scholarly journals Emptying Śūnyatā: a Critical Reading of Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-83
Author(s):  
Ramunas Motiekaitis
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Kyoto School ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Linguistic Representations ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Modes Of Thought

Abstract In this article, invoking some terms of phenomenology and general principles of structural semiotics, I critically examine and reveal some aporetic aspects of Nishitani’s interpretation of Buddhist concept of sūnyatā presented in his seminal work Religion and Nothingness. My critics are directed to deeply ingrained claims among scholars of a “rejection of any form of dualism” and “non-substantial philosophy” as unique characteristics of the Kyoto school or “logic of the East”. My arguments are based on examining how linguistic differentiating articulation and narrative rendering that perform a fundamental role in human cognition are at work in definition of “emptiness” (sūnyatā) too. Thus emptiness is not completely empty; being certain philosophical identity it can be articulated only by differentiation from other identities, and thus different is included in it. Nishitani needed logocentric modes of thought, as a dialectical (m)other for constructing his sūnyatā ontology. Accordingly, the realms that are considered to be secondary or derivative (i.e. sensual and rational, or linguistic representations) appear to be the condition for constituting the primary (suchness of things, sūnyatā). Considering universal mechanisms of the articulation of values I am also asking whether sūnyatā paradigm indeed is so fundamentally different from Western paradigms centered on idea, God, or a rational subject as Nishitani wants to think. Since we find a clear hierarchical differentiation into truth and illusion, authentic and inauthentic modes of thought and time, and initial and derivative ontological realms, features of “strong thought” (in sense of Vattimo) are evident in his work. I am also suggesting, that possibly by considering not sūnyatā or “idea” but human languages as a universal “house of being”, we would be able to “empty” discourses of radical difference and uniqueness, and in this way become post-nationalistically modern. Philosophy, in order not to turn into a onesided ideology, should reflect on its mythological and narratological conditions, i.e. dances on certain semiotic axes. From such a perspective, the gravitational trajectory of human thought, longing for conjunction with the absolute, defined either as God or as sūnyatā, will seem similar rather than different.

Plotinus’s Apophatic Theology

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3-1) ◽  
pp. 108-120
Author(s):  
Dmitriy Filin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Cognition ◽  
Happy People ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Apophatic Theology ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
First Cause ◽  
The Way

The purpose of this article is to analyze the content of Plotinus’s apophatic theology. The problem of the limit of human cognition has always been topical in the history of the human thought. The absolute reality acted as such a limit in Platonism. The apophatic aspect was the final step of its cognition. The founder of Neoplatonism systematized the Plato’s teaching about hypostases of the being and by doing so he transferred the center of the philosophical speculations in the sphere of the Unity of Oneness. Thus, his apophatics is more consequent than the Plato’s one. Narrating about the Unity of Oneness, Plotinus is sort of synthesizing certain peculiarities of the apophatic theology of his two great predecessors: Aristotle and Plato. One can say, Plotinus’s apophatic theology “vanished” in the description of the mystical blending to the Unity of Oneness of the first cause of being. However for a philosopher intuitive aspects of its cognition are as important in a certain context as logical ones. Plotinus’s philosophy is the way of antinomies, the way of upper-and-non-predicative apophatic darings. The first Unity of Oneness in his philosophy is uncertain and formless because the Unity of Oneness causes all things but doesn’t need them. The latter ones are incidental to It. In their incidental nature is the lack of Good what one can’t say about the Unity of Oneness Itself. It is neither anything qualitative nor quantitative, neither in the rest nor in the movement, neither in any place nor in any time. It is neither Intelligence nor Soul. Thus, the Unity of Oneness according to Plotinus is the energy without essence. Because it creates being transcendental to all things in existence. At the same time Plotinus has in the first place the proper experience of the ecstatic ascents to the exorbitant limit of all things in existence. Staying in It is for a thinker a happiness of the Soul, life of the gods and of the godlike happy people, “escape of the unity to the Unity of Oneness”. As a matter of fact apophatic for Plotinus is the first step taking aside from that experience to a random thought. However in the teaching of the founder of Neoplatonism the thought and the mystical life are so connected to each other that it is practically impossible to separate them—they are the unified whole of existence.

Science Regained [1962]

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Aubenque
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Motion Time ◽  
First Philosophy

Pierre Aubenque’s “Science Regained” (1962; translated by Clayton Shoppa) was originally published as the concluding chapter of Le Problème de l’Être chez Aristote, one of the most important and original books on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In this essay, Aubenque contends that the impasses which beset the project of first philosophy paradoxically become its greatest accomplishments. Although science stabilizes motion and thereby introduces necessity into human cognition, human thought always occurs amidst an inescapable movement of change and contingency. Aristotle’s ontology, as a discourse that strives to achieve being in its unity, succeeds by means of the failure of the structure of its own approach: the search of philosophy – dialectic – becomes the philosophy of the search. Aubenque traces this same structure of scission, mediation, and recovery across Aristotelian discussions of theology, motion, time, imitation, and human activity.

John Henry Newman

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Hurley
Keyword(s):  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Prose Style ◽  
Definition Of

Newman has been much vaunted as a ‘master’ of non-fiction prose style, and justly so. His felicity of phrasing is astonishing: so precise, so elegant, so vivid. This chapter admires Newman’s stylistic achievements too, but with a view to explaining why Newman himself baulked at such praise, by insisting instead on the importance of veracity over verbalism. While a number of different writings by Newman are surveyed in the course of the chapter, the argument comes to focus in particular on his seminal work of faith, Grammar of Assent, a book that took him some twenty years to write, which almost killed him, and which best exemplifies his suggestive but enigmatic definition of ‘style’ as ‘a thinking out into language’.

The construction of units in conversational talk

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARGRET SELTING
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Activity Type ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Conversational Context ◽  
Linguistic Unit ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Made In

The notion of Turn-Constructional Unit (TCU) in Conversation Analysis has become unclear for many researchers. The underlying problems inherent in the definition of this notion are here identified, and a possible solution is suggested. This amounts to separating more clearly the notions of TCU and Transition Relevance Place (TRP). In this view, the TCU is defined as the smallest interactionally relevant complete linguistic unit, in a given context, that is constructed with syntactic and prosodic resources within their semantic, pragmatic, activity-type-specific, and sequential conversational context. It ends in a TRP unless particular linguistic and interactional resources are used to project and postpone the TRP to the end of a larger multi-unit turn. This suggestion tries to spell out some of the assumptions that the seminal work in CA made in principle, but never formulated explicitly.

The Beautiful As a “Rescue Hopeless”. Hegel and Adorno

2021 ◽  
pp. 148-158
Author(s):  
Greta G. Solovieva ◽  
◽  
Zhazira A. Rakhmetova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Art ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Main Thing ◽  
And Shifts

Does modern philosophy of art reject the principles and methods of mastering the reality of classical aesthetics, in particular, the category of the beautiful, em­phasizing, on the contrary, the ugly, ugly, terrible, disgusting? The authors strive to find answers in the dialogue of great philosophical masters – “Zeus the Olympian of the German classics” by Hegel and the preacher of “progressive negation” on the border of modernity and postmodernism Theodor Adorno. Hegel insists on the transcendental origin of the beautiful as the coincidence of idea and reality, the sensory phenomenon of the absolute, the resolution of con­tradictions between the subjective and the objective, the universal and the indi­vidual, the finite and the infinite. Adorno opposes, claiming the rights of “beauti­ful negativity”. He abandons the transcendental character of beauty and shifts the emphasis to the social sphere. The ugly, the ugly, the ugly should not be hidden. But to portray him in such a way as to arouse disgust towards him, the desire to create a project of “righteous life” But the development of the dialogue reveals that both thinkers ultimately agree on the main thing: the beautiful is inescapable and remains the defining category of both aesthetics and life.

A Didactic Dilemma in Emerging Societies: Devaluing Journal Club in Medical Working out

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 01-05
Author(s):  
Saeed Shoja Shafti
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Journal Club ◽  
Academic Misconduct ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Clinical Issues ◽  
Journal Clubs ◽  
Reading Abilities ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Working Out

A journal club is a scholastic conference in which a group of persons discuss issued articles, providing an opportunity for a shared effort to keep up with the current writings. The emphasis of journal clubs has supposedly shifted over the years. What was once a setting in which the world's recent literature was analyzed became a setting for talking over clinical issues raised by the writings and, most recently, a setup for learning critical reading abilities to physicians or other associated authorities. Nevertheless, so far there is no generally accepted definition of journal club, even though this academic method has been around for more than a century and has evolved basically during this period. In the present paper, conceptual and applied features of journal club, especially in developing countries, is surveyed, to discuss an apparent underrating of journal club in some medical departments, which could be due to misunderstanding of new philosophies, or to talk about the necessity of modification of an academic misconduct, which could be attributable to didactic unawareness.

Kant’s Metaphilosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 292-310
Author(s):  
Michael Lewin
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Scientific Concept ◽  
Demarcation Criterion ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract While the term “metaphilosophy” enjoys increasing popularity in Kant scholarship, it is neither clear what distinguishes a metaphilosophical theory from a philosophical one nor to what extent Kant’s philosophy contains metaphilosophical views. In the first part of the article, I will introduce a demarcation criterion and show how scholars fall prey to the fallacy of extension confusing Kant’s philosophical theories with his theories about philosophy. In the second part, I will analyze eight elements for an “imperfect definition” (KrV A731/B759) of philosophy outlining the scope of Kant’s explicit metaphilosophy against the backdrop of recent metaphilosophical research: (i) scientific concept of philosophy, (ii) philosophy as an activity, (iii) worldly concept, (iv) philosophy as a (proper and improper) science, (v) philosophy as an architectonic idea (archetype and ectypes), (vi) philosophy as a social practice and the appropriate holding-to-be-true (one or many true philosophies?), (vii) reason as the absolute condition and subject of philosophy, and (viii) methodology of philosophy. I will put these elements together for an attempt to give an imperfect definition of philosophy – something that Kant promised but never did – in the conclusion.

scholarly journals Three-tiered score for Ki-67 and p16ink4a improves accuracy and reproducibility of grading CIN lesions

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (11) ◽  
pp. 981-988 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjolein van Zummeren ◽  
Annemiek Leeman ◽  
Wieke W Kremer ◽  
Maaike C G Bleeker ◽  
David Jenkins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Management Strategies ◽  
Intraepithelial Neoplasia ◽  
Reference Standard ◽  
Ki 67 ◽  
Papillomavirus Infection ◽  
Cumulative Score ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
New Biomarkers ◽  
Tissue Specimens

AimsTo investigate the accuracy and reproducibility of a scoring system for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN1–3) based on immunohistochemical (IHC) biomarkers Ki-67 and p16ink4a.Methods115 cervical tissue specimens were reviewed by three expert gynaecopathologists and graded according to three strategies: (1) CIN grade based on H&E staining only; (2) immunoscore based on the cumulative score of Ki-67 and p16ink4a only (0–6); and (3) CIN grade based on H&E supported by non-objectified IHC 2 weeks after scoring 1 and 2. The majority consensus diagnosis of the CIN grade based on H&E supported by IHC was used as the Reference Standard. The proportion of test positives (accuracy) and the absolute agreements across pathologists (reproducibility) of the three grading strategies within each Reference Standard category were calculated.ResultsWe found that immunoscoring with positivity definition 6 yielded the highest proportion of test positives for Reference Standard CIN3 (95.5%), in combination with the lowest proportion of test positives in samples with CIN1 (1.8%). The proportion of test positives for CIN3 was significantly lower for sole H&E staining (81.8%) or combined H&E and IHC grading (84.8%) with positivity definition ≥CIN3. Immunoscore 6 also yielded high absolute agreements for CIN3 and CIN1, but the absolute agreement was low for CIN2.ConclusionsThe higher accuracy and reproducibility of the immunoscore opens the possibility of a more standardised and reproducible definition of CIN grade than conventional pathology practice, allowing a more accurate comparison of CIN-based management strategies and evaluation of new biomarkers to improve the understanding of progression of precancer from human papillomavirus infection to cancer.

37. Absolute grounds for refusal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Bently ◽  
B. Sherman ◽  
D. Gangjee ◽  
P. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Trade Mark ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Bad Faith ◽  
Trade Marks ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Absolute Grounds For Refusal ◽  
Trade Mark Registration

This chapter examines the ‘absolute’ grounds for refusing to register a trade mark as set out in section 3 of the Trade Marks Act 1994, Article 3 of the Trade Marks Directive, and Article 7 of the European Union Trade Mark Regulation (EUTMR). It first looks at the reasons for denying an application for trade mark registration before analysing the absolute grounds for refusal, which can be grouped into three general categories: whether the sign falls within the statutory definition of a trade mark found in sections 1(1) and 3(1)(a) and (2) of the Trade Marks Act 1994; whether trade marks are non-distinctive, descriptive, and generic; and whether trade marks are contrary to public policy or morality, likely to deceive the public, prohibited by law, or if the application was made in bad faith. Provisions for specially protected emblems are also considered.

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