Courage

2020 ◽  
pp. 269-282
Author(s):  
Kimberly K. Garchar
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Active Response ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter attempts to demarcate and specify the virtue of courage. The author begins by providing an explication of what she takes to be aspects of the human condition: relatedness and fallibility. The author then suggests a reconceptualized framework for courage, given the constraints of human nature. She argues that courage works as a foundational virtue, and the practice of courage includes and grounds the practices of other virtues, including care. The author argues that courage has two necessary components: empathetic recognition and active response. A courageous person has practiced and is attuned to the needs of others empathetically, but she also acts to meet those needs. Finally, there is an aspect of justice incorporated in courageous acts; courage often arises to meliorate suffering, which may well be caused by various forms of oppression and require a just response.

On the Harm of Genocide

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Paul Kucharski
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Community Or ◽  
The World ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Individual Human ◽  
The Human Condition

My aim in this essay is to advance the state of scholarly discussion on the harms of genocide. The most obvious harms inflicted by every genocide are readily evident: the physical harm inflicted upon the victims of genocide and the moral harm that the perpetrators of genocide inflict upon themselves. Instead, I will focus on a kind of harm inflicted upon those who are neither victims nor perpetrators, on those who are outside observers, so to speak. My thesis will be that when a whole community or culture is eliminated, or even deeply wounded, the world loses an avenue for insight into the human condition. My argument is as follows. In order to understand human nature, and that which promotes its flourishing, we must certainly study individual human beings. But since human beings as rational and linguistic animals are in part constituted by the communities in which they live, the study of human nature should also involve the study of communities and cultures—both those that are well ordered and those that are not. No one community or culture has expressed all that can be said about the human way of existing and flourishing. And given that the unity and wholeness of human nature can only be glimpsed in a variety of communities and cultures, then part of the harm of genocide consists in the removal of a valuable avenue for human beings to better understand themselves.

scholarly journals La condición humana y el Estado en Hobbes

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Héctor Sierra Salas
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Natural Condition ◽  
State Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Civil State ◽  
Political Work ◽  
The Human Condition

Sobre la condición humana en la teoría del Estado de Hobbes. La necesidad de comprender la condición humana como razón de ser del Estado, se hace evidente a los largo de la obra política de Hobbes. Por eso, cabe notar cómo, paralelamente en los libros Elementos del Derecho Natural y Político, De Civey el Leviatán, el pensador inglés dedica parte de su estudio a la explicación de la naturaleza humana, y a la dramática condición de los hombres que habitan en medio de una situación de guerra permanente, surgida a partir del dominiode las pasiones naturales sobre el comportamiento humano. Así mismo, hace ver que la legitimación del Estado Civil y la justificación de elementos como el Derecho, la Ley, la soberanía, entre otros, surge de la necesidad de garantizarla paz y la seguridad a los hombres, lo cual significa sacarlos de su estado natural.Palabras clave: Hobbes, estado de naturaleza, Estado Civil.AbstractThe Human Condition in Hobbes’ State Theory. The need to understand the human condition as reason of being of the State becomes evident throughout Hobbes’s political work. For this reason, it is important to note how in the books, The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, On the Citizen, and TheLeviathan, the English thinker dedicates part of his study to the explanation of human nature and to the dramatic condition of men who live in an environment of permanent war. This environment arises from the domain of natural passions that make up human behavior. Likewise, it is shown that the legitimacy of the Civil State and the justification of elements, such as rights, Law and sovereignty among others, arise from the need to guarantee peace and safety for humanbeings, which means removing them from their natural state.Key words: Hobbes, natural condition, Civil State.

Leonard Woolf’s Fear and Politics: A Debate at the Zoo: Satirical Heritage as Apocalyptic Prophecy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vara Neverow
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Closing Time ◽  
Genetic Elements ◽  
Zoo Animals ◽  
Leonard Woolf ◽  
Animal Farm ◽  
The Human Condition

Leonard Woolf, in his 24-page satirical pamphlet, Fear and Politics: A Debate at the Zoo, was published in 1925 and was the seventh work in the first series of Hogarth Essays. In the work, Woolf explores the inherent attributes of the human condition from a highly ironic viewpoint, presenting his argument through the discourse of animals. Victoria Glendinning (Leonard Woolf: A Biography) categorizes the work as a “satirical squib” and describes how “the supercivilized zoo animals hold a debate after closing time to discuss Man.” The elephant, all too familiar with human nature, states emphatically that, “Human beings delude themselves that a League of Nations or Protection or armies and navies are going to give them security and civilization in their jungle.” Glendinning not only aligns the heritage of Woolf’s essay with the caustic social critiques of Swift and Kipling but also observes that Fear and Politics “casts a beam ahead toward Orwell’s Animal Farm” (Glendinning 240-41). By situating the essay in the context of its hereditary, genetic elements, Glendinning highlights how Woolf’s work is also passed on to another heir.

The Primordial Affirmations of Literature

Janus Head ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Arthur A. Brown ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The World ◽  
The Human Condition

Stephen Crane’s short story “The Open Boat”—a tale “intended to be after the fact”—affirms Merleau-Ponty’s conclusion that “The perceived world is the always presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value and all existence.” The story dramatizes and reflects on the men’s situation in the world, their inter-subjective experience against the background of non-human nature. In facing the imminent possibility of their own deaths as, for each of them, “the final phenomenon of nature,” the men become “interpreters” of what is primary in the human condition. The line between the world of the reader and the world of the story, like the line between consciousness and being, is less a line than a horizon.

War

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kekes
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Causes Of War ◽  
The Human Condition

AbstractThis article is an explanation of the causes of war. It shows the inadequacy of existing explanations in terms of competition for scarce resources, aggressiveness as a trait inherent in human nature, and struggle for power. It constructs a new explanation that combines the defensible elements of the inadequate explanations and adds to them conflicts between systems of value on which the identity of the warring parties depends as the most important of the causes of war. It concludes that since values are plural and conflicting, conflicts between systems of value are ineliminable. This has the consequence that war is a permanent adversity that is an unavoidable obstacle to the improvement of the human condition.

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