Woodrow Wilson—Then and Now

1974 ◽  
Vol 7 (03) ◽  
pp. 256-259
Author(s):  
Pendleton Herring

It was in this house that Wilson, after the burdens of public office, sought “some ease.” In words I quote from John Milton's “Samson Agonistes:”“Ease to the body some, noneto the mindFrom restless thoughts, thatlike a deadly swarmOf hornets armed, no soonerfound aloneBut rush upon methronging, and presentTimes past, what once I was,and what am now.”One cannot speak of Woodrow Wilson fifty years after his death without recalling his last tragic days. Most poignant is Raymond Fosdick's account:“I went down to Washington to see him…. It was less than a month before he died, and it was very obvious that his strength was failing, although his mind was keen and alert. When I said to him: ‘How are you, Mr. President,’ he quoted a remark by John Quincy Adams in answer to a similar query: ‘John Quincy Adams is all right, but the house he lives in is dilapidated, and it looks as if he would soon have to move out’…. His whole thought centered on the League of Nations, and I had never heard him speak with deeper or more moving earnestness. In his weakness the tears came easily to his eyes and sometimes rolled down his cheek, but he brushed them impatiently away. I think he had a premonition that his days were numbered - “The sands are running fast,’ he told me - and perhaps he Wanted to make his last testament clear and unmistakable. The League of Nations was a promise for a better future, he said, as well as an escape from an evil past. Constantly his mind ran back to 1914. The utter unintelligence of it all, the sheer waste of war as a method of settling anything, seemed to oppress him. ‘It never must happen again,’ he said. ‘There is a way out if only men will use it.’ His voice rose as he recalled the charge of idealism so often used against the League. ‘The world is run by ideals,’ he exclaimed. ‘Only the fool thinks otherwise.’ The League was the answer. It was the next logical step in man’s widening conception of order and law. The machinery might be changed by experience, but the core of the idea was essential. It was in line with human evolution. It was the will of God.

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (10) ◽  
pp. 74-87
Author(s):  
Irina N. Sidorenko

 The author analyzes the conceptions of ontological nihilism in the works of S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger, E. Jünger. On the basis of this analysis, violence is defined as a manifestation of nihilism, of the “will to nothingness” and hypertrophy of the self-will of man. The article demonstrates the importance of the problem of nihilism. The nihilistic thinking of modern man is expressed in the attitude toward a radical transformation of the world from the position of his “absolute” righteousness. The paradox of the current situation is that there is the reverse side of this transformative activity, when there is only the appearance of action and the dilution of responsibility. Confidence in the rightness of own views and beliefs increases the risk of the violent imposition of own vision of reality. Historical and philosophical reconstruction of the conceptions of nihilism allowed to reveal the following projects of its comprehension and resolution: (1) the project of “positing of values,” which consists in the transformation of the evaluation, which is understood as another perspective of positing values, leading to the affirmation of being; (2) the project of overcoming nihilism from the space of temporality, carried out through the resoluteness to accept the historicity of own existence; (3) the project of overcoming nihilism as the oblivion of being from the spatial perspective of the “line,” allowing to realize the “glimpse” of being. The author concludes that it is impossible to solve the problem of violence and its various forms of its manifestation without overcoming “ontological nihilism.” Significant role in solving the problem of ontological violence is assigned to philosophy as a critical and responsible form of thinking, which is capable to help a person to bear the burden of the world, to provide meanings and affirm being, as well as to unite people and resist the fundamentalist claims of exclusivity and rightness.


Author(s):  
David Carus

This chapter explores Schopenhauer’s concept of force, which lies at the root of his philosophy. It is force in nature and thus in natural science that is inexplicable and grabs Schopenhauer’s attention. To answer the question of what this inexplicable term is at the root of all causation, Schopenhauer looks to the will within us. Through will, he maintains that we gain immediate insight into forces in nature and hence into the thing in itself at the core of everything and all things. Will is thus Schopenhauer’s attempt to answer the question of the essence of appearance. Yet will, as it turns out, cannot be known immediately as it is subject to time, and the acts of will, which we experience within us, do not correlate immediately with the actions of the body (as Schopenhauer had originally postulated). Hence, the acts of will do not lead to an explanation of force, which is at the root of causation in nature. Schopenhauer sets out to explain what is at the root of all appearances, derived from the question of an original cause, or as Schopenhauer states “the cause of causation,” but cannot determine this essence other than by stating that it is will; a will, however, that cannot be immediately known.


1948 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perry Miller

The reputation of Jonathan Edwards, impressive though it is, rests upon only a fragmentary representation of the range or profundity of his thinking. Harassed by events and controversies, he was forced repeatedly to put aside his real work and to expend his energies in turning out sermons, defenses of the Great Awakening, or theological polemics. Only two of his published books (and those the shortest), The Nature of True Virtue and The End for which God Created the World, were not ad hoc productions. Even The Freedom of the Will is primarily a dispute, aimed at silencing the enemy rather than expounding a philosophy. He died with his Summa still a mass of notes in a bundle of home-made folios, the handwriting barely legible. The conventional estimate that Edwards was America's greatest metaphysical genius is a tribute to his youthful Notes on the Mind — which were a crude forecast of the system at which he labored for the rest of his days — and to a few incidental flashes that illumine his forensic argumentations. The American mind is immeasurably the poorer that he was not permitted to bring into order his accumulated meditations.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madison Dozzi-Perry

Current design practices for addiction treatment facilities reflect that of the western perspective on health, providing sterile, monolithic and cold environments. The quest for cleanliness, static and conditioned spaces robs the user of the richness of an engaging experience, isolating them into a sealed box. We further numb and anesthetize patients, disembodying them from the world and hindering their abilities to achieve physical, mental, emotional and spiritual awareness. This disengagement of the natural, human and spiritual realms proliferates the problems facing people with addiction. This thesis proposes an engagement of Anishinabek healing and wellbeing principles to inform the design of addiction healing spaces that stimulate the users, re-engages and enhances one’s awareness and understanding of one’s self, other beings and place in the world. By incorporating these principles into design, architecture can begin to re-engage the mind, the body, the heart and the soul of people suffering from addiction wellbeing issues.


1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warner R. Schilling

… we must take, so far as we can, a picture of the world into our minds. Is it not a startling circumstance for one thing that the great discoveries of science, that the quiet study of men in laboratories, that the thoughtful developments which have taken place in quiet lecture rooms, have now been turned to the destruction of civilization? … The enemy whom we have just overcome had at its seats of learning some of the principal centres of scientific study and discovery, and used them in order to make destruction sudden and complete; and only the watchful, continuous cooperation of men can see to it that science, as well as armed men, is kept within the harness of civilization.These words were spoken in Paris in January 1919 by Woodrow Wilson, addressing the second Plenary Session of the Peace Conference. Wilson believed he had found a watchdog for civilization in the League of Nations. In this he was sadly mistaken. Science and armed men have indeed been harnessed, but in order to promote and maintain the goals of conflicting polities. Whether in the pursuit of these ends the cause of civilization will yet be served remains, we may hope, an open question.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madison Dozzi-Perry

Current design practices for addiction treatment facilities reflect that of the western perspective on health, providing sterile, monolithic and cold environments. The quest for cleanliness, static and conditioned spaces robs the user of the richness of an engaging experience, isolating them into a sealed box. We further numb and anesthetize patients, disembodying them from the world and hindering their abilities to achieve physical, mental, emotional and spiritual awareness. This disengagement of the natural, human and spiritual realms proliferates the problems facing people with addiction. This thesis proposes an engagement of Anishinabek healing and wellbeing principles to inform the design of addiction healing spaces that stimulate the users, re-engages and enhances one’s awareness and understanding of one’s self, other beings and place in the world. By incorporating these principles into design, architecture can begin to re-engage the mind, the body, the heart and the soul of people suffering from addiction wellbeing issues.


2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-98
Author(s):  
Predrag Milidrag
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Will ◽  

The article analyzes Descartes' notion of the teachings of nature as a consequence of the union of the mind with the body in the context of the determination of the will. The paragraphs 3-5 of Second meditations are interpreted concerning the teachings of nature about man.


Author(s):  
Nikos C. Apostolopoulos

On the basis of their corporeity humans are not only beings of distance but also the beings of proximity, rooted beings, not only inner worldly but also beings in the world (Patocka, 1998)Over the centuries the dialectical confluence of metaphysics and epistemology has been at the forefront in the attempt to define the concept of what it is to be human and ultimately human existence. The union of several aspects conceived from these two opposite elements has been responsible for the genesis of numerous philosophical terms and ideas such as: rationalism, materialism, socialism and idealism. Although these terms reference something different, what is primarily at the core has been the endeavour to analyse and demonstrate that it is through man’s relationship with nature that one garners the understanding of self. Human consciousness in conjunction with a spatio-temporal perception, defined as movement through the time-space continuum, creates the condition where the possibility of defining the essence of existence may blossom. In this commentary, an effort is made to present movement, specifically its relationship to the “body” as the physical construct for the meaning of self.


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