Perfectionism

Philosophy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Wall
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
Human Good ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

The term perfectionism in philosophy, unlike its more common usage in popular psychology, denotes a range of theoretical positions. There are perfectionist accounts of ethics, perfectionist accounts of well-being, and perfectionist accounts of politics. These positions are often mutually supportive, but one can accept some of them while rejecting others. Perfectionist views purport to be objective in that they characterize states of affairs, character traits, activities, and/or relationships as good in themselves and not good in virtue of the fact that they are desired or enjoyed by human beings. In the history of philosophy, perfectionism has a long and impressive pedigree. It is often associated with ethical theories that characterize the human good in terms of the development and exercise of capacities that are taken to be central to human nature. Aristotle is the foundational figure in this tradition, but perfectionist arguments of this kind can be found in writers as diverse as Aquinas, Kant, (arguably) Mill, Marx, Nietzsche, G. E. Moore, and T. H. Green, among others. Perfectionism also has been associated with ethical theories that, while not tying the human good specifically to the development of human nature, accept some alternative objective account of the human good. Typically, such views have a teleological structure, holding that we have duties to promote the good. More recently, perfectionism has been used to refer to political theories that reject the liberal principle of state neutrality and hold that it is permissible for states to favor, actively and intentionally, objectively valuable conceptions of the good over base ones. Perfectionism, in both moral and political philosophy, has often been charged with being anti-egalitarian and hostile to individual liberty. This charge is encouraged and sustained by a selective focus on the elitist ideas of certain influential perfectionist writers, such as Nietzsche. For these writers, what matters is the excellence of the few, not the mediocrity of the many. It is a mistake, however, to identify perfectionism with any specific articulation of it. Contemporary defenses of perfectionism have attempted to show how its central ideas are compatible with, and indeed supportive of, human equality and individual autonomy.

Persons Together

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Jewish Tradition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Market Relations ◽  
The Image Of God

This chapter moves into the political and economic aspects of human nature. Given scarcity and interdependence, what sense has Judaism made of the material well-being necessary for human flourishing? What are Jewish attitudes toward prosperity, market relations, labor, and leisure? What has Judaism had to say about the political dimensions of human nature? If all humans are made in the image of God, what does that original equality imply for political order, authority, and justice? In what kinds of systems can human beings best flourish? It argues that Jewish tradition shows that we act in conformity with our nature when we elevate, improve, and sanctify it. As co-creators of the world with God, we are not just the sport of our biochemistry. We are persons who can select and choose among the traits that comprise our very own natures, cultivating some and weeding out others.

The Chronology of Sudanese Arabic Genealogical Tradition

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 325-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Spaulding
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Old Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Islamic Faith

Modern nationalisms first arose during the later eighteenth century around the wide periphery of the ancient heartland of western culture and gnawed their way inward during the course of the nineteenth century to the core, culminating in World War I, Each new nationalism generated an original “imagined community” of human beings, part of whose ideological cohesion derived from a sense of shared historical experience. Since the actual historical record would not necessarily satisfy this hunger, it was often found expedient to amend the past through acts of imagination aptly termed the “invention of tradition.”One of the many new “imagined communities” of the long nineteenth century took shape in the northern Nile-valley Sudan between the final disintegration of the old kingdom of Sinnar (irredeemable after the death of the strongman Muhammad Abu Likaylik in 1775) and the publication of Harold MacMichael's A History of the Arabs in the Sudan in 1922. The new national community born of the collapse of Sinnar, strongly committed to Arabic speech and Islamic faith, was tested by fire through foreign conquest and revolution, by profound socio-economic transformation, and by the challenges attendant on participation in an extended sub-imperialism that earned it hegemony—first cultural, and ultimately political—over all the diverse peoples of the modern Sudan.One important response of the nascent community to the trials of this difficult age was the invention of a new national historical tradition, according to which its members were descended via comparatively recent immigrants to the Sudan from eminent Arabs of Islamic antiquity.

Legalism and Humankind

1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Frank I. Michelman
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Human Good ◽  
Good For ◽  
Normative Argument

Prescriptive political and moral theories contain ideas about what human beings are like and about what, correspondingly, is good for them. Conceptions of human “nature” and corresponding human good enter into normative argument by way of support and justification. Of course, it is logically open for the ratiocinative traffic to run the other way. Strongly held convictions about the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, of certain social institutions or practices may help condition and shape one's responses to one or another set of propositions about what people are like and what, in consequence, they have reason to value.

Waste

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eiko Maruko Siniawer
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Mass Consumption ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Central Forces

Affluence of the Heart explores the many and various ways in which waste—be it of time, stuff, money, possessions, and resources—was thought about in Japan from the immediate aftermath of devastating war to the early twenty-first century.It shows how questions about waste were deeply embedded in the decisions of the everyday and shaped by the central forces of postwar Japanese life from economic growth and mass consumption to material abundance and environmentalism.What endured from the late 1950s onward was a defining element of Japan’s postwar experience: the tension between the desire to achieve and defend the privileges of middle-class lifestyles made possible by affluence, and the discomfort and dissatisfaction with the logics, costs, and consequences of that very prosperity. This tension complicated the persistent search in these decades for what might be called well-being, happiness, or a good life. Affluence of the Heart is a history of how people lived—how they made sense of, gave meaning to, and found value in the acts of the everyday.

4. Religion

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-103
Author(s):  
James A. Harris
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

‘Religion' discusses Hume’s various treatments of religion, particularly in the essay ‘Of Miracles’, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, and ‘The Natural History of Religion’. Hume's earlier writings show some interesting implications for religion, including A Treatise of Human Nature and the essay ‘Of National Characters’. Looking at ‘Of Miracles’ shows that Hume’s theme was not the possibility of miracles as such, but rather the rational grounds of belief in reports of miracles. Considering the Dialogues emphasizes the distinction between scepticism and atheism. Meanwhile, ‘Natural History’ emphasizes Hume’s interest in the dangerous moral consequences of monotheism. What is the future for religion? Perhaps Hume was unlikely to have supposed that his writings would do anything to reduce religion’s hold on the vast majority of human beings.

scholarly journals The Traditional Understanding of Grief Among Ameru in Kenya

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Mukiri Mukaria ◽  
Andrew Ratanya Mukaria
Keyword(s):  
Culturally Relevant ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Life After Death ◽  
Grief And Bereavement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
Traditional Understanding

The main objective of this article is to explore the Ameru indigenous ways of overcoming death and grief. Death and grief have always been the most challenging thing throughout the history of human beings, and even within contemporary society. The Ameru culture provided room, space and meaning of death and life after death to both the dead and to the living. The culture was an integral part of Ameru, especially on matters of death and grief. The culture provided values found to be helpful to the well-being of the Ameru people, in a holistic way especially in the period of grief and bereavement. The article explores these meaning and how they can be relevant to the contemporary society, which ethos are guided by the Church. Today, the church plays the central role in overcoming grief and bereavement. In meaning making, there is a need for contextualization. Contextualization is an attempt to present the gospel in culturally relevant ways. For this reason, this article tries to explore some of the Ameru ways of overcoming grief and how this can be relevant to the contemporary Church diakonia work and counseling of grief.

scholarly journals Self-Transcendence as a Buffer Against COVID-19 Suffering: The Development and Validation of the Self-Transcendence Measure-B

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul T. P. Wong ◽  
Gökmen Arslan ◽  
Victoria L. Bowers ◽  
Edward J. Peacock ◽  
Oscar Nils Erik Kjell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
True Self ◽  
Transcendence Measure ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Transcendence ◽  
Development And Validation

The age of COVID-19 calls for a different approach toward global well-being and flourishing through the transcendence suffering as advocated by existential positive psychology. In the present study, we primarily explained what self-transcendence is and why it represents the most promising path for human beings to flourish through the transformation of suffering in a difficult and uncertain world. After reviewing the literature on self-transcendence experiences, we concluded that the model of self-transcendence presented by Frankl is able to integrate both of the characteristics associated with self-transcendence. Afterward, we discussed how the self-transcendence paradigm proposed by Wong, an extension of the model by Frankl, may help awaken our innate capacity for connections with the true self, with others, and with God or something larger than oneself. We presented self-transcendence as a less-traveled but more promising route to achieve personal growth and mental health in troubled times. Finally, we presented the history of the development and psychometrics of the Self-Transcendence Measure-Brief (STM-B) and reported the empirical evidence that self-transcendence served as a buffer against COVID-19 suffering. The presented data in the current study suggested that the best way to overcome pandemic suffering and mental health crises is to cultivate self-transcendence.

scholarly journals Reconstructing the Economy: A Methodological Journey from the Surface to the Essence and Back

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 483-493
Author(s):  
Peter Karl Fleissner
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
New Science ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Protection Mechanisms ◽  
Abstract Level ◽  
The Many ◽  
Copy Protection

The essential methodology in social science to “understand” phenomena is informed abstraction. But the way - how and what for the abstraction process is shaped - divides the economists into various schools. While mainstream econ- omists abstract from any links of the economy to human beings - replacing them by selfish machines maximizing their prof- its or individual utilities, and neglecting any deeper analysis of the basic constructions they use (like prices or money), heterodox economists try to look behind the surface, link them to certain periods of history and to the source of all value: humans are social beings and cannot exist without mutuality. The paper presents a heterodox way to reconstruct contempo- rary capitalist economies by applying the new science of information with its evolutionary concepts. It starts the description on a very abstract level: useful things and services produced by specialized labor. Step by step new layers of economic activities and related information are added and become the basis for the next one. Vice versa economic activities on lower layers become controlled and modified by higher layers. One can see that the higher controlling principles in contemporary capitalist economies do not assist the economic, social, and cultural well-being of the majority of people, but function ac- cording to the self-interest of a minority. For the first time in history capitalism has developed new technologies that in prin- ciple could allow for the participation of the many, to create abundance of information, and to offer tools for building a de- mocratic and sustainable society. But by the same capitalism, rigid Intellectual Property Rights and severe copy protection mechanisms enforce artificial shortage of information goods.

Feeding a Thousand Souls

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vijaya Nagarajan
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
Rice Flour ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Sanskrit Literature ◽  
Tamil Literature ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Picture Languages ◽  
The Many

Drawing on extensive fieldwork, this book investigates aesthetic, symbolic, metaphorical, literary, mathematical, and philosophical meanings of the kōlam, the popular Tamil women’s daily ephemeral practice, a ritual art tradition performed with rice flour on the thresholds of houses in southern India. They range from concepts such as auspiciousness, inauspiciousness, ritual purity, and ritual pollution. Several divinities, too, play a significant role: Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, good luck, well-being, and a quickening energy; Mūdevi, the goddess of poverty, bad luck, illness, and laziness; Bhūdevi, the goddess of the soils, the earth, and the fields; and the god Ganesh, the remover of obstacles. Braiding art history, aesthetics, and design, this book analyzes the presence of the kōlam in medieval Tamil literature, focusing on the saint-poet Āṇṭāḷ. The author shows that the kōlam embodies mathematical principles such as symmetry, fractals, array grammars, picture languages, and infinity. Three types of kōlam competitions are described. The kinship between Bhūdevi and the kōlam is discussed as the author delves into the topics of “embedded ecologies” and “intermittent sacrality.” The author explores the history of the phrase “feeding a thousand souls,” tracing it back to ancient Sanskrit literature, where it was connected to Indian notions of hospitality, karma, and strangers. Its relationship to the theory of karma is represented by its connection to the five ancient sacrifices. This ritual is distinguished as one of the many “rituals of generosity” in Tamil Nadu.

“Non potest non peccare”: Karl Barth on original sin and the bondage of the will

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-207
Author(s):  
Shao Kai Tseng
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Historical Condition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will

Summary This article offers an exposition of Karl Barth’s actualistic reorientation of the Augustinian notions of original sin and the bondage of the will in § 60 and § 65 of Church Dogmatics IV/1–2. Barth redefines human nature as a total determination of the human being (Sein/Dasein) “from above” by the covenantal history of reconciliation. Human nature as such remains totally intact in the historical state of sin. The human being, however, is also determined “from below” by the Adamic world-history of total corruption. With this dialectical construal of sin and human nature, Barth redefines original sin as the radically sinful activities and decisions that determine the confinement of human beings to the historical condition of fallenness. Barth also challenges the famous Augustinian account of the bondage of the will to which original sin gives rise, and uses the present active indicative to express his actualistic reorientation of the Augustinian notion of the bondage: “non potest non peccare”.

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