THE BOUNDED LIFE: ADORNO, DICKENS, AND METAPHYSICS

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 547-563
Author(s):  
Helen Small
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Direct Experience ◽  
Empirical World ◽  
The World ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Aristotelian Metaphysics

THEODOR ADORNO'S LATE LECTURESonMetaphysicspropose a “shocking thesis”: “metaphysics began with Aristotle” (15). A “doubly shocking” thesis, Adorno tells his audience, because it gives credit where credit is not usually given, and declines to give it where most students of philosophy would understand that it belongs–with Plato (18). The Platonic doctrine of Ideas misses the essential criterion for metaphysics. Plato never fully accepted that the tension between the sphere of transcendence and the sphere of “direct experience” is not merely an adjunct of metaphysical inquiry but its defining subject matter (18). Aristotle understood this, and understood also that metaphysics has always a “twofold aim”; for, even as Aristotelian metaphysics criticizes Plato's attempt to define essence in opposition to the world of the senses, it tries to “extract an essential being from the sensible, empirical world, and thereby to save it.” True metaphysics, Adorno claims, is an effort to go beyond thought in the very act of defining the boundaries of thought. In his words, it is “the exertion of thought to save what at the same time it destroys” (20).

scholarly journals The Transcendental Foundations of Science

Phainomenon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-22
Author(s):  
Jairo José da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Empirical World ◽  
The World ◽  
Logical Nature ◽  
The Senses

Abstract It is a philosophical naiveté to believe that the object of science is some ready-made world out there that the scientist, free of any preconceptions, simply stumbles upon. Of course, there is a world out there, given to us through the senses, but that must be intentionally elaborated to become a world for us and a possible object of scientific inquiry. The intentional constitution of the world of science supports and “justifies” a priori conceptions about the empirical world, even those of a logical nature, that are, then, properly transcendental rather than metaphysical. My goal here is to investigate what these presuppositions are and on what they are based.

Platón, Einstein y el triunfo de la imaginatividad cosmológica

1998 ◽  
pp. 87-98
Author(s):  
T. M. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Striking Similarity ◽  
Empirical World ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Cosmology ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Physical Objects ◽  
Changing World

This article argues the following five claims: 1. Plato’s description of the origins of cosmos in the Timaeus is not a myth, nor something unlikely: when he called it an eikos mythos or eikos logos, he meant a likely or trustworthy account on this very subject. 2. Among the details in this account, the following are prominent and surprising: a) the world was fashioned in time, in that precise point that was the beginning of time; b) several kinds of duration can be distinguished in cosmology (mainly eternity, sempiternity, perpetuity and time); and c) space is an entity characterized by movement and tension. 3. In the Statesman, Plato repeats much the same thing, adding this time the strange notion that the universe’s circular movement is periodically reversed. 4. In spite of the important differences in detail, there is a striking similarity between Plato’s account of the origins of the world and the explanation adopted by much of modern cosmology. 5. What Plato shares with so many instances of recent thought is here termed “cosmological imaginativity”. A first section of the paper deals exclusively with the Timaeus. Claims 1 and 2a are supported by a revision of the meanings of mythos and logos, followed by brief reference and discussion of the argument at Timaeus 27d, leading to the conclusion that Plato affirms that the ever-changing world has indeed had a beginning in time. Claim 2b describes five different types of duration, corresponding to Forms, the Demiurge, Space, the [empirical] world and its contents, physical objects. The second section is concerned with the myth in the Statesman, discussing it as a parallel and describing its peculiar turn to the Timaeus’ cosmology and cosmogony, a complex spheric and dynamic model. After digressing into some important ideas in modern cosmology, touching especially on affinities of some of Einstein’s ideas with of Plato’s own, the paper closes with a discussion of cosmological imaginativity, oriented to recover and recognize fully Plato’s greatness as a cosmologist.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Preyer
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

The study of meaning in language embraces a diverse range of problems and methods. Philosophers think through the relationship between language and the world; linguists document speakers’ knowledge of meaning; psychologists investigate the mechanisms of understanding and production. Up through the early 2000s, these investigations were generally compartmentalized: indeed, researchers often regarded both the subject matter and the methods of other disciplines with skepticism. Since then, however, there has been a sea change in the field, enabling researchers increasingly to synthesize the perspectives of philosophy, linguistics, and psychology and to energize all the fields with rich new intellectual perspectives that facilitate meaningful interchange. One illustration of the trend is the publication of Lepore and Stone’s ...

Dibdin and Jane Austen

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Pritchard-Pink
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Musical Education ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
Female Performance ◽  
The World ◽  
Music Collection ◽  
Conduct Book

Jane Austen was one of Dibdin’s greatest admirers and his songs feature prominently in her music collection. Yet the Dibdin songs she owned, with their bawdy comedy, political and social satire, and martial, masculine themes, were far removed from the musical diet prescribed for young ladies of Austen’s rank by conduct writers. Indeed, they were quite different from those advocated by Dibdin himself in his tract on the musical education of young girls, the Musical Mentor (1808), which suggested songs on ‘Constancy’, ‘A Portrait of Innocence’, or ‘Vanity Reproved’ as more suitable subject matter. By highlighting the contrasts between contemporary expectations of female performance and the contents of Austen’s collection, this interlude presents domestic musical performance less as an instrument of control and more as a means by which women could express themselves and participate in the world beyond the bounds of home, family, and conduct-book femininity.

scholarly journals Myth in the Context of African Traditional Histories: Can it be Called “Applied History”?

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 485-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.A. Shokpeka
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Inanimate Object ◽  
Cultural Artifacts ◽  
Comprehensive Examination ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Final Answer

For the reconstruction of history from oral sources, four broad types are usually distinguishable. These are myth, legend, songs, and what Phillips Stevens calls “popular history.” All of them fall under the generic heading of “folklore”—a term which is so broad in its application that it could include nearly all expressive aspects of culture. The only type that we will concern ourselves with in this study is myth. A comprehensive examination of the issue in question in the study requires a definition of the word myth; an examination of the characteristics of “applied history;” and the application of these characteristics to myth with a view to finding out any point of agreement between them, before a final answer will be given to the question whether “myth in the context of African traditional histories,” can be called applied history.The Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English defines myth as a “story handed down from olden time, containing the early beliefs of a race.” Vansina identifies myths by their subject matter and talks about them as those stories which “deal with and interpret the relations between the natural and the supernatural and are concerned with all that part of religious life that lies beyond the moral order. “ He says that they “attempt to explain the world, the culture, the society … in terms of religious causes.” McCall, for his part, refers to myths as “stories concerning the supernatural, the activities of deities, spirits and semi-divine heroes on the origin of the world, mankind and cultural artifacts and institutions which usually are said to have been achieved through the instrumentality of these sacred beings.” Afigbo, in turn, considers myths as having the “tendency to explain historical institutions and development by appeal to non-historic factors and forces”—as stories that see “the supernatural acting at times through the agency of man, at times through the agency of the lower animals and other times even through the agency of inanimate object, as the original and continuing causes of motion in a society.”

Non-Taster: A Photo Essay About a Loss of Taste and Breakfast

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-153
Author(s):  
Burong Zeng
Keyword(s):  
Food Packaging ◽  
The World ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Immigrant Experience ◽  
Scanned Images ◽  
Photo Essay

Non-taster is a photo essay exploring the elusive connections between the change of taste and the immigrant experience based on my story of losing taste at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. The world, which used to be dirty, viscous, and alive has rapidly become hygienic, distanced, and virtual. I documented the packaging and food sauce for breakfast via a series of scanned images and photographs during the second and third lockdown in London. The photos of spicy sauce and food packaging reveal the desire to reconnect with the senses. Alongside apathy, nostalgia, and homesickness, Non-taster laments the changes of the senses and desires in the post-pandemic period.

Prayer as the “Lifeline of Theology”

2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-283
Author(s):  
Marilyn McCord Adams
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Partnership Models ◽  
Human Family

The thesis of this essay is that—before writing—theologians should get to know their subject matter. Prayer is the lifeline of theology, because God is the subject matter of theology and prayer is our way of being in the world with God. Developing this idea first with human family and partnership models brings out how multifaceted prayer is, and how it is a way of being in the world not only for individuals but for Christian communities. Applying these observations to the task of theology, the essay attempts to clarify the thesis by answering the charge that it makes theology perniciously subjective.

Global Distributive Justice

2018 ◽  
pp. 102-117
Author(s):  
Simon Caney
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Global Distributive Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

This chapter explores the relevance of facts and empirical enquiry for the normative project of enquiring what principles of distributive justice, if any, apply at the global level. Is empirical research needed for this kind of enquiry? And if so, how? Claims about global distributive justice often rest on factual assumptions. Seven different ways in which facts about national, regional and global politics (and hence empirical research into global politics) might inform accounts of global distributive justice are examined. A deep understanding of the nature of global politics and the world economy (and thus empirical research on it) is needed: to grasp the implications of principles of global distributive justice; to evaluate such principles for their attainability and political feasibility; to assess their desirability; and, first, to conceptualize the subject-matter of global distributive justice and to formulate the questions that accounts of global distributive justice need to answer.

Sex Differences in Children's Art

1982 ◽  
Vol 164 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen McNiff
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
School Adjustment ◽  
Children's Art ◽  
Artistic Activity ◽  
Psychological Differences ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Trends Over Time ◽  
The Subject

This paper examines the similarities and differences in the art of boys and girls aged six, seven, and eight. It is primarily concerned with the ways in which the subject matter of the children's art reflects sex differences in interests, introspective thought, and symbolic organization of the world. The methodology, based on the spontaneous art experience, seeks to establish that artistic activity is a viable medium through which information on the non-discursive aspects of children's thought can be obtained. Over 1800 drawings, done by 26 children, were collected. The content of the drawings was examined for its range of subject matter and for thematic trends over time. It was found that girls and boys consistently portray very different subjects. The children's art did not present stereotypic images of sex roles nor could the contrasts be specifically attributed to genetic, social, or psychological differences between the sexes, although there was some correlation with the research findings in those areas. It was concluded that girls and boys have very different expressive interests and needs which are not fully incorporated into their educational environment and which affect all areas of school adjustment.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document