‘The solitary saint walks forth to meditate at even-tide’

2021 ◽  
pp. 39-67
Author(s):  
Christopher Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Spiritual Autobiography ◽  
Strong Connection ◽  
William Cowper ◽  
The World ◽  
Physical Spaces

This chapter illustrates a strong connection between prayer and what I term radical interiority—a self defined by the authenticity of a supposed depth or secrecy—across the work of Evangelical poet William Cowper. Expressing this inward and grace-filled self is always accompanied by and conceived on the model of intense prayer; by contrast, prayerlessness equals spiritual desolation. The connection is particularly torturous in melancholic early texts such as Adelphi (his spiritual autobiography) and the Olney Hymns. In his most famous poem The Task, a poetics interlinking prayer and interiority continues: despite an initial elision in favour of hymning the natural world and focusing outside the self, it is reasserted through a quietist turn. Cowper’s final praying self retreats from the world, meditatively into itself but also in occupying hidden physical spaces as prayer closets, a combination inspired by his translations of French mystic, Madame de Guyon.

Afterword

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Long
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
The Self ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Modern Era

In the early modern world, exceptional bodies are linked to knowledge, not as the production of knowledge of the self through the scrutiny of those who have been ‘othered’, but as a means of inducing self-scrutiny and awareness of the limitations of human understanding. Exceptional beings and phenomena entice us to consider the world beyond that which is familiar to us and raise questions concerning our knowledge systems based on notions of what is natural or, in our modern era, normal. Rather than reacting with horror, disgust or pity, we can learn to respect the variety, mobility and resilience of the natural world in our contemplation of that which we see as exceptional.

Identity, Community and the Natural Environment: Some Perspectives from Process Thinking

1998 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-267
Author(s):  
Clare Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environment ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Human Community ◽  
Process Thinking ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Differentiation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Over Time

AbstractAlfred North Whitehead's and Charles Hartshorne's process thinking presents a complex and sophisticated metaphysical underpinning for a theory of self and self-identity. Their construction of the self has significant implications for understanding of the (human) community and the natural environment. Process thinking, I argue, undercuts the idea of self unity; of self-continuity over time; and of self-differentiation from the world. When combined, these three elements mean that it is hard to separate the individual, personal self from the community and the natural world. I compare these implications from process thinking with what might seem similar implications from radical ecological philosophies. Although there are ethical and metaphysical differences between process thinkers and deep ecologists, both kinds of theory need to be treated with caution in application to our thinking about the environment.

scholarly journals The aesthetics of participation.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Tekatch
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Self ◽  
Relevant Feature ◽  
Charles Olson ◽  
Interactive Process ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Stan Brakhage

"In this paper I would like to articulate a mode of perceptual participation, primarily an aesthetic mode, whereby humans enter into relation with the natural world around them. In order to elaborate on the mode of this participation I will draw examples from artists and thinkers that I believe have determined to make the notion of 'participation' an integral part of their work. The purpose of this paper is to situate my project in a larger tradition and theoretical framework. Over the last two years of study I have been drawn to a number of artists and thinkers who have influenced me a great deal. The common feature among them, or the relevant feature to me, has been the theme of the interaction between the self and the world, the organism and the environment, to use John Dewey's terminology, and how this interaction speaks of humanity's carnal and perceptual inherence in the world. Among these artists are Charles Olson, Jack Chambers and Stan Brakhage, and I would like to discuss their work in relation to this interactive process of self and world."--Pages 2-3.

scholarly journals The role of nature in the self-ownership proviso

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 326-343
Author(s):  
Lamont Rodgers
Keyword(s):  
Private Property ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
The World ◽  
Eric Mack

Eric Mack defends a version of John Locke’s proviso. Mack applies his proviso to original appropriations, uses, and systems of private property. His proviso precludes severely disabling the world-interactive powers of others. Mack specifically warns against using concrete features of the natural world as a baseline for determine whether the proviso has been violated. While his proviso is plausible, I argue that he cannot. eschew employing the receptivity of the natural, unowned world to the extent that he suggests. We cannot determine whether one’s powers are disabled or diminished without knowing how receptive the world would be to those powers had a system of private property not arisen. The upshot of this paper is that the requirements of a well-formulated proviso is an empirical matter.

Contemporary Scottish Poetry and the Natural World

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
The World ◽  
Environmental Thought ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Animal

Contemporary Scottish Writers and the Natural World examines the work of four Scottish poets – John Burnside, Kathleen Jamie, Robin Robertson and Kenneth White – in the light of philosophical considerations of the subject’s relation to the natural world and environmental thought. Drawing in particular on the phenomenological work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on embodiment and Martin Heidegger on dwelling, the study explores the organic intimate interrelation between the self and the world, including human and non-human relations. The poets’ work is discussed in the context of the main premises of the phenomenological tradition that address the self’s relation with the world, focusing in particular on the sense of place, the vegetal and animal worlds, and foregrounding the dialogue between poetics, the subject and the landscape. The study considers a chiasmic human-non-human animal intertwining as particularly important in the poetry because of its lived experience of the world. Proposing a theoretically-informed discussion, which includes various modes of ecocritical apprehension, it analyses the subject’s perception of intimacy with the materiality of the natural world and the role of language in the registration of perceptual experience as explored in contemporary Scottish poetry.

scholarly journals “He dwells alone:” The Image of Completeness in the Self in Cowper’s “The Snail”

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Biswarup Das
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
William Cowper ◽  
English Poet ◽  
Private World ◽  
The World ◽  
Private Domain ◽  
Ideal Ego ◽  
Critical Lines

Abstract Following the critical lines of Psychoanalysis and Existentialism, the present study aims at conveying how William Cowper, the much acclaimed English poet of the 18th century, presents in his 1799 poem “The Snail” the image of an individual possessing completeness in the self. Not only is Cowper’s snail content with life in seclusion, but also abhors the intrusion of an outsider in its private domain. The article aims at investigating how the snail’s world of completeness bears both the somatic and the psychic dimensions and also how the creature exists in that world narcissistically. Concomitantly, the article would probe into the association between the world of the snail and the poet’s longing to attain sufficiency in the self at a time he is left alone. It would be conveyed how the snail of the poem embodies the poet’s projected self in its idealised form, something which following the French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan can be called the poet’s “ideal ego,” than an insignificant creature engrossed merely in nourishment on vegetation. Keywords: Cowper, completeness, private world, self, The Snail.

scholarly journals The aesthetics of participation.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Tekatch
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
The Self ◽  
Relevant Feature ◽  
Charles Olson ◽  
Interactive Process ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Stan Brakhage

"In this paper I would like to articulate a mode of perceptual participation, primarily an aesthetic mode, whereby humans enter into relation with the natural world around them. In order to elaborate on the mode of this participation I will draw examples from artists and thinkers that I believe have determined to make the notion of 'participation' an integral part of their work. The purpose of this paper is to situate my project in a larger tradition and theoretical framework. Over the last two years of study I have been drawn to a number of artists and thinkers who have influenced me a great deal. The common feature among them, or the relevant feature to me, has been the theme of the interaction between the self and the world, the organism and the environment, to use John Dewey's terminology, and how this interaction speaks of humanity's carnal and perceptual inherence in the world. Among these artists are Charles Olson, Jack Chambers and Stan Brakhage, and I would like to discuss their work in relation to this interactive process of self and world."--Pages 2-3.

Out of the Dreamtime

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Culliney ◽  
David Jones
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The West ◽  
The World ◽  
Abrahamic Religions ◽  
Scientific Terms ◽  
Traditional Cultures

Chapter 2 diverges from science to follow some primordial strands of thought on origins. An intimate, participatory universe was anticipated before human beings began to articulate worldviews in philosophic or scientific terms. Our search for the fractal self begins by tracing prototypes recorded in myths and oral histories. Anthropologists, such as Levy-Bruhl, concluded that people in remote traditional cultures understood themselves as embedded with nature. Their demigods, such as Coyote, Maui, Hermes, and Dionysus, roamed their environs and instigated changes and events for good or ill. Shamans interpreted and engaged natural forces and negotiated with nature on behalf of humans. Such figures embodied qualities of the fractal self. The break came in the West. Early cosmogonies featured characters such as Gaia and Ouranos, avatars of intimacy with nature and exalted authority respectively. However, as influenced by Plato and Aristotle the development of Abrahamic religions situated humans apart from the rest of nature and under the rule of an omnipotent, transcendent God. The identity of the self at one with nature ultimately subsided and was brutally suppressed in much of the world. However, Daoism and Buddhism remained attuned with ideas of humanity as deeply interdependent with the natural world.

scholarly journals A Rhapsody in Pink: Reflections on Seducing Nature through World Philosophies by way of James Joyce’s Ulysses

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-264
Author(s):  
David Jones
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The World

Through a reflection on color in the natural world by way of James Joyce’s Ulysses, this paper is an ebullient, rhapsodic, and free-flowing associative meditation on the embodied place of humans in nature. Various sources are employed through a variety of philosophic literature: ancient Western, such as Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaximander, and Plato; the Continental philosophical tradition, such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty; and Asian sources, especially Buddhism (Dōgen and Thich Nat Hanh) and Daoism (Laozi and Zhuangzi). The meditation metaphorically opens with an encounter of the color pink, which is allegorically represented as our entry into the natural world, and how this color has been neutralized through its human intensification in the color red, which in its attempt to exaggerate pink and the natural accomplishes the opposite – the covering up the self-same reality of the world and the human place in the world. The liberation of the feminine by way of Joyce’s character Molly Bloom is heralded as a call to turn again to nature’s world as the only means of human redemption. This turn, or return, is a returning to the natural order by means of learning afresh how to seduce nature to love us as a species again; and in turn, nature holds out an existential challenge to our species – how to say yes, again and again, to who and what we truly are. And the what and who we are is to be in and a part of nature once again.

A Māori Girl Watches, Listens, and Learns – Coming of Age from an Indigenous Viewpoint: Mauri (Merata Mita, 1988)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Indigenous Woman ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Force ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines Merata Mita’s Mauri, the first fiction feature film in the world to be solely written and directed by an indigenous woman, as an example of “Fourth Cinema” – that is, a form of filmmaking that aims to create, produce, and transmit the stories of indigenous people, and in their own image – showing how Mita presents the coming-of-age story of a Māori girl who grows into an understanding of the spiritual dimension of the relationship of her people to the natural world, and to the ancestors who have preceded them. The discussion demonstrates how the film adopts storytelling procedures that reflect a distinctively Māori view of time and are designed to signify the presence of the mauri (or life force) in the Māori world.

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