The Expansion of European Integrative Processes Essay

The Expansion of European Integrative Processes - Essay Example The European Union has also fostered peace, security, justice and freedom among the nations formed the organization. The European integration is the process of economic, legal, industrial and political unification of the European states. European integration, formerly European federalism, was changed to its current name by the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher three decades since its formation in the 1950s years shortly after the devastating second World War and serves many functions, which include lowering of risks and emergence of war, eliminating of trade barriers at the national level that has led to the economic growth among the member states of the union. Through the removal of trade barriers, the European integration has led to the development of European Economic Community,which has enabled better exchange of goods and services among the member states. This includes, for example, import and export sector, which, in turn, entails goods like machinery, automobiles, chemicals, in dustrial goods, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology products, not mention other import and export goods.European Economic Integrative Processes Over the years European Union has undergone several integrative processes which have helped it achieve its objectives.The integration processes include the economic, regional, social and political integrations. To begin with is the economic integration which forms the most important function of the European Union. ... process is ensured by the EEC which eliminated the quotas, tariffs and preference on the imports and exports among its members thereby creating a Free Trade Area (FTA). According to the Free Trade Association, all types of the national legislation- all that caused hindrance to the manufacturers from moving freely from one market to the other had to vanish and infrastructure later improved. This led to many countries signing the European Union Association Agreement (AA) that had the Free Trade Area provisions and included Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Tunisia among the many nations. Other agreements signed include Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) and the Eastern Partnership (Haines 59). As per the Maastricht Treaty created in 1992, EU’s main goal was to ensure creation and maintaining of a solitary market which guaranteed the â€Å"four basic freedoms† to make certain the liberated movements of goods, capital, people and services across the EU market. This led t o the creation of European Economic Area (EEA) which allowed three nations: Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway to participate in the EU single market without necessarily joining it (Segell 200). Several custom unions were also created for instance the European Customs Union which defined the removal of the tariff barriers which were imposed internally among the EEC constituent member states which was brought into impact in 1968. The countries that belong to the EU custom union include the San Marino and Andorra while Turkey was given the association by the EUTCU (European Union –Turkey Customs Union) (Kramberger 56). Several European economic integrative processes followed on then and these include the fiscal unions and other monetary unions which have assisted in the realization of economic growth

Existentialism and Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Existentialism and Art - Essay Example A look into these various concepts proves that Leo Tolstoy comes up with the best explanation regarding art. According to him, art is a form of communication that can take various forms. If it succeeds in developing an emotion, it is an art. Aristotle and Art According to the Aristotelian view, art is an imitation of life. He starts his theory of art with the claim that humans have the urge to imitate, and this tendency to imitate is the very basis of human learning. It is this tendency that makes humans delight in works of imitation. Thus, according to the scholar’s opinion, various people imitate using various medium ranging from color and voice. As Butcher (1951, p. 116) says, this concept contains three elements of imitation. They are rhythm, language, and harmony. Here, Aristotle brings in the concept of virtue in art. To illustrate, the factor that decides whether a particular artwork is a comedy or a tragedy is the object that is imitated in the work. Though the art for m used is the same, the emotions it creates will be quite opposite in both the cases. Thus, when one follows the Aristotle's point of view, one gets a chance to evaluate the quality of art and the element of virtue in it. This becomes possible because the artist is supposed only to imitate, not to create. Evidently, there are a number of pitfalls in the Aristotelian view. ... For example, if the quality is assessed from the perfection in imitation, people from other geographical areas will not be able to assess the quality of any art. In other words, an art form will be highly limited to people in that geographical area or who are familiar with the item being imitated. Another issue arises that the concept does not take into account the authenticity of abstract works. To illustrate, it forgets the quality of Cubism and Pop as art forms, though they are not realistic reflections of nature. Thus, it becomes evident that though Aristotle managed to present the human characteristic of imitation, he failed to develop a flawless theory of art out of it. Plato and Art One can see that Plato too shows a tendency to consider art as an imitation though he develops a bit on the concept; but to the wrong side. In The Republic, Plato claims that art is an imitation of the things and events that one encounters in everyday life (p. 69). However, admittedly, Platoâ€℠¢s theory goes astray when things like music are considered. For example, even though Plato claims that music represents natural sounds and emotions, one can easily find that there is no imitation of anything natural other than emotion. However, Plato’s effort to show how complicated art can be in imitating things deserves appreciation. To illustrate, in The Allegory of the Cave, Plato describes the example of some prisoners chained to a bench, facing the wall of a deep cave. Behind them, artists are performing puppet play, and the prisoners could only see the shadows what they perceive as reality. However, as one prisoner gets released, he sees the puppets that produced the shadows (The allegory of the cave, 2011). Thus, one sees that, though Plato considers art