Scholastic Philosophers on the Role of the Body in Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Nájera
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Body ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Systematic Treatment ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Latin West ◽  
The One

There was no systematic treatment of philosophical issues related to embodiment in the medieval period in the Latin West. But a number of theological and philosophical problems related to the nature of the knowledge of embodied and disembodied human souls and angels forced philosophies such as Scholasticism and thinkers such as Ockham, Suárez, and above all Thomas Aquinas to engage with what it was for a being to have or to assume a body. The one thing that characterized embodied entities when it came to cognition was their having to get that knowledge by themselves through or in conjunction with the corporeal senses. There was no denying that embodiment was the natural state of human beings, and therefore that this was as good as it could get in God’s creation. Still the body was seen as a sort of encumbrance to arriving at a purer kind of intellectual activity.

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.

scholarly journals On metaphorical designation of humans, animals, plants and things in Serbian and English language

2004 ◽  
pp. 147-176
Author(s):  
Stanimir Rakic
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
The Body ◽  
Symbolic Meaning ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Compound Nouns ◽  
Derivatives Of

In this paper I examine compound names of plants, animals, human beings and other things in which at least one nominal component designates a part of the body or clothes, or some basic elements of houshold in Serbian and English. The object of my analysis are complex derivatives of the type (adjective noun) + suffix in Serbian and componds of the type noun's + noun, noun + noun and adjective + noun in English. I try to show that there is a difference in metaphorical designation of human beings and other living creatures and things by such compound nouns. My thesis is that the metathorical designation of human beings by such compounds is based on the symbolic meaning of some words and expressions while the designation of other things and beings relies on noticed similarity. In Serbian language such designation is provided by comples derivatives praznoglavac 'empty-headed person', tupoglavac 'dullard' debolokoiac 'callos person', golobradac 'young, inexperienced person' zutokljunac 'tledling' (fig), in English chicken liver, beetle brain birdbrain, bonehead, butterfingers, bigwig, blackleg, blue blood bluestocking, eat's paw, deadhead,fat-guts,fathead, goldbrick (kol) hardhat, hardhead, greenhorn, redcoat (ist), redneck (sl), thickhead, etc. Polisemous compounds like eat's paw lend support for this thesis because their designation of human beings is based on symbolic meaning of some words or expressions. I hypothesize that the direction and extend of the possible metaphorization of names may be accounted for by the following hierarchy (11) people - animals - plants - meterial things. Such hierarchy is well supported by the observations of Lakoff (1987) and Taylor (1995) about the role of human body in early experience and perception ofthe reality. Different restrictions which may be imposed in the hierarchy (11) should be the matter of further study, some of which have been noted on this paper. The compounds of this type denoting people have metaphorically meaning conected with some pejorative uses. These compounds refer to some psychological or characteral features, and show that for the classification of people such features are much more important than physical properties. While the animals and plants are classified according to some charecteristics of their body parts, people are usually classified according to psychollogical characteristics or their social functions. I have also noted a difference in structure between compounds designation animals and those designating plants and other things. The designation of animals relies more on metonymy, and that of plants and other things on metaphor based on comparision of noticed similarities. In the compounds designating animals, the nominal component relatively seldom refers to the parts of plants or other things. I guess that the cause may be the fact that the anatomy of plants is very different from the anatomy of animals. As a consequence the structure adjective + noun is much more characteristic of the compounds designating animals in English than the structure noun's + noun, and the same holds, although in a lesser degree for the compounds designating humans. It is also noticeable that in English compounds whose second component a part of body or clothes the first component rarely designates animals. On the other hand the compounds (9), in which the nominal head refers to some superordinate species, the first component often designates animal species, but usually of a very different kind. These data seem to lend support for Goldvarg & Gluksberg's thesis (1998) that metaforical interpretation is favoured if the nominal constituents denote quite different entities.

The Enduring Interim

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Saint Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter discusses the basic economic life in the Middle Ages, noting the absence of trade or a market during the period. It first considers the legacy of the Romans with respect to economic and political life, including their commitment to the sanctity of private property and Christianity. In particular, it describes Christian attitudes toward wealth and the link between morality and the market. It also examines the ideas of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Nicole Oresme before turning to the role of markets in the Middle Ages, along with their special characteristics. Finally, it looks at other aspects of economic life during the medieval period, such as the intrusion of ethics on economics—the fairness or justice of the relationship between master and slave, lord and serf, landlord and sharecropper.

Richard Knapwell

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.V. Dougherty
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Substantial Form ◽  
Robert Kilwardby

The English Dominican friar and theologian Richard Knapwell (Clapwell) (fl. 1284–1286) is best known as an early defender of Thomas Aquinas. He was the first to respond to William de la Mare’s Correctorium fratris Thomae (Correction of Brother Thomas), a Franciscan attack consisting of 117 articles identifying purported errors drawn from several of Aquinas’s major writings. Knapwell’s detailed riposte, composed in the early 1280s, was the earliest and most extensive of a series of polemical Correctoria corruptorii fratris Thomae (Corrections of the Corruptor of Brother Thomas) that would appear, and Knapwell’s contribution is known as the Correctorium “Quare.” Knapwell’s commitment to Aquinas’s writings, however, was not fully evident in his earlier work, as Knapwell had lectured on the Sententiae of Peter Lombard at Oxford sometime between 1269 and 1277, and his surviving notes or Notabilia exhibit an admixture of views taken from Aquinas and Augustine. After writing the Correctorium “Quare,” Knapwell incepted as a master in theology at Oxford in 1284–1285, and not long afterward he produced the De unitate formae (On the unity of form), a disputed question that brought about his condemnation. In that work, Knapwell asserted the theological neutrality of the Aristotelian metaphysical thesis that there is a single substantial form in human beings. The unity of form thesis was opposed by those who posited a plurality of forms, believing that the unity of form thesis was incompatible with a host of theological issues such as whether Christ’s body in the tomb was numerically identical with the body of the living Christ. In October 1284 the Franciscan archbishop of Canterbury John Pecham had renewed the prohibitions of 1277 concerning the unity of form thesis previously set by his Dominican predecessor, Robert Kilwardby. On the basis of Knapwell’s defense of the unity of form in De unitate formae, Pecham excommunicated Knapwell in April 1286. Knapwell traveled to Rome to argue his case before the pope, but the newly elected Franciscan pontiff Nicholas IV responded by silencing him in 1288. Nothing definite is known about his later activities. The extant works of Knapwell (beyond the abovementioned Notabilia, Correctorium “Quare,” and De unitate formae) include six additional disputed questions that pertain mostly to issues of human and divine cognition, and one short Quodlibet of twenty-nine questions on a variety of topics.

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.

A mathematical model for the evolution of solute concentrations in a hemodialysis filter

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (01) ◽  
pp. 1850015
Author(s):  
A. Fasano ◽  
G. Guarnieri ◽  
A. Farina
Keyword(s):  
Characteristic Time ◽  
Numerical Solutions ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
The Body ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Transport Mechanisms ◽  
Constant Input ◽  
Waste Products ◽  
The One

We consider the process of hemodialysis performed by means of a hollow fiber dialyzer with a special focus on the dynamics of the light solutes (including metabolic waste products) through the porous fibers membrane. The model we illustrate here completes the one formulated in a previous paper in which solutes concentrations in the dialyzate were neglected. Exploiting the large difference between the characteristic time of the processes in the machine and the relaxation time to equilibrium in the body, we confine our study to the case of constant input data in order to emphasize the role of the solute transport mechanisms. Numerical solutions show that diffusion is dominant at the early stage of filtration.

The Sunsum of Onyame: Akan Perspectives on an Ecological Pneumatology

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Owusu Agyarko
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Natural State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Dynamic Equivalent ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One

Abstract The Akan notion of sunsum may form the basis for an ecological pneumatology. Sunsum may be understood as the central, unifying vitality which integrates various elements in Akan thought. Amongst the Akan, God has Sunsum and anything which exists in its natural state has sunsum, a spark from God. The concept of sunsum expresses how the “one” (Onyame) and the “many” (nature including human beings) are related. It is the dynamic equivalent of the Holy Spirit in the Akan Twi Bible. Sunsum is energy, life, communicating itself and transcending itself. It is absolute spirit, who enlivens the whole universe. The Akan concept of sunsum suggests the possibility of a union of the concrete with the universal. The concept of sunsum may therefore enable one to speak of the Holy Spirit and its relation both to God and to nature. This proposal may also enable one to understand the Holy Spirit as cosmic in nature and as divine in being. This contribution offers theological reflection on the implications of the notion of sunsum for ecotheology.

scholarly journals Modernitetens modsigelser. Konfigurationskonflikter og samfundstænkning i Grundtvigs »Om Mennesket i Verden«

1998 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
Henning Eichberg
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

Contradictions of Modernity. Conflicting Configurations and Societal Thinking in Grundtvig's »The Human Being in the World«A Worm - a God. About the Human Being in the World. Ove Korsgaard (ed.). With contributions of Niels Buur Hansen, Hans Hauge, Bosse Bergstedt, Uffe Jonas and Knud Bjarne Gjesing. Odense Universitetsforlag 1997.By Henning EichbergIn 1817, Grundtvig wrote »Om Mennesket i Verden« which can be regarded as a key to the understanding of his philosophy and psychology, but which is difficult to place in relation to his later folkelig, societal engagement. A recent reedition of this text together with some actual comments by Grundtvig researchers is an occasion to quest deeper about this relation.However, it is not enough to ask - as Grundtvig research has done for a long time - what Grundtvig wanted to say, but his text can be regarded as a document of how modem orientation in the world is characterized by conflicting linguistic and metaphorical patterns, which sometimes may tell another story than intended.On the one hand, Grundtvig's text speaks of a lot of dualistic contradictions such as life vs. death, light vs. darkness, truth vs. lie, God vs. devil, human fall vs. resurrection, body vs. spirit, nature vs. history and time vs. eternity. In contrast to the author's intention to produce clarity and lucidity - whether in the spirit of Christianity or of modem rationality - the binary constructions give rather a confusing picture of systematical disorder where polarity and polemics are mixed, antagonism and gradual order, dichotomy and exclusive either-or, paradoxes and dialectical contradictions. On the other hand,Grundtvig tries again and again to build up three-pole imaginations as for instance the threefold human relation to time, space and truth and the three ages of spiritual seeing, feeling and conceptualization resp. of mythology (childhood), theology (youth) and history (adult age). The main history, Grundtvig wants to tell in his text, is built up around the trialectic relation of the human being to the body, to the spirit and to itself, to the living soul.The most difficult to understand in this relation seems to be what Grundtvig calls the spirit, Aanden. Grundtvig describes it as Aandigt Samfund mellem Menneske og Sandhed, »the spiritual community between the human being and the truth«, and this may direct our attention towards samfund, meaning at the same time association, togetherness and society. Aanden is described by threefold effects - will, conscience and faith, all of them describing social relations between human beings resp. their psychological correlate. The same social undertone is true when Grundtvig characterizes three Aande-Livets Spor (»traces of spiritual life«): the word, the history and love. If »the spirit« represents what is larger or »higher« than the single human being and what cannot be touched by his or her hand, then this definition fits exactly to society or the sociality of the human being. Social life - whether understood as culture, social identity or folk (people) - is not only a quantitative sum of human individuals, but represents another quality of natural order. Thus it has its logic that Grundtvig places the human being in between the realms of minerals, plant and animal life on the one hand and the »higher« order on the other, which can be understood as the social existence.In this respect, the societal dimension is not at all absent in his philosophy of 1817. However, it is not enough to state the implicite presence of sociality as such in the earlier Grundtvigian thinking before his folkelig break-through. What was the sociality, more concretely, which Grundtvig experienced during the early modernity? In general, highly dichotomous concepts are dominating the modem discourse as capitalism vs. feudalism, materialism vs. idealism, modernity vs. premodemity, democracy vs. absolutism or revolution vs. restoration; Grundtvig was always difficult to place into these patterns. Again, it might be helpful to try a trialectical approach, transcending the dualism of state and market by civil society as a third field of social action. Indeed, it was civil society with its farmers' anarchist undertones which became the contents of Grundtvig's later folk engagement.

scholarly journals Body, Possibility and Biographical Interpretation

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 64-87
Author(s):  
Anabela Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Visual Interpretation ◽  
Individual Interaction ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
World Perspective

The aim of this article is to demonstrate how body-representations offer an opportunity for its visual interpretation from a biographical point of view, enhancing, on the one hand, the image’s own narrative dynamics, and, on the other, the role of the body as a place of incorporation of experiences, as well as, a vehicle mediating the individual interaction with the world. Perspective founded in the works of the artists Helena Almeida and Jorge Molder, who use self-representation as an expression of these incorporated (lived) experiences, constitutes an important discursive construction and structuring of their narrative identity through visual creation, the artists enable the other with moments of sharing knowledge, creativity and subjectivity, contributing also to the construction of the contemporary, cultural and social imagery.

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