From Absurdity to Authenticity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Webber
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Interpersonal Conflict ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Core

This chapter elucidates the existentialist problem of absurdity and analyses the eudaimonist responses offered by Fanon and Sartre. The core claim of existentialism that the reasons we encounter reflect our values, which we can choose to revise or replace, seems to entail that there can be no ultimate reason to prefer one set of values over another. Yet existentialism is the ethical theory that we ought to treat the freedom at the core of human existence as intrinsically valuable and the foundation of all other value. Eudaimonist arguments for authenticity hold it to be essential for avoiding anxiety, despair, and interpersonal conflict. But they can establish at best that we should recognize human freedom, not that we should respect or promote it. And they cannot provide overriding reasons for this recognition, only reasons that might be outweighed by other reasons grounded in the agent’s values.

What Is Existentialism?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Webber
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Clear Definition ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
The Core ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Definition Of

Articles and books on existentialism generally eschew precise philosophical definition of their subject matter and disagree with one another over which ideas, issues, and thinkers should be classified as existentialist. This loose categorization distorts readings of the texts that are claimed to fall under it. This book argues for a precise conceptualization of existentialism grounded in the definition it was given by Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre when the term was first popularized. Existentialism is therefore defined as the ethical theory that we ought to treat the freedom at the core of human existence as intrinsically valuable and the foundation of all other values. This chapter argues for the need for a clear definition and presents an overview of how the book develops its analysis.

Rethinking Existentialism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Webber
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Moral Imperative ◽  
The Core ◽  
Jean Paul

Rethinking Existentialism argues that the core of existentialism is the theory that Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre described when they popularized the term in 1945: the ethical theory that we ought to treat human freedom as intrinsically valuable and the foundation of all other value. The book argues that Beauvoir and Sartre disagreed over the structure of this freedom in 1943 but that Sartre came to accept Beauvoir’s view by 1952, that Frantz Fanon’s first book should also be classified as a canonical work of existentialism, and that Beauvoir’s argument for a moral imperative of authenticity is a firmer ground for existentialism’s ethical claim than any of the eudaimonist arguments offered by Fanon and Sartre. It develops its arguments through critical contrasts with Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The book concludes by sketching contributions that this analysis of existentialism can make to contemporary philosophy, psychology, and psychotherapy.

scholarly journals Sartres Lösung zur Antinomie der sozialen Realität in der Kritik der dialektischen Vernunft

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (6) ◽  
pp. 817-847
Author(s):  
Sebastian Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Theory ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Philosophical Foundation ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Dialectical Reason ◽  
The Individual

AbstractCritics have standardly regarded Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason as an abortive attempt to overcome the subjectivist individualism of his early philosophy, motivated by a recognition that Being and Nothingness lacks ethical and political significance, but derailed by Sartre’s Marxism. In this paper I offer an interpretation of the Critique which, if correct, shows it to offer a coherent and highly original account of social and political reality, which merits attention both in its own right and as a reconstruction of the philosophical foundation of Marxism. The key to Sartre’s theory of collective and historical existence in the Critique is a thesis carried over from Being and Nothingness: intersubjectivity on Sartre’s account is inherently aporetic, and social ontology reproduces in magnified form its limited intelligibility, lack of transparency, and necessary frustration of the demands of freedom. Sartre’s further conjecture – which can be formulated a priori but requires a posteriori verification – is that man’s collective historical existence may be understood as the means by which the antinomy within human freedom, insoluble at the level of the individual, is finally overcome. The Critique provides therefore the ethical theory promised in Being and Nothingness.

The Obligation to Tear Through the Veil: An Analysis and Transformation of Mankind’s Insufficient Complacency Through the Novels of Jenny Offill

Meliora ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maggie Toole
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Nuclear Family ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Evolutionary Aspects

This thesis explores the ways in which we as humans are alienated by the fundamental social structures of our world and how the novels of Jenny Offill offer a possible remedy. With a specific focus on the psychological and evolutionary aspects of womanhood and motherhood, this text attempts to illustrate the ways in which these novels address the imposing weight of such fundamental structures in the 21st century. Through an analysis of the nuclear family, this thesis examines the debilitating and profound existence of women, and more specifically, mothers. Offill’s novels present a profoundly clear picture of the modern world as it depicts the reality and ramifications of psychoanalytic and evolutionary theory. This work demonstrates how Offill’s texts attempt to remedy the core dissonance of our binary-laden human existence with clarity and realization rather than acceptance of an oversimplified past and a debilitating future.

The police invention of humanity: Notes on the “thin blue line”

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Wall
Keyword(s):  
Human Existence ◽  
Police Power ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
Racialized Violence ◽  
Blue Line ◽  
Security Property ◽  
As If ◽  
Sylvia Wynter

This article unpacks the idea of police as a “thin blue line” as narrating a story about the police invention of the human through a civilizing and exterminating war against beasts. To speak in the name of the “thin blue line,” then, is to articulate the police as the primary force which secures, or makes possible, all the things said to be at the core of “human” existence: liberty, security, property, sociality, accumulation, law, civility, and even happiness. The current project is less a history of the thin blue line slogan than a more conceptually grounded sketch, and abolitionist critique, of its most basic premises: the idea at the heart of thin blue line is that the most routine mode of violent state prerogative—the police power—is imagined as always a defense of civilization, which at once means the “human species.” In other words, thin blue line, to use a formulation from Sylvia Wynter, is best understood as a defense of a particular genre of the human, or “Man,” that “overrepresents itself as if it were the human itself.” But importantly, thin blue line articulates this police project of inventing the human as always incomplete, insecure, and unstable. Of course, it must always be incomplete, because it is through its inability to fully eradicate the bestial trace that police claim a license to endless war in the name of humanity. As a discourse of ordinary emergency, thin blue line becomes an expression of what Diren Valayden outlines as “racial feralization,” or the colonial bourgeois anxiety that humanity will regress back into a violent nature. A critique of the thin blue line encourages a consideration of how fantasies and failures of becoming human animate all things police, including the racialized violence at the heart of the police project.

scholarly journals Laku Tasawuf sebagai Terapi Psikospiritual

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dikhorir Afnan
Keyword(s):  
Human Existence ◽  
The Core ◽  
Real Science ◽  
Religious Psychology ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive ◽  
Early Establishment ◽  
True Science

  ABSTRACT Human existence is built on the consciousness of two things as transcendent creatures (transcendere), and as immanent beings (Latin: immanere, abiding within). Man makes himself, with all activities and the result builds his own uniqueness (Syam, 2015). One of the traditions and culture of Javanese society in the spiritual context is the behavior of Sufism. The research was conducted to trace the ritual of worship as transedental creature in group of jamaah "Ilmu Sejati" in Karangampel Village of Indramayu Regency. In this study, researchers used qualitative descriptive methodology. The results of this study include: Sufism behavior as psychospiritual therapy in the congregation "True Science" includes congregational prayers, munajat, khalwat and tirakat. (1) The worship ritual of worship congregation becomes a daily portrait of the congregation of "Real Science". At certain moments, the month of Ramadan for example, in addition to the obligatory prayers 5 times and tarawih prayers, all pilgrims are encouraged to perform salat sunah hajat and tahajud one full month. (2) Munajat is the core of the teachings of "Real Science". Bermunajat or berzikir is a process to Allah SWT. To be able to "get" to communicate with Him, they first purify themselves, both physically and mentally. (3) The practice of khalwat on the teachings of "Real Science" is only done by the highest leadership, namely Ibn Salma bin Kadar Yahya. This procession of self-isolation he did during the early establishment of the teachings of "Real Science" around 1997. (4) Tirakat or fasting on the teachings of "Real Science" also can only be done by Ibn Salma as the leader of the pilgrims. The behavior of tirakat can be referred to as a complementary ritual of the teachings of "True Science" besides the ritual of the play. Keywords: Transcendental Communication, Sufism, Religious Psychology

scholarly journals What is Movement?

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Nikos C. Apostolopoulos
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Temporal Perception ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
The Core ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The World ◽  
Spatio Temporal

On the basis of their corporeity humans are not only beings of distance but also the beings of proximity, rooted beings, not only inner worldly but also beings in the world (Patocka, 1998)Over the centuries the dialectical confluence of metaphysics and epistemology has been at the forefront in the attempt to define the concept of what it is to be human and ultimately human existence. The union of several aspects conceived from these two opposite elements has been responsible for the genesis of numerous philosophical terms and ideas such as: rationalism, materialism, socialism and idealism. Although these terms reference something different, what is primarily at the core has been the endeavour to analyse and demonstrate that it is through man’s relationship with nature that one garners the understanding of self. Human consciousness in conjunction with a spatio-temporal perception, defined as movement through the time-space continuum, creates the condition where the possibility of defining the essence of existence may blossom. In this commentary, an effort is made to present movement, specifically its relationship to the “body” as the physical construct for the meaning of self.

THE Theology of the Body

2018 ◽  
pp. 862-876
Author(s):  
José Granados
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Core ◽  
John Paul Ii ◽  
Theology Of The Body ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Vision Of God

This chapter outlines and defends the theology of the body that has been developed following the famous series of Wednesday catecheses offered by Pope St John Paul II. The chapter emphasizes three themes at the heart of the Theology of the Body. First, a vision, following Gaudium et Spes 22 that places Christ and the Incarnation at the core of the interpretation of humanity and society. Second, a vision of the human body that makes it possible to describe human existence in the light of love and to recover the theological significance of the notion of ‘experience’. Third, a corresponding anthropology of love that offers the key to the Christian vision of God, humanity, and the world; this anthropology of love is centred in the family relationships, as the privileged place where God reveals himself.

scholarly journals SENI TARI DALAM PANDANGAN ISLAM

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 239
Author(s):  
Tri Yuliana Wijayanti
Keyword(s):  
Human Existence ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
The Core ◽  
Exotic Dance ◽  
Aesthetic Expression

Humans in their daily lives cannot be separated from art. Art is a form of aesthetic expression towards human existence as a servant. Expressions of beauty that are expressed through beautiful movements, will give birth to exotic dance. Speaking of dance, in general, the negative prejudices of both dancers and dances are generally generated. This is interesting to study when drawn with the flexibility of Islamic teachings and the core of Islamic teachings themselves, namely tauhid.

Sustainable Rural Development

2019 ◽  
pp. 296-311
Author(s):  
Shereen Yunus Khan
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Rural Development ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Sustainable Rural Development ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
The Core ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
New Strategies

Sustainable development on social, economic, and ecological dimensions explores the approaches embracing the wellbeing for the rural communities. The chapter initiated with the description of sustainability by providing its comprehensive dimensions, proceeds to development by explaining the essential steps of development process as analysis, requirements, planning, implementation, and evaluation. After in-depth interpretation of sustainability and development, the chapter focused its discussion on sustainable rural development by emphasizing the demarcation of rural communities, their distinctive features and portrayal of needs confronted by rural communities, the core values and importance of sustainable rural development for the general awareness and setting grounds for policy makers. Rural zones are subject to socioeconomic problems. To lead human existence towards prosperity and progression depiction of UN established 17 sustainable development goals known as global goals are undertaken. Measures of sustainable rural development reviewed to recommend new strategies.

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