The Psychological Theory of On the Utility and Liability of History for Life

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-96
Author(s):  
Jozef Majerník
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
Normal Human ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Erotic

AbstractThe problem of history in Nietzsche’s second Unfashionable Observation is best approached through that which it is supposed to serve: life, more specifically human life. I argue that Nietzsche presents an oblique but nevertheless complete articulation of the nature of the human soul as consisting of two basic parts, of desiring (the unhistorical) and memory (the historical): of a multiplicity of desires that struggle for domination over the others, and which express themselves in more complex ways through memory-based structures such as conscience. I then discuss some implications of this conception. First, I interpret the significance of the useful kinds of history: rather than being different modes of historical science, they are much more basic modes of practical relating to the matters of our world (especially to other humans and their ways of life) that are external to us both temporally and spatially. Second, I discuss the particular kinds of desires which underpin the three useful kinds of history. Third, I interpret the problem of scientific history as arising from a turning of the normal human structures of meaningfulness against themselves, and as resulting in two specific kinds of psychic damage: to our capacity for growth and self-cultivation, and to our will to do so at all. Finally, I show the importance of the erotic-historic soul for the questions of right and wrong methods of self-knowledge and for the meaning of the imperative “sei du selbst!” that we find in Schopenhauer as Educator.

scholarly journals Expanding Boundaries

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-122
Author(s):  
THOMAS A. CAVANAUGH
Keyword(s):  
Worldwide Web ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
Do So

Itself a topic of constant comment, the Internet's implications for healthcare remain unclear even while its boundaries incessantly expand. The WorldWide Web and allied technologies such as telephony are clearly permanent fixtures of our world. These technologies have changed our ways of life and demonstrate further dynamic capacities to do so. They speak of what we shall be, but know not.

The Ethical Presupposition of Historical Understanding

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-241
Author(s):  
Natan Elgabsi
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Method ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Historical Science ◽  
Ethical Attitudes ◽  
The Past ◽  
Annales School ◽  
Ways Of Life

Abstract Discussions on Marc Bloch usually focus on The Annales School, his comparative method, or his defence of a distinct historical science. In contrast, I emphasise his seldom-investigated ideas of what historical understanding should involve. I contend that Bloch distinguishes between three different ethical attitudes in studying people and ways of life from the past: scientific passivity; critical judgements; understanding. The task of the historian amounts to understanding other worlds in their own terms. This essay is an exploration of Bloch’s methodology and what historical understanding is needed to do justice to cultures that belong to the past, both conceptually and practically.

scholarly journals Psychology and interviewing: what direction now in our quest for reliable information?

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin E. Oxburgh ◽  
Coral J. Dando
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Investigative Interviewing ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Emergent Theory ◽  
And Training ◽  
Do So

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss two distinct but interrelated areas, namely witness/victim and suspect interviewing, and to argue that both must continue to evolve, suggest how they might do so, and that this process must be driven by emergent theory and contemporary empirical research.Design/methodology/approachThe paper outlines the impact of psychological theory and empirical research to investigative interviewing in recent decades.FindingsIt is argued that in order to stay ahead of the game, the field of investigative interviewing (suspect and witness) must continue to evolve in such a manner that not only protects and fosters the important practitioner/academic relationship, but also ensures that future directions are driven by empirical research, with recourse to emergent theory.Originality/valueThe paper outlines the impact of psychological theory and empirical research on investigative interviewing and the consequent enhancement of the interviewing of both suspected offenders and witnesses. The paper demonstrates that working closely together academic research can make a difference, and influence law, policy decisions and training guidelines in order to improve practice.

scholarly journals A Critical Discourse Analysis of Socio-Psychological Factors in Taufiq Rafat’s “Wedding in the Flood”

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (I) ◽  
pp. 78-90
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Psychological Factors ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Free Verse ◽  
Common People ◽  
The Social ◽  
Poetic Diction

People use language for different social practices in different contexts and perspectives, and discourse analysts examine these social practices for a better understanding of the discourse. The language used by a poet is different from the language used by common people; the poetic diction helps to understand a poet’s literary style, his ideology, and the use of descriptive language. This article focuses on exposing the socio-psychological factors through examining the use of language in a free verse poem ‘Wedding in the Flood’ by Taufiq Rafat who tried to present different aspects of Pakistani culture in the poem. The socio-psychological factors combine the social (family, society, wealth, religion) and the psychological factors (feelings, thoughts, actions, beliefs) that play an important role in shaping the personality of an individual, and the characters in the poem are the best examples of it. This analysis is based on Fairclough’s conceptions in CDA that claims of an inter-link between ideologies and texts, and this link cannot be separated because there are many ways to interpret texts, and the Socio-Psychological Theory (20121) also combines many social and psychological factors of human life. Many researchers did the stylistic analysis of the poem, but nothing has been done to highlight its socio-psychological factors through CDA.

Love

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha C. Nussbaum
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Early Experiences ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Active Interest ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Different Levels

Love is usually understood to be a powerful emotion involving an intense attachment to an object and a high evaluation of it. On some understandings, however, love does not involve emotion at all, but only an active interest in the wellbeing of the object. On other accounts, love is essentially a relationship involving mutuality and reciprocity, rather than an emotion. Moreover, there are many varieties of love, including erotic/romantic love, friendly love, and love of humanity. Different cultures also recognize different types of love. Love has, as well, a complicated archaeology: because it has strong links with early experiences of attachment, it can exist in the personality at different levels of depth and articulateness, posing special problems for self-knowledge. It is mistake to try to give too unified an account of such a complex set of phenomena. Love has been understood by many philosophers to be a source of great richness and energy in human life. But even those who praise its contribution have seen it as a potential threat to virtuous living. Philosophers in the Western tradition have therefore been preoccupied with proposing accounts of the reform or ‘ascent’ of love, in order to demonstrate that there are ways of retaining the energy and beauty of this passion while removing its bad consequences.

scholarly journals Engineering Gain-of-Function Analogues of the Spider Venom Peptide HNTX-I, A Potent Blocker of the hNaV1.7 Sodium Channel

Toxins ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunxiao Zhang ◽  
Qiuchu Yang ◽  
Qingfeng Zhang ◽  
Dezheng Peng ◽  
Minzhi Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sodium Channel ◽  
Medical Condition ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Hydrophobic Surface ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Charged Surface ◽  
Multiple Site ◽  
Wild Type ◽  
Voltage Gated ◽  
Normal Human

Pain is a medical condition that interferes with normal human life and work and reduces human well-being worldwide. The voltage-gated sodium channel (VGSC) human NaV1.7 (hNaV1.7) is a compelling target that plays a key role in human pain signaling. The 33-residue peptide µ-TRTX-Hhn2b (HNTX-I), a member of NaV-targeting spider toxin (NaSpTx) family 1, has shown negligible activity on mammalian VGSCs, including the hNaV1.7 channel. We engineered analogues of HNTX-I based on sequence conservation in NaSpTx family 1. Substitution of Asn for Ser at position 23 or Asp for His at position 26 conferred potent activity against hNaV1.7. Moreover, multiple site mutations combined together afforded improvements in potency. Ultimately, we generated an analogue E1G–N23S–D26H–L32W with >300-fold improved potency compared with wild-type HNTX-1 on hNaV1.7 (IC50 0.036 ± 0.007 µM). Structural simulation suggested that the charged surface and the hydrophobic surface of the modified peptide are responsible for binding affinity to the hNaV1.7 channel, while variable residues may determine pharmacological specificity. Therefore, this study provides a profile for drug design targeting the hNaV1.7 channel.

scholarly journals Contact zones: Multispecies scholarship throughImperial Eyes

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 712-731 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen F Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Contact Zone ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Contact Zones ◽  
Colonial Histories ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge ◽  
Do So

The contact zone is described as the space of imperial encounter. Against a backdrop of work that has used Mary Louise Pratt's concept of the contact zone to examine culture-making, and destabilize normative understandings of division, distinction, and bordering, the paper interrogates the value of utilizing the concept in multispecies contexts. To do so, the paper considers the relationship between the contact zone and the concept of encounter, noting how they overlap and depart as approaches to questioning embodied difference, colonial histories, and immanent potential. Turning to the BBC documentary series Blue Planet II, the paper uses the concept of the contact zone and discourse analysis to examine its dominant ideas, frontiers of difference, and the means through which alternative geographies are both foreclosed and enabled. It demonstrates how the concept of the contact zone can draw attention to the ocean as the documentary's site of production, where different forms of knowledge, technology, people, elements, and non-human life grapple with each other in conditions of uneven power. In moving between narrative and oceanic contact zones, the paper raises questions about practices of knowledge-making, uneven structures of power, and decipherability, to demonstrate what can be gained from staying with the postcolonial framing of the contact zone as a critical tool of analysis in multispecies scholarship.

Oedipus and Socrates on the Quest for Self-Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-43
Author(s):  
Ann Ward
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Private Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Family ◽  
Self Knowledge

This article explores how Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Plato’s Apology of Socrates address the question of whether reason can ground the good human life. Sophocles’ tragedy and Plato’s dialogue both tell of the search for rational self-knowledge. Both Oedipus and Socrates are recognized for human wisdom and are presented as skeptical toward the gods. Yet, whereas Oedipus’ life ends in tragedy, Socrates’ life does not. Sophocles thus suggests that the rational search for truth must be limited by a pious respect for the gods. Plato, on the other hand, preserves Socrates’ belief that the ‘unexamined life is not worth living for a human being’. Four lines of inquiry into the causes of this divergence are then explored: 1) Socrates’ order of knowledge from particular to universal, 2) Oedipus’ proneness to anger, 3) Socrates’ private life in contrast to Oedipus’ public life and, 4) the differing status of the family.

Emotion Experience, Rational Action, and Self-Knowledge

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Lambie
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Rational Action ◽  
Emotion Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Do So

This article examines the role of emotion experience in both rational action and self-knowledge. A key distinction is made between emotion experiences of which we are unaware, and those of which we are aware. The former motivate action and color our view of the world, but they do not do so in a rational way, and their nonreflective nature obscures self-understanding. The article provides arguments and evidence to support the view that emotion experiences contribute to rational action only if one is appropriately aware of them (because only then does one have the capacity to inhibit one's emotional reactions). Furthermore, it is argued that awareness of emotion increases self-knowledge because it is a source of information about our biases.

scholarly journals Small Change – Big Difference

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (10) ◽  
pp. 87
Author(s):  
Matthew Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Conceptual Basis ◽  
Community Media ◽  
Multiple Media ◽  
Small Change ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
Do So

This article analyses transmedia as a non-fictional social phenomenon, discussing the significance of participation, documentary, and community media. Specifically, the article conceptualises transmedia through the lens of charity politics. To do so, I use the Comic Relief charity campaign in the UK to trace how the socials traditions, ways of life and sensibilities associated with Red Nose Day have evolved into emerging digital technologies to shape this charity campaign across the borders of multiple media platforms. Embracing how social specificity informs non-fictional transmedia, I position ‘infotainment’ as a key conceptual basis of non-fictional transmedia, showing how audiences follow the ‘ethos’ of Red Nose Day across multiple media.

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