Levinas on the Problem of Language

Author(s):  
William Large

This chapter discusses the problem of language in Levinas’s philosophy regarding methodology. Ethics, for Levinas, happens in everyday speech, where the Other demands a response from me. How he describes this relation presents methodological problems for Levinas, because it is resistant to any kind of theoretical approach, including phenomenology. Any writing about ethics, including Levinas’s, would immediately be its betrayal. This chapter describes Levinas’s account of language in Totality and Infinity, the issues that remain there, which it highlights through Blanchot’s and Derrida’s discussion of Levinas’s work. It also outlines a different way of thinking about the alterity of Other that is suggested in Totality and Infinity but comes to the fore in Otherwise Than Being, which is not as an opposition between speech and the visible, but enunciation (the saying) and the sayable (the said).

Vox Patrum ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 339-348
Author(s):  
Bogdan Czyżewski

Although St. Basil did not live 50 years, the topic of the old age appears in his works quite often. On the other hand, it is clear that Basil does not discuss this issue in one par­ticular work or in the longer argumentation. The fragmentary statements about old age can be found in almost all his works, but most of them can be found in the correspondence of Basil. In this paper we present the most important ad the most interesting aspect of teach­ing of Basil the Great. As these certificates show that the bishop of Caesarea looked at the old age maturely, rationally estimated passage of time, which very often makes a man different. He experienced it, for example as a spiritual and physical suffering, which often were connected with his person. He saw a lot of aspect of the old age, especially its advan­tages – spiritual maturity and wisdom. What is more, he pointed also to passage of time, which leads a man to eternity, which should be prepared to, regardless how old he is. In his opinion fear is not seen opinions of St. Basil present really Christian way of thinking, well-balanced and calm.


Author(s):  
Claire Taylor

This chapter lays out the theoretical approach for the book and discusses the methodological problems of writing about poverty and the poor in the ancient world. Whilst studying the lives of the poor in the ancient world is to some extent elusive, it argues that historians can do more than simply imagine this group of people back into the gaps left by other evidence. As well as reviewing previous scholarship on poverty in the ancient world, it suggests a way forward which is more in line with contemporary poverty research within the social sciences.


Traditio ◽  
1948 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 161-185
Author(s):  
Kurt Lewent

Cerveri was decidedly no poetical genius, and often enough he follows the trodden paths of troubadour poetry. However, there is no denying that again and again he tries to escape that poetical routine. In many cases these attempts result in odd and eccentric compositions, where the unusual is reached at the cost of good taste and poetical values. On the other hand, it must be admitted that Cerveri's efforts in this respect were not always futile. His is, e.g. an amusing satire upon bad women. One of his love songs, characteristically called libel by the MS (Sg), assumes the form of a complaint submitted to the king as the supreme earthly judge, in which the defendant is the lady whose charms torture the lover and have made him a prisoner. This poem combines the traditional praise of the beloved and a flattery addressed to the king. Its slightly humoristic tone is also found in a song entitled lo vers del vassayll leyal. Here Cerveri, basing himself on a certain legend connected with St. Mark, gives the king advice in his love affair. Again the poet kills two birds with one stone, flattering the sovereign and pointing, for obvious purposes, to his own poverty. The latter is the only topic of a remarkably personal poem in which the author complains bitterly that, while many of his playmates have become rich in later years, the only wealth he himself did amass were the chans gays and sonetz agradans which he composed for other people to enjoy. Cerveri even tries to renew the traditional genre of the chanson de la mal mariée by adding motifs of—presumably—his own invention. This tendency towards a more independent way of thinking and greater originality in its poetical presentation could not be better illustrated than by the two poems which the MS calls Lo vers de la terra de Preste Johan and Pistola The one puts the poet's moral argumentation against the background of the medieval legend of Prester John, the other, which forms the subject of the present study, sets its teachings in a still more solemn framework, the liturgy of the Mass.


2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 113
Author(s):  
Muhammad Alfandi

<p class="IIABSBARU">This study is about the potential prejudice sparked internal conflict of Muslims, especially between the group Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the Council of Tafsir Al-Qur'an (MTA) in Surakarta. Lately there is a conflict between NU and the MTA congregation. MTA is questioned by NU in some areas because of the materials and methods of preaching/dakwah considered to be provocative and less likely to appreciate the difference fiqhiyah and abusive deeds done by NU. From the reason above, the conflict between these two Islamic organizations appeared. One of the triggers that caused the internal conflict among Muslims is the certain group of Muslims can not understand well the other religious groups, which have different ideological backgrounds; that it affects the way of thinking, behaving and acting that are different from themselves. As a result, the internal relations marred by religious conflict, caused by the internal religious prejudice. Similarly, the possibility that occurred among the group of NU and MTA.</p><p class="IKa-ABSTRAK">***</p>Penelitian ini adalah tentang potensi memicu prasangka konflik internal umat Islam, terutama antara kelompok Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) dan Majelis Tafsir Al-Qur'an (MTA) di Surakarta. Akhir-akhir ini ada konflik antara NU dan jemaat MTA. MTA dipertanyakan/diperdebatkan oleh NU di beberapa daerah karena bahan dan metode dakwah/dakwah dianggap/cenderung provokatif dan cenderung tidak menghargai perbedaan <em>fiqhiyah</em> dengan perbuatan kasar yang dilakukan oleh NU. Dari alasan di atas, konflik antara kedua organisasi Islam telah terjadi/ muncul. Salah satu pemicu yang menyebabkan konflik internal di kalangan umat Islam adalah kelompok tertentu umat Islam tidak bisa memahami dengan baik kelompok agama lain, yang memiliki latar belakang ideologi yang berbeda, se­hingga mempengaruhi cara berpikir, bersikap dan bertindak yang berbeda dari diri mereka sendiri. Akibatnya, hubungan internal yang dirusak oleh konflik agama, disebabkan oleh prasangka keagamaan internal. Demikian pula, ke­mungkin­an yang terjadi di antara kelompok NU dan MTA.


2003 ◽  
pp. 33-59
Author(s):  
Danilo Basta

Fichte's theory of the state, comprising and integral part of his practical philosophy, is built on the key premises of his metaphysics. Therefore the clarification of this problem in Fichte's later philosophy intends to point, on one hand, to a representative metaphysical project of the state with great speculative power, and on the other to a way of thinking about the state which is today taken to be anachronistic, unscientific, outdated, and hence worthy of being mentioned as a "negative example". Though these qualifications should not be totally discarded or questioned in advance, revisiting Fichte's late metaphysics of the state is philosophically productive even in our times. Nowadays it can be extremely helpful to anyone who has not yet been trodden over by a scientific political science and whose cognitive interest is still sufficiently open for a strongly philosophical consideration of the state, who wishes to philosophically enrich or sharpens his/her view of the state. Although Fichte's theory of the state is unified and coherent, it underwent - especially in its last phase - a significant transformation. It was so much visible that the state is relegated to the background even terminologically. In Fichte's later philosophy the keyword is no longer the state but the "realm of freedom". The state is here talked about intentionally, as it were, always with a glance aimed at this realm, at the possibility and prospects for its establishment. Although this terminological and cognitive primacy of the realm of freedom pushed the state into the background, it was not denied any importance. On the contrary, on the way to freedom the state is for Fichte an important point of development that must be passed. And precisely in this transiency lies its inevitability. .


Author(s):  
Andrea Bachner

This chapter explores different links between sound and writing, from Rilke’s and Adorno’s reflections on phonographic grooves as a type of proto-writing in the early decades of the twentieth century to contemporary media theories that invest sound with the powers of immediacy, immersion, and corporeal resonance on the one hand and to poststructuralist fantasies of sound as an embodiment of écriture on the other. Sound theorists invest sound with contradictory desires: as a counter to phonocentric phantasms of presence as well as an alternative, resonant way of thinking, as that which is most mediated as well as a figure of non-mediation. And figures of inscription—as overt or disavowed imaginary, as well as negative foil—frequently represent and mediate between these differing theoretical approaches to sound. The genealogy of intextuated sound that this chapter narrates throws light on the strategic deployment of media in theory, for which sound (and its conceptual imaginaries) becomes a hallmark of reconceptualizing corporeality and materiality as well as a way of negotiating between mediation and the unmediated.


1991 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
William White ◽  
Paul J. Handal

This study systematically examined the relationship between death anxiety and mental health/distress and controlled for methodological problems present in the literature. Specifically, two measures of death anxiety were used-both had recommended cut-off scores for high death anxiety. Both positive and negative aspects of adjustment were assessed, and a valid clinically meaningful cut-off score for distress was employed. Results revealed high death-anxious females were statistically and clinically more distressed and were significantly less satisfied with life than low death-anxious females. Similar results were obtained for males on one death-anxiety measure; a similar trend was found on the other measure. Discussion focuses on the interpretation of results.


2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 305-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave Holmes ◽  
Amélie Perron ◽  
Patrick O’Byrne

From the seeming chaos of war zones and emergency rooms to the ritualized order of forensic psychiatric settings and sexual health clinics, nurses often experience feelings of disgust and repulsion in their practice. For these intense feelings to occur, an abject object must exist. Cadaverous, sick, disabled bodies, troubled minds, wounds, vomit, feces, and so forth are all part of nursing work and threaten the clean and proper bodies of nurses. The unclean side of nursing is rarely accounted for in academic literature: it is silenced. Using a theoretical approach, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate how fruitful the concept of abjection is in understanding nurses’ reactions of disgust and repulsion regarding particular patients or clinical situations.


1981 ◽  
Vol 70 (03) ◽  
pp. 143-151
Author(s):  
Georg Von Keller

SummaryThe author first of all quotes from Rademacher's Erfahrungsheillehre der alten scheidekünstigen Geheimärzte and Rudolph Steiner's 1920 Lectures to Doctors and Medical Students, to show that considerable differences exist within homœopathy and similar schools of medicine regarding the method of finding the remedy.Paracelsus, Rademacher, Rudolph Steiner and others hold the view that the physician must first diagnose the organ in which the disease takes its origin, before he can prescribe the appropriate organotropic medicine. Hahnemann on the other hand is against such a theoretical approach and depends entirely on the predominantly subjective symptoms of the individual, to find a remedy for this particular person and not for an abstract disease.Only those who follow Rademacher's line of thought will therefore be content with seeing a remedy such as Chelidonium as a specific for the liver. The Hahnemannians need all the symptoms of the remedy for their method, down to the smallest and most subjective detail.With the aid of tape recordings made in his surgery, the author therefore goes into the details of three indications for Chelidonium—abdominal pain, pain in the back, and headache. This establishes the fact that, as with all remedies, the action of Chelidonium is in no way limited to a single organ, but extends to the whole human being, and to all his organs.In conclusion it is stated that the remedy may be frequently indicated if there is hepatic involvement, but that a closer study of the more detailed actions of Chelidonium will enable the practitioner to recognize it far more frequently in the patients he sees day by day, and become more certain in his choice of the remedy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
RUTH CHANG

ABSTRACT:What makes a choice hard? I discuss and criticize three common answers and then make a proposal of my own. Paradigmatic hard choices are not hard because of our ignorance, the incommensurability of values, or the incomparability of the alternatives. They are hard because the alternatives are on a par; they are comparable, but one is not better than the other, and yet nor are they equally good. So understood, hard choices open up a new way of thinking about what it is to be a rational agent.


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