scholarly journals God’s Power and Almightiness in Whitehead’s Thought

Open Theology ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Palmyre M.F. Oomen
Keyword(s):  
Essential Elements ◽  
Concept Of God ◽  
Hans Jonas ◽  
Divine Omnipotence ◽  
The World ◽  
Persuasive Power ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference

AbstractWhitehead’s position regarding God’s power is rather unique in the philosophical and theological landscape. Whitehead rejects divine omnipotence (unlike Aquinas), yet he claims (unlike Hans Jonas) that God’s persuasive power is required for everything to exist and to occur. This intriguing position is the subject of this article. The article starts with an exploration of Aquinas’ reasoning towards God’s omnipotence. This will be followed by a close examination of Whitehead’s own position, starting with an introduction to his philosophy of organism and its two-sided concept of God. Thereupon, an analysis of Whitehead’s idiosyncratic view on God’s agency will show that, according to this conception, God and the World depend upon each other, and that God’s agency is a non-coercive but persuasive power. The difference between coercion and persuasion will be explained as well as the reason why God, according to Whitehead’s conception, cannot possibly coerce. Finally, a discussion of the issue of divine almightiness will allow for a reinterpretation of divine almightiness from a Whiteheadian perspective, which will show how despite Whitehead’s rejection of God’s omnipotence, his concept retains essential elements of God as pantokrator (and thus markedly differs from Hans Jonas’ concept).

Life, Movement, and Desire

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renaud Barbaras
Keyword(s):  
Final Analysis ◽  
Vital Activity ◽  
Hans Jonas ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Satisfaction Of Needs ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Living Being ◽  
Life Movement

AbstractIn French, the verb "to live" designates both being alive and the experience of something. This ambiguity has a philosophical meaning. The task of a phenomenology of life is to describe an originary sense of living from which the very distinction between life in the intransitive sense and life in the transitive, or intentional, sense proceeds. Hans Jonas is one of those rare authors who has tried to give an account of the specificity of life instead of reducing life to categories that are foreign to it. However, the concept of metabolism, by which Jonas characterizes vital activity, attests to a presupposition as to life: life is conceived as self-preservation, that is, as negation of death, in such a way that life is, in the end, not thought on the basis of itself. The aim of this article is to show that life as such must be understood as movement in a radicalized sense, in which the living being is no more the subject than the product. All living beings are in effect characterized by a movement, which nothing can cause to cease, a movement that largely exceeds what is required by the satisfaction of needs and that, because of this, bears witness to an essential incompleteness. This incompleteness reveals that life is originarily bound to a world. Because the world to which the living being relates is essentially non-totalizable and unpresentable, living movement can not essentially complete itself. Thus, in the final analysis, life must be defined as desire, and in virtue of this view, life does not tend toward self-preservation, as we have almost always thought, but toward the manifestation of the world.

On the Rationality of Radical Theological Non-Naturalism

1978 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Necessary Condition ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Concept Of God ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Time And Being ◽  
Clear Idea ◽  
The Way

In my Contemporary Critiques of Religion and in my Scepticism, I argue that non-anthropomorphic conceptions of God do not make sense. By this I mean that we do not have sound grounds for believing that the central truth-claims of Christianity are genuine truth-claims and that we do not have a religiously viable concept of God. I argue that this is so principally because of three interrelated features about God-talk. (I) While purporting to be factual assertions, central bits of God-talk, e.g. ‘God exists’ and ‘God loves man-kind’, are not even in principle verifiable (confirmable or disconfirmable) in such a way that we can say what experienceable states of affairs would count for these putative assertions and against their denials, such that we could say what it would be like to have evidence which would make either their assertion or their denial more or less probably true. (2) Personal predicates, e.g. ‘loves’, ‘creates’, are at least seemingly essential in the use of God-talk, yet they suffer from such an attenuation of meaning in their employment in religious linguistic environments that it at least appears to be the case that we have in such environments unwittingly emptied these predicates of all intelligible meaning so that we do not understand what we are asserting or denying when we utter ‘God loves mankind’ or ‘God created the heavens and the earth’ and the like. (3) When we make well-formed assertions, it appears at least to be the case that a necessary condition for such wellformedness is that we should be able successfully to identify the subject of that putative statement so that we can understand what it is that we are talking about and thus understand that a genuine statement has actually been made. But, where God is conceived non-anthropomorphically, we have no even tolerably clear idea about how God, an infinite individual, occupying no particular place or existing at no particular time, and being utterly transcendent to the world, can be identified. Indeed we have no coherent idea of what it would be like to identify him and this means we have no coherent idea of what it would be like for God even to be a person or an it. He cannot be picked out and identified in the way persons and things can.

scholarly journals Imagination and the Image: A Revised Phenomenology of Imagination and Affectivity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erez Nir
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Mode I ◽  
The World ◽  
Critical Revision ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Way

In this paper I offer a critical revision of the main thematic phenomenological writings on imagination by Sartre and Edward Casey based on the following three criteria: 1. the sufficiency of their respective sui generis accounts of imagination. 2. The capacity of their respective frameworks to account for imagination’s rich affectivity. 3. Their ability to provide a coherent and purely transcendental description of the difference between imagination and perception. I argue that in both Sartre and Casey the problematic aspects of their theories derive from focusing solely on the nature of the imaginative object at the expense of the imaginative experience as a whole. Using Husserl’s transcripts on the subject, I suggest a new phenomenological analysis of imagination as the direct intuition of the experience of the object instead of an intuition of an object in a possible mode. I argue that in imagination the object is present in a marginal way and what is directly experienced is the object’s affective form, which is an intuitive aspect of the object’s value qualities. This analysis shows that the intentional presence of value qualities in objects, and the general presence of value in the world is always connected to the way we imagine objects and not the way we perceive them, and that the value of things is better to be called their imaginative structure.

scholarly journals City and Video Games: Moving Towards Each Other

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 674-695
Author(s):  
Irina A. Steklova ◽  
◽  
Galina N. Veslopolova ◽  
Alexander M. Steklov ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Artistic Images ◽  
Active Link ◽  
Contemporary Architecture ◽  
The City ◽  
Made In

The article is devoted to the problem of the city new imagery, the steady convergence of real architecture and virtual architecture. Although the connection between these phenomena has been the subject of reflection by specialists from various science branches for the past decades, it has not been sufficiently manifested. Another attempt at manifestation is made in this article, within the fundamental problems of art theory and history. Its novelty consists in activating the classical category “image of the city” in the virtual space centre of video games as the most active link between artistic and empirical images of the city. On the example of real architectural objects in the cities of the last quarter of the 20th — 21st centuries and architectural objects, existing only in the popular video games locations of the last generation, the interaction mechanisms of artistic images and their transition into the empirical images sphere with a gradual blurring of the transition boundaries are studied. The contemporary architecture trend is seen as the purposeful programming of sophisticated associative games through the production of images of the city that make you doubt the reality of the world, the difference between authenticity and imaginary. In turn, cities in video games simulate the same dubiously humane worlds, only in addition they can be managed, tested for viability online. The exacerbation of gaming in architecture is seen as a postmodern provocation to critically, ironic deconstruct reality in the fullness of its contradictions, and the videogame set of cities as an ideal platform to work on the deconstruction experience and, perhaps, to reset personal relationships with the world. It shows how the artistry of video games turns into the everyday background of life, changing the perception of the urban environment and the world as a whole.

Theatre on an Epic Scale

2018 ◽  
pp. 46-60
Author(s):  
Tim Supple
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Pure Form ◽  
The World ◽  
Epic Theatre ◽  
The Difference

Peter Brook’s ‘epic’ Mahabharata was not overtly a play for here and now but a conscious attempt to absorb the epics of elsewhere and render them meaningful throughout the world; it reached beyond place and time and sought a theatre of fundamental shared human character, belonging to no particular land or people or epoch. In pure form, we could see here all the essential elements of ‘epic’ theatre—narrative, episodic structure, music, the large-scale workings of gods and men and the crucial objective eye on all actions; and the result was something entirely original and intoxicating. It is the combination of ‘intimate’ impact with ‘epic’ scale, which marks the difference between truly ‘epic’ theatre and the mere big spectacle. This chapter examines the work of various practitioners from around the world, as well as some of the author’s own practice, in its attempt to define theatre on ‘an epic scale’.

scholarly journals Binocular spatial induction for the perception of depth does not cross the midline

2008 ◽  
Vol 105 (46) ◽  
pp. 18006-18011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd E. Hudson ◽  
Leonard Matin ◽  
Wenxun Li
Keyword(s):  
Test Line ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Median Plane ◽  
The Body ◽  
Retinal Disparity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Stage 1 ◽  
Binocular Depth

Although horizontal binocular retinal disparity between images in the two eyes resulting from their different views of the world has long been the centerpiece for understanding the unique characteristics of stereovision, it does not suffice to explain many binocular phenomena. Binocular depth contrast (BDC), the induction of an appearance of visual pitch in a centrally located line by pitched-from-vertical flanking lines, has particularly been the subject of a good deal of attention in this regard. In the present article, we show that BDC does not cross the median plane but is restricted to the side of the visual field containing a unilateral inducer. These results cannot be explained by the use of retinal disparity alone or in combination with any additional factors or processes previously suggested to account for stereovision. We present a two-channel three-stage neuromathematical model that accounts quantitatively for present and previous BDC results and also accounts for a large number of the most prominent features of binocular pitch perception: Stage 1 of the differencing channel obtains the difference between the retinal orientations of the images in the two eyes separately for the inducer and the test line; stage 1 of the summing channel obtains the corresponding sums. Signals from inducer and test stimuli are combined linearly in each channel in stage 2, and in stage 3 the outputs from the two channels are combined along with a bias signal from the body-referenced mechanism to yield θ′, the model's prediction for the perception of pitch.

scholarly journals MYTHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY. Second Article

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-221
Author(s):  
V. M. Naydysh
Keyword(s):  
Main Function ◽  
Ideal Model ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Religious Consciousness ◽  
States Of Consciousness ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Epistemological Basis ◽  
The Ideal

The concept of interpretation (as a procedure for determining the values of those abstractions that are used in the theorization of knowledge, in the process of developing an abstract model of the subject) is applicable to any forms of knowledge, including systems of religious knowledge, designing the ideal model of the subject of religious veneration. The author analyzes the epistemological features of theology as a form of spiritual culture, its formation in ancient culture. It is shown that the epistemological basis for overcoming mythological consciousness was the decentralization of thinking, i.e. development of the ability of consciousness in the construction of the image, the picture of the world to correct the position of the subject, to take into account the relativity of the reference system, from the standpoint of which the subject perceives the object and transforms it into an operational system of thinking. Decentration of thinking provided the overcoming of the subjective mental boundaries of the field, giving the thinking nature of universality. Historical stages and moments of this process - the transformation of mythology into forms of folk art, mythopoetic epic, in the form of religious consciousness. In line with such transformations of archaic consciousness, cultural and historical prerequisites of theology emergence were formed. They are represented in mythopoetic art (Homer, Hesiod, etc.), ancient mythography, early traditions of critical and rationalistic interpretation of the myth, etc. The article shows the formation of allegorical theology, which became possible in the era of individualization of artistic creativity, when the visible was the difference between the motive and the purpose of activity, creative idea and its embodiment, figuratively-poetic and rationally-conceptual ways of reflecting the world, when the image of reality and its personal meaning began to be realized as different States of consciousness. The main function of any theology is the interpretation of abstract models of the subject of religious veneration (the imaginary image of the supernatural).

scholarly journals K personální etice

Envigogika ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zuzana Svobodová
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Ethical Basis

In the text entitled "The Ethics of Persona" are successively opened following questions: What is the basis of ethics? What constitutes the humanity of man? How have views of human nature in history changed? What has the discovery of the subject-object approach to the world meant? Why do we now talk about the need for a new ethics? After emphasizing the role of communication in the human being, a consequence of the difference of social or individual bases of human existence is shown. Also depicted is the gradual discovery of the personal dimension of man and the tension, which can be   expressed following Levinas's formulation, as a question: nominative, or accusative? Referring to the prioritisation of accusative "selves" before the nominative "Ego" leads to the prioritisation of responsibility and care as the (existential) significant ethical basis for the meaningful development of man and the world.

scholarly journals Conception of a man in Bataille’s anthropology of chance

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 75-83
Author(s):  
Anastasiia Prushkovska
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Model ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Creative Self ◽  
The Universe

The purpose of this article is to present the conceptшщт of G. Bataille’s philosophy (the anthropology of chance) through the analysis of the nature of concept of «chance» and its relation to the conception of a man in the «ontologies of negativity» of M. Heidegger, J.-P. Sartre and A. Kojève. Theoretical basis. The author defines Bataille's anthropology as anthropology of chance based on its comparison with the ontologies of negativity of the twentieth century. Scientific novelty. The author presents the anthropological concept of G. Bataille, in which a person is understood as a "chance". The author introduces the concept of "anthropology of chance" as a replacement for the classical metaphysical concept of a person and as an alternative to understanding a person in the ontologies of negativity of the twentieth century. Results. It has been established that G. Bataille grouds his understanding of a man in contravention of the subject in classic paradigm. On the place of concepts that have been defining a traditional comprehension of human place in the world, like God, rationality or productivity, Bataille places chance. At the same time, the author highlights the difference between Bataille's anthropology and the “ontologies of negativity” of the twentieth century, built around the concepts of impersonal being (M. Heidegger) or nothing (J.-P. Sartre). The essence of the concept of chance are defined to be openness and meeting with the Other (Autrui) and the other (Autre). It is shown that Bataille’s person-chance consists has a contingent nature and defined through the instability of his place in the universe and society. Community has been identified as a key concept in defining the specifics of the “anthropology of chance”. It might be reached by the subject mystical, erotic and poetic experience. Conclusion. The main difference between the human model proposed by Bataille and existentialism is revealed. Man is described by Bataille not as a creative self isolated in himself, but as “imperfection” opened to another. The Other in this paradigm turns out to be a condition, not a limit of freedom. In Bataille's Inner Experience, man appears as a wound through which it is possible to create a message. Thus, Bataille's concept of a person as a chance becomes a springboard for the emergence of an understanding of the heterogeneous contingent subject in modern philosophy.

scholarly journals Od czarów nad kołyską do magii językowej usieciowionej matki — ciągłość i zmienność charakteru magii języka matek

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 245-257
Author(s):  
Julia Legomska
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Folk Culture ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Positive Feelings ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Linguistic Behaviour ◽  
Negative Feelings ◽  
World Image

From spells over the cradle to linguistic magic of a networked mother — continuity and change of the nature of mothers’ language magic The essay draws attention to the fact that, since the old days, in the case of frustration connected with the child mothers have reached out for words, they have used words to affect both internal, psychic reality and the external one. Magical acts by means of language are based on the world image shared by the sender and the recipient. Polish folk culture positively valued phenomena referring to Polish Catholic symbols, therefore these symbols constitute protective and benevolent powers evoked in folk lullabies. The author suggests looking at contemporary linguistic activities performed by mothers frustrated with staying with the child, which activities are presented in the analysed website magazine Bachor as activities which also make use of the language magic. According to the author, the difference lies in changing the cultural context of linguistic behaviour and associating them in particular with the defining technology. In contemporary mediatised society the power of “obligatory existence”, which was characteristic of magical speech activities, supports and intensifies the equation of media by recipients. Therefore, the author sees Bachor as the act of blocking the language of success which makes room only for parents who are “effective” and affirm positive feelings by introducing into reality — by means of words, words in media — incapable, frustrated parents who are full of negative feelings. The subject is discussed in adescriptive and not in an evaluative way.

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