Philosophy as a Distinct Cultural Practice

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin E. H. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
Cultural Features ◽  
The Way

This chapter analyzes the cultural features in the ancient world that led to the emergence of philosophy as a distinct cultural activity and examines the way in which Indian philosophy, in contrast to the cases of Greece and China, may be understood in relation to these cultural features. It examines the influence of the technology of writing, as well as of natural-scientific inquiry, especially in the domain of health and medicine, and the transregional importance of literacy and science for the project of philosophy, while also showing that Indian philosophy functions throughout the classical and into the modern period as a relatively discrete intellectual activity. Finally it shows, by comparing the French materialist philosopher Pierre Gassendi with Indian philosophers in the mid-1660s, how differences in the two philosophical traditions’ relationships to literacy and science continued to play a role in the perception of a philosophical divide between these two traditions.

The God who gives generously: honour, praise and the agony of celebrity

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-66
Author(s):  
Mark B. Stephens ◽  
Georgiane Deal
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Celebrity Culture ◽  
Competitive Behaviour ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe need for honour, meaning publicly acknowledged worth, has been a feature of social life across the ages. From the ancient world of Greece and Rome, through to the honour codes of contemporary celebrity culture, the quest for honour is often framed in agonistic terms, in that honour is a limited good that demands competitive behaviour. This article examines the way early Christianity responded to ancient honour codes, with a view to its potential relevance in contemporary culture. It demonstrates the way early Christianity retained something of the language of honour in its ecclesial communities, but redefined honour in light of its conception of grace.

Becoming Politicized

2017 ◽  
Vol 225 (4) ◽  
pp. 324-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitrios Barkas ◽  
Xenia Chryssochoou
Keyword(s):  
Collective Identity ◽  
Political Socialization ◽  
Greek Society ◽  
Economic Vulnerability ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Identity Model ◽  
Beliefs About The Future ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
The Way

Abstract. This research took place just after the end of the protests following the killing of a 16-year-old boy by a policeman in Greece in December 2008. Participants (N = 224) were 16-year-olds in different schools in Attiki. Informed by the Politicized Collective Identity Model ( Simon & Klandermans, 2001 ), a questionnaire measuring grievances, adversarial attributions, emotions, vulnerability, identifications with students and activists, and questions about justice and Greek society in the future, as well as about youngsters’ participation in different actions, was completed. Four profiles of the participants emerged from a cluster analysis using representations of the conflict, emotions, and identifications with activists and students. These profiles differed on beliefs about the future of Greece, participants’ economic vulnerability, and forms of participation. Importantly, the clusters corresponded to students from schools of different socioeconomic areas. The results indicate that the way young people interpret the events and the context, their levels of identification, and the way they represent society are important factors of their political socialization that impacts on their forms of participation. Political socialization seems to be related to youngsters’ position in society which probably constitutes an important anchoring point of their interpretation of the world.

The Post-Zionist Discourse in Israel: 1990–2001

2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilan Pappé
Keyword(s):  
Israeli Society ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
The Way

This essay describes the development of the Post-Zionist critique within Israeli society, from the late 1980s, when it first appeared in academic works, and follows its dissemination into other areas of cultural activity (theatre, newspapers, films, TV and radio). It assesses the overall impact of post-Zionism on Israeli society, with particular stress on the way the recent Intifada (begun in September 2000) has influenced its fortunes in Israel, and raised some fears for the immediate future.

Our Most Troubling Madness

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Defeat ◽  
Social World ◽  
Epidemiological Evidence ◽  
The West ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Brain Alteration ◽  
Benign Course ◽  
Cultural Features ◽  
The Way

This book examines the way schizophrenia is shaped by its social context: how life is lived with this madness in different settings, and what it is about those settings that alters the course of the illness, its outcome, and even the structure of its symptoms. Until recently, schizophrenia was perhaps our best example—our poster child—for the “bio-bio-bio” model of psychiatric illness: genetic cause, brain alteration, pharmacologic treatment. We now have direct epidemiological evidence that people are more likely to fall ill with schizophrenia in some social settings than in others, and more likely to recover in some social settings than in others. Something about the social world gets under the skin. This book presents twelve case studies written by psychiatric anthropologists that help to illustrate some of the variability in the social experience of schizophrenia and that illustrate the main hypotheses about the different experience of schizophrenia in the west and outside the west--and in particular, why schizophrenia seems to have a more benign course and outcome in India. We argue that above all it is the experience of “social defeat” that increases the risk and burden of schizophrenia, and that opportunities for social defeat are more abundant in the modern west. There is a new role for anthropology in the science of schizophrenia. Psychiatric science has learned—epidemiologically, empirically, quantitatively—that our social world makes a difference. But the highly structured, specific-variable analytic methods of standard psychiatric science cannot tell us what it is about culture that has that impact. The careful observation enabled by rich ethnography allows us to see in more detail what kinds of social and cultural features may make a difference to a life lived with schizophrenia. And if we understand culture’s impact more deeply, we believe that we may improve the way we reach out to help those who struggle with our most troubling madness.

Humans and the Environment

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Environmental Archaeology ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

The environment has always been a central concept for archaeologists and, although it has been conceived in many ways, its role in archaeological explanation has fluctuated from a mere backdrop to human action, to a primary factor in the understanding of society and social change. Archaeology also has a unique position as its base of interest places it temporally between geological and ethnographic timescales, spatially between global and local dimensions, and epistemologically between empirical studies of environmental change and more heuristic studies of cultural practice. Drawing on data from across the globe at a variety of temporal and spatial scales, this volume resituates the way in which archaeologists use and apply the concept of the environment. Each chapter critically explores the potential for archaeological data and practice to contribute to modern environmental issues, including problems of climate change and environmental degradation. Overall the volume covers four basic themes: archaeological approaches to the way in which both scientists and locals conceive of the relationship between humans and their environment, applied environmental archaeology, the archaeology of disaster, and new interdisciplinary directions.The volume will be of interest to students and established archaeologists, as well as practitioners from a range of applied disciplines.

scholarly journals La literatura se acompasa a la nación. Rómulo Gallegos y su Venezuela moderna

2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-242
Author(s):  
Mónica Marinone
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
Moral Improvement ◽  
Romulo Gallegos ◽  
Xixth Century ◽  
Deep Conviction ◽  
The Way

Rómulo Gallegos was a chronicler of his place and time. The charm projected on his spirit by the stories of an optimistic modernity led his firm hand in the design of an image of a modern nation for Venezuela, inspired by the possibility of progressive knowledge, social and moral improvement, and the re-establishment  of a policy associated to virtue and law. An acknowledgement of foundations was inherent to that charm, as well as the notion of model, so dear to the western tradition that demanded quality, insisted on values, and recommended or prescribed lifestyles, two axes of a project that could be achievable due to the best regulatory device, Education. In this article I examine how writing was for Gallegos a cultural practice essentially associated to these axes and to that device because of its mission character and its possibility to organize multiple or complex realities. This cultural practice was also the way to canalize its programmatic pulse through performative statements that showed the Venezuelan reality and made the public believe what that reality was like in the view of a group that even standing against-power, enjoyed part of the monopoly of the discursive production of that reality. From this position I focus on Pobre negro (1937) and I establish its connection to some XIXth century scholars through the élan pédagogique or bequest of the Illustration, in the deep conviction that “education could do everything”.

scholarly journals From Pausanias to Baedeker and Trip Advisor: Textual proto-tourism and the engendering of tourism distribution channels

Turyzm ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-19
Author(s):  
Vicky Katsoni ◽  
Anna Fyta
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Digital Storytelling ◽  
Distribution Channels ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Travel Information ◽  
The Core ◽  
Textual Strategies ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
The Way

The key aim of this article is to provide an interdisciplinary look at tourism and its diachronic textual threads bequeathed by the ‘proto-tourist’ texts of the Greek travel author Pausanias. Using the periegetic, travel texts from his voluminous Description of Greece (2nd century CE) as a springboard for our presentation, we intend to show how the textual strategies employed by Pausanias have been received and still remain at the core of contemporary series of travel guides first authored by Karl Baedeker (in the 19th century). After Baedeker, Pausanias’ textual travel tropes, as we will show, still inform the epistemology of modern-day tourism; the interaction of travel texts with travel information and distribution channels produces generic hybrids, and the ancient Greek travel authors have paved the way for the construction of networks, digital storytelling and global tourist platforms.

scholarly journals To Act or not to Act: How Coleridge Changed the Way We See Hamlet

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (31) ◽  
pp. 133-143
Author(s):  
Svetozar Poštić
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ◽  
Samuel Johnson ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Insightful Analysis ◽  
The One ◽  
Main Protagonist ◽  
General Opinion ◽  
Lasting Influence ◽  
Real Action ◽  
The Way

Exactly 200 years ago, from 1811 to 1819, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the most famous English Romantic poets, held a series of influential lectures about William Shakespeareand his plays. His presentation of “Hamlet”, a play hitherto not only negatively appraised, but even viewed quite negatively by the leading critics, most notably Samuel Johnson, was especially significant. His insightful analysis helped to change the general opinion about the play, and pointed to the qualities of “Hamlet” that made it into perhaps the best known and most frequently played drama in the next 200 years. In this paper, I examine the way Coleridge was able to recognise the neglected features of Shakespeare’s profound tragedy up to that point. First of all, he identified with the main protagonist of the play, the Prince of Denmark, and described the unbridgeable gap between ambitions and power of imagination on the one hand, and inability to act on the other. Like Hamlet, Coleridge had "great, enormous, intellectual activity, and a consequent proportionate aversion to real action" (Coleridge 2014: 345). Aware of this shortcoming, but unable to correct it, the extremely talented and educated Coleridge presented it in fascinating detail. Secondly, he used his knowledge of the most influential contemporary philosophers, especially Kant, Locke and Hobbes, and the increasingly popular psychological approach to character analysis in order to paint an internal portrait of leading characters of the play. Due to the increasingly popular trend in recent literary theory and analysis focusing on the political and material context of an art work, the universal qualities of Coleridge's intepretation of “Hamlet” that contributed to the lasting influence of his critique have been largely neglected. This article intends, therefore, to re-establish the significance of Coleridge's “Hamlet” lectures

Bacon’s Novum organum

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 38-46
Author(s):  
Elodie Cassan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The World ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
The Way

Dan Garber’s paper provides materials permitting to reply to an objection frequently made to the idea that the Novum Organum is a book of logic, as the allusion to Aristotle’s Organon included in the very title of this book shows it is. How can Bacon actually build a logic, considering his repeated claims that he desires to base natural philosophy directly on observation and experiment? Garber shows that in the Novum Organum access to experience is always mediated by particular questions and settings. If there is no direct access to observation and experience, then there is no point in equating Bacon’s focus on experience in the Novum Organum with a rejection of discursive issues. On the contrary, these are two sides of the same coin. Bacon’s articulation of rules for the building of scientific reasoning in connection with the way the world is, illustrates his massive concern with the relation between reality, thinking and language. This concern is essential in the field of logic as it is constructed in the Early Modern period.

Myth and the ‘home culture concept’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leah Modigliani
Keyword(s):  
Art History ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Intentional Communities ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Home Culture ◽  
American Artist ◽  
Master's Thesis ◽  
Cultural Expressions ◽  
Back To The Land

Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace’s rejection of ‘home’ and ‘homeland,’ and the primacy of the manifesto as an important polemical tool in framing one’s work, are explored in Chapter 3 in relation to Wall’s art history master’s thesis on the Berlin Dada group, which established “myth” as an anti-critical cultural practice that was broadly applied to much of the cultural activity then active in Vancouver. Vancouver’s seeming “lack of history,” the existence of back-to-the-land intentional communities living outside of the urban centre, the proliferation of other performance and media based art groups, and the influence of visiting American artist Robert Smithson’s earthworks are all examined as cultural expressions deemed a-historical or romantic by photo-conceptualists.

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