scholarly journals Life and Mind: Varieties of Neo-Aristotelianism: Naive, Sophisticated, Hegelian

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Kern
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Process ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Vital Activity ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Second Nature ◽  
Human Individual ◽  
The Subject ◽  
First Nature ◽  
Concrete Concept

AbstractIn his treatment of subjective mind, Hegel argues that the development that characterizes the vital process of a human individual is logically unique in that it dissolves the contradiction between two logical determinations that characterize any vital activity: the contradiction between the ‘immediate singularity’ of the subject of this process and its ‘abstract generality’. Hegel employs the term Bildung to characterize any vital activity that has this form. The idea that the distinction between human life and non-human life is a logical distinction is one of the main lessons that Hegel thinks we should learn from Aristotle's treatment of the idea of life. In this article I distinguish between two contemporary varieties of this Aristotelian idea: a sophisticated variety that emphasizes the idea of second nature in order to characterize the distinctiveness of the human, and a naive variety that thinks of the human's uniqueness in terms of characterizations that already belong to its first nature. I argue that Hegel is neither sophisticated nor naive but offers a third variety of Neo-Aristotelianism that solves the difficulties of the other two. This has decisive consequences for his understanding of Bildung. Although the notion of Bildung describes an empirical process, Hegel argues, it is not an empirical concept. Rather, it is the concrete concept of the process of actualization that characterizes a self-conscious form of life that reflects the inner temporality of this form's actuality.

scholarly journals Two Conceptions of Second Nature

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg W. Bertram
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Open Future ◽  
Second Nature ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Cognitive Activities ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
The One ◽  
First Nature

AbstractThe concept of second nature promises to provide an explanation of how nature and reason can be reconciled. But the concept is laden with ambiguity. On the one hand, second nature is understood as that which binds together all cognitive activities. On the other hand, second nature is conceived of as a kind of nature that can be changed by cognitive activities. The paper tries to investigate this ambiguity by distinguishing a Kantian conception of second nature from a Hegelian conception. It argues that the idea of a transformation from a being of first nature into a being of second nature that stands at the heart of the Kantian conception is mistaken. The Hegelian conception demonstrates that the transformation in question takes place within second nature itself. Thus, the Hegelian conception allows us to understand the way in which second nature is not structurally isomorphic with first nature: It is a process of ongoing selftransformation that is not primarily determined by how the world is, but rather by commitments out of which human beings are bound to the open future.

scholarly journals La conquista de la fortuna

2005 ◽  
pp. 119-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Hermosa Andújar
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Political Liberty ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

In this work the author holds the thesis that with Maquiavelo, in accordance with Tucidides, the complete humanization of history and human life arose. Man has become the complete owner of his destiny when conquering fortune by virtù, that is, the entirety of social forces, concrete or diffuse, that oppose to the exercise of his will. It is only nature that remains as a region still inaccessible to human will. This is the reason why in Maquiavelo the concepts which should organize the explanation of human behavior are not, as considered until now, virtù/fortune but virtù/nature. Even though, there are two antagonic limits to the emancipatory virtuos action: on the one hand, its still nondemocratic condition, since only the Prince is capable of such virtù. On the other, the political liberty, something that in principle appears external to the subject, but once known he won´t forget ever, that is, political liberty becomes a constitutive feature of the human being at which every virtuos action of the Prince directed to extirpate it, fails.

scholarly journals The Joy of Being as Anthropological Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
Agapov Oleg D. ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Human Condition

The joy of being is connected with one’s activities aimed at responding to the challenges of the elemental forces and the boundlessness of being, which are independent of human subjectivity. In the context of rising to the challenges of being, one settles to acquire a certain power of being in themselves and in the world. Thus, the joy of being is tied to achieving the level of the “miraculous fecundity” (E. Levinas), “an internal necessity of one’s life” (F. Vasilyuk), magnanimity (M. Mamardashvili). The ontological duty of any human being is to succeed at being human. The joy of being is closely connected to experiencing one’s involvement in the endless/eternity and realizing one’s subjective temporality/finitude, which attunes him to the absolute seriousness in relation to one’s complete realization in life. Joy is a foundational anthropological phenomenon in the structure of ways of experiencing the human condition. The joy of being as an anthropological practice can appear as a constantly expanding sphere of human subjectivity where the transfiguration of the powers of being occurs under the sign of the Height (Levinas) / the Good. Without the possibility of transfiguration human beings get tired of living, immerse themselves in the dejected state of laziness and the hopelessness of vanity. The joy of being is connected to unity, gathering the multiplicity of human life under the aegis of meaning that allows us to see the other and the alien in heteronomous being, and understand the nature of co-participation and responsibility before the forces of being, and also act in synergy with them.The joy of being stands before a human being as the joy of fatherhood/ motherhood, the joy of being a witness to the world in creative acts (the subject as a means to retreat before the world and let the world shine), the joy of every day that was saved from absurdity, darkness and the impersonal existence of the total. Keywords: joy, higher reality, anthropological practices, “the height”, subject, transcendence, practice of coping

scholarly journals The Problem of the Subject in Artificial Nature

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-28
Author(s):  
Nesterov Alexander Yu. ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Agents ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Second Nature ◽  
The Third ◽  
Technological Singularity ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Artificial Nature

The article discusses the situation with the subject and subjectivity that arises in the conditions of scientific and technological progress. The concept of the subject is introduced through the distinction between reflex (natural) and reflexive (artificial) processes of self-awareness, the subject is understood as a way of connecting “worlds” in the sense of K. R. Popper. The forms of reflection that create subjectivity are introduced as philosophical inventions in the sense of I. I. Lapshin as an aphorism, dialogue and system. The research methodology is of a general semiotic and neo-Kantian character: the function of subjectivity for artificial environments of human life is considered as a reflexive basis for constructing theories and carrying out technical activities, the performance of this function leads to a consistent transformation of nature due to the accumulation of artifacts in the sensually accessible physical world (the first artificial nature), in the rational world of logical-grammatical forms (the second artificial nature), in the world of reason or intellectual reflection (the third artificial nature). Based on the analysis of subjectivity in the first, second and third artificial nature, we conclude that the crisis of the subject and human subjectivity observed in the information society, expressed in the models of the subject-free objectivity of the technosphere or technological singularity is evidence of the exhaustion of the methodological resources of the subject’s analysis. The third artificial nature, i. e. a man-made technical environment that includes intellectual artifacts, autonomous intelligent agents of making socially significant decisions, needs a new philosophical invention that allows for self-awareness procedures. In the conclusion, the assumption is formulated that as such a new philosophical invention, the “environment” can be discussed that removes the “system” in the same sense in which the “system” removes the “dialogue”, and the latter – “aphorism”. Keywords: subject, technology, philosophy of technology, artificial nature, second nature, third nature, technological singularity

scholarly journals ACTIVITY OF A SUBJECT OF THE DAILY LIFE UNDER THE CONDITIONS OF A VITAL THREAT IN THE PROBLEM FIELD OF PSYCHOLOGY

2021 ◽  
pp. 221-229
Author(s):  
Ольга Валерьевна Никитина
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Vital Activity ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Individual Style

Проблема активности является одной из ключевых проблем человекознания, уделяется внимание теоретическим аспектам изучения активности в отечественной психологической науке, обозначены подходы к активности субъекта жизнедеятельности. Анализируется вклад психологов Пермской психологической школы в развитие представлений об активности. Исследование активности человека осуществляется во взаимосвязи с проблематикой интегральной индивидуальности и индивидуального стиля. Представителями Пермской психологической школы проведены теоретико-эмпирические исследования разных видов и стилей активности человека в условиях повседневной деятельности и в экстремальных условиях жизни: учебной, волевой, коммуника тивной, религиозной, информационно-манипулятивной, смыслообразующей, профессиональной. Научным продуктом сложившегося направления исследований в психологии активности Б. А. Вяткин называет представление о существовании в социальном мире Homo activus – человека активного. Обозначена актуальность изучения активности субъекта жизнедеятельности в условиях пандемии коронавируса (COVID-19), т. е. ситуации витальной угрозы. Данный цивилизационный феномен и обусловленная им эпидемиологическая обстановка внесли глобальные коррективы во все сферы жизнедеятельности человека, что обусловило необходимость адаптации к трансформирующимся условиям среды и пролонгированной ситуации неопределенности. Психологи отмечают не только негативные аспекты в сложившейся ситуации, но и позитивные, которые связывают с необходимостью активации всей психической жизни для преодоления пандемокризиса. В Пермской психологической школе для изучения активности субъекта жизнедеятельности в условиях витальной угрозы созданы теоретические предпосылки в виде концепции интегральной индивидуальности (В. С. Мерлин), теории метаиндивидуального мира (Л. Я. Дорфман), концептуальной динамической модели активности субъекта жизнедеятельности (А. А. Волочков), интегративного подхода к изучению коммуникативной активности (С. А. Васюра), разработан соответствующий диагностический инструментарий. The article notes that the problem of activity is one of the key problems of human knowledge, attention is paid to the theoretical aspects of the study of activity in domestic psychological science, approaches to the activity of a subject of vital activity are outlined. The contribution of psychologists of the Perm psychological school to the development of ideas about activity is analyzed. The study of activity is carried out in conjunction with the problems of integral individuality and individual style. Representatives of the Perm psychological school carried out theoretical and empirical studies of various types and styles of human activity in the conditions of daily activity and in extreme conditions of life: educational, volitional, communicative, religious, information-manipulative, meaningforming, professional. The scientific product of the current direction of research in the psychology of activity B. A. Vyatkin calls the idea of the existence in the social world of Homo activus – an active person. The article outlines the relevance of studying the activity of the subject of vital activity in the conditions of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), i.e., a situation accompanied by a vital threat, is indicated. This civilizational phenomenon and the resulting epidemiological situation have made global adjustments to all spheres of human life, which necessitated adaptation to the transforming environmental conditions and prolonged situation of uncertainty. Psychologists note not only negative aspects in the current situation, but also positive ones, which are associated with the need to activate all mental life to overcome the pandemocrisis. In the Perm psychological school for the study of the activity of the subject of vital activity in conditions of a vital threat, theoretical prerequisites have been created in the form of the concept of integral individuality (V.S. Merlin), the theory of the meta-individual world (L. Ya. Dorfman), a conceptual dynamic model of the activity of the subject of vital activity (A. A. Volochkov), an integrative approach to the study of communicative activity (S. A. Vasyura), a corresponding diagnostic toolkit has been developed.

Metamorphoses of Form (Goethe)

Forms of Life ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 123-188
Author(s):  
Andreas Gailus
Keyword(s):  
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Normative Force ◽  
Second Nature ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Natural Forms ◽  
The One

This chapter discusses Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the metamorphoses of form. Goethe's biological and literary writings of the 1790s radicalize Kant's insights. On the one hand, he emphasizes the “metamorphic” fluidity of both natural forms and human cognition; on the other, he stresses the erotic and social dimension of subjectivity. For Goethe, human life is singularly precarious because it is subject to libidinal investments and the unruliness of the imagination. To develop properly, human life must therefore be regularized by social forms that (re)direct its innate vitality — it must assume a second-order, socialized naturalness. Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship associates the creation of this second nature with liberal forms of governing, depicting liberalism's normative force as a necessary, if at times violent, supplement to human life. With Goethe, vitalism opens itself to biopower.

scholarly journals Metafictional poetics of Victor Pelevin’s novel “iPhuck 10”

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dual Function ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Art Objects ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Self Transcendence ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Existential Anthropology ◽  
Event Dynamics

The article analyzes the ways of artistic realization of the aesthetic-reflective metafictional complex in Victor Pelevin’s novel “iPhuck 10”. The metanarrative structure of the novel is traced, which is built with the use of a special type of narrator - a literary simulator, which at the same time is the sum of all the cultural forms of writing, a kind of archive thesaurus, on the other hand undermines the basis of its own narrative by exposing the empty nature and the existential problematic nature of the narrative. Metatextual issues are updated at the level of the deictic structures of the language-speech that are basic for aesthetic communication. A further subject of study is the method of isomorphic conjugation of plot-motive event dynamics with semantics of a series of ecstatically described and interpreted art objects of various medial-semiotic nature. Thanks to the dual function of the diegetic narrator as the subject of the story and its object, the equivalence effect of different metalanguages and discourses is simultaneously created within the framework of the basic conceptual metaphors and symbolic constructions of the novel. Thanks to this, we can talk about both metanarrativeness and the metafiction of the poetics of the novel. Metafictional reflection productively correlates with author's anthropological concepts. In particular, the plot of the creator-impostor combines the through Pelevinian motive of suffering and pain as the fundamental characteristics of human life with pain as an inalienable quality and source of creativity. A software algorithm is grown as a conscious person to create works of art, and its creators reinforce sorrow, anxiety, and the experience of the meaninglessness of existence so that creativity is genuine. Man is experienced by the temptation of demiurgy, by meeting with the Other, by the demand for personal self-transcendence. Thus, the author succeeds in isomorphically combining metafictional poetics and existential anthropology of the novel.

Men in Love: Aspects of Plato's Symposium

Ramus ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Penwill
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Source Book ◽  
Middle Period ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Way

Plato's so-called ‘middle period’ saw the composition of what are generally agreed to be his finest philosophical dramas, and of these the Symposium is usually singled out for special praise. Yet it is only recently that serious attempts have been made to approach the Symposium as a work of literature rather than a philosophical treatise. Those who employ the work as a source-book for Platonist doctrines rarely venture beyond Socrates' dialectical refutation of Agathon and his report of what Diotima told him (199c-212b); and if they do, it is to point out the logical or perceptual fallacies — i.e. the philosophical deficiencies — of the other five encomia and to find in Alcibiades' contribution a glowing tribute by Plato to that most remarkable of human personalities, the philosopher Socrates. This, however, is not the way to arrive at a real understanding of the Symposium. The author clearly intends the reader to respond to this work not as a philosophical treatise on the subject of Eros but as a work of literature which portrays a group of thinking human beings engaged in appraisal of an issue which is of fundamental importance in their lives. His primary purpose in dramatising this intellectual event is thus not to expound the philosopher's conception of Eros or to expose our minds to auto to kalon (‘the beautiful itself’). Rather the true subject of the work is man the intellectual animal, whose logoi (‘speeches’) demonstrate his capacity for analysing, evaluating and idealising his feelings and aspirations. It depicts ‘philosophy brought down from the sky and located in the cities and homes of men’; we are shown how, and how successfully, philosophy can function as a vital constituent of human life, rather than a barren and essentially irrelevant dispute about the mechanics of the universe.

Design Mind or Laws of Nature: Space, Vital and Social Reality

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2-1) ◽  
pp. 143-164
Author(s):  
Vadim Rozin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
The Other ◽  
Second Nature ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
The One ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
First Nature

The article is devoted to the consideration of two interrelated topics: the opposition of two foundations of social action, one of which is called the ‘design mind’ by the author, and the other is known as ‘nature’, and the path of evolution, in which three types of realities arose sequentially - cosmic, vital (biological) and social. The discourse of the design mind is formed in ancient culture in the works of Plato, and the concept of nature in the works of Aristotle. The first is characterized by the predominance of ideas and patterns, as well as a belief in the possibility of their implementation. The second is characterized by considering the prevailing reality (nature) and mediating social action by knowledge of the processes of nature. The new European understanding of nature is a hybrid; it combines the Aristotelian and Platonic approaches. Nature is both actions in nature and design creation. The second difference is that the new European nature was understood as “written in the language of mathematics” and passed through experimentation. However, since the 19th century, the natural-scientific understanding of nature has been criticized and differentiated: a demarcation is made between the first and second nature, different types of realities, nature and technology. Within the framework of this process, in the course of explaining the origin of life, man and society, a diagram of the evolution of three types of realities is outlined: first, there is only cosmic reality, understood as the first nature, then comes vital reality, and then social (second nature). An assumption is introduced that the next type of reality in evolution appears as a new formation, on the one hand, as a result of development and complication, and on the other, as a number of random processes. The conditions of interaction of processes belonging to different types of reality are discussed; in this regard, the concepts of “renegade areas” and “maternal reality” are introduced. On the basis of the outlined distinctions and relationships, an explanation of the pandemic and the modern transition process from modernity to post-culture is proposed.

scholarly journals From Reality to Subject: A Sympathetic, Yet Critical Reading of Eliade

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
TEUVO LAITILA
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Mode Of Being

Mircea Eliade is, or at least has been, the most heavily crticised scholar of religions. A number of critics have been discontented with his 'uncritical' way of using data to illustrate or assert his insights. It has been said that Eliade's presuppositions about the nature of reality and religion are not scientific but metaphysical or theological. Eliade's sympathisers, on the other hand, have tried to show that he does after all have a method, and that a careful reading demonstrates that either his presuppositions are no more unscientific that those of anyone else or they can be rethought in a scientifically acceptable way. My starting point is both sympathetic and critical. My question is, what is Eliade actually attempting to understand when he states that he wants to understand religion at its own level? He himself states that he wants to unmask the 'revelations' of the sacred, or - as he also says - the transcendent, and their significance for modern man, who has lost his comprehension of both the sacred and its meaning. This he can do, he argues, by recapturing the way in which 'primitive' and 'archaic' cultures and ancient and modern traditions outside mainstream religions have used symbols to establish a patterned, harmonised view of the world, or - as Eliade prefers to say - reality. Both Eliade's critics and his sympathisers presumably agree that Eliade's presuppositions include statements about the 'essence' of religion, about the nature of reality, and about the ways religion operates, or should operate, in human life, or mode-of-being-in-the-world; they also agree that one of Eliade's main concern in religious studies is with symbols. In my article, I deal with these four points (essence, reality, mode-of-being and symbols), proposing a reading of Eliade which emphasises the scholar's encounter with the subject and not the 'essence' of the matter under study. In my conclusion I suggest that studying the ways in which humans use symbols, which they connect with the 'real' to construct a 'mode-of-being' - or, as William Paden put it, a 'world' - is one way of going 'beyond' Eliade.

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