Four Pillars of Sustainable Human Happiness

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-17
Author(s):  
M.S. Swaminathan
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Fay

Postwar American film noir explores an artificial world that does not foster human happiness and growth, but leads to a kind of human incapacity to act and respond. Beyond merely depicting these negative environments, noir lays bare the attachments to bad living and unsustainable striving that underwrite the accumulating culture of the Anthropocene at midcentury. Positioning itself as the genre that critiques postwar peaceful prosperity, noir gives us the characters, places, and scripts for human expiration as the counter to both nuclear survivalism and consumer capitalism. The hospitality of film noir is rental property. Indeed, impermanent dwelling of the individual and humanity as a whole is one of noir’s lessons for the Anthropocene. American noir is an ecological genre that teaches us in the spirit of Roy Scranton’s book how “to die in the Anthropocene.”


Ethics ◽  
1938 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Moffitt,
Keyword(s):  

AI and Ethics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Hanna ◽  
Emre Kazim

AbstractAI Ethics is a burgeoning and relatively new field that has emerged in response to growing concerns about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on human individuals and their social institutions. In turn, AI ethics is a part of the broader field of digital ethics, which addresses similar concerns generated by the development and deployment of new digital technologies. Here, we tackle the important worry that digital ethics in general, and AI ethics in particular, lack adequate philosophical foundations. In direct response to that worry, we formulate and rationally justify some basic concepts and principles for digital ethics/AI ethics, all drawn from a broadly Kantian theory of human dignity. Our argument, which is designed to be relatively compact and easily accessible, is presented in ten distinct steps: (1) what “digital ethics” and “AI ethics” mean, (2) refuting the dignity-skeptic, (3) the metaphysics of human dignity, (4) human happiness or flourishing, true human needs, and human dignity, (5) our moral obligations with respect to all human real persons, (6) what a natural automaton or natural machine is, (7) why human real persons are not natural automata/natural machines: because consciousness is a form of life, (8) our moral obligations with respect to the design and use of artificial automata or artificial machines, aka computers, and digital technology more generally, (9) what privacy is, why invasions of digital privacy are morally impermissible, whereas consensual entrances into digital privacy are either morally permissible or even obligatory, and finally (10) dignitarian morality versus legality, and digital ethics/AI ethics. We conclude by asserting our strongly-held belief that a well-founded and generally-accepted dignitarian digital ethics/AI ethics is of global existential importance for humanity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (Supplement_6) ◽  
pp. vi114-vi114
Author(s):  
Marie-Therese Forster ◽  
Irina Lortz ◽  
Volker Seifert ◽  
Christian Senft

Abstract OBJECTIVE Pursuing a profession is an indispensable component of human happiness. The aim of this study was to analyze patients′ professional, socio-economic and psychological outcomes besides their neuro-oncological and functional evaluation after awake surgery for gliomas in eloquent areas. METHODS The neuro-oncological and functional outcomes of patients with gliomas other than glioblastoma undergoing awake surgery during a period of 5 years were prospectively assessed within our routine oncological follow-up. Repercussions of the disease on their professional status, socio-economic situation, and neurocognitive function were evaluated retrospectively with structured interviews. RESULTS We analyzed data of 37 patients with gliomas (3 WHO Grade I, 6 WHO grade II, 28 WHO grade III). Gross total and subtotal tumor resections were performed in 20 (54.1%) and 11 (29.7%) patients, respectively, whereas in 7 patients (16.2%) resection had to remain partial. Median follow up was 24.1 months (range: 5–61 months). 31 patients (83.8%) had stable disease, 2 (5.4%) patients suffered from tumor progression and 4 (10.8%) patients died. Prior to surgery, all but one patient were employed. At the time of analysis, 24 (72.7%) of 33 alive patients had resumed their profession. 5 patients (15.2%) were on incapacity pension, 2 patients were on sick leave, and 2 had retired. The median time until return to work following surgery was 5.9 ±4.6 months. Young age (< 40 years) was the only factor statistically significantly associated with the ability to return to work (p< 0.001). CONCLUSION Despite brain tumor surgery in eloquent regions, the majority of patients with WHO grade II or III gliomas are able to return to work. Employing awake techniques in order to preserve neurological function is of utmost relevance for individual patients′ quality of life and may also decrease the economic burden due to work loss frequently encountered in glioma patients.


1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 325-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuhei Sugiyama

Some people would no doubt be surprised to learn of a man like Kaiseki Sata who in the early days of Meiji zealously asserted that ‘every expedience is an evil and every inexpedience a benefit’, and that umbrellas, lamps, railways, steamships and other similar innovations could only be harmful. But others whose personal knowledge and experience of such things as the noise and polluted air of big cities, the growing toll of road accidents and the horrors of the atomic bomb have convinced them that too much so-called civilization does not secure human happiness might be more inclined to sympathize with him. In fact, Sata merely represented the feelings of men in the street, by no means small in number, who, accustomed to the traditional way of life under the Shogunate, were either implicitly or explicitly opposed to the new government or at least unable to adapt themselves to the new way of life which made its appearance so suddenly. To Sata anything brought in from abroad seemed harmful, for he feared that innovations might lead to the impoverishment of those who lived by traditional trades and so land the whole nation in misery. He never ceased to write and lecture on this topic, and even went as far as to petition the government to stop the importation, and discourage the use, of any foreign commodity whatsoever. However, because his influence was extremely small compared with that of the notorious motto 'Civilization and Culture', and because his attitude was seen as a mere feudal reaction to what was inevitable, his was after all a voice crying in the wilderness1.


2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172110420
Author(s):  
Zoltan Balazs

Though it may sound awkward to ask whether the political sovereign is happy or unhappy, the question is relevant to political theory, especially within a political theological perspective. Because man was created in the image of God, human happiness needs to be a reflection of divine beatitude, and as divine sovereignty is, at least analogically, related to political sovereignty, the conceptual coherence is secured. The main argument is, however, that the analogy does not hold. I shall show how St Thomas Aquinas’s short treatment of God’s beatitude may mislead us about power, fame, riches, and dignity being essential to happiness, based on an analysis of Franz Kafka’s major novel, The Castle, and a few other writings by him. I shall argue that our tradition of political thinking and behavior remains ambivalent on this issue. The political sovereign is born out of our unhappy condition, yet its power, fame, riches, and glory suggests to us that it has appropriated our happiness. But for this very reason it cannot be happy, and it therefore suggests a false analogy between the divine and the political sovereign. It is fundamentally at variance with our happiness, which incites us to abandon, reject, and eventually, kill it.


Author(s):  
Aiste Celkyte

The monograph aims to show that the Stoa, an ancient Greek philosophical school, made a substantial line of enquiry into the nature of aesthetic properties, and thus there are good reasons to analyse and discuss the sub-field of the Stoic thought that could be called ‘Stoic aesthetics.’ This study of Stoic views on beauty begins with the question of indifferents and the challenge it poses for aesthetics. The controversial Stoic theory of values states that ‘beauty’ is one of the so-called indifferents, that is, the things that do not contribute to human happiness and therefore ought not to be treated as the good. It is argued that a thorough reading of the material shows that beauty is not treated as irrelevant in general; the evidence only shows that beauty is an inferior value to virtue. This leaves the possibility of theorising aesthetic objects. This leads to a systematic interpretation of Stoic aesthetics by looking at other pieces of extant evidence where beauty is mentioned, including the argument ‘that only the beautiful is the good’, theological arguments, the claim that only the wise man is beautiful and the Stoic definition of beauty as summetria. The latter, it is argued, is a succinct formulation of the idea that beauty is a function composition, and this idea has emerged in the previous discussions of various arguments involving aesthetic terms. The monograph ends with a discussion of the Stoic views in ancient Greek philosophical context.


2021 ◽  
pp. 9-29
Author(s):  
O. Anchimiuk ◽  
R. Szymula
Keyword(s):  

The present study examines Archbishop Anastasy (Dobradin)’s famous sermon «Слово на Новый годъ. Въ чемъ счастіе человѣка и гдѣ его найти?», dealing with the question of the dual understanding of “happiness” (philosophical, i.e. secular, and religious). Attention is paid to the means of verbalising the concept of happiness in the text under study. The text under analysis is a unique example of the homily, distinguished by its atypical for this genre appeal to a secular element, associated with the preacher’s dual understanding of “happiness”. The article presents the results of the analysis of etymology and development of semantics of the noun счастье. Its lexical compatibility in the text of a sermon is investigated. Full and short forms of adjectives, which serve to express positive and negative connotations, are identified. It has been proved that in the studied homily the preacher attributes the concept of “happiness” not only to the high register but also to the low register, which is related to the two concepts of “happiness” considered by him, reflected also on the graphic level (счастіе, счастье). Particular attention is paid to the most frequent attribute in the sermon, истинный, which has in common with the noun счастье the seme God. The epigraph of the homily, which usually presents the main point of the sermon, does not include the lexeme счастье because the entire sermon is devoted to redefining this concept.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document