The Joys and Challenges of Caring for Patients

2013 ◽  
pp. e327-e330
Author(s):  
Teresa Gilewski
Keyword(s):  
Patient Care ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Optimal Care ◽  
Human Interactions ◽  
The Core ◽  
Personal Effect ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Human Condition

Optimal care of patients involves the integration of both the scientific and humanistic aspects of medicine. However, the tremendous focus on technology can easily overshadow the personal effect of patient care. The complex relationship between the physician and the patient is a reciprocal one. Not only does the physician influence the experience of the patient, but the patient may leave a significant impression on the physician. Their interactions provide a myriad of opportunities for greater insight into the human condition, but may also contribute toward the struggle of physicians to maintain their own well-being. Enhanced awareness of the significance of these human interactions is at the core of caring for patients.

An Adolescent Girl Experiments with Sexuality: Rain (Christine Jeffs, 2001)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Adolescent Girl ◽  
Emotional Problems ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Core ◽  
Parental Neglect ◽  
The Human Condition

The analysis in this chapter focuses on Christine Jeffs’s Rain as evidence of a shift that had occurred in New Zealand society whereby puritan repression is no longer perceived as the source of emotional problems for children in the process of becoming adults, but rather its opposite – neoliberal individualism, hedonism, and the parental neglect and moral lassitude it had promoted. A comparison with Kirsty Gunn’s novel of the same name, upon which the adaptation is based, reveals how Jeffs converted a poetic meditation on the human condition into a cinematic family melodrama with a girl’s discovery of the power of her own sexuality at the core.

On the Harm of Genocide

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Paul Kucharski
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Community Or ◽  
The World ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Individual Human ◽  
The Human Condition

My aim in this essay is to advance the state of scholarly discussion on the harms of genocide. The most obvious harms inflicted by every genocide are readily evident: the physical harm inflicted upon the victims of genocide and the moral harm that the perpetrators of genocide inflict upon themselves. Instead, I will focus on a kind of harm inflicted upon those who are neither victims nor perpetrators, on those who are outside observers, so to speak. My thesis will be that when a whole community or culture is eliminated, or even deeply wounded, the world loses an avenue for insight into the human condition. My argument is as follows. In order to understand human nature, and that which promotes its flourishing, we must certainly study individual human beings. But since human beings as rational and linguistic animals are in part constituted by the communities in which they live, the study of human nature should also involve the study of communities and cultures—both those that are well ordered and those that are not. No one community or culture has expressed all that can be said about the human way of existing and flourishing. And given that the unity and wholeness of human nature can only be glimpsed in a variety of communities and cultures, then part of the harm of genocide consists in the removal of a valuable avenue for human beings to better understand themselves.

“Before the Word and World became Separate”

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-216
Author(s):  
Joe Moffett
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
Gerard Manley Hopkins ◽  
Spiritual Quest ◽  
The Core ◽  
Intended Destination ◽  
The Human Condition

There is in Charles Wright’s work a complicated spiritual quest that frequently turns to Gerard Manley Hopkins. Wright’s reappearing “pilgrim” persona, who, unlike Chaucer’s pilgrims, never arrives at his intended destination, persists in a stubborn search for divine insight. Wright uses Hopkins as a sounding board, both in the sense of testing his own spiritu- ality against Hopkins’s and the sense of experimenting with Hopkins’s very sounds. Wright marvels at his predecessor’s ability to combine world, word, and Word; he often attempts, and fails, to do the same, coming to believe that language has become severed from its spiritual origins, but in exploring that rift, which Wright often does in Hopkinsian terms, the poet “burrows deep into the core of the human condition” and achieves a gravity unlike that of any other contemporary poet.

scholarly journals Beyond Quietism: Transformative Experience in Pyrrhonism and Wittgenstein

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rico Gutschmidt
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Philosophical Practice ◽  
Transformative Experiences ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Pyrrhonian Skepticism ◽  
Philosophical Questions ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Human Condition

Pyrrhonian skepticism is usually understood as a form of quietism, since it is supposed to bring us back to where we were in our everyday lives before we got disturbed by philosophical questions. Similarly, the ‘therapeutic’ and ‘resolute’ readings of Wittgenstein claim that Wittgenstein’s ‘philosophical practice’ results in the dissolution of the corresponding philosophical problems and brings us back to our everyday life. Accordingly, Wittgenstein is often linked to Pyrrhonism and classified as a quietist. Against this reading, I will employ Laurie Paul’s notion of epistemically transformative experience and argue that Pyrrhonian skepticism and Wittgenstein’s philosophy can be interpreted as a philosophical practice that changes our self-understanding in significant ways. I will argue that this practice can evoke transformative experiences and is thereby able to yield a non-propositional insight into the finitude of the human condition. This shows that Pyrrhonian skepticism and Wittgenstein’s philosophy go beyond quietism.

Becoming Ray Bradbury

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan R. Eller
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
American Writer ◽  
Long Life ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Private Collections ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Human Condition

This book chronicles the making of an iconic American writer by exploring Ray Bradbury's childhood and early years of his long life in fiction, film, television, radio, and theater. It measures the impact of the authors, artists, illustrators, and filmmakers who stimulated Ray Bradbury's imagination throughout his first three decades. This biography follows Bradbury's development from avid reader to maturing author, making a living writing for the genre pulps and mainstream magazines. Unprecedented access to Bradbury's personal papers and other private collections provides insight into his emerging talent through his unpublished correspondence, his rare but often insightful notes on writing, and his interactions with those who mentored him during those early years. They also provide insight into his very conscious decisions, following the sudden success of The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, to voice controversial political statements in his fiction. The book illuminates the sources of Bradbury's growing interest in the human mind, the human condition, and the ambiguities of life and death—themes that became increasingly apparent in his early fiction. It elucidates the complex creative motivations that yielded Fahrenheit 451. Revealing Bradbury's emotional world as it matured, the book highlights the emerging sense of authorship at the heart of his boundless creativity.

On the Nature of Sport

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Synthia Sydnor
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Digital Culture ◽  
Sports Performance ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
The Core ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Recent Addition ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter argues that digital culture is a recent addition to myriad forms of expression and expressiveness that have occurred since time immemorial. Digital media then, “are tools that enable humans to continue doing what has always been at the core of the human condition: living in community, communicating, consuming, gathering, playing.” The chapter also develops a treatise on the nature of sport that takes into account both the digital era and theories of play, ritual, and culture. Cyber activities around sport, including “fantasy league play; social and individual memories of sports performance; video/computer games; the seemingly infinite growth of sport performances/stunts showcased on YouTube, tweets, and the colossal transglobal economy associated with sport,” replicate the “fun, thrills, danger, gravity play” and other affective sensations surrounding participation in sport itself. Ultimately, the digital revolution confirms the formal, symbolic ritualistic nature of sport more than it transforms.

Suicide prohibition: Shame, blame, or social aim?

Thomas Szasz ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 104-123
Author(s):  
James L. Knoll
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Research ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Rational Suicide ◽  
The Core ◽  
Legal Opinions ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
The Human Condition

Szasz’s final book, Suicide Prohibition: The Shame of Medicine (2011), covers the medical, legal, and philosophical aspects of suicide. The question of suicide goes straight to the core of the human condition. Szasz’s fearless wisdom brought this ostensibly taboo—yet historically popular and philosophically rich—topic into a brighter light. However, this topic is too complex to be resolved by confining it to an overly simplistic dichotomy of autonomy versus paternalism. A critical examination of “rational suicide,” sociological and psychological research on suicide, and various legal opinions concerning several forms of suicide, reveal both agreement and disagreement with Szasz’s detailed, nuanced, and heavily existential position on the matter. His emigration analogy fails because suicide, whatever its benefits, is life-negating, while emigration is typically life-affirming. Throughout this examination runs an implicit juxtaposition of the rational and the normative, from both individualistic and sociopolitical points of view.

Beyond Realism

Renascence ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19
Author(s):  
Maurizio Ascari ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Character ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Human Condition

A complex and controversial novel, Atonement is at the core of a lively critical debate, opposing those who focus on the impossibility of Briony’s atonement – also in relation to the author’s atheist views – to those who conversely explore the redemptive quality of her “postlapsarian” painful self-fashioning. Far from concerning simply the destiny of a literary character, this debate has to do with the impact Postmodernist relativism has on both the conception of the human subject and the discourses of the past, from memory to history and fiction. Discarding any potentially nihilistic interpretations of Atonement as disempowering, this article delves into Ian McEwan’s multi-layered text in order to comprehend its ambivalences, its subtle investigation of the human condition, and its status as a postmemory novel reconnecting us to the events of World War Two.

scholarly journals Transformative Experience in Skepticism. The External Standpoint and the Finitude of the Human Condition

Philosophy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 95 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-417
Author(s):  
Rico Gutschmidt
Keyword(s):  
Decision Theory ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Objective Knowledge ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Philosophical Practice ◽  
Transformative Experiences ◽  
Skeptical Problem ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Human Condition

AbstractAccording to its quietist readings, skepticism can be dissolved by demonstrating that the notion of ‘absolute objectivity’ is confused. The dissolution of this confusion is supposed to lead us to acquiesce in our finite and plain everyday life without being bothered anymore about the supposed need for objective knowledge. In contrast, I want to propose a transformative reading of skepticism according to which the philosophical practice of skepticism can be ‘epistemically transformative’. To this end, I will transpose L.A. Paul's notion of ‘epistemically transformative experience’ from decision theory to the realm of philosophical practice and argue that the modern skeptical problem of an external standpoint can evoke transformative experiences that lead to a new, albeit non-propositional, insight into the finitude of the human condition.

Hannah Arendt on Eichmann: The Public, the Private and Evil

1984 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiraz Dossa
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Human Condition

Since its publication,Eichmann in Jerusalemhas provoked a storm of controversy. With a few exceptions, critics reacted to the substance of Arendt's thesis with considerable bitterness and hostility. This article argues that her detractors badly misunderstood Arendt because they were insufficiently conversant with, or unaware of, her political theory. Fundamental to this theory, articulated at length in herThe Human Condition, is the crucial distinction between the public and the private. None of her critics, including those who sympathized with Arendt, have understood that her critical analysis of Eichmann's conduct and of the response of the Jewish leadership to the tragic fate that befell their people makes sense on the peculiar terrain of her political theory and particularly in terms of the public-private distinction which lies at the core of this theory.

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