The Glass Shatters and Ducks Turn into Rabbits: Bad Faith and Moral Luck

Dialogue ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 583-602
Author(s):  
Matthew King
Keyword(s):  

ABSTRACTThis article shows how the “problem of moral luck” and Sartre's concept of “bad faith” are mutually illuminating, since both have to do with confusions about how much we control, or are controlled by, our situations. I agree with three recent proposals that the problem of moral luck results from certain epistemic malfunctions. However, I argue that the problem cannot be dissolved by overcoming these malfunctions because they are rooted in bad faith. Against the currently dominant interpretation, I argue that bad faith is an inescapable condition of human being because, while we are both free and factical, we can only exist as one or the other at once (much as a “duck-rabbit” drawing can only be seen as duck or rabbit), thus always keeping an aspect of our nature hidden (though in plain sight) from ourselves.

Trictrac ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petru Adrian Danciu

Starting from the cry of the seraphim in Isaiahʹ s prophecy, this article aims to follow the rhythm of the sacred harmony, transcending the symbols of the angelic world and of the divine names, to get to the face to face meeting between man and God, just as the seraphim, reflecting their existence, stand face to face. The finality of the sacred harmony is that, during the search for God inside the human being, He reveals Himself, which is the reason for the affirmation of “I Am that I Am.” Through its hypnotic cyclicality, the profane temporality has its own musicality. Its purpose is to incubate the unsuspected potencies of the beings “caught” in the material world. Due to the fact that it belongs to the aeonic time, the divine music will exceed in harmony the mechanical musicality of profane time, dilating and temporarily cancelling it. Isaiah is witness to such revelation offering access to the heavenly concert. He is witness to divine harmonies produced by two divine singers, whose musical history is presented in our article. The seraphim accompanied the chosen people after their exodus from Egypt. The cultic use of the trumpet is related to the characteristics and behaviour of the seraphim. The seraphic music does not belong to the Creator, but its lyrics speak about the presence of the Creator in two realities, a spiritual and a material one. Only the transcendence of the divine names that are sung/cried affirms a unique reality: God. The chant-cry is a divine invocation with a double aim. On the one hand, the angels and the people affirm God’s presence and call His name and, on the other, the Creator affirms His presence through the angels or in man, the one who is His image and His likeness. The divine music does not only create, it is also a means of communion, implementing the relation of man to God and, thus, God’s connection with man. It is a relation in which both filiation and paternity disappear inside the harmony of the mutual recognition produced by music, a reality much older than Adam’s language.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Sepúlveda Ferriz

Freedom and Justice have always been challenged. Since the most remote times, and in the most varied circumstances of places and people, human beings have tried to clarify and put into practice these two controversial concepts. Freedom and Justice, in effect, are words, but also dreams, desires and practices that, not being imperfect, are less sublime and ambitious. Reflecting on them on the basis of an ethics of development and socioenvironmental sustainability is still a great challenge in our contemporaneity. This book is born from the need that we all have to reflect, understand what our role is in relation to the OTHER, understood as the other as Environment. Doing this from such disparate areas and at the same time as current as Economics, Philosophy and Ecology, is still a great opportunity to discuss complexity, transdisciplinarity and the inclusion of diverse themes, but which all converge in the Human Being and its relationship with the world. Endowing human beings with Freedom and a sense of Justice means RESPONSIBILITY. To be free and to want a better and fairer world is to endow our existence with meaning and meaning. Agency, autonomy, functioning, dignity, rights, are capacities that must be leveraged individually and collectively for authentic development to exist. Development as Freedom is a valid proposal for thinking about a socio-environmental rationality that interferes in the controversial relations between economics, ethics and the environment.


2013 ◽  
pp. 174-183
Author(s):  
Piotr Sadkowski

Throughout the centuries French and Francophone writers were relatively rarely inspired by the figure of Moses and the story of Exodus. However, since the second half of 20th c. the interest of the writers in this Old Testament story has been on the rise: by rewriting it they examine the question of identity dilemmas of contemporary men. One of the examples of this trend is Moïse Fiction, the 2001 novel by the French writer of Jewish origin, Gilles Rozier, analysed in the present article. The hypertextual techniques, which result in the proximisation of the figure of Moses to the reality of the contemporary reader, constitute literary profanation, but at the same time help place Rozier’s text in the Jewish tradition, in the spirit of talmudism understood as an exchange of views, commentaries, versions and additions related to the Torah. It is how the novel, a new “midrash”, avoids the simple antinomy of the concepts of the sacred and the profane. Rozier’s Moses, conscious of his complex identity, is simultaneously a Jew and an Egyptian, and faces, like many contemporary Jewish writers, language dilemmas, which constitute one of the major motifs analysed in the present article. Another key question is the ethics of the prophetism of the novelistic Moses, who seems to speak for contemporary people, doomed to in the world perceived as chaos unsupervised by an absolute being. Rozier’s agnostic Moses is a prophet not of God (who does not appear in the novel), but of humanism understood as the confrontation of a human being with the absurdity of his or her own finiteness, which produces compassion for the other, with whom the fate of a mortal is shared.


Author(s):  
Samuel Scolnicov

Socrates' great educational innovation was in ascribing moral worth to the intellectual activity reflectively directed at one's own life. His concept of eudaimonia was so different from the ordinary that talking about it took on sometimes a paradoxical air, as in Apology 30b3. For him, reason is not a tool for attaining goals independently thought worthwhile; rather, rationality itself, expressed in the giving of reasons and the avoidance of contradictions, confers value to goals and opinions. Persons are reasonable, but obviously not the empirical human being. But education is aimed at the empirical man or woman and inevitably employs psychological means. How then is it possible that the result of education should grow out of the depths of each individual and be nevertheless valid for all individuals? In the Symposium, Plato gives Aristophanes the crucial move. Each of us is only half the whole person and we are moved by our desire for what we lack. In this context, to claim that the soul is immortal is to claim-at least-that the soul has a non-empirical dimension, that its real objects are not the objects of desire as such, and that a person's sensible life is not the true basis for the evaluation of his or her eudaimonia. However, in the soul which is not free from contradictions there is no advantage to right but unexamined options. There is in the life of the naïve just an insecurity which is not merely pragmatic. Even if a person never falters to the end of life, this is no more than moral luck. One is still guilty on the level of the logos, and liable to blame and punishment not for what one does, but for what one could have done.


Author(s):  
Ekta Sharma

The Presented summary paper target is to draw the attention of the public to the benefits of Environment and how we are connected to the Environment. To show that if there’s any change in the Environmental conditions, then how the conditions change in human beings lives. Living Being, whether a Human Being or Animals or plants,  are all directly or indirectly Dependent on the Environment for their Survival. When asked truly it can be said that none of the living being can survive without the presence of Environment. It is difficult to find absolutely natural environments, and it is common that the naturalness varies in a continuum, from ideally 100% natural in one extreme to 0% natural in the other. More precisely, we can consider the different aspects or components of an environment, and see that their degree of naturalness is not uniform.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 11-33
Author(s):  
Janusz Mariański

In this article, the issue of structural individualisation, which is one of the results of social modernisation, is adopted as the subject-matter. In the processes of individualisation, it is, first and foremost, the importance of an individual human being and matters relevant to their life, including the obligation to make constant choices in all the aspects of life, that is placed emphasis upon. In the aspect of values, the process of individualisation means transfer from values seen as responsibilities (related to duties) to values connected with self-fulfilment (self-development). The consequence of individualisation is the significant changes in the realm of morality: departing from traditional moral values and standards, permissivism and moral relativism, the destruction of normativity, and the secularisation of morality. On the other hand, it creates the opportunity to determine one's own moral choices and shapean autonomous moral personality.


2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (SE) ◽  
pp. 161-170
Author(s):  
Ramin Keshavarz ◽  
Moheb Ali Absalan

Plato by proposing the "theory of forms" changed the essence of truth and he converted it from sensorial case to extrasensory. As a result, he disparaged art and beauty that they were depended with world of phenomena and senses. He considered idea’s position in the sphere of institute and episteme and placed sensorial case, "Doxa" and "Eikon" as base of art that from his point of view is not world of "to be" and "not to be", but its world of representation and as a result he interpreted art world and it’s product as a false phenomena. He claimed that art relates with revealed component of ego that causes irreparable ruin for human being and has relationship with "Episteme". In the other hand, Aristotle unlike Plato believed in art and existence originality and considered art as a result of human’s episteme and rationality. He introduced adequacy, cognition natural talent as three principle of art. He claimed art and science deal with episteme and knowledge and they are common at the end. But what is Plato and Aristotle disagreement in sphere of art and from where it originates? And which cases are not similar in the sphere of art? The following essay will explain Plato and Aristotle’s art philosophy and comparing and explaining their ideas with relating existence originality and essence originality.  


1966 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-139
Author(s):  
Donald J. Mcculloch

There is no convincing evidence to support the view that antisocial behaviour can be accounted for by reference to concepts such as learning defect, immaturity or lack of moral fibre. The criminal displays behaviour towards authorities identical to that displayed by a patriot in an occupied country towards the enemy. This identical behaviour, it is asserted by some, shows in the one case instability, cowardice, lack of resolve and in the other case, stability, courage, resolve and strength of will. These statements reveal the attitudes and bias of the observer without illuminating the situation of the observed. It is more relevant to examine what the psychopath has learned and the conditions in which his learning took place than to pursue enquiries aimed at demonstrating a learning defect. The human being is born without the attitudes, beliefs and sentiments towards e.g. property, sexual object etc., which are necessary for his successful incorporation into his ongoing social group. It is the intention of society's socializing agents, the family and the school, to inculcate in the developing human being these necessary attitudes, sentiments and beliefs. Psychopathic personalities are the consequence of the socializing process gone wrong. This paper describes the types of psychopath together with the learning situations which brought them about. The implications for treatment programs are examined.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Derry Ahmad Rizal

This paper aims to do a study of the concept of a perfect human being by taking two corners of the field of characters, Friedrich Williams Nietzsche and Ibn ‘Arabi. In this case the two figures convey their thoughts on how to become perfect human beings. Nietzsche who gives a view about humans must be able, strong and be themselves in facing all their problems. Making humans superior in Netzsche's view. On the other hand Ibn Arabi who explained about the nature of being a perfect human being, and humans themselves are a reflection of the formation of a real God on earth. The level in achieving goals as a perfect human being. The categorization of macrocosm and microcosm in looking at differences in "humans".


2018 ◽  
Vol 165 ◽  
pp. 277-285
Author(s):  
Olga A. Mescheryakova

Perceptual notation in the Russian folk fairy-talePerceptual notation captures information received from different sense organs but predicated by the same consciousness of “a perceived human being”. In the cognitive context semantics of sensory nominations reflects elements of the perceptual concept. The fact that the verbalization of its facultative elements depends not only on the type of discourse folklore, genre a tale, but also on its subtype a fairy-tale is claimed to be a hypothesis of this research. It settles that in the Russian folk fairy-tale the semantics of perceptual notation is predicated by the opposition “real — irreal world” and the semantics element “fabulous, belonging to the other world” is a basis of the semantic content of the perceptual notation. Besides that, the perceptual semantics in this type of fairy tales correlates with the aesthetical, axiological views of the folklore community on nature and human beings, reconstructing the folk ideal or ant-ideal. Перцептивне означення у російській народній чарівнiй казціПерцептивне означення фіксує інформацію, що надходить від різних органів чуттів, але обумовлену єдиною свідомістю «людини сприймаючої». У когнітивному плані семантика номінацій сенсорики відображає ознаки перцептивного концепту. Те, що вербалізація його факультативних ознак залежить не тільки від типу дискурсу фольклор, жанру казка, але і від підвиду жанру чарівна казка, становить гіпотезу даного дослідження. Встановлюєть­ся що в російській народній чарівній казці семантика перцептивної номінації обумовлена опозицією «реальний- ірреальний світ» і семантична ознака ‘чудовий, що належить іншому світу’ є основою змісту перцептивного означення. Крім того, в даній групі казок перцептивна семантика співвідноситься з естетичними, аксіологічними поглядами фольклорного соціуму на природу і людину, реконструюючи народний ідеал або антиідеал.


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