Montaigne on Monsters and Monstrosity

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Long
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Divine Omnipotence ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face

Monsters take on many roles in Montaigne’s Essays, almost always in novel ways. They do not take on their usual roles as markers of other races, genders, or bodies, as threats or objects of repulsion. Rather, the authorial self and his work are seen as monstrous; Europeans and their culture are seen as monstrous; the knowledge systems that create monsters are themselves monstrous; man’s vanity is monstrous. But most of all, the monster is the provocation to meditation on man’s presumption, and on the limitations of human knowledge and power in the face of the world and the divine. As the sign of the diversity and mutability of the natural world and thus of divine omnipotence, the monstrous and unusual is valued by Montaigne over the normal or usual. It is also the mark of human creativity, dependent as it is on the vagaries of the imagination, new and radically different from the rhetorical, literary, and artistic norms. This is why the Essays themselves can be considered a monstrous work.

scholarly journals Cartographic Sublime

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Hsu ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
The World ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
The Face ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
Rational Side

Kant distinguishes two notions of the sublime: the mathematically sublime and the dynamically sublime. In the case of both notions, the experience of the sublime consists in a feeling of the superiority of our own power of reason, as a super sensible faculty, over nature. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) The concept of the sublime was associated with nature in late 18th and early 19th century aesthetics. Political philosopher and states-man Edmund Burke evoked human mortality in A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, defining the sublime as experience of the overwhelming magnitude of phenomena in the natural world which causes “a sort of delightful horror, a sort of tranquility tinged with terror; which, as it belongs to self-preservation, is one of the strongest of all the passions.” Kant, in contrast to Burke, defines rationality is an important component of the experience of the sublime: “The sublime is to be found in an object even devoid of form, so far as it immediately involves, or else by its presence provokes a representation of limitlessness, yet with a super-added thought of its totality.” That is, reason--super-added thought--allows us to comprehend and challenge the entirety of that which is beyond comprehension. He writes that “the feeling of the sublime in nature is respect for our own vocation . . . this feeling renders as it were intuitable the supremacy of our cognitive faculties on the rational side over the greatest faculty of sensibility.” For Kant, in other words, the experience of the sublime was the oscillation between sensation and rationality in the face of the overwhelming-ness of phenomena in the world.

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.

Comments on Penelope Maddy’s What Do Philosophers Do?

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-230
Author(s):  
Barry Stroud
Keyword(s):  
Recent Book ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Philosophical Scepticism

I here offer a discussion of some of Penelope Maddy’s responses to philosophical scepticism in her recent book, What Do Philosophers Do? Among other things, I suggest that philosophers who take an interest in human knowledge are not primarily concerned with whether anyone knows anything about the world, but rather with understanding how we know the things we do in the face of the difficulties that seem naturally to arise in the explanations they come up with.

Epilogue: Ad Astra Per Aspera

2020 ◽  
pp. 188-200
Author(s):  
Adam Pryor
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Imago Dei ◽  
World Today ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Existential Concerns

What happens when the Anthropocene and the imago Dei become corroborative symbols in the astrobiological contexts that shape our engagement with the world today? My argument has been that, in the face of various instances of ecological crises, the Anthropocene symbolizes the existential concerns at stake in this devastation so that we better understand that our way of meaningfully orienting our existence toward the natural world is askew. To remember that we are the imago Dei can give us courage to stay with the trouble of this disorientation a moment longer and imaginatively play out new realities that confront the inevitable ecological devastations that have been wrought upon the earth.

Mind, Knowledge and Reality: Themes from Kant

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 321-348
Author(s):  
Quassim Cassam
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Cognitive Faculties

According to what might be described as ‘humanist’ approaches to epistemology, the fundamental task of epistemology is to investigate the nature, scope and origins of human knowledge. Evidently, what we can know depends upon the nature of our cognitive faculties, including our senses and our understanding. Since there may be significant differences between human cognitive faculties and those of other beings, it would seem that an investigation of the nature, scope and origins of human knowledge must therefore concern itself, in the first instance, with uncovering the structure and operations of the human cognitive apparatus. The most influential versions of humanism in epistemology have also been inclined to insist both that it is contingent that our cognitive faculties are as they are, and that an investigation of these faculties must be largely empirical. An empirical investigation is to be understood, very roughly, as one which relies upon observation and experiment, and to describe such an investigation as naturalistic is to draw attention to the fact that it is presupposed by humanism that the faculties being investigated are a part of the natural world, the world of space, time and causal law.

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.

Power of Darkness: Narrative and Biographical Reflexivity in A Series of Unfortunate Events

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-212
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH BULLEN
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Project Risk ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
High Earning ◽  
Textual Culture ◽  
Children’S Exposure ◽  
Central Claim

This paper investigates the high-earning children's series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, in relation to the skills young people require to survive and thrive in what Ulrich Beck calls risk society. Children's textual culture has been traditionally informed by assumptions about childhood happiness and the need to reassure young readers that the world is safe. The genre is consequently vexed by adult anxiety about children's exposure to certain kinds of knowledge. This paper discusses the implications of the representation of adversity in the Lemony Snicket series via its subversions of the conventions of children's fiction and metafictional strategies. Its central claim is that the self-consciousness or self-reflexivity of A Series of Unfortunate Events} models one of the forms of reflexivity children need to be resilient in the face of adversity and to empower them to undertake the biographical project risk society requires of them.

Indigenous Environmental Justice, Knowledge, and Law

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah McGregor
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Indigenous Worldviews ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Innovative Approaches

This article aims to introduce a distinct conception of Indigenous environmental justice (IEJ) based on Indigenous legal orders, knowledge systems, and conceptions of justice. This is not to suggest in any way that the existing environmental justice (EJ) scholarship is flawed; in fact, the scholarship and activism around EJ have been central in diagnosing and drawing attention to injustices that occur on a systematic basis everywhere in the world. This article argues instead that such discussions can be expanded by acknowledging that concepts of environmental justice, including distinct legal orders informed by Indigenous knowledge systems, already existed on Turtle Island for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Europeans. It also suggests that environmental justice framed within Indigenous worldviews, ontologies, and epistemologies may make significant contributions to broader EJ scholarship, particularly in relation to extending justice to other beings and entities in Creation. This approach acknowledges ongoing colonialism and emphasizes the need to decolonize in order to advance innovative approaches to IEJ. 

Persons in a World of Things

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Classic Essay

This chapter focuses on the reality of persons in a world of things. It begins and ends with some relevant views drawn from the Jewish philosophers Buber (1878–1965), Heschel (1907–72), and Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–93). Framed by the Jewish concerns, it turns to a philosophical exploration of human personhood. The chapter begins by consiering Sellars's classic essay on the scientific and manifest images of “man-in-the-world.” Sellars shows how urgent and difficult it is to sustain a recognizable image of ourselves as persons in the face of scientism. With additional help from Nagel and Kant, it argues that persons cannot be conceptually scanted in a world of things. Notwithstanding the explanatory power of science, there is more to life than explanation. Explanation of what we are needs supplementing by a conception of who we are, how we should live, and why we matter. Those are questions to which Jewish sources can speak.

Too WEIRD, Too Fast: Preprints about COVID-19 in the Psychological Sciences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arathy Puthillam
Keyword(s):  
Overwhelming Majority ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Psychological Studies

That American and European participants are overrepresented in psychological studies has been previously established. In addition, researchers also often tend to be similarly homogenous. This continues to be alarming, especially given that this research is being used to inform policies across the world. In the face of a global pandemic where behavioral scientists propose solutions, we ask who is conducting research and on what samples. Forty papers on COVID-19 published in PsyArxiV were analyzed; the nationalities of the authors and the samples they recruited were assessed. Findings suggest that an overwhelming majority of the samples recruited were from the US and the authors were based in US and German institutions. Next, men constituted a large proportion of primary and sole authors. The implications of these findings are discussed.

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