Of Absolute and Relative Worth

2020 ◽  
pp. 34-56
Author(s):  
L. Nandi Theunissen
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Absolute Value ◽  
Instrumental Value ◽  
Conceptual Connection ◽  
Independent Form

Theunissen explores Kant’s legacy. As she reads him, a crucial dimension of Kant’s view that human beings are absolutely valuable is that human beings are of value independently of the good they do or stand to do. Absolute value is importantly a benefit-independent form of worth. The author brings out Kant’s significant departure from ancient (and in particular Socratic) conceptions of value according to which there is a conceptual connection between goodness (or value) and benefit. The author uncovers the sense in which contemporary readers are likely to inherit Kant’s elision of benefit with instrumental value, something that is regarded as a lowly and even morally worrisome form of worth. She gives reason to resist this identification.

כסתות, מספחות and נפשות (Ezek 13:17–23)

2020 ◽  
Vol 132 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-305
Author(s):  
Daewook Kim
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Conceptual Connection ◽  
The People ◽  
The Dead

AbstractThe expression נפשות in Ezekiel 13 refers to two different meanings: (living) human beings and the spirits of the dead. The words כסתות and מספחות seem to refer to the paraphernalia involved in the women’s practice of necromancy and in the fall of the people, respectively. The expression נפשות is employed as antanaclasis to establish a conceptual connection between necromancy and ruin.

scholarly journals How ’Straight’ Has Developed Its Meanings －Based on a metaphysical theory

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 03009
Author(s):  
Kosuke Nakashima
Keyword(s):  
Mother Tongue ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Standing Posture ◽  
Metaphysical Theory ◽  
Normal Image ◽  
Conceptual Connection ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Central Meaning ◽  
Made In

This paper makes the development of the word ’straight’ clear. Dictionaries define ’straight’ as; ‘without a curve or bend’, ‘going direct to the target’, ‘honest’, ‘in continuous succession’ or ‘neat’. As can be seen, ’straight’ has a variety of meanings. Some connections between these meanings can be guessed but others cannot. The mechanism of how ’straight’ has obtained each meaning will be explained logically in this paper. First, the most basic or central meaning of ’straight’ is ‘without a curve or bend’. So ’straight’ modifies the verb ’stand’ like the following: He stood up straight. ’Straight’ has a strong conceptual connection with a standing posture. At the present time, ’straight’ is the normal posture for human beings. This means ’straight’ has a concept for ‘normal’ for human beings like the following: He grew up straight. This sentence does not mean that his posture is straight up. It means that he grew up honest. ’Straight’ gives a normal image to English speakers both physically and metaphysically. Like an example above, this paper explains how ’straight’ has developed its meanings through the human beings’ way of thinking. And some comparisons between English expressions and Japanese ones, which is the author’s mother tongue, are made in this paper as well.

Defending Non-Tuism

1999 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Dimock
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Instrumental Value ◽  
To Receive

Hobbes's central insight about ethics was that it should not be understood to require that we make ourselves a prey for others. It is this insight that both varieties of contractarianism [Hobbesian and Kantian] respect. Consider a relationship between two human beings that exists for reasons of either love or duty; let us also suppose that it is a relationship that can be instrumentally valuable to both parties. In order for that relationship to receive our full moral endorsement, we must ask whether either party uses the duty or the love connecting them in a way that affects the other party's ability to realize the instrumental value from that relationship. To be sure, good marriages and good friendships ought not to be centrally concerned with the question of justice, but they must also be, at the very least, relationships in which love or duty are not manipulated by either party in order to use the other party to her detriment.

Beauty, Aesthetic Experience and Immanent Critique

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 67-81
Author(s):  
Julia Peters
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
Absolute Value ◽  
Artistic Activity ◽  
Primary Element ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Hegelian Philosophy

In his essay What is living and what is dead of the philosophy of Hegel?, Benedetto Croce praises Hegel for bestowing the highest value on beauty, in particular artistic beauty. He emphasises Hegel's ‘tendency to make art a primary element in human life, a mode of knowledge and of spiritual elevation’, and the ‘constant contact of Hegelian speculation with taste and with works of art, and the dignity which it assigned to the artistic activity’ (Croce 1985: 121). This tendency, Croce writes, is what makes Hegelian speculation congenial to the great aesthetic theories of the Romantic period. In this paper, I shall put forward some considerations which render support to Croce's observation that there is a strand of unreserved and absolute appreciation of beauty, in particular artistic beauty, in Hegelian philosophy. My focus will be in particular on the question of why Hegel thinks that the experience of beauty — which I will be referring to, in short, as aesthetic experience — is of special, even absolute value for human beings. This will involve, in the first part of the paper, an analysis of what Hegel takes to be the content of such experience; hence an analysis of Hegel's notion of beauty.Such emphasis on the absolute value of beauty invites of course the question of how beauty relates, in Hegel's system, to what Hegel regards as the highest value of all: reconciliation. Hegel believes that both philosophical speculation — which culminates in knowledge of the absolute truth — and the achievement of the highest practical good, the participation in civic life, are ways of reconciling the human individual with the world they live in. Does the same apply to beauty, or aesthetic experience? I will briefly touch on the relation between aesthetic experience and reconciliation in the second part of the paper. In this context, we will also consider an objection to the view that Hegel's appreciation of aesthetic experience is unrestricted or absolute, which arises from consideration of Hegel's famous claim that philosophy is higher than art.

scholarly journals Synthetic biology ethically evaluated: The creating God and co-creating human

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Riaan Rheeder
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Absolute Value ◽  
God's Image ◽  
The One ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Image Of God

God did not create once and then put an end to it. Testimony from Scripture shows that God continuously establishes or creates new things. Humans can therefore expect to always see and experience new things in creation. With this pattern of reasoning, one can anticipate that the human being as image of God will continuously establish new things in history. Although nature has value, it does not have absolute value and therefore it can be synthesised responsibly. The thought that humans are stewards of God is no longer adequate to, theologically put into words, the relationship human beings have with nature. New biotechnological developments ask for different answers from Scripture. Several ethicists are of the opinion that the theological construction of humans and created co-creators can help found the relationship of the human being to nature. Humans developed as God’s image evolutionary. On the one hand, this means humans themselves are a product of nature. On the other hand, the fact that humans are the image of God is also an ethical call that humans, like God, have to develop and create new things throughout history. Synthetic biology can be evaluated as technology that is possible, because humans are the image of God. However, it should, without a doubt, be executed responsibly.Sintetiese biologie eties geëvalueer: Die skeppende God en medeskeppende mens. God het nie net eenmaal geskep en daar gestop nie. Uit Skrifgetuienisse kan afgelei word dat God voortdurend nuwe dinge tot stand bring of skep. Daarom kan die mens verwag om gedurig nuwe dinge in die skepping te sien en te beleef. Hiermee saam kan verwag word dat die mens as beeld van God voortdurend nuwe dinge in die geskiedenis tot stand sal bring. Alhoewel die natuur waarde het, het dit nie absolute waarde nie en kan dus verantwoordelik gesintetiseer word. Die gedagte dat die mens rentmeester van God is, is nie meer voldoende om die mens se verhouding tot die natuur teologies te verwoord nie. Nuwe biotegnologiese ontwikkelinge vra na ander antwoorde vanuit die Skrif. Verskeie etici is van mening dat die teologiese konstruksie van die mens as geskepte medeskepper kan help om die mens se verhouding tot die natuur te begrond. Die mens het deur ’n evolusionêre proses tot God se beeld ontwikkel. Aan die een kant beteken dit dat die mens self ’n produk van die natuur is. Aan die ander kant is beeldskap ook ’n etiese oproep dat die mens, soos God, nuwe dinge in die geskiedenis moet ontwikkel en skep. Sintetiese biologie kan gesien word as tegnologie wat moontlik is omdat die mens na die beeld van God geskape is. Sonder twyfel moet sintetiese biologie egter verantwoordelik beoefen word.

Plato on Pure Pleasure and the Best Life

Phronesis ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Instrumental Value ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Positive Evaluation

Abstract In the Philebus, Socrates maintains two theses about the relationship between pleasure and the good life: (1) the mixed life of pleasure and intelligence is better than the unmixed life of intelligence, and: (2) the unmixed life of intelligence is the most divine. Taken together, these two claims lead to the paradoxical conclusion that the best human life is better than the life of a god. A popular strategy for avoiding this conclusion is to distinguish human from divine goods; on such a reading, pleasure has merely instrumental value, and it benefits human beings only as a result of their imperfect nature. I argue that certain ‘pure’ pleasures are full-fledged, intrinsic goods in the Philebus, which are even worthy of the gods (thus Socrates ultimately rejects thesis 2). This positive evaluation of pure pleasure results from a detailed examination of pleasure, which reveals that different types of pleasures have fundamentally different natures.

scholarly journals Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Marina Tucakovic
Keyword(s):  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Independent Form ◽  
Conscious Choice ◽  
Health And Illness ◽  
Human Tendency ◽  
Dialectical Relationship ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Relationship Of

<p>This Thesis focuses on the experience of being human as process in order to reveal being. Illness and health are seen as reflections of this process of revelation. This work argues that health and illness are physical expressions of consciousness and therefore an outcome of what a human being has thought. In this way, this work shows how thought/intent serves to create life in the moment. In this understanding lies the potential to change reality, to change life. The Thesis identifies self-responsibility as the key to changing consciousness. Taking responsibility for the creation of one's reality eliminates the human tendency to blame another for what is experienced in life. To that end, this work argues, we are each free to choose what is felt in response to life. In so doing, we can become conscious that life is a choice approached from either the position of perfection, or excellence. This work argues that as human beings we have grounded thinking in perfection. In this playing out of rights and wrongs, an independent form of surrender, the outcome is the reification of the thought that we are separate from God. I think, therefore I Am. Such thinking it is argued, is the basis of disease and thus illness is an outcome of thought that as experience has been judged. The thesis develops the position that human beings approach life from the position of perfection thereby creating an appraisal from the outcome of life's experiences. Excellence as a state of being creates the appraisal from the effort of an outcome. Thus excellence, is to experience life as an Isness, and then make a conscious choice to feel love. Perfection makes a judgement about life, and so pronounce life and therefore thinking as good and bad, or right and wrong. In the understanding that human beings are the creators of their reality, it is possible to conceive of care in nursing that is directed at changing thinking/thought. Such change would be to focus on the excellence of life, and in that way enact care in nursing that is an enabling through a process of being that is an emotional allowance in response to life. To this end, this work is titled Nursing as an Aesthetic Praxis. The aesthetic is emotion and feeling. Praxis, is presented in its dialectical relationship of thought and action that is then bound to emotion and feeling in such a way that it illuminates the nature of thinking. This way of thinking, this work shows, is transformatory. Where transformation is a process of being that as a state of excellence is one of incremental human freedom accompanied by incremental responsibility.</p>

scholarly journals Kant on Human Dignity

Kant-Studien ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 106 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jochen Bojanowski
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Standard Interpretation ◽  
Absolute Value ◽  
A Value ◽  
Relational Concept

Abstract:In his book, “Kant on Human Dignity”, Oliver Sensen argues that the standard interpretation of Kant’s conception of human dignity as an absolute value property is mistaken. According to Sensen, the standard interpretation is based on the assumption that Kant endorses Moorean moral intutionism. This leads to the false view that we must first perceive that other human beings have value and then infer that we ought to respect them. Against this standard interpretation Sensen claims that Kant endorses moral prescriptivism. According to this view a value statement is “nothing more than a (rational) prescription that commands what we should value”. If we interpret Kant’s moral epistemology along these lines, we will come to see that dignity is in fact a relational concept. In this paper I want to agree with Sensen that Kant was not a moral intuitionist. In thinking that objectivity in morality would require that the moral law “exists” independently of rational cognizers the moral intuitionist presupposes a conception of objectivity rather than arguing for it. The unargued presupposition is that the object has to be something other than the cognizing subject itself. However, the fact that intuitionism is not the adequate account does not imply that the standard interprtation of Kant’s conception of human dignity is mistaken. In other words, the claim ‘intuitionism is false’ and ‘human dignity is an absolute value property’ are compatible. I believe that Sensen ultimately does not sufficiently appreciate the fact that the moral law is the form of

The Genetic Account of Moral Status: A Defense

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-277 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Matthew Liao
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Genetic Basis ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Instrumental Value ◽  
Final Value ◽  
The Status

Christopher Grau argues that the genetic basis for moral agency account of rightholding is problematic because it fails to grant all human beings the moral status of rightholding; it grants the status of rightholding to entities that do not intuitively deserve such status; and it assumes that the genetic basis for moral agency has intrinsic/final value, but the genetic basis for moral agency only has instrumental value. Grau also argues that those who are inclined to hold that all human beings are rightholders should reconsider speciesism. In this paper, I argue that Grau’s objections do not undermine the genetic basis for moral agency account of rightholding, and I also offer criticisms of Grau’s defense of speciesism.

Christianity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Absolute Value ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Features ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Trinity

Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion ends with his account of Christianity. He finds in the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity the key features that make Christianity, in his eyes, the true religion. The long story of the history of the world’s religions has featured different conceptions of human beings. In all of these views humans were never entirely free since they were subject to the forces of nature, or to fate, or to a tyrannical deity. Only when humans are fully free can this development be said to be complete. But for humans, as self-conscious agents, to be free, they must be recognized as free by their god. This was not the case in the previous religions, but in Christianity it happens for the first time that the absolute value of each individual is recognized. For this reason, Hegel claims, Christianity is the religion of freedom.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document