World

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-166
Author(s):  
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei

This chapter begins by examining the existentialist challenge to claims of absolute objective knowledge about the world and their rejection of any god’s-eye view of reality in favor of the world as a source of existential wonder. The situatedness of the subject is shown to be constitutive of the world as existentially described. In this context are presented Heidegger’s notions of being-in-the-world, and the attunement with which the world is accessed by an existential subject. Beauvoir’s notion that we experience the world as a detotalized totality is traced to the phenomenological notion of a world horizon and likened to Nietzsche’s promotion of perspectivism. The threat of nihilism and fragmentation, and the possibility of experiencing the world as inhospitable, alienating, or uncanny are also considered in existentialist terms through Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Camus, while existential wonder in the face of the world is considered in light of Camus and Marcel.

Lumen et Vita ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Nutter

Rather than being of little practical importance, the metaphysical underpinnings of a given horizon determine the character of its existential problematic. With the breakdown of classical metaphysics concomitant with the modern turn to the subjective, the existential problematic of finitude as ultimate horizon arose. According to this subjective turn, the human person can no longer engage the world as though it were in itself constituted by transcendently grounded meaning and value. Standing within this genealogical lineage, Martin Heidegger undertook a phenomenological investigation into the existential constitution of the human person which defines authenticity in terms of finitude. For the early Heidegger, human life is essentially ‘guilty’. This guilt, however, is not the traditional cognizance of one’s sinfulness, but the foundational Nichtigkeit (‘nullity’) of life and its attendant possibilities in the light of the ultimate finality of death. Authenticity, then, consists of a resolute working out of one’s life in the face of such inevitable finality. For the later Heidegger, the finite horizon of a particular epochal disclosure gifts Being to thought and determines it thereby. Authenticity in this case consists of giving oneself over to be appropriated by an event of Being. In contrast, Lonergan understands authenticity as being true to that primordial love which beckons us to intellectual probity and responsibility in working out life’s possibilities. This essay will illustrate how Lonergan’s analysis of the intentional structure of human conscious operations stands as a corrective to Heidegger’s early existential analysis of human being-in-the-world and later thought about Being. While Lonergan defines authenticity as loving openness to transcendent Being, Heidegger, because of his forgetfulness of the subject in her conscious operations, does not allow for a transcendence which stands beyond any finite horizon. 


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Thom Van Dooren

In September 2011, a delicate cargo of 24 Nihoa Millerbirds was carefully loaded by conservationists onto a ship for a three-day voyage to Laysan Island in the remote Northwest Hawaiian Islands. The goal of this effort was to establish a second population of this endangered species, an “insurance population” in the face of the mounting pressures of climate change and potential new biotic arrivals. But the millerbird, or ulūlu in Hawaiian, is just one of the many avian species to become the subject of this kind of “assisted colonisation.” In Hawai'i, and around the world, recent years have seen a broad range of efforts to safeguard species by finding them homes in new places. Thinking through the ulūlu project, this article explores the challenges and possibilities of assisted colonisation in this colonised land. What does it mean to move birds in the context of the long, and ongoing, history of dispossession of the Kānaka Maoli, the Native Hawaiian people? How are distinct but entangled process of colonisation, of unworlding, at work in the lives of both people and birds? Ultimately, this article explores how these diverse colonisations might be understood and told responsibly in an era of escalating loss and extinction.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 113
Author(s):  
Adelino José de Carvalho Dias

O artigo se ocupa da discussão sobre os desafios postos à educação essencialmente popular no Brasil em face dos processos de formação humana definidos pela mundialização do capital no mundo atual. Interessa refletir acerca das dificuldades para a construção de uma educação coletiva e emancipadora diante de projetos educacionais que se amparam na narrativa que responsabilizam o sujeito por seu processo de formação, anunciando ainda que a sua busca por qualificação e preparação para o ingresso e permanência no mundo do trabalho define o aumento de sua “empregabilidade”, constituindo-se como caminho único para alçá-lo a melhores condições de existência.Palavras-chave: Formação humana; Educação popular; Contradição.Abstract: The article deals with the discussion on the challenges posed to essentially popular education in Brazil in the face of the human formation processes defined by the globalization of capital in the current world. It is interesting to reflect on the difficulties for the construction of a collective and emancipatory education in the face of educational projects that are supported by the narrative that hold the subject responsible for their training process, also announcing that their search for qualification and preparation for entering and remaining in the world of work defines the increase of its “employability”, constituting itself as a unique way to raise it to better conditions of existence.Keywords: Human education; Popular education; Contradiction.


2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 84-101
Author(s):  
Nerijus Čepulis

Šiuo straipsniu siekiama permąstyti tradicinę tapatumo sąvoką. Į tapatumą Vakarų mąstymo istorijoje buvo žiūrima visų pirma ontologiniu požiūriu. Moderniųjų laikų posūkis į subjektą susitelkia į Aš kaip bet kokio tapatumo centrą, pagrindą ir gamintoją. Fenomenologinė analizė tapatumo ištakas pagilina iki Aš santykio su išore, su pasauliu, su kitybe. Tačiau kitybė, tapdama sąmonės turiniu, nėra absoliuti kitybė. Būdas, kuriuo tapatumas, įsisavindamas savinasi pasaulį ir naikina kitybę, yra reprezentacija, siekianti akivaizdumo. Reprezentacija kaip intencionalus įžvalgumas bet kokį objektą lokalizuoja sąmonės šviesoje. Šviesa ir regėjimas – tai paradigminės Vakarų mąstymo tradicijos metaforos. Straipsnyje siekiama parodyti, kodėl ir kaip šviesa bei akivaizdumas netoleruoja absoliučios kitybės. Iš akivaizdumo kerų tapatumas atsitokėti gali tik per atsakingą santykį su Kitu, tai yra etiką. Čia tapatus subjektas praranda pirmumo teisę kito asmens imperatyvo atžvilgiu. Begalybės idėja, draskydama totalų tapatumą iš vidaus, neleidžia jam nurimti ir skatina atsižvelgti į transcendenciją, į kitybę, idant ji būtų laisva nuo prievartinio tapimo egocentrinio tapatumo turiniu ir manipuliacijos auka. Atsakomybė kito žmogaus veido akivaizdoje eina pirma akivaizdaus suvokimo ir įteisina jį.Pagrindiniai žodžiai: tapatumas, akivaizdumas, kitybė, socialumas.Charms of Evident IdentityNerijus Čepulis SummaryIn this article I seek to rethink the traditional notion of identity. In the tradition of Western thought identity was viewed first and foremost from an ontological point of view. After the turn toward the subject, the I is thought of as the centre, the base and the producer of any identity. Phenomenological analysis deepens the origin of identity to the relation of the I to the world, i.e. to the alterity. Yet the alterity, by becoming the content of consciousness, is not an absolute alterity. The way, in which identity assimilates, possesses the world and annihilates alterity, is representation. Representation seeks evidence. Representation as intentional perceptivity localizes every object in the light of consciousness. Light and vision are paradigmatic metaphors of the traditional Western thought. Hence in this article I seek to show why and how light and evidence do not tolerate absolute alterity. Identity can be sobered from the charms of evidence only by responsible relation to the Other, i.e. by ethics. Here identical subject loses the right of priority in front of the imperative of the other person. Idea of infinity worries total identity from within. Infinity does not permit identity to quiet down and induces to heed transcendence and alterity. Only in this way alterity can escape the violence to become a content of egocentrical identity and the victim of manipulation. Responsibility in the face of the other person precedes evident perception and legitimates the latter.Keywords: identity, evidence, alterity, sociality.


2021 ◽  
pp. 339-336
Author(s):  
Zeynep Atbaş

"Ottoman sultans showed a great interest in books; on the one hand, they had their palace workshops prepare manuscripts ornamented with unique illustrations and illuminations; on the other hand, they collected books created in other locations of the Islamic world through various means, such as, gifting, looting, and purchasing. The subject of this article involves the artistic manuscripts from the Ilkhanid era that entered the Topkapı Palace Treasury. Most manuscripts in the Topkapı Palace Library consist of copies and sections (juz’) of the Koran. With their illumination and binding, these large-format books designed by the skillful illuminators and bookbinders of the Ilkhanid era are early fourteenth-century masterpieces of Islamic art of the book. Among these are Koran sections prepared for the famous Ilkhanid ruler, Sultan Uljaytu Khodabanda, and the renowned vizier, Rashid al-Din. Some examples were written by the most illustrious Islamic calligraphers, Yaqut al-Musta’simi and Arghun Kamili, illuminated by the famous artist of the era who worked in Baghdad, Muhammad b. Aybak b. Abdallah, and bound by bookbinder Abd al-Rahman. The Ilkhanid era was also a time when fascinating and important manuscripts were prepared in terms of book illustration. Two of the three Mongol-era manuscripts in the Topkapı Palace collection are copies of the Jami’at-Tawarikh—a general history of the world prepared by a commission led by the vizier Rashid al-Din under the order of the Ilkhanid ruler Ghazan Khan— while the third is a copy of the Garshaspnama. In addition, some paintings that appear in one of the palace albums belong to a volume of the Jami’at-Tawarikh on the history of Mongol khans, which has not survived. The significant and unique paintings of the Ilkhanid era are the Miʿrajnama paintings made by Ahmed Musa featured in the album prepared for Bahram Mirza, the brother of the Safavid sultan, Shah Tahmasp. The preface of the album written by Dust Muhammad refers to the famous painter Ahmed Musa, who lived in the era of the Ilkhanid ruler Abu Said, to have “removed the veil from the face of painting and invented the painting that was popular in that era.” In addition, the author states that he illustrated a Miʿrajnama. However, only the eight album pages with miʿraj images have survived this work. Through their bindings, illuminations, calligraphy, and illustrations, Ilkhanid era manuscripts from the Topkapı Palace constitute a vital collection that demonstrates the advanced level reached by the arts of the book during this era. "


1993 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-321
Author(s):  
Robert Gatto

The subject, a source of long standing debate among theoreticians and practitioners in public administration, is revisited in an interesting and challenging way. In the face of a changing decentralized government role in many parts of the world, the author presents a modified classical position that proposes to deal with the impact of this on the public service. Canada and the Canadian public service are attempting to re-establish their roles in this new milieu. The author argues for a new role for public administration by drawing from an historical development of the field and introducing new arguments to support changing needs.


Author(s):  
Michelle Bal ◽  
Kees Van den Bos

In the literature on prejudice and derogatory reactions, two prominent lines of research can be distinguished, one focusing on the expression and endorsement of (mostly) negative stereotypes and prejudice, and one zooming in on how defense of cultural worldviews can lead to derogatory reactions toward those who are different from ourselves. Research on both stereotypes/prejudice and cultural worldviews reveals how personal uncertainty can lead to the occurrence of derogatory reactions. In research on prejudice, the automaticity of stereotyping and prejudice has been the subject of debate. Some scholars argue for the inevitability of stereotyping, as these processes are assumed to be automatic and inevitable. By contrast, other scholars distinguish automatic stereotype activation from more controlled stereotype endorsement. Importantly, stereotype activation may be altered by stereotype-negation training reducing the expression of prejudice. In worldview defense research, it is shown how uncertainty-related motives and other worldview threats are related to the expression of derogatory reactions toward those who fall outside our scope of justice. In contemporary society, people frequently have to deal with feelings of personal uncertainty, especially regarding future-oriented delayed outcomes. To cope with these feelings, people adhere to their cultural worldviews. These belief systems enable people to strive for long-term goals, but also make them more vulnerable to expressing prejudice and other derogatory reactions. A wealth of research shows that when people’s worldviews are threatened, they tend to react more rigidly and negatively toward others, especially toward those who belong to an outgroup. For example, if one believes that the world is inherently just (i.e. in studies looking at “just world beliefs”), interacting with innocent victims of crimes can threaten this worldview. In the face of this conflict, people sometimes respond in derogatory and prejudiced ways toward those victims in order to uphold their belief that the world is a just place where bad things can only happen to bad people. Importantly, alleviating feelings of personal uncertainty (either by affirming personal certainty or by refocusing attention toward other aspects of an unjust situation) can reduce derogatory reactions and instigate benevolent reactions focused on helping those who are less well off.


Author(s):  
Roberto Dante Flores

This is an analysis of the ethico-cultural crisis of modernity and the emergence of the so-called postmodern aesthetic expressions (and conduct), examined principally from the point of view of Frederic Jameson and its coincidence with other authors (D. Lowe, G. Lipovetsky, and P. Virilio). I also investigate the relationship between the new sensitivities of the end of the century and the notion of justice, and its moral. This is seen by the authors as a consequence of the impact that mass-media technologies have produced in individuals leading to a new form of experience: the aesthetization of life and the fragmentation of the subject. The culture of the image is omnipresent, diluting art into aesthetization and the subject into the objectivization of consumption. We can see that there is a loss of historicity in the postmodern individual-originating from the speed of audiovisual information-upon perceiving, on a screen, the world in an instanct, without references to either a past or a future. The new technologies are the product of a new stage of capitalism, even more so than in the modernity of massive consumption. As a consequence of these three factors (aesthetization, ahistoricity, consumption), there has emerged a hedonistic ethos which differentiates itself from its modern vanguardist antecedents in that it is no longer the transgressor of a religious moral, or the secularism of duty, because pleasure is no longer forbidden. This framework, which is lacking in hard principles and is sustained by 'weak and conviction free' individuals is compatible with the liberal ethic of Rawls. In the face of the contradiction of modernity, we shall reconsider, as factors of socio-political construction, the moral values provided by the world's great religions.


Author(s):  
Thomas N. Sherratt ◽  
David M. Wilkinson

Viewed from space by human eyes, the predominant colours of our planet are the blue of the oceans and the white of the clouds. The blue of the oceans forms the subject of another of our chapters. However, if one focuses on the land masses other colours dominate. On land the white colour still features prominently in the polar areas covered with snow and ice, but zoom in on lower latitudes and much of the land is a mix of the green of vegetation and the brown of more arid areas. Green dominates large areas of land, so unless you are reading this in a desert, during the high-latitude winter, or in a highly urban area, then green will probably feature prominently in your surrounding landscape. One answer to the question that heads this chapter is that the climate (often rainfall) allows some parts of the land to be green with plant life, while making other areas arid and brown. However, this green of extensive plant life is still a puzzle—plants are food for a wide range of animals, so why is so much food left unused? Swarms of locusts, destroying most plants in their path (be they biblical plagues or modern day outbreaks), are the exception not the rule. But why is this so? Why are so many parts of our world green in the face of this threat from herbivores? As we will see, if herbivores are the key to our question, then what starts as a question in plant ecology ends up being a question about factors that limit the size of herbivore populations. In effect, we need to understand why herbivore populations do not increase in density to such a level that they destroy all the available plants, giving a land that is brown rather than green. Until the middle of the twentieth century if you had put the green world question to biologists, many of them would probably have suggested that it was not in the interests of a species to consume all of its food reserves.


Author(s):  
Hamid Vahid

The internalism/externalism debate in epistemology is primarily concerned with the conditions or factors by virtue of which beliefs acquire the status of being epistemically justified. Internalism holds that these justification-conferring factors must all be ‘internal’ to the subject’s perspective on the world. However, depending on how the notion of internal is understood, internalism ap-pears in different forms. Access internalism, the most common form of internalism, holds that the justification-conferring factors must be reflectively accessible to the subject, such that he is able to find, with regard to the beliefs he holds, whether they are justified. Internalism captures the pre-theoretic intuition that having justification for a belief is a matter of having good reasons for that belief. It also treats the problem of scepticism seriously and explains why it has its source in internalism. Internalism has, however, faced two important objections: (1) it has been objected that internalism fails to deliver a genuinely truth-conducive conception of justification; and (2) that no available account of the access requirement could provide it with a viable basis to realize its aspirations. In an externalist account of justification, some justification-conferring factors of a belief are per-mitted to fall outside the subject’s ken and beyond the reach of the subject’s reflective access. Externalism can plausibly explain why justified beliefs are likely to be true; but by losing sight of the subject’s perspective, externalism fails to appreciate the force of the sceptical challenge. Ex-ternalists have had a hard time explaining the widely shared intuition that beliefs formed in de-mon world scenarios enjoy as much justification as they do when formed in (phenomenologically identical) normal circumstances. In the face of such challenges, both the internalist and external-ist accounts have made significant compromises, in view of which a pluralistic approach to the question of epistemic justification has become a live option.


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