s side. Bob Marley was raised Catholic, but became a devoted Rastafarian and started growing dreads, which is very important to them, it’s like the anatine tuning meaning you’re into the universe. Rastas are also vegetarian. Bob was a jiglo with eleven kids, some you might know like Damien Marley and Ziggy Marley. III.Rastafarians also were avid pot heads which is a Rastafarian belief were ganja or that kush is a holy sacrament. The difference between Rastas and non Rastas are that they smoke for religious and medicinal purposes. Another quote I like is â€Å"why do government people want the herb to be illegal, why something that makes people so happy, so relax so illegal? Some people smoke weed because you rebel makes you question what is and what isn’t. Exercise your mind frees your mind in a society that tries to involve it’s self in everyday life telling you what is right and wrong! † IV.In July 1977 Bob found out that out that he had cancer all throughout his body, he even had spots his brain the size of quarters that the doctor didn’t understand how he last so long without any medication or medicine assistance. He was buried near his birth place; his last words were to his son â€Å"mommy can’t buy life†! I know that for me inner beauty supposed to shine through to reveal your outer beauty; and it’s taken me awhile for me to truly understand why men and women choose physical beauty over inner beauty. Physical beauty and inner beauty can be similar and dissimilar.Inner beauty are the actions we take, whether it’s giving up a smile to a stranger, eating the right foods, wearing clothes that shows our physique, or using the right hair tools: such as curling irons, flat iron, and gel. These are things we do to take care of ourselves, and they add up to make us the unique person that we and you are! Physical and inner beauty can be similar or dissimilar: they both attract people. People in general are attracted to both physical and inner beauty. I may be drawn to M orris Chestnut’s appearance; while my big sister will love his personality. Physical and inner beauty are both equally important though.Let’s take for example: Beyonce, who many young girls and women admire for her unique sense of style (myself included). I’ve never met her in person, but it seems to me that she has this balance of inner and outer beauty. As the face of L'Oreal, a brand known for their quality cosmetics: hair and nail colors; we have seen Beyonce’s alter ego Sasha Fierce! She’s a bad Bitch! She also appears to be very comfortable in her own skin either portraying Etta James in Cadillac Records or Deena Jones in Dream Girls. When I watch Beyonce being interviewed, she seems very genuine, candid, and confident when sharing bits and pieces about her life.I sense that she pay close attention to details: hair, make-up, perfume and the clothes she wears. Finding balance between inner and outer beauty doesn’t just happen overnight. It’ll take some inner soul searching and discovering of our own uniqueness: hat beauty could be in the form of how we dress or the way we shine! Most importantly it’s the way we feel about ourselves, and having the awareness that beauty consists of both the inner and outer, we are the first step to becoming more authentic and the real person that we were meant to be, Beautiful!