Chapter 3. The body, the universe, society and language

Author(s):  
Kate Burridge
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-367
Author(s):  
Roberto Paura

Transhumanism is one of the main “ideologies of the future” that has emerged in recent decades. Its program for the enhancement of the human species during this century pursues the ultimate goal of immortality, through the creation of human brain emulations. Therefore, transhumanism offers its fol- lowers an explicit eschatology, a vision of the ultimate future of our civilization that in some cases coincides with the ultimate future of the universe, as in Frank Tipler’s Omega Point theory. The essay aims to analyze the points of comparison and opposition between transhumanist and Christian eschatologies, in particular considering the “incarnationist” view of Parousia. After an introduction concern- ing the problems posed by new scientific and cosmological theories to traditional Christian eschatology, causing the debate between “incarnationists” and “escha- tologists,” the article analyzes the transhumanist idea of mind-uploading through the possibility of making emulations of the human brain and perfect simulations of the reality we live in. In the last section the problems raised by these theories are analyzed from the point of Christian theology, in particular the proposal of a transhuman species through the emulation of the body and mind of human beings. The possibility of a transhumanist eschatology in line with the incarnationist view of Parousia is refused.


Author(s):  
Nikita A. Solovyev ◽  

A ternary ontological model in which the living being is a triad of I – form – substrate is described. I is an intangible subject, contemplating the content of consciousness and controlling the material body, which is the unity of the form and the substrate. The contents of consciousness are connected both with the form of the body, which I contemplate in the inner “mental space” in the form of in­formation, and with the substrate, which embodies the forms of the body and is responsible for sensations and intentions. The problem of control of the material body by the non-material self is solved under the assumption that the human brain is a quantum object. The ternary model of a living being is inscribed in an absolute ontology, in which the Absolute also has a threefold structure and is the unstitched unity of the absolute I, the absolute Form and the absolute Sub­strate. The Absolute creates the other world with its threefold energies, which provides the threefold structure of a living being. The created world arises from the timeless world of the potential possibilities of the Universe, which modern cosmology associates with its wave function. Created entities arise in the process of alienation from the Absolute, resulting in free will.


2020 ◽  
pp. 164-188
Author(s):  
Gerard O'Daly

The chapter discusses Augustine’s presentation in Books 11–14 of the origins of the two cities, heavenly and earthly. The focus is on the creation of the universe, the angels and the rebellion of some of them, and Adam, Eve, and the Fall. Specific themes include: Genesis exegesis; the elaboration of the history theme, with good and bad angels as ‘prologues’ to the two historical human cities; good and evil in the universe; angelic rebels and the nature of the will; death and resurrection; Platonist and Christian views on the body; Pauline flesh and spirit; emotions and passions; sexual desire in paradise and since the Fall; love of self and love of God, and the application of this contrast to the two cities.


Author(s):  
Shams C. Inati

The discussion of the human soul, its existence, nature, ultimate objective and eternity, occupies a highly important position in Islamic philosophy and forms its main focus. For the most part Muslim philosophers agreed, as did their Greek predecessors, that the soul consists of non-rational and rational parts. The non-rational part they divided into the plant and animal souls, the rational part into the practical and the theoretical intellects. All believed that the non-rational part is linked essentially to the body, but some considered the rational part as separate from the body by nature and others that all the parts of the soul are by nature material. The philosophers agreed that, while the soul is in the body, its non-rational part is to manage the body, its practical intellect is to manage worldly affairs, including those of the body, and its theoretical intellect is to know the eternal aspects of the universe. They thought that the ultimate end or happiness of the soul depends on its ability to separate itself from the demands of the body and to focus on grasping the eternal aspects of the universe. All believed that the non-rational soul comes into being and unavoidably perishes. Some, like al-Farabi, believed that the rational soul may or may not survive eternally; others, like Ibn Sina, believed that it has no beginning and no end; still others, such as Ibn Rushd, believed that the soul with all its individual parts comes into existence and is eventually destroyed.


Author(s):  
T.S. Rukmani

Hindu thought traces its different conceptions of the self to the earliest extant Vedic sources composed in the Sanskrit language. The words commonly used in Hindu thought and religion for the self are jīva (life), ātman (breath), jīvātman (life-breath), puruṣa (the essence that lies in the body), and kṣetrajña (one who knows the body). Each of these words was the culmination of a process of inquiry with the purpose of discovering the ultimate nature of the self. By the end of the ancient period, the personal self was regarded as something eternal which becomes connected to a body in order to exhaust the good and bad karma it has accumulated in its many lives. This self was supposed to be able to regain its purity by following different spiritual paths by means of which it can escape from the circle of births and deaths forever. There is one more important development in the ancient and classical period. The conception of Brahman as both immanent and transcendent led to Brahman being identified with the personal self. The habit of thought that tried to relate every aspect of the individual with its counterpart in the universe (Ṛg Veda X. 16) had already prepared the background for this identification process. When the ultimate principle in the subjective and objective spheres had arrived at their respective ends in the discovery of the ātman and Brahman, it was easy to equate the two as being the same spiritual ‘energy’ that informs both the outer world and the inner self. This equation had important implications for later philosophical growth. The above conceptions of the self-identity question find expression in the six systems of Hindu thought. These are known as āstikadarśanas or ways of seeing the self without rejecting the authority of the Vedas. Often, one system or the other may not explicitly state their allegiance to the Vedas, but unlike Buddhism or Jainism, they did not openly repudiate Vedic authority. Thus they were āstikadarśanas as opposed to the others who were nāstikadarśanas. The word darśana for philosophy is also significant if one realizes that philosophy does not end with only an intellectual knowing of one’s self-identity but also culminates in realizing it and truly becoming it.


Author(s):  
Ion Marian CROITORU ◽  

Although scientific research is in full bloom regarding, for instance, the environment, the fact of creation cannot be ignored either, even if some scientists deny it, while others ascertain it, albeit from perspectives, however, foreign to the patristic vision specific of the Orthodoxy. Consequently, the limits of cosmology are structured as well by Christian theology, which shows that the study of the world, guided by laws of physics in a limited framework, is carried out inside the creation affected by the consequences of the primordial sin, so that the reality of the world before sin is known only to those who reach spiritual perfection and holiness, therefore, from an eschatological perspective, since they, too, go through the moment of separation of the soul from the body, waiting for the general resurrection. Therefore, a new way of being is affirmed in the Orthodox Church, by the personal experience of each believer, which is a transformation on the personal and cosmic level, according to Jesus Christ’s resurrected body, which means the reality of a new physics, which concerns both the beginning of the universe, but also its new dimension, at the Lord’s Second Coming, when heaven and earth will be renewed by transfiguration. Regarding the existence of the universe, the differences are given by the perceptions of two cosmologies. Thus, the theonomous cosmology highlights man’s purpose on earth, the necessity of moral and spiritual life, and the transfiguration of creation, explaining God’s presence in His creation, but also His work in it, namely the transcendence and the immanence in relation to the creation. The autonomous cosmology engenders the evolutionist theory, which leads to secularism and, consequently, to the gap between the contemporary man’s technological progress, and his spiritual and moral regress. Today, more scientists are turning their attention also to the data of the divine Revelation, the way it makes itself known by its organs, the Holy Scripture and the Holy Tradition, in the one Church, which will mean a deepening of the dialogue between science and theology in favour of the man from everywhere and from the times to come.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 180
Author(s):  
Samir Al-Sheikh ◽  
Ahmed Hasan Mousa

If poetry is the verbal art of beauty, and beauty is truth, then, poetry has its own truth which is universal by nature since the poetic patterns embody a particular vision of the universe. This universal truth is encoded in poetic image. The poet who creatively used the poetic image to express his aesthetic vision is Nizar Kabbani (1923- 1998). The study aims at exploring the development of the notion of beauty as structured in the modern Arab poetic works. It aims at investigating Kabbani’s poetic imagery in its amorous-erotic aspects. The study proceeds with the hypothesis that the modern love poet’s synesthetic imagery is an impressive representation of Kant’s aesthetic axioms as encoded in his Critique of the Aesthetic Judgment. The scope of the inquiry focuses upon the love lyrics and songs of the modern Arabic love poet regardless his political writings. Kabbani’s poetics is investigated in terms of Aesthetic Cultural Approach (ACA), a critical orientation that links the cultural patterns of meaning to the aesthetic structures of the poem. Of the seminal findings of the study is that Kabban’s love poems are pleasurable moments in which the body of the beloved becomes the source of the poet’s ecstasy and joyfulness.


Author(s):  
Khaldia abdelkader benyamina

I have tried through my studies to appreciate the efforts of researchers who dealt with the issue of divorce, summarize the sum of their ideas in it or more remind us of our youth and those concerned with the danger of divorce, which has become a strange phenomenon, and an unusual event razed the body of our Muslim society or nearly, despite the existence of what it organizes and limits In the Holy Quran, which emphasized the moderation and moderation in the management of human affairs and the universe, as the provisions and laws surrounded by the Koran divorce aims to maintain human relations based on housing and affection and mercy, and restrict or narrowing the circle of divorce by specifying the number Shots and staging them, and limit the causes and disobedience B who tamper with it and exceed the limits of God, and follow him by restricting and paid by the provisions of the kit and the expense of mediation mediated by divorce and made them a tool of reconciliation and treatment and review more than the tool of separation and division and destruction, without arbitrariness in the kit prolongation of , And in the expense of the husband's insolvency to spend above the cost itself, as well as that the Holy Quran was an average when equated between the parties to the marriage in the request for divorce, and fought Nchuz which disturbs her life and leads to divorce, preventive steps and stages of reform distancing the sex from The power of masculinity and the language of conflict, and remove women from humiliation and humiliation, and maintain the relationship between parents Children. The centrality of the Quran and the moderation of Islam in dealing with divorce are based on its miraculousness, which does not leave a minor or a large one except that it is counted. He did not prohibit divorce so as not to be extreme, and he did not give him absolute permission so as not to be unjust. He was between the custodian of the conditional marriage And he maintained the sanctity of the human relationship in the event of separation between the spouses. He was merciful to the man and he is marrying him, and he is also merciful to him, and he is authorized to divorce him, and he is merciful and he hates this divorce.    


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