Trajective Locomotion

2021 ◽  
pp. 125-148
Author(s):  
Jordan Schonig
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Forward Movement ◽  
Theoretical Account ◽  
Aesthetic Properties ◽  
The Face ◽  
Formal Properties ◽  
Movement Expression

This chapter examines the perceptual and aesthetic properties of the “follow shot,” a tracking shot that follows a human subject on foot from behind. Analyzing two films that conspicuously explore the follow shot as their core stylistic principle, Alan Clarke’s Elephant (1989) and Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003), this chapter shows how the formal properties of the follow shot—the camera’s forward movement, its denial of the subject’s face, and its sense of being tethered to its subject—are crucial to each film’s meditation on violence and human agency. By visually emphasizing the forward movement of its subjects while denying access to their interiorities (via the face), the follow shot attunes its viewers to its subject’s agency as a sense of pure “towardness” devoid of psychological insight, an effect the chapter calls “trajectivity.” Such a mode of representing subjectivity, the chapter argues, opposes cinematic traditions that rely on a seamless relation between psychological motivation, human expression, and human action. In doing so, the chapter offers a revised film theoretical account of the relation between camera movement, expression, and ethics.

scholarly journals Generational Portrait of Spanish Society in the Face of Climate Change. A Question to Consider for the Green Economy under the Well-Being Approach

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 807
Author(s):  
María-José Foncubierta-Rodríguez ◽  
Rafael Ravina-Ripoll ◽  
José Antonio López-Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Human Action ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Green Economy ◽  
Subjective Well Being ◽  
Spanish Society ◽  
The Face ◽  
Two Phases

Climate change is emerging as an issue of progressive attention, and therefore awareness, in societies. In this work, the problem is addressed from a generational perspective in Spanish society and is carried out from the approaches of awareness, human action, and self-responsibility. All this from the search of the subjective well-being and the citizens’ happiness, as one of the bases of sustainable development initiatives. With data from the European Social Survey R8, from EUROSTAT, we work in two phases: (1) descriptive and inferential on possible associations of the items with the variable Age, and (2) calculation of probabilities between groups through logistic regression. The results confirm a general awareness, but with apparent statistical differences between age groups. In general, the youngest are the most aware, blame human activity most intensely, are the most concerned, and are the most willing to act. And it is the older people who are less aware of all these issues. Based on this finding, and from the approach mentioned above, it is recommended that leaders, both in the macroeconomic and microeconomic sectors, develop initiatives that sensitize and encourage older age groups.

The Critical Test

2020 ◽  
pp. 292-314
Author(s):  
Ben Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Simple Form ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Biographical Sketch ◽  
Critical Test ◽  
Group Life ◽  
Complex Development ◽  
Complex Forms ◽  
Preverbal Infants

Darwin used observations of infants as evidence for his evolutionary hypotheses about human agency, in three ways. First, human actions that appear fully formed at the start of life, like sucking, were deemed reflexes or instinctive fruits of evolution. Second, infant actions show in a clear and simple form the foundations of human agency. Third, when there is no direct way of proving how complex forms of human action evolved, their growth in infancy provides a working model for natural, simple-to-complex development that is analogous to evolution. Two texts exploit these arguments: Expression (1872) and ‘A Biographical Sketch of an Infant’ (1877). The former concentrates on crying and weeping. The latter focuses on some of the distinctively human forms of agency described in Descent. A key omission in the evidence Darwin’s infant observations provide for his theory is a test of infants’ capacity for group-interaction. Evidence from such a test is critical to acceptance of Descent’s thesis that adaptations to group-life ground the most distinctive forms of human behaviour. Only recently have scientists sought this evidence. From these we know that preverbal infants do have a capacity for ‘groupness.’ Darwin’s observations of young children show a robustness and prescience borne out by contemporary research.

Althusser, Louis Pierre (1918–90)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Callinicos
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Everyday Experience ◽  
Louis Althusser ◽  
New Synthesis ◽  
Communist Movement ◽  
The Face ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Radical Movements

Louis Althusser was the most influential philosopher to emerge in the revival of Marxist theory occasioned by the radical movements of the 1960s. His influence is, on the face of it, surprising, since Althusser’s Marx is not the theorist of revolutionary self-emancipation celebrated by the early Lukács. According to Althusser, Marx, along with Freud, was responsible for a ‘decentring’ of the human subject. History is ‘a process without a subject’. Its movement is beyond the comprehension of individual or collective subjects, and can only be grasped by a scientific ‘theoretical practice’ which keeps its distance from everyday experience. This austere version of Marxism nevertheless captured the imagination of many young intellectuals by calling for a ‘return to Marx’, with the implication that his writings had been distorted by the official communist movement. In fact, Althusser later conceded, his was an ‘imaginary Marxism’, a reconstruction of historical materialism reflecting the same philosophical climate that produced the post-structuralist appropriations of Nietzsche and Heidegger by Deleuze, Derrida and Foucault. Most of the philosophical difficulties in which Althusser found himself can be traced back to the impossibility of fusing Marx’s and Nietzsche’s thought into a new synthesis.

Freedom and Culture

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuchen Xiang ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Self ◽  
Chinese Tradition ◽  
Symbolic Forms ◽  
The World ◽  
Book Of Changes ◽  
Philosophy Of Symbolic Forms ◽  
Symbolic Formation

Through a key passage (Xici 2.2) from the Book of Changes, this paper shows that Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms shares similarities with the canonical account of symbolic formation in the Chinese tradition: the genesis of xiang (象), often translated as image or symbol. xiang became identified with the origins of culture/civilisation itself. In both cases, the world is understood as primordially (phenomenologically) meaningful; the expressiveness of the world requires a human subject to consummate it in a symbol, whilst the symbol in turn gives us access to higher orders of meaning. It is the self-conscious creation of the symbol that then allows for the higher forms of culture. For both the Xici and Cassirer, symbols and the symbolic consciousness that comes with it is the pre-condition for the freedom, ethics and the cultivation of agency. As for both the Xici and Cassirer, it is human agency that creates these symbols, it will be argued that the Xici is making a Cassirerian argument about the (ethical) relationship between human agency, symbols and ethics/freedom.

Dall’enciclica “laudato si” all’enciclica “fratelli tutti”. Una prospettiva sulla spiritualità e l’etica sociale

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 155-168
Author(s):  
Peter Schallenberg ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Pope Francis ◽  
Prodigal Son ◽  
Christian Social Ethics ◽  
Law And Ethics ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

From the Encyclical „Laudato si” to the Encyclical „Fratelli tutti”. A Perspective on Spirituality and Social Ethics. The essay begins by showing that it is essential for all Christian thinking - and thus also for a Christian social ethics - to refer to a deeper meaning passively received from God. Starting from this Logos, Christian social ethical thinking tries to convey how to build a civilisation or a society of integral and humane capitalism whose inner building principle is love. This reception of meaning and love in order to be enabled to love takes place practically in liturgiacal worship as the author argues with Romano Guardini; here the absolute love of God is first received and vouchsafed as an unclaimable and yet profoundly vital gift. Liturgy focuses, like a burning glass, the experience of a greater freedom of the human being to do good in the face of a greater love, in the face of absolute love, in the face of God. In this view, liturgy is liberated freedom for the good and for the better, for the beautiful. From there, all human activity not only has a technical-instrumental and efficiency-oriented side, but is deeply ordered towards the realisation of higher values, so that the author can say: Culture grows out of cult. From here, he shows how a culture of law and ethics unfolds from the mere nature of man to faith in a personal God. In this perspective, law and morality are formulations of the primordial sense placed by God in human natural reason - the logos - and serve to shape a world conducive to life and worthy of human beings. This highlights in particular the space of political action, which plays a prominent role especially in Pope Francis’ encyclicals „Laudato si” and „Fratelli tutti”. In these encyclicals, the author primarily criticises a „technocratic paradigm”, in which human action is only reduced to questions of technical possibilities and efficiency, but in which the deeper meaning of human action is obscured. Starting from the parable of the prodigal son and the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is particularly prominent in „Fratelli tutti”, the author then develops the extent to which one must first convert to the incarnate Logos Christ in order to be able to realise the Logos instilled in man and the world, also in political thought and action. This is where the author sees the proprium of Christian social ethics as ethics of institutions and as inclusive capitalism, as also developed in the encyclicals of Pope Francis: The orientation of state, society and economy towards the realisation of higher values, of the Logos placed in the world by God. Keywords: Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti, Romano Guardini, Liturgy and Ethics, Social Ethics, Personalism, Integral Humanism, Critique on technocracy

Where in the world is God? On finding the Divine in Esther

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-191
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Newman
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The Other ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
Divine Agency ◽  
The World ◽  
Insight Into

The word “God” does not appear in the book of Esther. Some argue that this divine absence highlights human action over against Divine providence or sovereignty. I maintain, however, that it is a theological mistake to place divine and human action in separate domains. Divine action is not only the ground that makes human action possible; it is also the compelling spring that draws persons to act faithfully. Aristotle’s account of friendship sheds light on how friends act through one another, enabling each to become and do more than they would have otherwise. Aquinas’s discussion of primary and secondary causality provides compelling insight into how human agency relies upon Divine agency enabling us to move toward our true telos: communion with God. With Esther and Mordecai, one sees shared human agency: both rely upon the other to act. Even more, one sees how their faithfulness derives from their identity as persons in covenant with God, whose saving deeds on behalf of the Jews and the world make their lives possible.

Fatalism, Indian

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian F. Woods
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Literal Meaning ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Cosmic Order ◽  
Ultimate Source ◽  
The Status ◽  
Individual Potential ◽  
Vedic Period

Indian speculation about the vicissitudes of human life has a long and complex history. Life in the early Vedic period was considered to be largely hostage to the ‘fate’ of natural and psychic forces controlled by various gods (devas). Fate was what proceeded ‘from the gods’ (daiva), who were considered to be the guardians of the cosmic order and the ultimate source of prosperity. Sacrifice and prayer were the principal means to win their favour. Later the idea arose that one’s present lot is due, not to the whim of some god, but to karma, the effect of one’s own actions performed in this or previous lives. On this view, humans do have some scope or ‘freedom’ to change themselves and the environment in which they live. This more individual potential is called puruṣakāra, which, to varying degrees, may modify daiva. The literal meaning of this term is ‘human action’ (from the Sanskrit for ‘man’ and a verbal root meaning ‘to act’). With the increasing popularity of the karma theory, daiva tended to become equated with the effects of past behaviour. Finally, in the context of the spiritual ascent towards a unifying vision of existence, the status of human agency itself became an issue. As long as the seeker remains blinded by false notions of ‘I’, the ego must experience a sense of agency and a modicum of freedom to chart its course of life. However, from the perspective of enlightenment, or mokṣa, all is ‘fate’ in the hands of a personal God or a Supreme Self.

Culture

2020 ◽  
pp. 266-291
Author(s):  
Ben Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Social Darwinism ◽  
Human History ◽  
Group Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
Subordinate Role

The concepts of civilization and culture play a structuring role in Descent’s discussion of human agency. The evolutionary history Darwin described found continuity between animals and proto-humans. Thereafter, human history took on the idealized form of a single stairway rising in stages. Despite his enlightened opposition to slavery, Darwin placed on the stairs’ bottom step ‘the lowest savage,’ pictured in a disturbingly derogatory way. On the top step were certain nineteenth-century Europeans. Descent does not hold the progress of civilization to be inevitable, however. Indeed, Darwin holds natural selection to play a subordinate role in shaping contemporary human agency. While the foundations of human action are laid by our descent from animals, agency is specified—for good or ill—by the social customs and institutions which structure the development and group-life of a given individual: evolution proposes, culture disposes. This formula is fleshed out through Descent’s discussions of language use, moral agency, religious belief, virtue, and aesthetics. Resonances are explored with perspectives on social organization in Social Darwinism, Evolutionary Psychology, and theories of cultural evolution.

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