1. Introduction

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophy Of Nature ◽  
Roman Poet ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Conduct Of Life ◽  
Considerable Impact ◽  
The Universe

The ‘Introduction’ outlines the philosophy of Epicureanism and its founder, Epicurus (341–270 bce), and considers why it was so divisive and controversial. It explains how Epicureanism embodied a comprehensive set of teachings about nature and its living inhabitants, especially human beings. Epicurean prescriptions for the conduct of life and the attitudes to take towards love, friendship, death, and politics, were presented as following from fundamental truths about the constitution of the universe. The Roman poet Lucretius presented the Epicurean philosophy of nature in his first century bce De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), which had a considerable impact on science, anthropology, and moral theory when printed versions began to circulate in the 15th century.

Nature

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bellamy Foster
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Material World ◽  
Complex Word ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
The World ◽  
Raymond Williams

This article is adapted from John Bellamy Foster, "Nature," in Kelly Fritsch, Clare O'Connor, and AK Thompson, ed., Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 279-86, http://akpress.org/keywords-for-radicals.html."Nature," wrote Raymond Williams in Keywords, "is perhaps the most complex word in the language." It is derived from the Latin natura, as exemplified by Lucretius's great didactic poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) from the first century BCE. The word "nature" has three primary, interrelated meanings: (1) the intrinsic properties or essence of things or processes; (2) an inherent force that directs or determines the world; and (3) the material world or universe, the object of our sense perceptions—both in its entirety and variously understood as including or excluding God, spirit, mind, human beings, society, history, culture, etc.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Margaret Cavendish

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cunning
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
First Century ◽  
Margaret Cavendish ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Universe

Margaret Cavendish, a seventeenth-century philosopher, scientist, poet, playwright, and novelist, went to battle with the great thinkers of her time, and in many cases arguably got the better of them, but she did not have the platform that she would have had in the twenty-first century. She took a creative and systematic stand on the major questions of philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and political philosophy. She defends a number of theses across her corpus: for example, that human beings and all other members of the created universe are wholly material; that matter is eternal; that the universe is a plenum of contiguous bodies; that matter is generally speaking knowledgeable and perceptive and that non-human creatures like spiders, plants, and cells exhibit wisdom and skill; that motion is never transferred from one body to another, but bodies always move by motions that are internal to them; that sensory perception is not via impressions or stamping; that we can have no ideas of immaterials; and that creatures depend for their properties and features on the behavior of the beings that surround them. Cavendish uses her fictional work to further illustrate these views, and in particular to illustrate the view that creatures depend on their surroundings for their social and political properties. For example, she crafts alternative worlds in which women are not seen as unfit for roles such as philosopher, scientist, and military general, and in which they flourish. This volume of Cavendish’s writings provides a cross-section of her interconnected writings, views, and arguments.

“When you die, you will live”: Dystopia , Posthumanism and Zombies in the Mall Rats Series by Lily Herne

Mousaion ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Margeaux Bernadette Erasmus
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Self Control ◽  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Identity ◽  
Traditional Beliefs ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
The Walking Dead ◽  
The Universe

Zombies have become prominent figures in popular culture in the twenty-first century. Books, movies and series are all fascinated with the walking dead and the possible meanings of the figure. International portrayals of zombies raise concerns about a lack of self-control; by contrast, this paper argues that Lily Herne’s Mall Rats series, which is about a zombie outbreak in South Africa, explores posthumanist associations with the dead. The philosophical approach of posthumanism can be used to question the ideas and conceptualisation of human identity. While humanism places humans at the centre of the universe, both in control of and separate from other living, animal and non-human beings, posthumanism acknowledges that this is only a myth. According to posthuman thought, human subjectivity is created through a connection to animal and non-human beings; it is an assemblage that co-evolves with all living beings on the planet. Thus, posthumanism can be used to study the representations of human identity that have been used to situate the human above other life forms. Herne depicts this posthuman subjectivity through her South African zombies categorised as Rotters and Guardians whose thoughts and emotions are connected with each other, animals and humans. It is this connection to all things that Herne proposes will end any form of discrimination. As it becomes more and more uncomfortable for the reader to side with zombie slayers, the posthumanist objective is realised as traditional beliefs that humans are somehow superior and more conscious than other beings on Earth come into question.

A Rapture of the Nerds? A Comparison between Transhumanist Eschatology and Christian Parousia

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-367
Author(s):  
Roberto Paura
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Point Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Universe

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.

The Property Species

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart J. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Full Account ◽  
Symbolic Thought ◽  
Core Property ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

What is property, and why does our species happen to have it? The Property Species explores how Homo sapiens acquires, perceives, and knows the custom of property, and why it might be relevant for understanding how property works in the twenty-first century. Arguing from some hard-to-dispute facts that neither the natural sciences nor the humanities—nor the social sciences squarely in the middle—are synthesizing a full account of property, this book offers a cross-disciplinary compromise that is sure to be controversial: All human beings and only human beings have property in things, and at its core, property rests on custom, not rights. Such an alternative to conventional thinking contends that the origins of property lie not in food, mates, territory, or land, but in the very human act of creating, with symbolic thought, something new that did not previously exist. Integrating cognitive linguistics with the philosophy of property and a fresh look at property disputes in the common law, this book makes the case that symbolic-thinking humans locate the meaning of property within a thing. The provocative implications are that property—not property rights—is an inherent fundamental principle of economics, and that legal realists and the bundle-of-sticks metaphor are wrong about the facts regarding property. Written by an economist who marvels at the natural history of humankind, the book is essential reading for experts and any reader who has wondered why people claim things as “Mine!,” and what that means for our humanity.

Lucretius and the Language of Nature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barnaby Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Figurative Language ◽  
Linguistic Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Detailed Understanding ◽  
Technical Language ◽  
Depth Reconstruction ◽  
Linguistic Innovation ◽  
Prefixed Words ◽  
Core Features

Lucretius’ Epicurean poem De Rerum Natura (‘On the Nature of Things’), written in the middle of the first century BC, made a fundamental and lasting contribution to the language of Latin philosophy. This book is a study of Lucretius’ linguistic innovation and creativity. Lucretius is depicted as a linguistic trailblazer, extending and augmenting the technical language of Latin in order to describe the Epicurean universe of atoms and void in all its complexity and sublimity. A core thesis of the book is that a detailed understanding of Epicurean linguistic theory will bring with it a greater appreciation of Lucretius’ own language. Accordingly, the book features an in-depth reconstruction of certain core features of Epicurean linguistic theory. Elements of Lucretius’ style that are discussed include his attitudes to and use of figurative language (especially metaphor); his explorations, both explicit and implicit, of Latin etymology; his uses of Greek; and his creative deployment of compounds and prefixed words. His practice is related throughout not only to the underlying Epicurean theory but also to contemporary Roman attitudes to style and language.

Imagining Sound as the Absolute

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Saam Trivedi
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Scientific Ideas ◽  
The Universe

Saam Trivedi ponders the Sangita Ratnakara by the Ayurveda physician Sarangadeva. In this thirteenth-century manuscript, Sarangadeva asserts that Sound, identical to the Absolute, is the only fundamental thing in the universe and that all other things are illusory or, at best, some derivative or other manifestation of Sound. While the twenty-first century, non-monist Trivedi is critical of this claim, he finds much to be fascinated by, and, in his dissection of the main points of the Sangita Ratnakara, he offers the reader an imagining of sonic monism that, while far-removed from the orthodoxy of today’s acoustics and natural sciences, might one day come to be seen as inspiration for the latest scientific ideas concerning sound.

scholarly journals The Discarded Image and the Debunked Tao: Objective Value in C.S. Lewis’ Medieval Model and His Critique of Modernity †

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 597
Author(s):  
Yuxiao Su
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Moral Relativism ◽  
First Century ◽  
Parallel Study ◽  
The Status ◽  
Implicit Belief ◽  
Objective Value ◽  
Medieval Model ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Spiritual Resource

This paper considers C.S. Lewis’ “doctrine of objective value” in two of his major works, The Abolition of Man and The Discarded Image. Lewis uses the Chinese name Tao, albeit with an incomplete understanding of its origins, for the objective worldview. The paper argues that Tao, as an explicit theme of The Abolition of Man, is also a determining undercurrent in The Discarded Image. In the former work, Tao is what Lewis wants to defend and restore against twentieth-century secular ideologies, which Lewis condemns as infected with “the poison of subjectivism”. In the latter work, where Lewis presents one of the best accounts of the European medieval model of the Universe, objective value (the Tao in Lewis’ argument) underlies both how the model has been shaped, and how Lewis, as a medievalist, accounts for and draws upon it as an intellectual and spiritual resource. The purpose of this parallel study is to show that Lewis’ explication of the Tao in The Abolition of Man, which is a “built-in”, implicit belief in The Discarded Image, provides a critique of tendencies towards the subjectivism prevalent in Lewis’ lifetime. These tendencies can be traced into the moral relativism, pluralism and reductionism of the twenty-first century, giving Lewis’ work the status of twentieth-century prophecy.

tenet of ubuntu in South (African) ethics

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vhumani Magezi ◽  
Clement Khlopa
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Care ◽  
South African ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
African Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
African Ethics ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
African Worldview

The notion of ubuntu as a moral theory in the South African and African contexts presents attractive norms of an African worldview that can be articulated and applied to contemporary Christian ethics. The proponents of ubuntu perceive it as an African philosophy based on the maxim, “a person is a person through other persons”, whereby the community prevails over individual considerations. It is not merely an empirical claim that our survival or well-being is causally dependent on others but is in essence capturing a normative account of what we ought to be as human beings. However, ubuntu has shortcomings that make it an impractical notion. Despite its shortcomings, ubuntu has natural ethic potential that enforces and engenders hospitality, neighbourliness, and care for all humanity. This article contributes to further conceptualisation and understanding of the notion of ubuntu and its relationship with hospitality in order to retrieve some principles that can be applied to effective and meaningful pastoral care. The principles drawn from ubuntu are juxtaposed with Christian principles and pastoral care to encourage embodiment of God by pastoral caregivers.

19. The Human Quest to Live in a Cosmos

2020 ◽  
pp. 217-228
Author(s):  
Heather Eaton
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Scales ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
The Universe

This chapter reflects on the enduring quest of human beings to inhabit and understand the universe. Weaving together an account of the exterior (objective) and interior (subjective) facets of the cosmos, Heather Eaton finds the unique qualities of human subjectivity in symbolic consciousness and in the worldviews, narratives, and other systems of symbols through which humans interpret and respond to their surroundings. Along with symbols and narratives, learning about ecology involves attention to systems and interrelationships at multiple scales, from ecosystems to the biosphere.

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