Waiting for the Barbarians and Kant

The three formulations of the Categorical Imperative in Immanuel Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals are as follows:

The First Formulation
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction."

The Second Formulation
Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end. ”

Third Formulation
“Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.”

You assignment is to find a quote from Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians that is relevant to one of these three formulations.  Write the quote, provide the page number, and provide a brief explanation.

Waiting for the Barbarians

Choose one symbol from Coetzee's work, and explain what abstract ideas/emotions/concepts that object represents.  Use a quote (and provide a page number) in your explanation.

Be sure not to repeat a symbol another student has already discussed.

Practicing Thesis Statements

Hello All,

For this entry, just post a thesis statement you could use to compare/contrast one literary device across two different works we've studied in class.

Here's the template to use:

While both these works use this literary device in order to express this idea, work 1 uses it like this and work 2 uses it like that.

Here's the template in practice:

While both Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" and Wislawa Szymborska's "Reality Demands" use historial allusions to explore the idea of catastrophe, Szymborska uses those allusions to emphasize a positive acceptance of tragedy while Shelley remains focused on ruin and decay.

Enjoy your weekend !

Oh, and Tina asked what I thought the message of "The Missing Scarf" might be . . .

Since I am choosing to think positively, I'll choose to think the message is to seize the day and enjoy life as I live it (as opposed to spending it worried on events I cannot control).

What do you think?