A Present Folded Back on the Past (Bergson)

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Bernet

AbstractIn Matter and Memory, Bergson examines the relationship between perception and memory, the status of consciousness in its relation to the brain, and more generally, a possible conjunction of matter and mind. Our reading focuses in particular on his understanding of the evanescent presence of the present and of its debt vis-à-vis the "unconscious" consciousness of a "virtual" past. We wish to show that the Bergsonian version of a critique of "the metaphysics of presence" is, for all that, an offshoot of a Platonic type of metaphysics. It is true that Bergson departs from traditional standpoints on the side of a self-sufficient and original present and a form of presence to which the transparency of consciousness would confer the character of immediate evidence. All the same, it can hardly be claimed that his rehabilitation of the past and the unconscious opens up new perspectives on how forgetting and death are bound up with the work of memory.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Davies

The rise of populist political rhetoric and mobilisation, together with a conflict-riven digital public sphere, has generated growing interest in anger as a central emotion in politics. Anger has long been recognised as a powerful driver of political action and resistance, by feminist scholars among others, while political philosophers have reflected on the relationship of anger to ethical judgement since Aristotle. This article seeks to differentiate between two different ideal types of anger, in order to illuminate the status of anger in contemporary populist politics and rhetoric. First, there is anger that arises in an automatic, pre-conscious fashion, as a somatic, reactive and performative way, to an extent that potentially spirals into violence. Second, there is anger that builds up over time in response to perceived injustice, potentially generating melancholia and ressentiment. Borrowing Kahneman’s dualism, the article refers to these as ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ anger, and deploys the distinction to understand how the two interact. In the hands of the demagogue or troll, ‘fast anger’ can be deployed to focus all energies on the present, so as to briefly annihilate the past and the ‘slow anger’ that has been deposited there. And yet only by combining the conscious reflection of memory with the embodied response of action can anger ever be meaningfully sated in politics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Dina Afrianty

AbstractIndonesian women were at the forefront of activism during the turbulent period prior to reformasi and were a part of the leadership that demanded democratic change. Two decades after Indonesia embarked on democratic reforms, the country continues to face challenges on socio-religious and political fronts. Both the rise of political Islam and the increased presence of religion and faith in the public sphere are among the key features of Indonesia's consolidating democracy. This development has reinvigorated the discourse on citizenship and rights and also the historical debate over the relationship between religion and the state. Bearing this in mind, this paper looks at the narrative of women's rights and women's status in the public domain and public policy in Indonesia. It is evident, especially in the past decade, that much of the public conversation within the religious framework is increasingly centred on women's traditional social roles. This fact has motivated this study. Several norms and ideas that are relied on are based on cultural and faith-based interpretations - of gender. Therefore, this paper specifically examines examples of the ways in which social, legal, and political trends in this context affect progress with respect to gender equality and gender policy. I argue that these trends are attempts to subject women to conservative religious doctrines and to confine them to traditional gender roles. The article discusses how these developments should be seen in the context of the democratic transition in Indonesia.


Author(s):  
Vered Lev Kenaan

Commonly understood as a modern conceptual invention rather than the discovery of a psychic reality, the notion of the unconscious is often criticized by traditional classicists as an anachronistic lens, one that ineluctably subjects ancient experience to modern patterns of thought. The book challenges this ambivalent theoretical disposition toward the psychoanalytic concept by offering an interpretation of the unconscious, explaining why this concept is in fact inseparable from, and crucial for, the study of the ancient text and more generally for the methodology of classical philology. The book thus examines the complicated, often conflicted, relationship between classical studies and psychoanalytic theory. The Ancient Unconscious considers the debate over whether the ancients had an unconscious as an invitation to rethink the relationship between antiquity and modernity. While antiquity does not provide organic provenance for modernity, it is nevertheless the case that despite the cultural and historical distance, the two epochs are firmly connected. The book investigates the meaning of the textual ties created by arbitrary, spontaneous, and unintentional contacts between the past and its future. Understanding the meaning of textuality through contact between times, historical moments that have no priority under the law of chronology, goes hand in hand with the book’s interpretation of the unconscious. Associations and connections between the past and its future—including the present—belong to the sphere of the unconscious. This latter is primarily employed here in order to study the inherent, often hidden links that bind modernity to classical antiquity, modern to ancient experiences.


1981 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Flannery ◽  
Graeme Taylor

The brain is the “key organ” for understanding mind/body/illness relationships. During the past two decades neurobiological research has generated a plethora of new data and concepts which have increased tremendously our knowledge of the functioning brain. As a result the psychoanalytic view of the relationship between mind and brain may seem at risk of becoming outmoded. Yet while psychoanalytic theory may no longer be wholly tenable, psychoanalysis continues to offer interesting and heuristically valuable isomorphic models of cortical function. On the other hand neurobiology provides a corrective influence on psychoanalytic concept-building, causing theory to be refined as it is tested against the results of research. One possible result of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization is that a revised theory of the function of dreams and fantasy may throw light on the vicissitudes of somatic experience, and the pathogenesis of psychophysiological disorder.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Andersson ◽  
Mathias Hallberg

The hexapeptide angiotensin IV (Ang IV) is a metabolite of angiotensin II (Ang II) and plays a central role in the brain. It was reported more than two decades ago that intracerebroventricular injection of Ang IV improved memory and learning in the rat. Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain the positive effects of Ang IV and related analogues on cognition. It has been proposed that the insulin-regulated aminopeptidase (IRAP) is the main target of Ang IV. This paper discusses progress in the discovery of inhibitors of IRAP as potential enhancers of cognitive functions. Very potent inhibitors of the protease have been synthesised, but pharmacokinetic issues (including problems associated with crossing the blood-brain barrier) remain to be solved. The paper also briefly presents an overview of the status in the discovery of inhibitors of ACE and renin, and of AT1R antagonists and AT2R agonists, in order to enable other discovery processes within the RAS system to be compared. The paper focuses on the relationship between binding affinities/inhibition capacity and the structures of the ligands that interact with the target proteins.


Author(s):  
Gunnar Bergh ◽  
Sölve Ohlander

General-purpose dictionaries may be assumed to reflect the core vocabulary of current language use. This implies that subsequent editions of a desk dictionary should mirror lexical changes in the general language. These include cases where special-language words have become so familiar to the general public that they may also be regarded as part of general language. This is the perspective of the present study on English football vocabulary, where a set of well-known football words – dribble, offside, etc. – are investigated as to their representation in five editions of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911–2011), and in four of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1948–1995). Two other dictionaries are also consulted: the Oxford Dictionary of English (2010) and – for first occurrences of the words studied – the Oxford English Dictionary. It is shown that, over the past hundred years, football vocabulary has gradually, at an accelerating pace, become more mainstream, as demonstrated by the growth of such vocabulary (e.g. striker, yellow card) in subsequent dictionary editions. Yet, some football terms make an esoteric impression, e.g. nutmeg ‘play the ball through the opponent’s legs’. Interestingly, such words also tend to be included in present-day dictionaries. Thus, football language is in a state of constant flux, responding to developments in and around the game. This is reflected in the dictionaries studied. In conclusion, due to the status and media coverage of the “people’s game” today, English general-purpose dictionaries have increasingly come to recognize much of its vocabulary as part of general language.


Author(s):  
Valentina I. Volokhova ◽  
Marina I. Koshenova ◽  
Denis M. Shabanov

This paper presents the current trends analysis of research into the psychological time of personality in foreign and domestic psychology, justified the need to study the dynamics of psychological time at the period of youth at conditional points of bifurcation associated with the forced need to make personal choices: in early and late youth. The reasonability of investigating the relationship of psychological time with personal identity as a predictor of self-realisation or maladaptation of personality at the stage of youth is shown. The pilot study presented in this work is aimed at identifying differences in the content characteristics and structure of psychological time in early and late youth. The ascertaining experiment was conducted with two groups (the total number of participants is 50 people). Diagnostic toolkit: the technique of F. Zimbardo on the time perspective (ZTPI), adapted by A. Syrtsova, the technique Time Experience Scale by E.I. Golovakhi, A.A. Kronik, as well as the technique Identity Status according to Marcia in the modification of the questionnaire G. and R. Aminev. Methods of mathematical statistics: t-Students criterion for independent samples and Pearsons index of linear correlation. The data obtained in the pilot study made it possible to draw conclusions that 1) the meaningful characteristics of psychological time in different periods of youth are not identical, 2) the characteristics of psychological time significantly correlate with the status of personality identity, and such a relationship is more important precisely in the period of early adolescence. The obtained data provided an opportunity to clarify the further direction of research and to outline the necessary ways of psychological support of the person during his youth in the conditions of modern social reality. For the prevention of maladaptation and destructive realization of the personality in the period of youth, targeted work is proposed with the psychological time of the personality, with the adoption of the past and the planning of the future, the determination of priorities, goal setting and the formation of temporal competence.


2002 ◽  
Vol 2002 ◽  
pp. 100-100
Author(s):  
F. Rosi ◽  
D. Magistrelli ◽  
F. Vitrani

The 16kDa peptide hormone leptin is an adipose tissue-derived regulator of food intake and energy homeostasis, and a signal of the status of body energy stores to the brain. Plasma levels of leptin reflect body fat mass in humans, rodents and ruminants (Houseknecht et al., 1998; Delavaud et al., 2000). The aim of this study was to investigate circadian rhythms of plasma leptin and other metabolic variables in rabbits, to assess the influence of the timing of food intake and to investigate the relationship between leptin and lipid metabolites.


2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 493-511
Author(s):  
Judit Gáspár

Time is in constant motion: the present, the future and the past, although they are not concepts having a fixed meaning, they are present in everyday life both at the conscious and the unconscious levels. The author’s intention in this paper is to grasp the relationship of companies to time and to the future in the mature and nascent states of their life cycles. As discussed in this paper, this relationship may appear with little reflection in the form of assumptions in the eyes of strategy researchers and practitioners. At first the interrelatedness of theory and practice is discussed in order to focus on the role of scholars and practitioners in creating theory and putting it to practice or vice versa. This general introduction will lay the ground for the study of interpretations of the future and time from the perspective of strategy research and strategy practice, respectively.


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