Writing the Life of the Mind

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-181
Author(s):  
Stephen Mulhall
Keyword(s):  
General Framework ◽  
Life Writing ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Ascetic Ideal ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Mind

This chapter focuses on the relation between philosophy, biography, and autobiography, as a way of tracking how the ascetic ideal informs our thinking about our relation to ourselves, and so about selfhood in general. Certain ascetic ideas about the possibility of self-identity and truthful self-characterization are shown to crop up throughout modern treatments of autobiographical theory and practice, and to generate opposition and criticism. The work of MacIntyre, Sartre, and Heidegger provides a general framework for navigating this part of the territory of life-writing; and the recent autobiographical trilogy by J. M. Coetzee is examined as a site within which ascetic practices of confession are developed, criticized, and then turned against themselves.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Strachan Donnelley
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Direct Experience ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Fly Fishing ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Essential Unity ◽  
The Mind

This book is written with the knowledge that serious cancer will foreshorten the author’s life. It is an expression of a life of exploring ideas and nature. And it is an affirmation of the essential unity of human beings and a natural order that is valuable and good. Following Alfred North Whitehead, this order can be called “nature alive.” The author has been shaped by an impulse to explore the life of the mind and the recognition of his own fundamental ignorance. The writing and contents of the book are shaped by two themes. One, “living waters,” centres on the direct experience with the nonhuman world, particularly fly-fishing, and is a metaphor for the fact that the natural world is fluid and dynamic, not completed and static. The second theme is “magic mountains,” which refers to the influence that important philosophical thinkers have had on the author’s thinking and self-identity. Each chapter in the book is designed to reveal the development of this tradition of questions and ideas and to invite readers to carry that dialogue further in their own lives and minds.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Goldschmidt ◽  
Barbara Graziosi
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
The Body ◽  
Specific Site ◽  
Entire Volume ◽  
The Third ◽  
Religious Significance ◽  
Classical Poetry ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Made In

The Introduction sheds light on the reception of classical poetry by focusing on the materiality of the poets’ bodies and their tombs. It outlines four sets of issues, or commonplaces, that govern the organization of the entire volume. The first concerns the opposition between literature and material culture, the life of the mind vs the apprehensions of the body—which fails to acknowledge that poetry emerges from and is attended to by the mortal body. The second concerns the religious significance of the tomb and its location in a mythical landscape which is shaped, in part, by poetry. The third investigates the literary graveyard as a place where poets’ bodies and poetic corpora are collected. Finally, the alleged ‘tomb of Virgil’ provides a specific site where the major claims made in this volume can be most easily be tested.

scholarly journals Knowing when to talk? Plant genome editing as a site for pre-engagement institutional reflexivity

2021 ◽  
pp. 096366252199979
Author(s):  
Robert D.J. Smith ◽  
Sarah Hartley ◽  
Patrick Middleton ◽  
Tracey Jewitt
Keyword(s):  
Genome Editing ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Plant Genome ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Institutional Dynamics ◽  
Social Studies Of Science ◽  
High Profile ◽  
A Site

Citizen and stakeholder engagement is frequently portrayed as vital for socially accountable science policy but there is a growing understanding of how institutional dynamics shape engagement exercises in ways that prevent them from realising their full potential. Limited attention has been devoted to developing the means to expose institutional features, allow policy-makers to reflect on how they will shape engagement and respond appropriately. Here, therefore, we develop and test a methodological framework to facilitate pre-engagement institutional reflexivity with one of the United Kingdom’s eminent science organisations as it grappled with a new, high-profile and politicised technology, genome editing. We show how this approach allowed policy-makers to reflect on their institutional position and enrich decision-making at a time when they faced pressure to legitimate decisions with engagement. Further descriptions of such pre-engagement institutional reflexivity are needed to better bridge theory and practice in the social studies of science.

scholarly journals The Pauli–Jung Conjecture and Its Relatives: A Formally Augmented Outline

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 527-549
Author(s):  
Harald Atmanspacher
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Verbal Description ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Background Material ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Cross Fertilization

AbstractThe dual-aspect monist conjecture launched by Pauli and Jung in the mid-20th century will be couched in somewhat formal terms to characterize it more concisely than by verbal description alone. After some background material situating the Pauli–Jung conjecture among other conceptual approaches to the mind–matter problem, the main body of this paper outlines its general framework of a basic psychophysically neutral reality with its derivative mental and physical aspects and the nature of the correlations that connect these aspects. Some related approaches are discussed to identify key similarities to and deviations from the Pauli–Jung framework that may be useful for cross-fertilization.

THE “HARD FORM” OF SCULPTURE: MARBLE, MATTER AND SPIRIT IN EUROPEAN SCULPTURE FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT THROUGH ROMANTICISM

2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
LINDA WALSH
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
External Appearance ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Familiar World ◽  
A Site ◽  
Aesthetic Values

The apparently distinct aesthetic values of naturalism (a fidelity to external appearance) and neoclassicism (with its focus on idealization and intangible essence) came together in creative tension and fusion in much late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century sculptural theory and practice. The hybrid styles that resulted suited the requirements of the European sculpture-buying public. Both aesthetics, however, created difficulties for the German Idealists who represented a particularly uncompromising strain of Romantic theory. In their view, naturalism was too closely bound to the observable, familiar world, while neoclassicism was too wedded to notions of clearly defined forms. This article explores sculptural practice and theory at this time as a site of complex debates around the medium's potential for specific concrete representation in a context of competing Romantic visions (ethereal, social and commercial) of modernity.

Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind

Academe ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley Brice Heath ◽  
Gerald Graff
Keyword(s):  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
The Mind

THEORY AND PRACTICE IN THE STUDY OF THE TIME PERSPECTIVE OF PERSONALITY: THE ABILITY TO ACT "IN THE MIND" OF YA.A. PONOMAREV

2021 ◽  
pp. 116-129
Author(s):  
Nina A. Pasternak ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Time Perspective ◽  
Empirical Test ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Expert Assessment ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
Life Path ◽  
The Mind

The study was conducted as an empirical test of the model of mental development proposed by Ya.A. Ponomarev, who showed that the ability to act “in the mind” is one of the most important indicators of the overall development of the human psyche. Within the framework of these ideas, a comparative analysis of the features of time planning by first-year students of one of the Moscow universities of low (10 people) and high (10 people) levels of development of the ability to act “in the mind” through expert assessments of teachers of this university (40 people) protocols of students’ responses is carried out. As a result of the expert assessment, it was shown that with a low level of development of the ability to act “in the mind”, it is more difficult to systematically achieve the set life goals, plan your future based on a logical calculation. The study raises the question of the possible connection between “theory and practice” when taking into account the personal characteristics associated with a certain stage of the development of the ability to act “in the mind”, raises the question of the desirability of psychological support for a teenager when, due to the low level of development of this ability, planning for the future is difficult. It is postulated that if a practical psychologist provides such support in adolescence, practical psychology will be able to really influence the life path of a growing personality.

The real banality of evil

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Regine Lamboy
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
The Real ◽  
Banality Of Evil ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Adolf Eichmann ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The University

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] When Hannah Arendt encountered Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem she was struck by the fact that his most outstanding characteristic was his utter thoughtlessness. This raised the questins of whether there might be a connection between thinking and abstaining from evil doing, which she explored in her last book The Life of the Mind. If there is indeed such a connection, there may be a class of people who might be led to abstain from evil doing if they can be persuaded to engage in thinking. This dissertation examines Arendt's success in establishing such a connection. Overall, her project does not really succeed. Her overly formal analysis of thinking wavers between a highly abstract and obscure conceptualization of thinking and a more down to earth definition. Ultimately she winds up stripping thinking of all possible content. .

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