scholarly journals Hearts, desires and behavioural patterns: Debating human nature in ancient China

2011 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Gassmann
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Early China ◽  
Historical Reconstruction ◽  
Ancient China ◽  
Behavioural Patterns ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

AbstractThinkers in the Zhànguó period of Chinese history debated intensely whether men were by nature “good” or “bad”. This debate has for many years been an important focus of sinological interest, but usually these properties were not attributed to men, but rather to so-called “human nature” (xìng 性) – thus, in effect, mirroring well-known (and problematic) “European” positions and discussions. The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to redirect attention to the original Zhànguó positions and to explore the reasons for their variance by offering novel and close historical readings of relevant passages, and on the other, to propose a viable historical reconstruction of the common anthropological assumptions underlying these positions by blending it with the traces of a dominant cognitive image present in the texts. This calls for a systematic rethinking of the role of hearts (in the plural), desires, and behavioural patterns in their interplay and as elements of a concept of the psychological build of human beings current in early China.

Freedom and Responsibility in Neoplatonist Thought

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Coope
Keyword(s):  
First Principle ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
The One ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility

The Neoplatonists have a perfectionist view of freedom: an entity is free to the extent that it succeeds in making itself good. Free entities are wholly in control of themselves: they are self-determining, self-constituting, and self-knowing. Neoplatonist philosophers argue that such freedom is only possible for nonbodily things. The human soul is free insofar as it rises above bodily things and engages in intellection, but when it turns its desires to bodily things, it is drawn under the sway of fate and becomes enslaved. This book discusses this notion of freedom, and its relation to questions about responsibility. It explains the important role of notions of self-reflexivity in Neoplatonist accounts of both freedom and responsibility. Part I sets out the puzzles Neoplatonist philosophers face about freedom and responsibility and explains how these puzzles arise from earlier discussions. Part II looks at the metaphysical underpinnings of the Neoplatonist notion of freedom (concentrating especially on the views of Plotinus and Proclus). In what sense (if any) is the ultimate first principle of everything (the One) free? If everything else is under this ultimate first principle, how can anything other than the One be free? What is the connection between freedom and nonbodiliness? Part III looks at questions about responsibility, arising from this perfectionist view of freedom. Why are human beings responsible for their behaviour, in a way that other animals are not? If we are enslaved when we act viciously, how can we be to blame for our vicious actions and choices?

Art and the Senses for Ocean Conservation

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosabelle Boswell
Keyword(s):  
World Ocean ◽  
Effective Communication ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Ecological Change ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The One ◽  
Conservation Plans ◽  
Ocean Conservation

This paper considers the role of art in ocean conservation. Drawing on the presentations and work of two artists featured in the One Ocean Hub Art and Emotions webinar hosted during the UN World Ocean Week, the paper focuses specifically on the sensorial nature of art and of human beings and the role that art can play in advancing ocean conservation. The main argument offered is that ocean conservation plans and policies should consider the importance of humans to ocean conservation, the importance of human artistic endeavour to ocean activism and finally the importance of the sensory to human experience. Acknowledging and recognising the importance of human sensory experience in relation to the sea, can nuance existing discourses of ocean use and benefits, revealing human priorities and potential obstacles to conservation. Third, by leveraging human sensory expression through art, ocean conservation advocates may be able to refine and produce more effective communication for ocean conservation. Finally, recognising the sensory (and the artistic) is key to reorienting humanity as it enters a post-anthropocentric age, marked by dramatic ecological change.

Fielding and Richardson

PMLA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 381-388
Author(s):  
William Park
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
General Type ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Tom Jones ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

But the Discovery [of when to laugh and when to cry] was reserved for this Age, and there are two Authors now living in this Metropolis, who have found out the Art, and both brother Biographers, the one of Tom Jones, and the other of Clarissa.author of Charlotte SummersRather than discuss the differences which separate Fielding and Richardson, I propose to survey the common ground which they share with each other and with other novelists of the 1740's and 50's. In other words I am suggesting that these two masters, their contemporaries, and followers have made use of the same materials and that as a result the English novels of the mid-eighteenth century may be regarded as a distinct historic version of a general type of literature. Most readers, it seems to me, do not make this distinction. They either think that the novel is always the same, or they believe that one particular group of novels, such as those written in the early twentieth century, is the form itself. In my opinion, however, we should think of the novel as we do of the drama. No one kind of drama, such as Elizabethan comedy or Restoration comedy, is the drama itself; instead, each is a particular manifestation of the general type. Each kind bears some relationship to the others, but at the same time each has its own identity, which we usually call its conventions. By conventions I mean not only stock characters, situations, and themes, but also notions and assumptions about the novel, human nature, society, and the cosmos itself. If we compare one kind of novel to another without first considering the conventions of each, we are likely to make the same mistake that Thomas Rymer did when he blamed Shakespeare for not conforming to the canons of classical French drama.

scholarly journals Why Catholic Theology Needs Metapshysics: A Christological Perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-62
Author(s):  
Thomas Joseph White
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Nature ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Son Of God ◽  
The One ◽  
Human Intellect ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The Church

The Chalcedonian confession of faith asserts that Christ is one person, the Son of God, subsisting in two natures, divine and human. The doctrine of the communication of idioms is essential to the life and practices of the Church insofar as we affirm there to be properties of deity and humanity present in the one subject, the Word made flesh. Such affirmations are made without a confusion of the two natures or their mutually distinct attributes. The affirmation that there is a divine and human nature in Christ is possible, however, only if it is also possible for human beings to think coherently about the divine nature, analogically, and human nature, univocally. Otherwise it is not feasible to receive understanding of the divine nature of Christ into the human intellect intrinsically and the revelation must remain wholly alien to natural human thought, even under the presumption that such understanding originates in grace. Likewise we can only think coherently of the eternal Son’s solidarity with us in human nature if we can conceive of a common human nature present in all human individuals. Consequently, it is only possible for the Church to confess some form of Chalcedonian doctrine if there is also a perennial metaphysical philosophy capable of thinking coherently about the divine and human natures from within the ambit of natural human reason. This also implies that the Church maintains a “metaphysical apostolate” in her public teaching, in her philosophical traditions, as well as in her scriptural and doctrinal enunciations.

scholarly journals Role of Radiologic Computed Tomography in Evaluating Coronavirus (COVID-19) Patients

2021 ◽  
pp. 39-44
Author(s):  
Mwahib Sayed Ahmed Aldosh
Keyword(s):  
Computed Tomography ◽  
Ct Scan ◽  
Ct Scanning ◽  
Viral Disease ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Complementary Method ◽  
High Incidence ◽  
High Incidence Rate ◽  
The Common

Objective: Coronavirus (Covid 19) is a dangerous viral disease that principally targets the respiratory system of human beings. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the significant effects resulting from Covid19 using radiologic CT scanning technology. Methods: The recent study was conducted in order to evaluate covid19 among the local public. The sample size for this study consisted of two hundred and thirty (230) patients diagnosed with coronavirus and underwent a chest computed tomography scan. The study was conducted at Najran city, between the period from September to December 2020. Results: The results showed that it is possible to diagnose the complications of coronavirus that affects the respiratory tract in an accurate manner using chest CT imaging and the main results revealed that coronavirus COVID-19 affected all, but males more than female. (50-60) Age group was the big distribution while acute respiratory failure is the most common clinical etiology. The CT scan findings revealed that bilateral pneumonia was the common complication with a high incidence rate of 32% percent and blood coagulation achieved 5% percent as the minimum distribution result. Conclusion: The sensitivity of the CT scans in assessing COVID-19 was significantly high, it has the efficiency to assess complications of COVID-19 in an accurate manner, and therefore it has been proposed to use CT scan as a complementary method in covid-19 diagnosis. More studies on coronavirus disease were recommended by the author.

appealed to the Queen on being besieged by the wild sense, especially in the concluding cantos, of leaving Irish (see Vi4.1n). In reading this ‘darke conceit’, an iron world to enter a golden one. But do these no one could have failed to recognize these allusions. ways lead to an end that triumphantly concludes the The second point is that Spenser’s fiction, when 1596 poem, or to an impasse of the poet’s imaginat-compared to historical fact, is far too economical ive powers? For some readers, Book VI relates to the with the truth: for example, England’s intervention earlier books as Shakespeare’s final romances relate in the Netherlands under Leicester is, as A.B. Gough to his earlier plays, a crowning and fulfilment, ‘a 1921:289 concludes, ‘entirely misrepresented’. It summing up and conclusion for the entire poem and would seem that historical events are treated from for Spenser’s poetic career’ (N. Frye 1963:70; cf. a perspective that is ‘far from univocally celebratory Tonkin 1972:11). For others, Spenser’s exclamation or optimistic’, as Gregory 2000:366 argues, or in of wonder on cataloguing the names of the waters what Sidney calls their ‘universal consideration’, i.e. that attend the marriage of the Thames and the what is imminent in them, namely, their apocalyptic Medway, ‘O what an endlesse worke haue I in hand, import, as Borris 1991:11–61 argues. The third | To count the seas abundant progeny’ (IV xii point, which is properly disturbing to many readers 1.1–2), indicates that the poem, like such sixteenth-in our most slaughterous age, especially since the century romances as Amadis of Gaul, could now go matter is still part of our imaginative experience as on for ever, at least until it used up all possible virtues Healy 1992:104–09 testifies, is that Talus’s slaughter and the poet’s life. As Nohrnberg 1976:656 aptly of Irena’s subjects is rendered too brutally real in notes, ‘we find ourselves experiencing not the allegorizing, and apparently justifying, Grey’s atrocit-romance of faith or chastity, but the romance of ies in subduing Irish rebels (see V xii 26–27n). Here romance itself ’. For still others, there is a decline: Spenser is a product of his age, as was the Speaker ‘the darkening of Spenser’s spirit’ is a motif in many of the House of Commons in 1580 in reporting studies of the book, agreeing with Lewis 1936:353 the massacre of Spanish soldiers at Smerwick: ‘The that ‘the poem begins with its loftiest and most Italians pulled out by the ears at Smirwick in solemn book and thence, after a gradual descent, Ireland, and cut to pieces by the notable Service of a sinks away into its loosest and most idyllic’; and with noble Captain and Valiant Souldiers’ (D’Ewes Neuse 1968:331 that ‘the dominant sense of Book 1682:286). As this historical matter relates to Book V, VI is one of disillusionment, of the disparity between it displays the slaughter that necessarily attends the the poet’s ideals and the reality he envisions’; or that triumph of justice, illustrating the truth of the common the return to pastoral signals the failure of chivalry in adage, summum ius, summa iniuria, even as Guyon’s Book V to achieve reform (see DeNeef 1982b). destruction of the Bower shows the triumph of tem-Certainly canto x provides the strong sense of an perance. This is justice; or, at best, what justice has ending. As I have suggested, ‘it is as difficult not to become, and what its executive power displayed in see the poet intruding himself into the poem, as it is that rottweiler, Talus, has become, in our worse than not to see Shakespeare in the role of Prospero with ‘stonie’ age as the world moves towards its ‘last the breaking of the pipe, the dissolving of the vision, ruinous decay’ (proem 2.2, 6.9). In doing so, Book and our awareness (but surely the poet’s too) that his V confirms the claim by Thrasymachus in Plato’s work is being rounded out’ (1961a:202). Republic: justice is the name given by those in power Defined as ‘doing gentle deedes with franke to keep their power. It is the one virtue in the poem delight’ (vii 1.2), courtesy is an encompassing virtue that cannot be exercised by itself but within the book in a poem that sets out to ‘sing of Knights and Ladies must be over-ruled by equity, circumvented by mercy, gentle deeds’ (I proem 1.5). As such, its flowering and, in the succeeding book, countered by courtesy. would fully ‘fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline’ (Letter to Raleigh 8). Courtesy: Book VI

2014 ◽  
pp. 36-36
Keyword(s):  
Strong Sense ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
Historical Fact ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

The Mediating Effect of Material Cultures as Human Hybridization

2011 ◽  
pp. 31-53
Author(s):  
L. Magnani
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Mediating Effect ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Survival And Reproduction ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
The Common

We already are hybrid humans, fruit of a kind of co-evolution of both our brains and the common, scientific, social, and moral knowledge we have produced by ourselves, starting from the birth of material culture with our ancestors until the recent effects generated by the whole field of information and communication technologies (ICTs). We all are constitutively natural born cyborgs; that is, biotechnological hybrid minds. Our minds should not be considered to be located only in the head; human beings have solved their problems of survival and reproduction, distributing cognitive and ethical functions to external nonbiological sources, props, and aids, which originate cultures. This chapter also illustrates the interplay between cultures and distributed cognition, taking advantage of the so-called disembodiment of mind, and stresses the problem of the co-evolution between brains and cultures. The second part of the chapter is related to the analysis of the interplay between cultures and cognition and of some consequences concerning the problem of intercultural communication in light of the role of moral mediators, docility, and cyberprivacy. Finally, I discuss some suggestions concerning the problem of what I call the principle of isolation of cultures, with respect to the effects of ICTs.

Pragmatic Humanism and the Posthumanist Challenge: Between Biocentrism and the New Human Being

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-84
Author(s):  
Ana Honnacker
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
William James ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Capabilities ◽  
Human Potentials

Humanism is charged with fostering a harmful anthropocentrism that has led to the exploitation of non-human beings and the environment. Posthumanist and transhumanist ideas prominently aim at rethinking our self-understanding and human-nature relations. Yet these approaches turn out to be flawed when it comes to addressing the challenges of the “age of the humanity”, the Anthropocene. Whereas posthumanism fails in acknowledging the exceptional role of human beings with regard to political agency and responsibility, transhumanism overemphasizes human capabilities of controlling nature and only deepens the human-nature dualism. Therefore, a critical and humble version of humanism is suggested as a viable alternative. Drawing on pragmatist thinkers William James and F.C.S. Schiller, a resource for de-centering the human being is provided that critically reflects our role in the larger ecosystem and underlines human potentials as well as human responsibilities.

Xunzi in the Light of the Guodian Manuscripts

Early China ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 113-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Rakita Goldin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Development ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Hubei Province ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Warring States ◽  
Proper Values ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way

This article discusses the several previously unknown Confucian texts discovered in 1993 in a Warring States tomb at Guodian, near Jingmen, Hubei Province. I believe that these works should be understood as doctrinal material deriving from a single tradition of Confucianism and datable to around 300 B.C. Of the surviving literature from the same period, they are closer to the Xunzi than to any other text, and anticipate several characteristic themes in Xunzi's philosophy. These are: the notion of human nature (xing 性),and the controversy over whether the source of morality is internar or “external”; the role of learning (xue 學)and habitual practice (xi 習) in moral development; the content and origin of ritual (li 禮), by which human beings accord with the Way; the conception of the ruler as the mind (xin 心) of the state; and the psychological utility of music (yue 樂) in inculcating proper values.It is especially important for scholars to take note of these connections with Xunzi, in view of the emerging trend to associate the Guodian manuscripts with Zisi, the famous grandson of Confucius, whom Xunzi bitterly criticized.

The Conceptual in Human Nature: Learning to Perceive the World

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-149
Author(s):  
Gerald Filson
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
Collective Deliberation ◽  
Culture And Language

Human beings are conceptual in ways unique to our species, different in kind from animal rationality. Our conceptual capacity goes beyond the cognitive and shapes our emotions, our moral and spiritual capabilities and our perception of the world. That conceptual capacity is formed by culture and language where language plays a central role in how we experience the world. The role of language, especially spiritual or religious language, can inform our perception of the world in ways that represent genuine ‘spiritual perception’ of the material, social and spiritual dimensions of reality. Human beings’ conceptual capabilities are fallible, even in how we use perception as a capacity for knowing the world. Conditions in modernity have increased our vulnerability to fallibility. Consequently, collective exercise of our conceptual capacities in deliberation and coordinated assessments of reality are more necessary than ever. Science and religion are influential models of how collective deliberation, or consultation, enhances our conceptual capabilities and the ways in which perception takes in a world that is both material and spiritual.

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