scholarly journals A REALISTIC POLITICAL IDEAL

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Schmidtz

Abstract:Over the past decade, political philosophers and political theorists have had a common purpose: to reflect on the merits of realism and idealism when theorizing about the human condition and the nature of justice. We have settled that no one is against being realistic or against being idealistic per se. The contributions to this volume represent a conversation about what would make one attempt to articulate ideals better than another.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Jarno Hietalahti

Abstract This article offers a pragmatist approach to concentration camp humor, in particular, to Viktor Frankl’s and Primo Levi’s conceptualizations of humor. They both show how humor does not vanish even in the worst imaginable circumstances. Despite this similarity, it will be argued that their intellectual positions on humor differ significantly. The main difference between the two authors is that according to Frankl, humor is elevating in the middle of suffering, and according to Levi, humor expresses the absurdity of the idea of concentration camps, but this is not necessarily a noble reaction. Through a critical synthesis based on pragmatist philosophy, it will be claimed that humor in concentration camps expresses the human condition in the entirely twisted situation. This phenomenon cannot be understood without considering forms of life, how drastic the changes from the past were, and what people expected from the future, if anything.


Author(s):  
Franco Cortese

This chapter addresses concerns that the development and proliferation of Human Enhancement Technologies (HET) will be (a) dehumanizing and a threat to human dignity and (b) a threat to our autonomy and sovereignty as individuals. Contrarily, HET can be shown to constitute the most effective foreseeable means of increasing the autonomy and sovereignty of individual members of society. Furthermore, this chapter elaborates the position that the use of HET exemplifies—and indeed even intensifies—our most human capacity and faculty, namely the desire for increased self-determination (i.e., control over the determining circumstances and conditions of our own selves and lives), which is referred to as the will toward self-determination. Based upon this position, arguably, the use of HET bears fundamental ontological continuity with the human condition in general and with the historically ubiquitous will toward self-determination in particular as it is today and has been in the past. HET will not be a dehumanizing force, but will rather serve to increase the very capacity and characteristic that characterizes us as human more accurately than anything else.


1998 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-405
Author(s):  
Colin Brown

The parable which we know as as ‘The Parable of the Prodigal Son’ and which the Germans call ‘Das Gleichnis vom verlorenen Sohn’ is the best loved of all Jesus' parables. It has given inspiration to Rembrandt and countless other artists. It has provided the theme for novels, ballet and film. It touches the human condition like no other story. It holds a mirror up to ourselves, whether we identify ourselves with the returning prodigal or see those around us unmasked as the elder brother. The parable has been examined by the best exegetes of the past and present.


2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Boston ◽  
Paul Callister

The issues surrounding the nature and impact of diversity – and especially ethnic and social diversity – have attracted growing interest in many countries during the past decade. For the purposes of this discussion the term ‘social diversity’ is used to embrace diversity in values, religious beliefs, life circumstances, lifestyles and other aspects of the human condition. 


Renascence ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Maurizio Ascari ◽  

A complex and controversial novel, Atonement is at the core of a lively critical debate, opposing those who focus on the impossibility of Briony’s atonement – also in relation to the author’s atheist views – to those who conversely explore the redemptive quality of her “postlapsarian” painful self-fashioning. Far from concerning simply the destiny of a literary character, this debate has to do with the impact Postmodernist relativism has on both the conception of the human subject and the discourses of the past, from memory to history and fiction. Discarding any potentially nihilistic interpretations of Atonement as disempowering, this article delves into Ian McEwan’s multi-layered text in order to comprehend its ambivalences, its subtle investigation of the human condition, and its status as a postmemory novel reconnecting us to the events of World War Two.


Author(s):  
A. Cook

Entering a new millennium the state of the public understanding of science is, and will continue to be, a key to the human condition; stories of the past may help to deepen it. In that hope we intend to mark the end of the present millennium in September 2000 or the start of the new one in January 2001 by an issue with millennial contributions, the choice of date depending on how rapidly potential authors respond to these hints.


Author(s):  
Mercedes Serna Arnaiz

Parra como escritor posmoderno destruye la verosimilitud poética y se apoya en la intertextualidad, al contemplar la literatura como práctica de relectura de textos precedentes en los cuales se reconoce o de los que se distancia. Al mismo tiempo, se refugia en el pasado, en la época antigua, las saturnalia romana, y recoge, como mecanismo de escritura, el espíritu y las formas de la cultura medieval y carnavalesca en donde aparecen los más variados géneros literarios, frecuentemente en una dialéctica irónica y paródica con los más serios, para bucear en la condición humana,  ante un supuesto cierre del horizonte histórico.Palabras clave: antipoesía, contratexto, posmodernidad, deconstrucción, grotesco, realismo. As a post-modern writer, Parra rejects poetic verisimilitude and espouses intertextuality, contemplating literature as the practice of rereading previous texts in which he sees himself reflected or from which he distances himself. At the same time, he seeks refuge in the past, in ancient times, in Roman saturnalia, and as a mechanism of writing revives the spirit and the forms of the medieval and carnivalesque culture in which the most varied literary genres appear, often in an ironic or parodic dialectic with more serious genres, to explore the human condition as the historical horizon appears to close. Key words: antipoetry, contratext, post-modernity, deconstruction, grotesque, realism.


1985 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-235
Author(s):  
Rajesh M. Basrur

In the increasingly uneasy world of today, when the notion of a “balance of terror” no longer seems a jaded and unlikely description of the human condition, the concerned thinker, fearful of the future, must pause to reconsider the relevance of the dominant mode of thought in international retations. This paper seeks to examine the fundamental question whether political realism, for long the dominant mode of thought in international politics, can any longer serve as a useful guide to understanding and action in world affairs. Given the dangerous direction in which the world is all too evidently heading in the 1980s, it is necessary to enquire whether the realist outlook, however useful in the past, provides any ground for optimism regarding the future. The task is all the more important because the “future” we are concerned with involves the question of the survival of life on this planet.


1970 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Apter

ANARCHISM AS A DOCTRINE HAS A PECULIAR FASCINATION FOR scholars. It both repels and attracts. It attracts because it embodies rage – the particular rage people have when they see man as an obstacle to his own humaneness. It is the ultimate statement of how outrageous the human condition can be. But it is precisely because man does not live by rage alone, but must master it by discovering proximate means to solving the ordinary problems of daily life, that anarchism repels. It seem a romantic luxury at best – a cry of pain for the future, just as nostalgia is for the past and, like nostalgia, this cannot fail to be attractive.Perhaps because of this anarchism is not a mere reflection of anger but also a contributing source. It is thus more than a lightning rod for the anger that exists. Anarchism is associated with unreason and bombs, violence and irresponsibility.


Author(s):  
Krzysztof Michalski

This chapter introduces the images of the grazing cows, the child at play, and the person observing them with envy and emotion. It argues that these images are supposed to confront us with human life, concentrated in the lived moment and simultaneously tearing the past from the future. It is life stretched out from “yesterday” to “tomorrow” and thereby burdened with memory and guilt—and at the same time innocent and oblivious, growing out of time in its every instant: the connection between time and its sickness, eternity. Such a concept of the human condition, the chapter shows, carries far-reaching consequences.


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