The Symbol – Code of the Past, Record of Human (Existence) Life, and Ontopoiesis of Life

2009 ◽  
pp. 125-141
Author(s):  
Joanna Hańderek
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  

2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Davide Sparti

Obwohl jede menschliche Handlung mit einem gewissen Grad an Improvisation erfolgt, gibt es kulturelle Praktiken, bei denen Improvisation eine überwiegende Rolle spielt. Um das Risiko zu vermeiden, einen zu breiten Begriff von Improvisation zu übernehmen, konzentriere ich mich im vorliegenden Beitrag auf den Jazz. Meine zentrale Frage lautet, wie Improvisation verstanden werden muss. Mein Vorgehen ist folgendes: Ich beginne mit einem Vergleich von Improvisation und Komposition, damit die Spezifizität der Improvisation erklärt werden kann. Danach wende ich mich dem Thema der Originalität als Merkmal der Improvisation zu. Zum Schluss führe ich den Begriff affordance ein, um die kollektive und zirkuläre Logik eines Solos zu analysieren. Paradigmatisch wird der Jazzmusiker mit dem Engel der Geschichte verglichen, der nur auf das Vergangene blickt, während er der Zukunft den Rücken zugekehrt hat, und lediglich ihr zugetrieben wird. Weder kann der Improvisierende das Material der Vergangenheit vernachlässigen noch seine genuine Tätigkeit, das Improvisieren in der Gegenwart und für die Zukunft, aufgeben: Er visiert die Zukunft trotz ihrer Unvorhersehbarkeit über die Vermittlung der Vergangenheit an.<br><br>While improvised behavior is so much a part of human existence as to be one of its fundamental realities, in order to avoid the risk of defining the act of improvising too broadly, my focus here will be upon one of the activities most explicitly centered around improvisation – that is, upon jazz. My contribution, as Wittgenstein would say, has a »grammatical« design to it: it proposes to clarify the significance of the term »improvisation.« The task of clarifying the cases in which one may legitimately speak of improvisation consists first of all in reflecting upon the conditions that make the practice possible. This does not consist of calling forth mysterious, esoteric processes that take place in the unconscious, or in the minds of musicians, but rather in paying attention to the criteria that are satisfied when one ascribes to an act the concept of improvisation. In the second part of my contribution, I reflect upon the logic that governs the construction of an improvised performance. As I argue, in playing upon that which has already emerged in the music, in discovering the future as they go on (as a consequence of what they do), jazz players call to mind the angel in the famous painting by Klee that Walter Benjamin analyzed in his Theses on the History of Philosophy: while pulled towards the future, its eyes are turned back towards the past.



2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 247-288
Author(s):  
Sabine Ackermann

AbstractAlthough people have established rules to secure their life and values, they seem to search—and to have searched, time and again, in the past—for exceptions to those rules, and this for different purposes. The article compares two concepts of exception, suggested by Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling and by Garve in his Treatise on the Connection between Moral and Politics, respectively. A systematic-critical analysis shows certain intersections between their specific ways of handling the proposed exception. Garve’s concept of exception requires an original status naturalis between countries to increase happiness, and this is claimed by an established sovereign ruling with trust in God for his people. By contrast, the exception of Kierkegaard’s teleological suspension of the ethical turns out, precisely by being based on an individual’s relationship with God, to be incommensurable with purportedly universal social, ethical and political standards. This notwithstanding, both conceptions build on the notion of a human existence, which is subject to and ultimately dependent upon no one except the immortal God.



Author(s):  
Sam Wiseman

Woolf’s childhood was characterised by contrasts between urban and rural, movement and belonging, past and future, domesticity and the outdoor landscape. These influences are evident in her work’s balance between nostalgic reflection and an acceptance of the inexorable transience of human existence and sensation. Woolf is interested in the ways in which new developments in travel and technology can defamiliarise us, and reveal interconnections with other beings. Her attentiveness to the sedimentary layering of the past within rural landscapes is applied to her reimagining of the urban environment; Woolf inverts urban-rural associations, and portrays the metropolitan world as a site within which both fragmentation and interconnection are made explicit. That sense of interconnection also extends to nonhuman animals in Between the Acts (1941). Ultimately, this portrayal of a world in which all experience and activity is part of a ‘work of art’ underlies the theme of unity in Woolf’s final novel; but that theme nonetheless remains balanced by the novel’s exploration of dispersal and fragmentation.



2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-91
Author(s):  
Thomas Kriza

Abstract This paper questions the contemporary turn towards horizons of existential meaning going back to antiquity especially in the shape of a turn to religion by pointing to crucial differences between antique conceptions of thought and their modern revivals. Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault interpret antique thought as spiritual exercises to perfect human existence, exposing an inherent existential relevance and connection to a peculiar conception of truth. I argue that because of these ties to a truth claim deeply alien to the modern scientific world-view, antique horizons of existential meaning cannot be revived within modern frames of thought. Their contemporary presence is more likely the expression of the deeply ambivalent modern relationship to premodern horizons of existential meaning, rather than a genuine revival.



1967 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 323-337
Author(s):  
C. F. Evans
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  

Tradition in either of its two senses—the act of handing on (generally verbally), and what is handed on—is a particular instance of a law of human existence that men live in dependence on one another and by the processes of giving and receiving. So a sociologist can write, ‘If we are able to speak of real tradition, we must find the past spontaneously taken into account as the meaning of the present, without any discontinuity of social time, and without any consideration of the past as irrelevant’ (M. Dufrenne, quoted by P. Congar, Tradition and Traditions, p. 264, n. 1). ‘If democracy’, wrote Chesterton, ‘means that I give a man a vote even though he is my chauffeur, tradition means that I give a man a vote even though he is my great-great-grandfather’. What is handed on, however, is not existence of a purely biological kind, to remain always what it has been or to change very slowly over a space of aeons. Except in primitive tribes even tradition is not simply passed on as something static and timeless, and it is received by men who, though themselves in time, are not totally time-bound or restricted by what they receive. They believe themselves to be capable of significant action which is more than the repetition and reproduction of what has gone before. They are able to grasp a span of time and to call it history; they believe themselves to have a history, and they write history.



2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (03) ◽  
pp. 179-182
Author(s):  
Parul Wadhwani ◽  
Soma Sharma ◽  
Gyanda Wadhwani

AbstractInfertility has been a major medical and social preoccupation since the dawn of human existence and women have always been the symbol of fertility. A 34-year-old woman presented with inability to conceive for the past 2.5 years. A single dose of indicated homeopathic remedy helped her conceive during the following month. In contrast with the fertility specialists, homeopathic treatment addresses the entire underlying bio–psycho–social dimension under a single roof. Publication of a collective pooled data may help us establish this beyond doubt, for the benefit of incomplete families!



2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Eko Budi Minarno

<p class="Bodytext5">Among the various crises, worrying enough is the start of the scarcity of some Natural Resources (SDA), especially from unrecoverable groups such as petroleum, metals and minerals. And by often ignoring the needs of other living beings as well as the needs of future generations. If then comes a crisis with respect to this SDA, which is affected negatively human finally. SDA is needed by humans in the past, present and future. The threat to the existence and sustainability of natural resources is just the same as the threat to human existence and survival. The conservation of natural resources, which is essentially the management of natural resources, is an absolute must and is the main responsibility of human being as the Caliph of this earth. There are three main tasks for human beings related to the conservation of natural resources including al Intifa '(nurture and utilize), al I'tibar (think, be grateful, explore the secrets of nature), and al Islah (preserve and deliberate sustainability for the benefit of people, and the creation of harmony of life nature of Allah's creation.</p><p> </p><p>Di antara berbagai krisis, yang cukup mengkhawatirkan adalah mulai terjadinya kelangkaan beberapa Sumber Daya Alam (SDA) terutama dari kelompok yang tidak terpulihkan seperti minyak bumi, logam, dan min­eral. Dan dengan sering mengabaikan kebutuhan makhluk hidup yang lain maupun kebutuhan generasi yang akan datang. Kalau kemudian muncul krisis sehubungan dengan SDA ini, yang terkena darnpak negatif akhirnya manusia juga. SDA sangat dibutuhkan oleh manusia dimasa lalu, sekarang dan yang akan datang. Ancaman terhadap keberadaan dan kelangsungan SDA sama saja artinya dengan ancaman terhadap keberadaan dan kelangsungan hidup manusia. Konservasi SDA yang berintikan pengelolaan SDA, adalah suatu hal yang mutlak harus dilaksanakan dan menjadi tanggung jawab utama manusia sebagai khalifah di bumi ini. Ada tiga tugas utama bagi manusia berkaitan dengan koservasi SDA meliputi al Intifa’ (memelihara dan mendayagunakan), al I’tibar (memikirkan, mensyukuri, menggali rahasia alam), dan al Islah (memelihara dan sengaja kelestarian untuk kemslahatan umat, serta terciptanya harmoni kehidupan alam ciptaan Allah SWT.</p><p> </p>



1970 ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
John Kinard

If museums are to meet the needs of the man of today and tomorrow, they must involve themselves in every area of human existence. This is a responsibility that challenges their most creative resources. Instead they stand accused on three points: failing to respond to the needs of the majority of people;failing to relate the knowledge of the past to the grave issues confronting us today or to participate in meeting those issues; andfailing to overcome not only their blatant disregard of minority cultures but their outright racism, which is all too apparent in what they collect, study and exhibit and in whom they employ. 



2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Jasmina M. Ahmetagić ◽  

Nostalgia is the keyword of Vladan Dobrivojević’snovelistic opus—nostalgia for the “original condition”, as B. Hamvas described the primordial, yet highest order of human existence, nostalgia for the God-man, which is exactly what makes it eschatological—and in our intent to describe its nature, we have chosen Where Angels Come From: The Eastern Genealogy(2019), a book modest in volume,which enables us to speak about the central problems of this markedly coherent opus by following the principle of synecdoche. Where Angels Come Fromis a collection of ten stories which form a nested narrative in The Waterpainter’s Dream(1994–1997), the writer’s encyclopedically conceived trilogy, and it contains the key ideas of The Waterpainter’s Dream, as well as other qualities paradigmatic of the writer’s opus. Taking as our basis an interpretation that links nostalgia to an ideal instead of the past, which would be typical for an 18th-century poem, we show that nostalgic idealization is a characteristic of Dobrivojević’s novels, whose protagonists are led by a longing for an authentic existence. Nostalgia for that which doesn’t exist, and yet it should (a standard of clear, permanent and unquestionable aesthetical and ethical, i.e. evangelical values) is the basic motivation behind his protagonists’ spiritual journey as they come to understand the heavenly origin of the human race, accomplish Christ-like feats and achieve the fullness of their cosmic status. That is why the narrative of return in Dobrivojević’s prose is also connected to the motive of the collective,lost home of the human race. Eschatological nostalgia—the protagonist’s central experience in Where Angels Come From—is primarily defined by a way of life devoted to their theanthropic purpose, which was given to human beings in the very beginning. Its solemn linguistic stylization and the poetics of icon painting explain the liturgical character of this novel in which ontotheological questions are evident.



2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-14
Author(s):  
Ferenc Miszlivetz

Elemér Hankiss was one of the most influential and brilliant thinkers of the past half century in Hungary and Central Europe. His work overarches disciplines from literary criticism and sociology, to political science, anthropological philosophy and civilizational theory. Thanks to his numerous essays and media appearances he was highly appreciated and well-respected as a non-partisan public intellectual. This essay investigates some of the lesser known aspects of his oeuvre, and his contribution to creating a unique advanced study centre in Western Hungary’s historic city of Kőszeg. It also highlights his outstanding ability to oscillate between different disciplines and public activities, while at the same time continuously focusing on the existential questions of human existence.



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