Contemplation as an alternative to curiosity: St Bonaventure on Ecclesiastes 1:3–11

2015 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-33
Author(s):  
Tyler Atkinson
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Alternative Interpretation ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
Union With Christ ◽  
Human Labour ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Abstract Existence

AbstractThis article seeks to offer a christological interpretation of the opening poem in Ecclesiastes (1:3–11) through engagement with St Bonaventure's exegesis of the passage. It begins with a brief survey of contemporary treatments of the passage, which are characterised by an emphasis on cosmic monotony as an illustration of the futility of human labour. Then, it examines the Seraphic Doctor's version of the contemptus mundi interpretation of the book, relating it to his metaphysics of emanation, exemplarity and consummation. It will be suggested that Bonaventure's version of contemptus mundi informs an alternative interpretation to the critical status quo.In his exegesis of the opening poem, Bonaventure begins by describing three kinds of existence: existence in the eternal and unchanging Word, material existence in the cosmos, and abstract existence in the mind. While Bonaventure does not consider existence in the Word in relation to Ecclesiastes 1:3–11, because such existence is not subject to the vanity of mutability, the conclusion of the article will propose that such existence is in view in the text. When Bonaventure considers material existence, his metaphysics will not allow him to read the cosmological motion in Ecclesiastes 1:5–7 as monotonous, but rather as creaturely movement which invites contemplation. When he considers abstract existence, he contrasts the movement of heavenly and elemental creatures with the dissatisfaction of human perception, constrained by curiosity, the vice which characterises the protagonist's pursuits in Ecclesiastes 1:12–2:26. Thus, it will be suggested from Bonaventure's exegesis that the problem in Ecclesiastes 1:3–11 is not an oppressively monotonous universe which shows humans how pointless their own movement is, but rather humanity's failing to treat the cosmos as a book which speaks of God.In the article's final section, a relationship between the contemplative reading of Ecclesiastes 1:3–11 and Bonaventure's Itinerarium will be outlined. The consideration of material existence in Ecclesiastes 1:4–7 will be related to contemplation through vestiges. Then a contrast between the perceptual rupture of Ecclesiastes 1:8–11 and contemplation through the divine image in humanity will be shown. Finally, a christological reading of Ecclesiastes 1:10a will be offered, suggesting that this verse gestures towards the incarnate Word, who reforms the divine image in humanity and thus places humanity back on course towards similitude. It will be suggested in closing that, in signalling this hope, Ecclesiastes 1:10a prepares one for the union with Christ which Song of Songs depicts.

scholarly journals 21st-century capitalism: structural challenges for universal health care

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan K. Sell
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Regulatory Reform ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
First Century ◽  
Value Chains ◽  
Universal Health Care ◽  
The Status ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Universal Health

AbstractThe structural perspective outlined here sheds light on some of the fundamental challenges involved in achieving Universal Health Care (UHC) in this twenty-first-century era of trade and financialized capitalism. This commentary explores connections between the structure of twenty-first-century capitalism and challenges to achieving UHC, discussing three features of today’s capitalism: financialized capitalism; trade, intangibles and global value chains; and inequality (as exacerbated by the first two features). The final section discusses the various opportunities for reform to facilitate UHC—from tinkering with the status quo, to deeper regulatory reform and fundamental structural change.

scholarly journals Concepts: Where Subjectivism Goes Wrong

Philosophy ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Johann Glock
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Conceptual Thinking ◽  
The Mind

AbstractThe debate about concepts has always been shaped by a contrast between subjectivism, which treats them as phenomena in the mind or head of individuals, and objectivism, which insists that they exist independently of individual minds. The most prominent contemporary version of subjectivism is Fodor's RTM. The Fregean charge against subjectivism is that it cannot do justice to the fact that different individuals can share the same concepts. Proponents of RTM have accepted shareability as a ‘non-negotiable constraint’. At the same time they insist that by distinguishing between sign-types and – tokens the Fregean objection cannot just be circumvented but revealed to be fallacious. My paper rehabilitates the Fregean argument against subjectivism. The RTM response rests either on an equivocation of ‘concept’—between types which satisfy the non-negotiable constraint and tokens which are mental particulars in line with RTM doctrine—or on the untenable idea that one and the same entity can be both a shareable type and hence abstract and a concrete particular in the head. Furthermore, subjectivism cannot be rescued by adopting unorthodox metaphysical theories about the type/token and universal/particular contrasts. The final section argues that concepts are not representations or signs, but something represented by signs. Even if RTM is right to explain conceptual thinking by reference to the occurrence of mental representations, concepts themselves cannot be identical with such representations.

scholarly journals A Frequency Ratio Account of Temporal Atomism

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-127
Author(s):  
Carey R. Carlson ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Frequency Ratio ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Relative Duration ◽  
Time Duration ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
Temporal Succession ◽  
Energy Ratios ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Frequency Ratios

This article examines the time duration of individual occasions in the light of the discovery that temporal succession produces frequency ratios. The frequency ratios are used to define energy ratios and the quantum. The manifold and the common particles are constructed graphically using the arrows of time, with the mass-ratios of the particles derivable from the graphs. The formal reduction of physics to time compels us to adopt Whitehead's conception of the physical universe as occasions of experience engaged in temporal/causal succession. The relative duration of the constituent occasions of the particles are determined by their graphs. In the final section, a refined account of the mind-brain interaction sequence confirms the duration of a human occasion as one tenth of a second.

A Portrait of Consciousness

2020 ◽  
pp. 63-99
Author(s):  
Garry L. Hagberg
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Model ◽  
Human Perception ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way

Departing from observations taken from the legal judgment that lifted the ban on Ulysses that concern the intricate way that Joyce in his novel portrays “the screen of consciousness,” this chapter first examines the classical empirical model of human perception where the eye is modeled on the lens of a camera. Moving to a consideration of what that model misses in terms of the webs of associations woven into perception by the experiential history of the perceiver and some philosophical arguments critiquing that oversimplified model, the chapter then looks into some details concerning acts of remembering, moments of recognition, the understanding of human motives, and the way the past can overlay the perception of the present, all of which challenge any reductive model of mere ocular sensation as the fundamental content of perception. With this background the chapter then moves to its main project, a reading of Joyce’s great novel that sees the work as an expansive and encompassing study of the nuances of perception, of the relationally complex ways in which the mind organizes and interacts with the world, and of the structuring power that our language exerts within perceptual consciousness.

Towards International Relations beyond the mind

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-105
Author(s):  
Dirk Nabers
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Final Section ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Large Segment ◽  
The Mind

The analysis focuses on the centrality of the mind and the mental, and their relationship with the notion of discourse in International Relations theorizing. While many forms of discourse theory are linked with anti-materialist idealism, the article develops an alternative argument, that is, that discourse theory should primarily be situated ‘beyond the mind’. The analysis starts with a discussion of prominent International Relations work on ideas and discourse and argues that that a large segment of International Relations work is insufficiently clear on these crucial notions. I therefore contend subsequently that this state of the art is reflected in how the philosophy of science and the philosophy of the mind have been treated in prominent International Relations work by following a particular version of Cartesian rationalism. It is on this basis that the article proposes to transcend the antinomies between mind and world as well as ideas and materiality by advancing a political ontology that stresses a particular concept of discourse in the final section. On that basis, it will become possible in the conclusion to summarize a path towards International Relations beyond the mind that engages in the study of the political more seriously.

Educational Reform as the Organization of Ritual: Stability as Change

1982 ◽  
Vol 164 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas S. Popkewitz
Keyword(s):  
Educational Reform ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Theoretical Construct ◽  
Outward Appearance ◽  
Reform Program ◽  
The Social ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
The Status ◽  
Individually Guided Education

The question of the social function of educational reform is addressed. While educational reform seems to imply change, in fact it serves as a kind of ritual, providing the outward appearance of scientifically controlled change and masking the actual ways in which the status quo is reproduced. Ethnographic investigation of the implementation of the Individually Guided Education program (IGE) is used to address the ways in which such a reform program is actualized in the daily life of schools. An analysis follows of the ways in which reform serves as a legitimating ritual in those schools by focusing attention on “scientific” rules and procedures rather than the underlying institutional structures in which schools are embedded. A final section addresses the usefulness of the theory of resistance as a theoretical construct to understand the ways in which individuals participate in and transform schools as social sites.

From Delusion to Illumination: A Larger Structure for L'Allegro-Il Penseroso

PMLA ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Vertical Structure ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Thematic Units ◽  
The Mind

The virtues of L'Allegro are incorporated into II Penseroso, and both mirth and melancholy serve the progress of the soul. The activities of II Penseroso complement those of L'Allegro, but at each point they are nearer to the contemplation of God. The progress of the poems culminates in the final section of II Penseroso, which has no parallel in L'Allegro. This vertical structure encompasses image patterns that range from humor psychology to music, and from hermeticism to topology. These patterns are further organized into parallel thematic units. Chief among these are the education of a superior mind, the subordination of flesh to mind and of mind to spirit, the syncretic nature of Christian vision, and the progress of the mind and soul through the complementary disorders of black melancholy and vain deluding joy. The delights of L'Allegro are real and valued, but they cannot stand against the ecstasy of Christian contemplation.

Descartes', Sixth Meditation: The External World, ‘Nature’ and Human Experience

1986 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 73-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Cottingham
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
External World ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
General Point ◽  
The Third ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Material Things ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

The Sixth Meditation deals, as its title proclaims, with ‘the existence of material things, and the real distinction between the mind and body of man’. In this paper, I want to start by examining Descartes' argument for the existence of material things—for the existence of an ‘external’, physical world around us. Next, in section two, I shall use this argument concerning the external world to bring out an important general point about the ‘dialectical’ way in which Descartes presents his reasoning in the Meditations. This will lead me on to the third section of the paper, which will analyse the concept of ‘nature’ and the role it plays in Descartes' reasoning, particularly in the Sixth Meditation. And this in turn will bring me to the fourth and final part of the paper, which will focus on what is by general consensus the most fascinating part of the Sixth Meditation—Descartes' account of the relation between mind and body. What I shall try to do in this final section is to highlight a curious tension between Descartes' recognition of the facts of human experience on the one hand, and on the other hand his doctrine that we are essentially incorporeal or non-physical substances.

scholarly journals Biases in Managerial Decision Making: Overconfidence, Status Quo, Anchoring, Hindsight, Availability

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 08-23
Author(s):  
Selim Aren ◽  
Hatice Nayman Hamamci
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Behavioral Finance ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Managerial Decision ◽  
Psychological Variables ◽  
Managerial Decisions ◽  
Raising Awareness ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
The Mind

Decision-making processes occur with the interaction of some cognitive and psychological variables. Neoclassical theories deal with rational reactions in these processes. However, in an environment where there is no information or where there is uncertainty instead of risk, decisions cannot be made rationally as the mind indicates. In this direction, firm managers have to make many decisions under uncertainty. For this reason, managers resort to various simple and useful shortcuts called bias for different reasons. In this study, it was aimed to reveal the effects of behavioral biases on management decisions. In this context, five biases in the behavioral finance literature, namely overconfidence, status quo, anchoring, hindsight and availability, were evaluated with theoretical and empirical studies and their effects on managerial decisions were discussed. It was seen that raising awareness of these biases in terms of managers provides benefits such as realistic evaluation of themselves, giving more realistic weights to events when making decisions, reaching rational judgments more easily and being open to innovations. In addition, this awareness, when combined with the emotional competencies of managers, helps them make successful decisions.

Self-Locating Content in Visual Experience and the "Here-Replacement" Account

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. 188-213
Author(s):  
Jonathan Mitchell ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Alternative Interpretation ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
De Se

According to the Self-Location Thesis, certain types of visual experiences have self-locating and so first-person (or de se), spatial contents. Such self-locating contents are typically specified in relational egocentric terms. So understood, visual experiences provide support for the claim that there is a kind of self-consciousness found in experiential states. This paper critically examines the Self-Location Thesis with respect to dynamic-reflexive visual experiences, which involve the movement of an object toward the location of the perceiving subject. The main aim of this paper is to offer an alternative interpretation of these cases which resists attributing them self-locating content, arguing for a replacement of the de se component with a non-conceptual equivalent of the indexical ‘here’ (the h-replacement account). In its final section, the paper also considers an extension of the h-replacement account to cases of visual kinesthesis.

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