Schopenhauer, Buddhism, and Compassion

2020 ◽  
pp. 327-346
Author(s):  
Richard Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Metaphysical Explanation ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Perfect Duties ◽  
Kantian View ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Way

The focus of this chapter is Schopenhauer’s On The Basis of Morality (1841). His distinctive views are that compassion marks one’s being as spontaneously motivated to relieve another’s suffering as one’s own and that this requires a metaphysical explanation for how one identifies with another. The author defends these views and shows in some detail how they mirror the Mahayana account of compassion in Shantideva’s The Way of the Bodhisattva. Next, the author outlines Schopenhauer’s case for compassion being the sole basis of moral value and defends this claim against the Kantian view that acting beneficently cannot (rationally) override so-called perfect duties to others. Finally, the author explores how Buddha Shakyamuni’s teachings cohere with Schopenhauer’s account of suffering and how mystical consciousness, as represented in Mahayana Buddhism’s “Middle Way,” coheres with Schopenhauer’s asceticism—the “denial of the will”—as the path to overcoming suffering.

Belief and the Will

Philosophy ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 47 (180) ◽  
pp. 95-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony O'Hear
Keyword(s):  
Long Period ◽  
General Account ◽  
The Will ◽  
Will Power ◽  
The Way

In this article, we will consider how far we might be said to be active in forming our beliefs; in particular, we will ask to what extent we can be said to be free in believing what we want to believe. It is clear that we ought to believe only what is really so, at least in so far as it lies in our power to determine this, but reflection shows that, regrettably, we do not confine our beliefs to what we have evidence for, nor do we always believe in accordance with the evidence we do have. So it is natural to conclude that non-intellectual factors may be at work here; such, at least, was the view of Descartes, who attributed error to the influence of our will in leading us to assent to judgments which go beyond the evidence presented by our infallible intellect. This view has some initial plausibility when we think of cases in which emotional considerations lead people to take up and genuinely believe things they have no evidence for, but it is not a view which has received much support from modern philosophers. So, in Part 1 we will look at criticisms levelled against Descartes' view by J. L. Evans, and in Part 2 we will see how far Descartes can be defended. Our conclusions here will lead us to give in Part 3 a general account of the influence of the will in beliefs. We will suggest that we are always responsible for our explicit beliefs, even though it is not true that we can simply believe what we like. Thus we will reject the idea that a man can consciously know something, and at the same time, by will power, believe the opposite. Belief is not then totally free, but we will argue that people do sometimes form beliefs which go against what they should and could believe, and that this can in a way be put down to the influence of the will. Finally we will consider some of the ways in which it is possible to influence our beliefs by willed acts over a long period of time, though this is not the way that we clami that the will might be said to play a part in every judgment that we make.

scholarly journals MAKING THE CONTENTS OF LETTERS IN THE NOTARIS IN ISLAM'S LEGAL PERSPECTIVE

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 234
Author(s):  
Tubus Tubus
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Legal Perspective ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
The Way

This paper aims to examine the making of the contents of wills examined from the point of view of Islamic law, in practice the reality in the lives of many people who have not heed the word basmallah as an incantation in the contents of the will for the followers of Islam. In this study using sociological juridical method, where the primary data obtained directly from field research, while secondary data obtained from the literature. The results obtained that the way of making the contents of the will and the absence of public legal awareness is optimal for the making of the contents of wills in accordance with Islamic law. And there are still weaknesses in the Making and Implementation of the contents of the current will, when the testament is oral, namely: The absence of the sacred intention or the noble intention of the collector must not necessarily occur; unsecured rights of the recipient, in the event of any problems of the future heirs of the pewasiat; there is a difficulty of proof in the absence of witnesses, when the will is brought before the Court. Law renewal in the making of the contents of the will in the presence of a notary in the perspective of Islamic law are: the reconstruction of its value, the Ideal Formation of the Will, the testament is done in writing witnessed by two witnesses and before the Notary. Ideal Construction Format of Testament Creation. The testament is written in the presence of two witnesses or in the form of a Deed or a Notary Deed. At the head of the will or the Deed or Notarial deed is included a sentence “Basmallah”.

Having the will and finding the way: A review and meta-analysis of hope at work

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 292-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca J. Reichard ◽  
James B. Avey ◽  
Shane Lopez ◽  
Maren Dollwet
Keyword(s):  
Meta Analysis ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Way

Between Construction and Immediacy

2019 ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Douglas S. Duckworth
Keyword(s):  
Ultimate Truth ◽  
Language And Thought ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Cognitive Orientation ◽  
Phenomenological Dimension ◽  
The Way

This chapter begins with a discussion of emptiness and introduces two broad streams of interpretation of the import of negation. The “enframed” interpretation emphasizes the value of language and thought in the discovery of ultimate truth, while the “unenframed” interpretation emphasizes the way that language and thought impede this discovery. Both interpretations claim to represent the view of Madhyamaka, the middle way between the extremes of essentialism and nihilism. The Geluk tradition of Madhyamaka emphasizes the interpretation of emptiness as an absence of true existence, yet its meaning is also participatory and performative, since the meaning of emptiness is to be cultivated through meditation. In Mind-Only and Yogācāra-inflected traditions like the Kagyü and Nyingma, the experiential or phenomenological dimension of emptiness is emphasized, whereby emptiness is inclusive of a participatory (or cognitive) orientation and is not typically framed as an object or solely the (object-ive) nature of things.

Nerve Ending

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan K. Rode
Keyword(s):  
Nerve Ending ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Will Rogers ◽  
Assistant Director ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Way

Curtiz directedI’ll See You in My Dreams (1951), starring Doris Day and the newcomer Danny Thomas. The picture was his last box-office hit at Warner Bros.His long-cherished project,The Will Rogers Story, starring the commentator-actor’s son, was a handsome picture but a commercial failure. A remake of The Jazz Singer(1952) with Danny Thomas turned out even worse, though he cast the singer Peggy Lee in the film.Curtiz was becoming increasingly angry with Warners for refusing to hire his brother David as an assistant director and stonewalling his inquiries concerning the profit percentages on his films. After Curtiz directed John Wayne in Trouble Along the Way(1953), the studio claimed that all Curtiz’s films but onehad lost money.It then attempted to cheat him out of those minuscule profits by legally parsing his contract.The author also notes two sets of differing financial figures that Warner Bros. maintained on Curtiz’s films.After Warner informed him that he would have to accept a salary reduction and rejected his profit claims, Curtiz threatened a lawsuit. The suit was dropped and Jack Warner eventually paid him off to settle the matter. Curtiz finished his last Warner movie,The Boy from Oklahoma(1954),and moved on to Paramount Pictures.

What Made Pompeius Fight in 49 B.c.?

1959 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. G. Pocock
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
World Order ◽  
Great Majority ◽  
European History ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Old World ◽  
Small Minority ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Way

The Civil War of 49 B.c. is one of the most important wars of European history, if only for the fact that it ended an old world order and paved the way for a new one which was to endure in Europe for nearly two thousand years. It is also one of the most dramatic wars of history, perhaps the most truly ‘tragic’, in the Greek sense of the word, of them all—so ‘tragic’ that it has never found a poet to do it justice, or to bring its leading characters fairly upon the stage. It was certainly the most unnecessary of wars. It involved the whole of Western civilization, and yet no really deep-seated emotions or animosities, racial, national, social, or even individual, caused the conflagration. It was, in fact, nothing but a trial of strength, with no constructive objective in view, between two men, highly educated, humane, related by marriage, not unfriendly to one another, members of the same society and the same clubs, as it were, whose interests, even, need not have been incompatible. It is generally agreed that the great majority of the senatorial aristocracy very definitely did not want the war; and it seems quite clear that the small minority, of some twenty-two, who did were powerless to commence it or wage it without the will and leadership of Pompeius. It is also agreed that Caesar, while prepared to fight for his skin and his dignitas, and to that extent responsible, did not want war and made sincere efforts both to avoid it and to stop it.

The Mediation is the Message: The Legacy of McLuhan for the Digital Era?

2000 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-37
Author(s):  
P. David Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Cultural Consciousness ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Way

McLuhan has enjoyed a resurgence in credibility through his rise with the Wired generation. This article identifies that McLuhan's major value is not so much contained in his aphorisms, but directly related to the way he was mediated and disseminated into the cultural consciousness. Thematically. McLuhan's mediation can be grouped around three valuable elements that are worth celebrating: his endeavour to operate at the level of the universal; his activity as a public intellectual: and his less obvious but currently important investment in the populace and popular culture. These components of the McLuhan persona/mediation have had a particular resonance with the changing divides of production/reception, the will to universalisation and the transformed ‘public sphere ‘ that the Internet has foregrounded.

Hermeneutik der Minne: Liebesdichtung und religiöser Diskurs bei Dante und Petrarca

2015 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Regn
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Courtly Love ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
The Will ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

AbstractAn important characteristic of Italian minne-poetry in the late Middle Ages is the negotiation of the Sacred and the Profane. Nonetheless, Dante and Petrarch, the most important representatives of Italian minne-poetry, enter this negotiation in very different ways. Dante proposes to align mundane minne-poetry - as a form of minne-theology - with sacralization; with that, Dante seems to be in perfect harmony with his epoch, commonly referred to as Christian or theocentric Middle Ages. But looking more closely, Dante’s sacralization of courtly love reveals itself to be an outrageous provocation of Christian orthodoxy: Dante’s minne-poetry presents itself as a supplement to the Gospel’s promise of Salvation, and thus obviously competes with the institutionalized religion. Petrarch, very much concerned to be perceived as the one to overcome the ‘Dark Ages’ represented by Dante and from there as the founding authority of what we call Renaissance, quotes Dante’s sacralization of the courtly love in order to cancel demonstratively its claim to ontological substance. Different to Dante, Petrarch avoids all heretic appearance by presenting the divinization of the minne-lady as a mere phantasm which is finally recognized as the result of a morally erroneous conception of love. Therefore with Petrarch, Christian orthodoxy is not overtly contested. This paradoxically clears the way for a genuine worldly poetry in which art itself gains the aura of the sacred: thus with Petrarch, the will to balance religion and love becomes a driving force of secularization.

The Will and the Way? Associations Between Purpose and Grit Among Students in Three US Universities

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-365
Author(s):  
Terese J. Lund ◽  
Belle Liang ◽  
Angela DeSilva Mousseau ◽  
Veronica Matyjaszczyk ◽  
Tyrone Fleurizard
Keyword(s):  
The Will ◽  
The Way

scholarly journals Naming oneself in the social mirror: A vignette-based survey

2020 ◽  
pp. 001139212093295
Author(s):  
Oscar MacClure ◽  
Emmanuelle Barozet ◽  
Ana María Valenzuela
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Economic Dimension ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Way

In order to understand the way in which people self-identify in society and as a contribution to debates about class identity in Latin America, in this article the authors assess how individuals categorize themselves and others socially, and discuss whether a significant portion of the population classifies itself as middle class. They address the question of whether or not individuals’ representation of their social position is linked to social class, examining whether that position incorporates a socio-economic dimension, a hierarchical dimension, or even an element of moral value. The authors focus on how individuals name their own social position by means of a vignette-based survey applied in 2016 to a randomized sample of 2000 people in Chile. The results show that the theoretical notion of class is still of relevance to subjective positioning criteria, and that such criteria are specific to individuals who self-identify with lower or higher social positions.

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