Should We Freeze Our Bodies for Future Resuscitation?

2021 ◽  
pp. 235-242
Author(s):  
Francesca Minerva
Keyword(s):  
Liquid Nitrogen ◽  
Human Mortality ◽  
Future Technology ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Major Objection

This chapter examines the ethical implications of cryopreservation. Cryopreservation is usually performed soon after the heart has stopped beating, and after the individual has been pronounced legally dead. A few hundred people in the world had been “cryopreserved” — that is, fully immerged in liquid nitrogen at -196 C — in the hope that science will eventually discover a therapy for the disease that has killed them, and that future technology will succeed in bringing them back to life. Understandably, the root of many objections to cryonics seem to be its perceived weirdness. Another major objection to cryonics is that it is a waste of money, or a scam, i.e. a way to make money by promising dying people something that cannot possibly be achieved. The chapter then considers the concepts of human mortality and immortality.

scholarly journals Ethics in Classical Hindu Philosophy: Provinces of Consequence, Agency, and Value in the Bhagavad Gītā and Other Epic and Śāstric Texts

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1029
Author(s):  
Jessica Frazier
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Bhagavad Gita ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Emergent Phenomena ◽  
The World ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Bhagavad Gītā ◽  
Interpersonal Concerns

The idea of a univocal property of ‘goodness’ is not clearly found in classical Sanskrit sources; instead, a common ethical strategy was to clarify the ontological nature of the self or world in such a way that ethical implications naturally flow from the adjustment in our thinking. This article gives a synoptic reading of sources that treat features of ethics—dispositions, agents, causal systems of effect, and even values themselves—as emergent phenomena grounded in complex, shifting, porous configurations. One conclusion of this was that what ‘goodness’ entails varies according to the scope and context of our concern. Firstly, we examine how the Bhagavad Gītā fashions a utilitarianism that assumes no universal intrinsically valuable goal or Good, but aims only to sustain the world as a prerequisite for choice. Recognising that this pushes problems of identifying the Good onto the individual; secondly, we look at accounts of malleable personhood in the Caraka Saṃhitā and Book 12 of the Mahābhārata. Finally, the aesthetic theory of the Nāṭya Śāstra hints at a context-constituted conception of value itself, reminding us that evaluative emotions are themselves complex, curate-able, and can expand beyond egoism to encompass interpersonal concerns. Together these sources show aspects of an ethical worldview for which each case is a nexus in a larger ethical fabric. Each tries to pry us away from our most personal concerns, so we can reach beyond the ego to do what is of value for a wider province of which we are a part.

Green, Thomas Hill (1836–82)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bellamy
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Empirical Reality ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Herbert Spencer ◽  
The World ◽  
Positive Liberty ◽  
The Individual

Green was a prominent Oxford idealist philosopher, who criticized both the epistemological and ethical implications of the dominant empiricist and utilitarian theories of the time. He contended that experience could not be explained merely as the product of sensations acting on the human mind. Like Kant, Green argued that knowledge presupposes certain a priori categories, such as substance, causation, space and time, which enable us to structure our understanding of empirical reality. Physical objects and even the most simple feelings are only intelligible as relations of ideas constituted by human consciousness. However, unlike Kant, he did not draw the conclusion that things in themselves are consequently unknowable. Rather, he argued that reality itself is ultimately spiritual, the product of an eternal consciousness operating within both the world and human reason. Green adopted a similarly anti-naturalist and holistic position in ethics, in which desires are seen as orientated towards the realization of the good – both within the individual and in society at large. In politics, this led him to criticize the laissez-faire individualist liberalism of Herbert Spencer and, to a lesser extent, of J.S. Mill, and to advocate a more collectivist liberalism in which the state seeks to promote the positive liberty of its members.

New walls to keep the bad out: populism and the totalitarian psyche

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-130
Author(s):  
Coline Covington
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Berlin Wall ◽  
Group Solidarity ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Psychological Understanding ◽  
Psychic Development ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War

The Berlin Wall came down on 9 November 1989 and marked the end of the Cold War. As old antagonisms thawed a new landscape emerged of unification and tolerance. Censorship was no longer the principal means of ensuring group solidarity. The crumbling bricks brought not only freedom of movement but freedom of thought. Now, nearly thirty years later, globalisation has created a new balance of power, disrupting borders and economies across the world. The groups that thought they were in power no longer have much of a say and are anxious about their future. As protest grows, we are beginning to see that the old antagonisms have not disappeared but are, in fact, resurfacing. This article will start by looking at the dissembling of a marriage in which the wall that had peacefully maintained coexistence disintegrates and leads to a psychic development that uncannily mirrors that of populism today. The individual vignette leads to a broader psychological understanding of the totalitarian dynamic that underlies populism and threatens once again to imprison us within its walls.

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Simone
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cartesian Dualism ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Binary Oppositions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Existential Perspective

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world: A Heideggerian Study explores Woolf’s treatment of the relationship between self and world from a phenomenological-existential perspective. This study presents a timely and compelling interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s textual treatment of the relationship between self and world from the perspective of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Drawing on Woolf’s novels, essays, reviews, letters, diary entries, short stories, and memoirs, the book explores the political and the ontological, as the individual’s connection to the world comes to be defined by an involvement and engagement that is always already situated within a particular physical, societal, and historical context. Emma Simone argues that at the heart of what it means to be an individual making his or her way in the world, the perspectives of Woolf and Heidegger are founded upon certain shared concerns, including the sustained critique of Cartesian dualism, particularly the resultant binary oppositions of subject and object, and self and Other; the understanding that the individual is a temporal being; an emphasis upon intersubjective relations insofar as Being-in-the-world is defined by Being-with-Others; and a consistent emphasis upon average everydayness as both determinative and representative of the individual’s relationship to and with the world.

“Utopia First!” A Machiavellian Conception of Solidarity in More's Utopia

Moreana ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (Number 209) (1) ◽  
pp. 79-93
Author(s):  
Marie-Claire Phélippeau
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Farm Work ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Difficulties ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Democratic Elections ◽  
Communal Organization

This paper shows how solidarity is one of the founding principles in Thomas More's Utopia (1516). In the fictional republic of Utopia described in Book II, solidarity has a political and a moral function. The principle is at the center of the communal organization of Utopian society, exemplified in a number of practices such as the sharing of farm work, the management of surplus crops, or the democratic elections of the governor and the priests. Not only does solidarity benefit the individual Utopian, but it is a prerequisite to ensure the prosperity of the island of Utopia and its moral preeminence over its neighboring countries. However, a limit to this principle is drawn when the republic of Utopia faces specific social difficulties, and also deals with the rest of the world. In order for the principle of solidarity to function perfectly, it is necessary to apply it exclusively within the island or the republic would be at risk. War is not out of the question then, and compassion does not apply to all human beings. This conception of solidarity, summed up as “Utopia first!,” could be dubbed a Machiavellian strategy, devised to ensure the durability of the republic. We will show how some of the recommendations of Realpolitik made by Machiavelli in The Prince (1532) correspond to the Utopian policy enforced to protect their commonwealth.

Drowning in negativism, self-hate, doubt, madness: Linguistic insights into Sylvia Plath’s experience of depression

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zsófia Demjén
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Medical Humanities ◽  
Sylvia Plath ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Linguistic Methods ◽  
Linguistic Approach

This paper demonstrates how a range of linguistic methods can be harnessed in pursuit of a deeper understanding of the ‘lived experience’ of psychological disorders. It argues that such methods should be applied more in medical contexts, especially in medical humanities. Key extracts from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath are examined, as a case study of the experience of depression. Combinations of qualitative and quantitative linguistic methods, and inter- and intra-textual comparisons are used to consider distinctive patterns in the use of metaphor, personal pronouns and (the semantics of) verbs, as well as other relevant aspects of language. Qualitative techniques provide in-depth insights, while quantitative corpus methods make the analyses more robust and ensure the breadth necessary to gain insights into the individual experience. Depression emerges as a highly complex and sometimes potentially contradictory experience for Plath, involving both a sense of apathy and inner turmoil. It involves a sense of a split self, trapped in a state that one cannot overcome, and intense self-focus, a turning in on oneself and a view of the world that is both more negative and more polarized than the norm. It is argued that a linguistic approach is useful beyond this specific case.

The Attempt to Author the World: How Intellectualism Denies the Individual

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth R. Wheelock
Keyword(s):  
Marxist Theory ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
Second Sex ◽  
Existential Theory ◽  
Feminist Scholar ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Existential Issues

Although primarily known as a feminist scholar and author of such works as She Came to Stay and The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir contributed heavily to French existential thought. The two writings upon which this paper focuses, The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Woman Destroyed, deal with the existential issues involved in human interactions and personal relationships. The Ethics of Ambiguity, famous as an exploration of the ethical code created by existential theory, begins with a criticism of Marxism and the ways in which it deviates from existentialism. Similarly, the first of the three short stories that make up de Beauvoir’s fictional work The Woman Destroyed follows the French intelligentsia and their similarities and digressions from Marxist and existential thought. In this paper, I seek to analyze Simone de Beauvoir’s criticism of Marxist theory in The Ethics of Ambiguity and its transformation into the critique of intellectualism found twenty years later in The Woman Destroyed. I will investigate Marxism’s alleged attempts to constrain the group it wishes to lead and the motivation behind these actions. Finally, I conclude with a discussion of the efficacy of fiction as a medium for de Beauvoir’s philosophy.

The relevance of dietetic approach of Ayurveda from the perspective of COVID-19 pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 748-752
Author(s):  
Swapnali Khabade ◽  
Bharat Rathi ◽  
Renu Rathi
Keyword(s):  
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome ◽  
Healthy Person ◽  
World Health ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
The Individual

A novel, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), causes severe acute respiratory syndrome and spread globally from Wuhan, China. In March 2020 the World Health Organization declared the SARS-Cov-2 virus as a COVID- 19, a global pandemic. This pandemic happened to be followed by some restrictions, and specially lockdown playing the leading role for the people to get disassociated with their personal and social schedules. And now the food is the most necessary thing to take care of. It seems the new challenge for the individual is self-isolation to maintain themselves on the health basis and fight against the pandemic situation by boosting their immunity. Food organised by proper diet may maintain the physical and mental health of the individual. Ayurveda aims to promote and preserve the health, strength and the longevity of the healthy person and to cure the disease by properly channelling with and without Ahara. In Ayurveda, diet (Ahara) is considered as one of the critical pillars of life, and Langhana plays an important role too. This article will review the relevance of dietetic approach described in Ayurveda with and without food (Asthavidhi visheshaytana & Lanhgan) during COVID-19 like a pandemic.

Chimeras In Time-Honored Societies

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-466
Author(s):  
TUMMALA. SAI MAMATA
Keyword(s):  
Major Elements ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Life Changes ◽  
Inner Self ◽  
The World ◽  
Nature And Nurture ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right ◽  
Superstitious Beliefs

A river flows serenely accepting all the miseries and happiness that it comes across its journey. A tree releases oxygen for human beings despite its inner plights. The sun is never tired of its duty and gives sunlight without any interruption. Why are all these elements of nature so tuned to? Education is knowledge. Knowledge comes from learning. Learning happens through experience. Familiarity is the master of life that shapes the individual. Every individual learns from nature. Nature teaches how to sustain, withdraw and advocate the prevailing situations. Some dwell into the deep realities of nature and nurture as ideal human beings. Life is a puzzle. How to solve it is a million dollar question that can never be answered so easily. The perception of life changes from individual to individual making them either physically powerful or feeble. Society is not made of only individuals. Along with individuals it has nature, emotions, spiritual powers and superstitious beliefs which bind them. Among them the most crucial and alarming is the emotions which are interrelated to others. Alone the emotional intelligence is going to guide the life of an individual. For everyone there is an inner self which makes them conscious of their deeds. The guiding force should always force the individual to choose the right path.  Writers are the powerful people who have rightly guided the society through their ingenious pen outs.  The present article is going to focus on how the major elements bound together are dominating the individual’s self through Rabindranath Tagore’s Home and the World (1916)

Erfahrung ohne Erfahrenden

2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-78
Author(s):  
Petr Kouba
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
Individual Structure ◽  
The World ◽  
Il Y A ◽  
Individual Existence ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Intentional Structure

This article examines the limits of Heidegger’s ontological description of emotionality from the period of Sein und Zeit and Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik along the lines outlined by Lévinas in his early work De l’existence à l’existant. On the basis of the Lévinassian concept of “il y a”, we attempt to map the sphere of the impersonal existence situated out of the structured context of the world. However the worldless facticity without individuality marks the limits of the phenomenological approach to human existence and its emotionality, it also opens a new view on the beginning and ending of the individual existence. The whole structure of the individual existence in its contingency and finitude appears here in a new light, which applies also to the temporal conditions of existence. Yet, this is not to say that Heidegger should be simply replaced by Lévinas. As shows an examination of the work of art, to which brings us our reading of Moravia’s literary exposition of boredom (the phenomenon closely examined in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik), the view on the work of art that is entirely based on the anonymous and worldless facticity of il y a must be extended and complemented by the moment in which a new world and a new individual structure of experience are being born. To comprehend the dynamism of the work of art in its fullness, it is necessary to see it not only as an ending of the world and the correlative intentional structure of the individual existence, but also as their new beginning.

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