Resolving Work ConflictFor this assignment, you will identify a wo.docx

Resolving Work Conflict
For this assignment, you will identify a workplace conflict that
you are now experiencing. Address the following in a paper:
· Provide a brief description of the conflict. (Note that you
should strive to be as unbiased as possible in this description;
consider yourself a video camera recording the situation.)
· Consider how cultural norms may be impacting the conflict.
· Discuss the impact that the conflict has on leadership’s
decision making.
· Describe specific techniques that are most useful in reducing
or overcoming the particular problem behavior. (Note that you
should use specific terms and concepts presented in the
module.)
· Present a summary of leadership de-escalation strategies that
provide oversight for the conflict and turn the challenge into an
opportunity.
· Postulate the potential negative and positive impacts that your
techniques may have on resolving the conflict.
Assignment Requirements:
· Your paper should be 4-5 pages in length, not counting the
required title and references pages.
· Format your paper according to theCSU-Global Guide to
Writing & APA (Links to an external site.)Links to an external
site..
· Cite a minimum of four scholarly sources to support your
positions, claims, and observations, in addition to the textbook,
three of which should be academic, peer-reviewed sources.
(You may not use the required and recommended readings for
this course.)
Be sure to review the Critical Thinking Assignment rubric in
the Module 6 folder for details regarding grading standards.
Assignment Requirements:
· Your paper should be 4-5 pages in length, not counting the
required title and references pages

· Please include topics & subtopics / introductionand conclusion
required.
· Format your paper according to the CSU-Global Guide to
Writing & APA (Links to an external site.)Links to an external
site..
· Cite a minimum of four scholarly sources to support your
positions, claims, and observations, in addition to the textbook,
three of which should be academic, peer-reviewed sources. (You
may not use the required and recommended readings for this
course.)
Chapter 7
The Madman and the Death of God
Nietzsche is here pointing to the gradual erosion of religious
belief already visible in late nineteenth-century Europe. The
belief in God, the parable suggests, has lost its hold on the
collective consciousness of the West. The morning newspaper
has replaced the morning prayer. Our concern with what St.
Thomas Aquinas called the Summum Bonum (salvation and
eternal life, the highest objects of human striving) has been
supplanted by the petty bourgeois virtues of industriousness,
thrift, and enlightened self-interest—all with an eye toward
achieving no higher goal than mere comfortable self-
preservation (what Nietzsche elsewhere refers to as “the green
meadow happiness of the herd”). The great cathedrals of Europe
are fast becoming “the tombs and monuments of God,” mere
tourist attractions much like the Parthenon in Athens is today.
What are the implications of this momentous event? For
Nietzsche they are catastrophic. The death of God signals a
crisis of meaning the likes of which mankind has never before
seen; the entire horizon that once gave the West its unique
cultural identity and self-understanding has been wiped clean.

To invoke Plato’s famous allegory, there are no longer any
shadows on the cave wall because the fire has been
extinguished. The sun (representing God), which once formed
the moral and existential center of our universe, has been torn
away from us. The madman carries a lantern in the morning
light because onlyhe recognizes that the world has been cast
into the darkness: “I come too early…I am not yet at the right
time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is
traveling—it has not yet reached men’s ears.” His prophetic
insight into the frightful consequences of the death of God is
thus seen by his derisive and uncomprehending fellow
unbelievers as a sign of madness.
Ivan Karamozov, one of the chief characters in Fyodor
Dostoevsky’s 1880 masterpiece The Brothers Karamozov,
famously proclaims: “If God does not exist, then nothing is true
and everything is permitted.” What he means is that, without the
Creator God of Judeo-Christianity, man has no essence or
nature, and hence no intrinsic purpose. The universe is devoid
of any eternal, divine, or natural law in the Thomistic[1] sense
(since there is no God to conceive it), and without these there
can be no cosmic basis for justice or morality. We are slowly
becoming conscious of inhabiting a world deprived of any moral
absolutes, a world in which there are no longer any restraints on
our conduct other than those established by human law or
custom. We are literally free-falling in the Abyss; “Whither do
we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly?
Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still
an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite
nothingness?” The death of God has ushered in the single
greatest crisis in human history: Nihilism, the bleakest and most
destructive of worldviews, which finds its most eloquent
expression in the following lines spoken by Shakespeare’s
Macbeth:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
What is Noble?
According to Nietzsche, the elevation of the human species
necessitates the establishment and maintenance of an
aristocratic society—“a society believing in a long scale of
gradations of rank and differences of worth among human
beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other.” Unlike
most Westerners today, Nietzsche vehemently opposes the
doctrine of egalitarianism. That all men are created equal, as the
U.S. Declaration of Independence asserts, is not in Nietzsche’s
eyes a “self-evident truth,” but rather a self-evident lie.
The aristocratic caste creates and embodies the system of values
(“master morality”) that ennobles, enriches, and beautifies their
civilization. Whereas in liberal democratic societies each
individual is free to pursue his or her particular vision of the
good life, for Nietzsche civilization exists solely in order to
produce those rare and gifted creatures which are its crowning
glory. The multitude of men possesses value only insofar as
they are useful subordinates to the ruling class; their principal
virtues are obedience and submission.
How do aristocratic societies come into being? In a word,
through conquest: “Men with a still natural nature, barbarians in
every terrible sense of the word, men of prey, still in possession
of unbroken strength of will and desire for power, threw
themselves upon weaker, more moral, more peaceful races…”
For Nietzsche, life is will-to-power, which “is essentially
appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak,
suppression, severity….and at the least, putting it mildest,
exploitation.” All living things, from the unicellular organism

to the human being and even whole societies, exhibit the will-
to-power. (Suffice it to say that aristocratic individuals possess
far more strength and vitality than the slavish multitudes.)
Exploitation, which in Nietzsche’s time (no less than our own)
is viewed disparagingly as belonging “to a depraved, or
imperfect and primitive society,” is in fact identical with the
“Will to Life.” This is an indisputable fact which many of us are
only too eager to deny: “the truth is hard.”
Master and Slave Morality
Nietzsche recognizes two fundamentally distinct types of
morality in the world, what he terms master morality and slave
morality. The former has always originated in the noble or
aristocratic caste, the latter among the slave or dependent class.
The two value terms that are applied in master morality are
“good” and “bad.” The aristocratic man—who according to
Nietzsche finds historical embodiment in “the Roman, Arabic,
German, and Japanese nobility,” as well as among the Homeric
heroes and Scandinavian Vikings—“conceives the root idea
‘good’ spontaneously and straight away, that is to say, out of
himself.” “He honors whatever he recognizes in himself: such
morality is self-glorification.” But what precisely are the
qualities that characterize the aristocratic soul, qualities that
find concrete expression in the formulation “good”? “The noble
man,” Nietzsche explains, “honors in himself the powerful one,
him also who has power over himself…who takes pleasure in
subjecting himself to severity and hardness, and has reverence
for all that is severe and hard.” Thus self-mastery, above even
the brute physical strength used to subjugate others, emerges as
the defining characteristic of nobility. As Nietzsche asserts in
the previous section (What is Noble?), the aristocrats’
“superiority did not consist first of all in their physical, but in
their psychical power—they were more complete men…” The
aristocratic caste, as the incarnate will-to-power, is fiercely
proud of its superior strength and elevated stature. This

“instinct for rank” impels the nobles to segregate themselves
from the lower beings, those who possess “the opposite of this
exalted, proud disposition,” the multitude of slaves and
weaklings of all sorts, toward whom the nobles (who have
duties only to their equals) may act in whatever manner they
wish.
While master morality spontaneously conceives the idea “good”
as the embodiment of the nobles’ defining qualities (self-
mastery, pride, physical strength, ambition, etc.), the concept
“bad” is more of an afterthought: it encompasses all that is
devoid of “goodness” and thus rightly deserving of scorn: “the
cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, those thinking of narrow
utility…” as well as “the distrustful…the self-abasing, the dog-
like kind of men who let themselves be abused, the mendicant
flatterers, and above all the liars.” So it is that the antithesis
“good” and “bad” in master morality “means practically the
same as ‘noble’ and despicable.’”
Whereas master morality is properly speaking active,
originating out of the spontaneous assertion of the aristocratic
caste’s essential qualities as “good,” slave morality, by
contrast, is more aptly characterized as passive or reactive:
“slave morality says ‘no’ from the very outset to what is
‘outside itself,’ ‘different from itself,’ and ‘not itself,’: and this
‘no’ is its creative deed.” Slave morality is born out of the
resentment experienced by “the abused, the oppressed, the
suffering, the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of
themselves,” who tremble in fear at the “power and
dangerousness,” the “dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength” of
the noble caste and thus who, “deprived as they are of the
proper outlet of action, are forced to find their compensation in
an imaginary revenge.” Instead of asserting their will by way of
direct action and manly self-assertion (of which only the “well-
born” are capable), the impotent multitudes must resort to
contriving a system of values whereby they exact “an imaginary

revenge” on their betters by consigning them to the illusory
category of evil—“the original, the beginning, the essential act
in the conception of a slave morality”—in contrast to which the
slave caste, by a wild leap of self-delusion, elevates itself to the
status of “good”: The “‘tame man,’ the wretched mediocre and
unedifying creature, has learnt to consider himself a goal and a
pinnacle, an inner meaning, an historic principle, a ‘higher
man.’” The transition from master to slave morality therefore
looks like this:
Slave morality, Nietzsche explains, is essentially the morality
of utility. Those qualities “which serve to alleviate the
existence of sufferers,” to make their lives less painful, less
insecure, less contemptible, and therefore more tolerable, are
enshrined in the morality of the lower class:
It is here that sympathy, the kind, helping hand, the warm heart,
patience, diligence, humility, and friendliness attain to honor;
for here these are the most useful qualities, and almost the only
means of supporting the burden of existence.
As Nietzsche restates in Goodnessand the Will to Power, “good”
in the aristocratic sense (which Nietzsche fully endorses as the
valuation that best corresponds to “the nature of the living
being as a primary organic function”) is constituted by “all that
enhances the feeling of power.” “Bad,” by contrast, is that
which “proceeds from weakness.” True happiness, then, is the
“feeling that power is increasing—that resistance has been
overcome.” The happiness of the noble caste is thus inseparable
from activity, as opposed to the sham happiness “of the weak
and oppressed, with their festering venom and malignity,” for
whom happiness “appears essentially as a narcotic, a deadening,
a quietude, a peace, a ‘Sabbath,’ [i.e., a break from
activity]…in short, a purely passive phenomenon.” The

aristocrat’s inherent vigor and vitality reveal themselves in his
“contempt for safety, body, life, and comfort, [his] awful joy
and intense delight in all destruction, in all the ecstasies of
victory and cruelty…” The diffident, slavish man, on the other
hand—represented by modern egalitarians who “believe almost
instinctively in ‘progress’ and the ‘future’”—desires nothing
more than comfort and safety, which accounts for Nietzsche’s
chilling observation that
The profound, icy mistrust which the German provokes, as soon
as he arrives at power—even at the present time—is always still
an aftermath of that inextinguishable horror with which for
whole centuries Europe has regarded the wrath of the blonde
Teuton beast…that lies at the core of all aristocratic races.
Chapter 8The Crowd Phenomenon
Jose Ortega y Gasset, writing in late 1920s Spain, remarks on
what he deems the “most important fact in the public life of the
West in modern times,” namely “the appearance of the masses
in the seats of highest social power[1]”— or, more precisely,
“the rebellion of the masses.”
He begins by pointing out what is obvious to all: the
phenomenon of “crowding.” The cities are teeming with an
abundance of people, as are the cafes and restaurants, theaters,
opera houses, and beaches. “We see,” he observes, “the
multitude as such in possession of the locales and appurtenances
created by civilization.” This is a radically new development,
for previously none of these establishments were full. What,
then, accounts for the change?
The individuals who constitute the present mass already existed
before, although not as “the masses”: in previous generations,
“each group, even each individual, occupied a space, each his
own space…in the fields, in a village, a town, or even in some
quarter of a big city.” Now, however, they appear suddenly as a

mass “in the places most in demand,” that is, “the places
previously reserved for small groups, for select minorities.”
Thus whereas in past ages the mass went unnoticed, now they
“have installed themselves in the preferred places of society.”
Framing it in sociological terms, Ortega argues that society has
always been “a dynamic unity” comprised of two elements:
masses and minorities. Let us begin by discussing the former:
“they are,” he remarks, “made up of persons not especially
qualified.” The mass-man is the “average man,” or more exactly
anyone who does not measure himself “by any particular
criterion,” and who is thus content to be “‘just like everybody
else.’” He is not in the least perturbed by his mediocre
condition, but rather is “smugly at ease” with it.
The “select individual,” by contrast, is the one “who demands
more from himself than do others, even when these demands are
unattainable.” According to Ortega, whose opposition to
democratic egalitarianism was greatly influenced by Nietzsche,
humanity is composed of 1) “those who demand much of
themselves and assign themselves great tasks and duties,” and
2) “those who demand nothing in particular of themselves, for
whom living is to be at all times what they already are, without
any effort at perfection—buoys floating on the waves.”
Ortega is at pains to emphasize that the division of society he
sketches is not a division “into social classes, but into two kinds
of men.” “Strictly speaking,” he clarifies, “there are ‘masses’
and minorities at all levels of society—within every social
class.” Thus it is not unusual to find among the working class
“outstandingly disciplined minds and souls,” although the
inverse trend has become even more common: mass and popular
vulgarity have insinuated themselves into the traditionally
selective groups. “Even in intellectual life,” Ortega laments,
“which by its very essence assumes and requires certain
qualifications, we see the progressive triumph of pseudo-

intellectuals…” Consider the following:
Then there are activities in society which by their very nature
call for qualifications: activities and functions of the most
diverse order which are special and cannot be carried out
without special talent. Thus: artistic and aesthetic enterprises;
the functioning of government; political judgment on public
matters. Previously these special activities were in the hands of
qualified minorities, or those alleged to be qualified. The
masses did not try or aspire to intervene: they reckoned that if
they did, they must acquire those special graces, and must cease
being part of the mass. They knew their role well enough in a
dynamic and functioning social order.
Thus, with the advent of the “crowd phenomenon,” the many
rich, rarified, and complex dimensions of political and cultural
life—areas which were once the exclusive preserve of select
minorities—have been usurped by the mass-man. Ortega refers
to this condition as “hyperdemocracy,” a kind of majority
tyranny in which the mass imposes “its own desires and tastes
by material pressure.” He notes in addition that “the average
reader” no longer reads in order to learn anything, but rather “in
order to pronounce judgment on whether the writer’s ideas
coincide with the pedestrian and commonplace notions the
reader already carries in his head.” (This, by the way, is an apt
description of the complacent prisoners of Plato’s cave allegory,
who violently resist any attempts by the philosopher to
enlighten them.)
We are left, finally, with a coarsened society which takes
everything noble and praiseworthy out of human beings, turning
them into vulgar little herd animals. “The mass,” Ortega
concludes, “crushes everything different, everything
outstanding, excellent, individual, select, and choice.”
[1] This would encompass political, economic, moral and

intellectual influence, as well as “all our collective habits, even
our fashions in dress and modes of amusement.”
Chapter 9Jean-Paul Sartre
Chapter Materials
Chapter 9 Quiz
Chapter Files
Sartre: "Existentialism is a Humanism"
Chapter Video Lecture
Chapter 9 Video Lecture
What is Existentialism?
In his 1945 lecture on existentialism and humanism, Jean-Paul
Sartre asserts: “existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to
draw all the conclusions from a coherent atheist position.” He
begins his explication of existentialist philosophy by discussing
one of its key concepts: that existence precedes essence.
Let us, he says, consider any man-made object, a book or paper
cutter, for instance. Here is an object that began as a concept or
idea in the mind of the artisan who designed and constructed it.
The concept involves the manner by which the paper cutter is
constructed and, more importantly, the specific purpose or use
to which it is put (in this case, to cut paper). “Therefore,” Sartre
concludes,
let us say that, for the paper-cutter, essence—that is, the
ensemble of both the production routines and the properties
which enable it to be both produced and defined—precedes
existence…Therefore, we have here a technical view of the

world whereby it can be said that production precedes
existence.
In other words, in the “technical view of the world,” the
“essence” of the artifact precedes the actual physical existence
of the artifact, in the sense that the blueprint or concept of the
paper-cutter already exists in the artisan’s mind before he ever
commits to its actual production in his workshop.
When we conceive God as the Creator, Sartre continues, He is
thought of as a kind of superhuman artisan: God creates the
Earth and the human species according to a deliberate and
specific plan or idea: “Thus, the concept of man in the mind of
God is comparable to the concept of paper-cutter in the mind of
the manufacturer, and, following certain techniques and a
conception, God produces man, just as the artisan, following a
definition and a technique, makes a paper-cutter.” The concept
of mankind in the divine intelligence is what we refer to as
“human nature”: it defines mankind in terms of what we are and
how we are meant to live (as we see, for example, in the natural
law teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas).
Atheistic existentialism, Sartre claims, is a more coherent
doctrine. It states: “if God does not exist, there is at least one
being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists
before he can be defined by any concept, and this being is
man…” That is, man first of all exists, “turns up, appears on the
scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself.” Because there is
no God who conceives the concept “man” and then creates
mankind according to that concept, there is no such thing as
human nature. There is, in other words, no particular reason
“why” we as a species are here. We are indeterminate beings,
without any fixed essence of nature, and hence entirely free to
live our lives in whatever manner we choose. The first principle
of existentialism is that “man is nothing else but what he makes
of himself.” Sartre also refers to this principle as “subjectivity.”

Let us explore it in greater detail.
Unlike inert or non-conscious objects like stones and tables,
man has a kind of intrinsic dignity insofar as he is a being who
“is at the start a plan which is aware of itself…” “Nothing
exists prior to this plan; there is nothing in heaven; man will be
what he will have planned to be.” The human being creates his
own essence or nature through his freely chosen acts, there
being no pre-determined human nature with which he is stamped
at conception and to which he must conform his actions. Thus if
existence precedes essence, then “man is responsible for what
he is.” And to be responsible for our own individuality
necessarily entails being “responsible for all men,” for “in
creating the man that we want to be… [we] at the same time
create an image of man as we think he ought to be.” In other
words, when we make a fundamental choice in life, we do so
according to a set of personally chosen values which projects a
certain image of ourselves as we choose to be, and by extension
we are projecting an ideal image of man as we think he ought to
be. For example,
if I want to marry, to have children; even if this marriage
depends solely on my own circumstances or passion or wish, I
am involving all humanity in monogamy and not merely myself.
Therefore, I am responsible for myself and for everyone else. I
am creating a certain image of man of my own choosing. In
choosing myself, I choose man.
Anguish, Forlornness, Despair
By anguish Sartre means that “the man who involves himself
and who realizes that he is not only the person he chooses to be,
but also a law-maker who is, at the same time, choosing all
mankind as well as himself, cannot escape the feeling of his
total and deep responsibility.” Because man is free and at the

same time responsible, he cannot escape the feeling of immense,
deep, and total responsibility not only for his own actions but
also for other men, since by choosing himself he assumes the
responsibility of creating an image for all of humanity. His
actions, therefore, are those of a lawmaker to whom “everything
happens as if all mankind had its eyes fixed on him and were
guiding itself by what he does.” Of course, many people attempt
to flee from anxiety either by renouncing freedom (through
relying on the advice of others instead of deciding on our own)
or through self-deception (by believing that our actions have no
affect on anyone else). If we are truly honest with ourselves, we
recognize the disquieting and inescapable fact that we alone
must choose what to do, without relying on any external source
of guidance, however comforting that may be. Thus, in making
a decision, one “cannot help having a certain anguish.”
“When we speak of forlornness,” writes Sartre, “we mean only
that God does not exist and that we have to face all the
consequences of this.” Sartre exposes the naivety of the casual
or fashionable atheist who believes one can maintain a secular
ethics while dispensing with the need for God altogether. The
rationale of these superficial thinkers runs as follows:
God is a useless and costly hypothesis; we are discarding it, but
meanwhile, in order for there to be an ethics, a society, a
civilization, it is essential that certain values be taken seriously
and that they be considered as having an a priori existence. It
must be obligatory, a priori, to be honest, not to lie, not to beat
your wife, to have children, etc., ...In other words…nothing will
be changed if God does not exist. We shall find ourselves with
the same norms of honesty, progress, and humanism, and we
shall have made of God an outdated hypothesis which will
peacefully die off by itself.
The thoughtless atheist wants to have the best of both worlds—
that is, to jettison entirely the belief in God (with all the

irksome restraints on our personal liberty such belief
necessarily entails) while at the same time preserving the
universal moral structure that makes civilization possible (but
for which there is absolutely no place in a godless universe).
The existentialist, on the other hand, “thinks it very distressing
that God does not exist,” for once God is out of the picture,
“there can be no longer an a priori Good, since there is no
infinite and perfect consciousness to think it.” If God does not
exist, then “everything is permitted” because, to invoke St.
Thomas Aquinas, there would be no natural and eternal law to
define and punish evil and injustice. This key insight “is the
very starting point of existentialism,” and as a result man is
forlorn, consumed by a feeling of abandonment, “because
neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling
to.” We are utterly alone in the universe, without any natural (or
supernatural) basis by which we can guide and assess our lives
(This should remind you of Nietzsche’s “Mad Man and the
Death of God”). Hence Sartre’s famous dictum that “man is
condemned to be free.” Condemned, because he is not self-
created, yet, in other respects free; “because, once thrown into
the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
In order to give us a better understanding of forlornness, Sartre
refers to one of his students, who sought his advice on whether
or not to join the French resistance, rather than stay with his
mother. Sartre points out that no world-view or ideology
(outside of existentialism) would be of any use to this boy
because universal values are too vague and broad for the
concrete and specific dilemmas each of us faces in life. For this
reason Sartre says: “the only thing left for us is to trust our
instincts,” by which he means that, “in the end, feeling is what
counts. I ought to choose whichever pushes me in one
direction.” His young student, embracing his freedom and
responsibility, ought therefore to reach a decision in the
following way:

If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything
else for her—my desire for vengeance, for action, for
adventure—then I’ll stay with her. If, on the contrary, I feel that
my love for my mother isn’t enough, I’ll leave.
But how do we determine the value of a “feeling”? For Sartre, it
is precisely through action that we determine the value of our
“instincts.” By choosing to stay with his mother, the boy’s
feeling for her acquires value; but short of an “act which
confirms and defines it,” such “feeling” is worthless. In other
words, despite what we may think of ourselves in the safety of
our imagination, we cannot possibly know how we would act in
a given situation until we actually find ourselves in that
situation, being forced by circumstances to make a choice one
way or the other: “I may say that I like so-and-so well enough
to sacrifice a certain amount of money for him, but I may say so
only if I’ve done it.”
We arrive finally at Sartre’s analysis of despair, which results
from our awareness that there are a multitude of factors in life
that lie completely beyond our control. Thus when “we want
something, we always have to reckon with probabilities.” “The
moment,” Sartre continues, “the possibilities I am considering
are not rigorously involved by my action, I ought to disengage
myself from them, because no God, no scheme, can adapt the
world and its possibilities to my will.” Thus no matter how well
thought out your plan, no matter how determined your will,
there will be contingencies you cannot influence. You may, for
example, develop a detailed, long-term plan to become, say, an
engineer. You may study hard and get into the best schools. But
then one day, as you are driving home late one night after a
graduate seminar, someone runs a red light and hits your car on
the driver’s side, causing you severe and permanent brain
damage, and thus in one stroke destroying your chances of
fulfilling your plan to become an engineer. Or perhaps you meet

the person you think is your “soul mate,” and you invest much
effort and hope in building a life-long relationship with that
person, only to find out that after ten years of marriage, your
spouse has been cheating on you all along.
The lesson here is that it is impossible to conquer chance: hence
Descartes’ famous dictum: “Conquer yourself rather than the
world,” by which he means that you should accommodate your
will to what is probable—knowing full well that circumstances
outside of your control may hinder your plans—rather than
expect the world (through belief in, for example, Divine
Providence, or destiny) to adapt itself to your will, hopes, or
desires. “Does this mean,” Sartre asks, “that I should abandon
myself to quietism? No. First, I should involve myself; then, act
on the old saying, ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’” The
existentialist says to himself: “I shall have no illusions and
shall do what I can.” This is the very opposite of quietism, since
it declares that (in a most fitting end to a chapter on atheistic
existentialism)
Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent
that he fulfills himself; he is, therefore, nothing else than the
ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life.
Chapter 10Theodore Dalrymple
Chapter Materials
Chapter 10 Quiz
Chapter Files
Chapter 10 Chapter Files
Chapter Video Lecture

Chapter 10 Video Lecture
The Frivolity of Evil
When prisoners are released from prison, they often say that
they have paid their debt to society.
This is absurd, of course: crime is not a matter of double-entry
bookkeeping. You cannot
pay a debt by having caused even greater expense, nor can you
pay in advance for a bank robbery
by offering to serve a prison sentence before you commit it.
Perhaps, metaphorically
speaking, the slate is wiped clean once a prisoner is released
from prison, but the debt is not
paid off.
It would be just as absurd for me to say, on my imminent
retirement after 14 years of my
hospital and prison work, that I have paid my debt to society. I
had the choice to do something
more pleasing if I had wished, and I was paid, if not
munificently, at least adequately. I chose
the disagreeable neighborhood in which I practiced because,
medically speaking, the poor are
more interesting, at least to me, than the rich: their pathology is
more florid, their need for
attention greater. Their dilemmas, if cruder, seem to me more
compelling, nearer to the fundamentals
of human existence. No doubt I also felt my services would be
more valuable there: in
other words, that I had some kind of duty to perform. Perhaps
for that reason, like the prisoner
on his release, I feel I have paid my debt to society. Certainly,
the work has taken a toll on me,
and it is time to do something else. Someone else can do battle
with the metastasizing social
pathology of Great Britain, while I lead a life aesthetically more
pleasing to me.

Resolving Work ConflictFor this assignment, you will identify a wo.docx

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Resolving Work ConflictFor this assignment, you will identify a wo.docx