scholarly journals Vātsyāyana’s Guide to Liberation

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 791-825
Author(s):  
Nilanjan Das

AbstractIn this essay, my aim is to explain Vātsyāyana’s solution to a problem that arises for his theory of liberation. For him and most Nyāya philosophers after him, liberation consists in the absolute cessation of pain (ātyantika-duḥkha-vimukti). Since this requires freedom from embodied existence, it also results in the absolute cessation of pleasure. How, then, can agents like us (who habitually seek pleasure) be rationally motivated to seek liberation? Vātsyāyana’s solution depends on what I will call the Pain Principle, i.e., the principle that we should treat all aspects of our embodied existence as pain. If we were to follow this advice, we would come to apply the label of pain (duḥkha-saṃjñā) to all aspects of our embodied existence, including pleasure. This would undermine our attachment to our own embodied existence. I show that this fits with Vātsyāyana’s general theory of motivation. According to this theory, by manipulating the labels (saṃjñā) using which we think about the world and ourselves, we can induce radical shifts in our patterns of motivation.

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kas Saghafi

In several late texts, Derrida meditated on Paul Celan's poem ‘Grosse, Glühende Wölbung’, in which the departure of the world is announced. Delving into the ‘origin’ and ‘history’ of the ‘conception’ of the world, this paper suggests that, for Derrida, the end of the world is determined by and from death—the death of the other. The death of the other marks, each and every time, the absolute end of the world.


1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. A. LEE

This study represents part of a long-term research program to investigate the influence of U.K. accountants on the development of professional accountancy in other parts of the world. It examines the impact of a small group of Scottish chartered accountants who emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Set against a general theory of emigration, the study's main results reveal the significant involvement of this group in the founding and development of U.S. accountancy. The influence is predominantly with respect to public accountancy and its main institutional organizations. Several of the individuals achieved considerable eminence in U.S. public accountancy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-131
Author(s):  
Lukman Hamdani

Property is one of the most important instruments in this life, because wealth is as a support  for the continuity  of human life, in Islam it is always emphasized the importance of independence in owning property  through  work or business, because Allah really loves his servant who is always giving  alms with  his own property.  Allah Almighty really likes hard workers or people who are persistent in seeking treasure for the sake of the afterlife, even Allah SWT  emphasizes in  Surah at-taubah  father 10. And Say: "Work  for you, Then Allah and His Messenger and the believers  will see your work, and you will be returned to (Allah) who knows the unseen and the real, then He tells you what you have done. Even the  Companions of the Messenger  of  Allāh  adalah were rich people  who possessed  wealth  for  the progress and development of Islam  at the time, a  very real example was the Friends of Abu Bakr, Abdurrah bin ʻAuf, Uthman ibn Affan and the Wife of the Messenger of Allāh adalah was a great entrepreneur, Siti Khadijah. They are friends looking  for wealth and have it as much as possible then after that they distribute their wealth through ZISWAF, it is obligatory and must for Muslims  to seek / have property  for the benefit of the world and the hereafter and the interests of Muslims and provision  in  the hereafter Can be concluded that ownership of property in Islam  it is very important because it is a means of sustaining life and as a place to find savings  for ukhrawi life  later,  because indeed ownership of property in Islam  is  not only focused  on worldly matters, but there are  two elements  that are always included,  namely for  worldly  and spiritual interests. It  should be underlined in the ownership of the property  that the principle  must be instilled that this property has the absolute God Almighty, we are only temporarily entrusted, therefore it is not beautiful to not distribute the assets we have to people in need through ZISWAF instruments.  


2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-127
Author(s):  
Henri Hude

This articles describes the “neuronal crisis,” the epidemic of psychosomatic illnesses observed all over the world, particularly in the West. The paper looks into the deeper real causes and seeks the most effective kind of cure for this malady. This leads to rational consideration of the metaphysical dimension of the human being and the fundamental problems (those of evil, of freedom, of God, of the soul, and of the body), where lack of sufficiency plays a major part in the etiology of these pathologies, as the desire for the Absolute is the basis of the unconscious. This approach presumes the Freudian model but denies its purely libidinal interpretation that substitutes desire for the Absolute with libido. Hence, an explanatory system applied to increasingly serious pathologies: ailments, neuroses, depressions, and psychoses. Frustration of one’s desire for the Good gives rise to a sublimation of finite goodness. The inevitable desublimation, caused by anguish because of the Evil, intense guilt, and the dramatization of evils, causes neuroses as awkward but inevitable solutions to the existential problem that is still unresolved, due to lack of functional and experimental knowledge. Psychiatry and even medicine must take into account the metaphysical layer, and, therefore, operate within an existential dynamic, aiming to progress in wisdom and to discover man, man’s brain and body, as these are structured around the axis of his desire.


2021 ◽  
Vol 218 (5) ◽  
pp. 240-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Hoare ◽  
Richard M. Duffy

SummaryThe World Health Organization has developed training material to support its QualityRights Initiative. These documents offer excellent strategies to limit coercion. However, the negative portrayal of psychiatry, the absolute prohibition on involuntary treatment and the apparent acceptance of the criminalisation of individuals with mental illness are causes for concern.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 143
Author(s):  
Sangeeta Bhatia ◽  
Natsuko Imai ◽  
Gina Cuomo-Dannenburg ◽  
Marc Baguelin ◽  
Adhiratha Boonyasiri ◽  
...  

Background: As of August 2021, every region of the world has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 196,000,000 cases worldwide. Methods: We analysed COVID-19 cases among travellers from mainland China to different regions and countries, comparing the region- and country-specific rates of detected and confirmed cases per flight volume to estimate the relative sensitivity of surveillance in different regions and countries. Results: Although travel restrictions from Wuhan City and other cities across China may have reduced the absolute number of travellers to and from China, we estimated that up to 70% (95% CI: 54% - 80%) of imported cases could remain undetected relative to the sensitivity of surveillance in Singapore. The percentage of undetected imported cases rises to 75% (95% CI 66% - 82%) when comparing to the surveillance sensitivity in multiple countries. Conclusions: Our analysis shows that a large number of COVID-19 cases remain undetected across the world. These undetected cases potentially resulted in multiple chains of human-to-human transmission outside mainland China.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Anisa Ilmia

ABSTRACTIslamic economics is an economic system that is different from the capitalist economic system and the socialist economic system, one of which is the ownership rights. Islam recognizes the existence of human ownership, but still emphasizes that Allah SWT is the absolute owner of everything include the universe so that what humans have is only a mandate that must be obtained and utilized in accordance with Allah’s rules. Ownership is the integration of the Islamic economic system so that it contains an element of morality that will give birth to the value of the khilafah and the value of al-birr wa al-taqwa (goodness and obedience) in which both values are centered on divine value (Ilahiyah). The realization of these values in ownership has implications for the well-being and economic equalization to achieve “falah” (bliss of the world and the hereafter). Keywords : ownership, morality, value, Islamic economic, obedience


Author(s):  
M.B. Rarenko ◽  

The article considers the story by Henry James (1843 – 1916) «The Turn of the Screw» (1898 – first edition, 1908 – second edition) in connection with the emergence of a new type of narrator in the writer's late prose. The worldview and creative method of H. James are formed under the influence of the philosophy of pragmatism, which became widespread at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries thanks to the works of the writer's elder brother, the philosopher William James (1842 – 1910). The core of pragmatism is the pluralistic concept of William James based on the assumption that knowledge can be realized from very limited, incomplete, and inadequate «points of view» and this leads to the statement that the absolute truth is essentially unknowable. The epistemological statements of William James's theory is that the content of knowledge is entirely determined by the installation of consciousness, and the content of the truth in this case depends on the goals and experience of the human, i.e. the central starting point is the consciousness of the person. Henry James not only creates works of art, but also sets out in detail the principles of his work both on the pages of fiction works of small and large prose, putting them in the mouths of their characters – representatives of the world of art, and in the prefaces to his works of fiction, as well as in critical works.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Stephan ◽  
Sarah Placì ◽  
Michael R. Waldmann ◽  
Giorgio Vallortigara

The categorization of geometric objects is one of the most fundamental problems all intelligent systems have to deal with in dynamic environments in which objects' geometrical configuration constantly changes. Animals, including humans, do not treat all geometrical differences equally: they ignore some geometrical features when it comes to generalization but not others. So far, no theory has been presented that explains this cognitive phenomenon. We here propose and empirically test such a theory. The theory identifies and relies on the invariant referents existing in 3D (i.e., gravity) and 2D (e.g., any 2D frame) environments to predict the geometrical differences reasoners consider as important or irrelevant for object categorization. We test and confirm a novel central prediction of the theory, namely that human reasoners categorize objects differently in 3D and 2D environments. These findings cast new light on core cognitive abilities that minds use to make sense of the world.


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