scholarly journals Creative Emotion and Understanding of Democracy in the Philosophy of H. Bergson

Problemos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 8-20
Author(s):  
Povilas Aleksandravičius
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Deep Process ◽  
Dynamic Movement ◽  
Political Rationality ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
Specific Emotion ◽  
The Will ◽  
Élan Vital ◽  
The Mind

In this paper, the concept of creative emotion (émotion créatrice) and the understanding of democracy, which arises out of it, in the philosophy of Bergson is analysed. This specific emotion does not depend on an object’s intellectual representation; therefore, Bergson refers to it as “supra-intellectual.” Contrary to the usual “infra-intellectual” emotions, it is primary in regard of the mind and the will, and it comprises the fundamental matrix of creative acts of the human being. Creative emotion is one of the forms of the intuition of duration that is rooted in élan vital. It not only determines the essential changes in the fields of art, religion or science, but also re-configures the political rationality by revealing a deeper form of sociality. Thus, the presumed anti-sociality of the philosophy of Bergson is denied. In his last work, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, Bergson shows how creative emotion transforms understanding of democracy and how it turns this political conception into a dynamic movement corresponding to the deep process of the human being and the whole reality.

The Art of Drawing Distinctions

2019 ◽  
pp. 407-433
Author(s):  
Alexander Kluge
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Cerebral Hemispheres ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Alexander Kluge ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Mind

This chapter highlights the individual's capacity for differentiation. Imagine the human body: take, for example, the mouth, whose capacity for differentiation would be called a sensation. The largest organ, the skin, also has sensation. The ear: therein lies musicality, the sense of balance, the sense of hearing, and rhythm. These sensations are divided between two cerebral hemispheres. All of these sensations play a role in an encounter with another person. The moment when related sensations reach a decision about another human being is called feeling. This is not something sentimental, but rather is subject to the sentimentalization and commercialization of the nineteenth century. In reality, feeling is something very human. It is what a person adds to an objective relation. In order to be able to convey more clearly the difference between sensation and feeling, Alexander Kluge introduces another term: passion. There is the passion of the mind and there is the mind of passion. This is the intensification of the will, feeling, the sum of various feelings pointed in a single direction.

Populism, Liberalism and the Eclipse of Emotion

Populism ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-171
Author(s):  
Stefan Bird-Pollan
Keyword(s):  
Political Representation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
The Will ◽  
Liberal Philosophy ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way

Abstract I argue that the way philosophy conceives of the political subject fails to understand the populist subject. In Section I, I shall sketch an ambiguity in how Hobbes conceives of the political subject as both driven by the passions and yet capable of rationally subduing them. In Section II, I argue that these two different conceptions of the will lead to different models of political representation. In Section III, I offer an sketch of some of the ways the Hobbesian picture of the mind as fueled by the passions has been eschewed by modern liberal philosophy. Finally, in Section IV, I offer an account of two features of populism which seem to me to suggest that the Humean model of the will is appropriate to understand certain essential features of populist politics.

On the Will of the People: Notes on the Political “Theory” of Populism

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Offe
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
National People ◽  
The Will

The “will of the (national) people” is the ubiquitously invoked reference unit of populist politics. The essay tries to demystify the notion that such will can be conceived of as a unique and unified substance deriving from collective ethnic identity. Arguably, all political theory is concerned with arguing for ways by which citizens can make e pluribus unum—for example, by coming to agree on procedures and institutions by which conflicts of interest and ideas can be settled according to standards of fairness. It is argued that populists in their political rhetoric and practice typically try to circumvent the burden of such argument and proof. Instead, they appeal to the notion of some preexisting existential unity of the people’s will, which they can redeem only through practices of repression and exclusion.

Las funciones del interregionalismo en la relación UE-CAN

Oikos ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (29) ◽  
pp. 13
Author(s):  
Olga María Cerqueira Torres
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Present Article ◽  
The Political ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Integration Process ◽  
Association Agreement ◽  
Political Rationality ◽  
Article Analysis ◽  
Andean Community ◽  
The Eu

RESUMENEn el presente artículo el análisis se ha centrado en determinar cuáles de las funciones del interregionalismo, sistematizadas en los trabajos de Jürgen Rüland, han sido desarrolladas en la relación Unión Europea-Comunidad Andina de Naciones, ya que ello ha permitido evidenciar si el estado del proceso de integración de la CAN ha condicionado la racionalidad política del comportamiento de la Unión Europea hacia la región andina (civil power o soft imperialism); esto posibilitará establecer la viabilidad de la firma del Acuerdo de Asociación Unión Europea-Comunidad Andina de Naciones.Palabras clave: Unión Europea, Comunidad Andina, interregionalismo, funciones, acuerdo de asociación. Interregionalism functions in the EU-ANDEAN community relationsABSTRACTIn the present article analysis has focused on which functions of interregionalism, systematized by Jürgen Rüland, have been developed in the European Union-Andean Community birregional relation, that allowed demonstrate if the state of the integration process in the Andean Community has conditioned the political rationality of the European Union towards the Andean region (civil power or soft imperialism); with all these elements will be possible to establish the viability of the Association Agreement signature between the European Union and the Andean Community.Keywords: European Union, Andean Community, interregionalism, functions, association agreement.

Nihilistic Thinking as the Self-Will of the Mind and the Projects of Its Overcoming

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (10) ◽  
pp. 74-87
Author(s):  
Irina N. Sidorenko
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
The Self ◽  
Spatial Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Radical Transformation

 The author analyzes the conceptions of ontological nihilism in the works of S. Kierkegaard, F. Nietzsche, M. Heidegger, E. Jünger. On the basis of this analysis, violence is defined as a manifestation of nihilism, of the “will to nothingness” and hypertrophy of the self-will of man. The article demonstrates the importance of the problem of nihilism. The nihilistic thinking of modern man is expressed in the attitude toward a radical transformation of the world from the position of his “absolute” righteousness. The paradox of the current situation is that there is the reverse side of this transformative activity, when there is only the appearance of action and the dilution of responsibility. Confidence in the rightness of own views and beliefs increases the risk of the violent imposition of own vision of reality. Historical and philosophical reconstruction of the conceptions of nihilism allowed to reveal the following projects of its comprehension and resolution: (1) the project of “positing of values,” which consists in the transformation of the evaluation, which is understood as another perspective of positing values, leading to the affirmation of being; (2) the project of overcoming nihilism from the space of temporality, carried out through the resoluteness to accept the historicity of own existence; (3) the project of overcoming nihilism as the oblivion of being from the spatial perspective of the “line,” allowing to realize the “glimpse” of being. The author concludes that it is impossible to solve the problem of violence and its various forms of its manifestation without overcoming “ontological nihilism.” Significant role in solving the problem of ontological violence is assigned to philosophy as a critical and responsible form of thinking, which is capable to help a person to bear the burden of the world, to provide meanings and affirm being, as well as to unite people and resist the fundamentalist claims of exclusivity and rightness.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas I. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Michel De Montaigne ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Northern European ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
Legal Principle ◽  
Ethical Disposition

In academic debates and popular political discourse, tolerance almost invariably refers either to an individual moral or ethical disposition or to a constitutional legal principle. However, for the political actors and ordinary residents of early modern Northern European countries torn apart by religious civil war, tolerance was a political capacity, an ability to talk to one’s religious and political opponents in order to negotiate civil peace and other crucial public goods. This book tells the story of perhaps the greatest historical theorist-practitioner of this political conception of tolerance: Michel de Montaigne. This introductory chapter argues that a Montaignian insistence that political opponents enter into productive dialogue with each other is worth reviving and promoting in the increasingly polarized democratic polities of the twenty-first century.

Psychoanalysis and the Existentialist Mind

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Webber
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Functioning ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Freudian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Radical Freedom ◽  
The Mind

This chapter argues that existentialism is not fundamentally antagonistic to Freudian psychoanalysis, as is often claimed, but rather aims to provide better articulations and explanations of the phenomena that Freud identified than Freud himself achieved. It distinguishes two forms of existentialist psychoanalysis, grounded in the two distinct existentialist theories of human being and psychological functioning identified in previous chapters: a Beauvoirian form based on project sedimentation and a Sartrean form based on radical freedom. It argues that both forms make a more radical break with the Cartesian conceptualization of the mind than Freud achieved, but that the Sartrean form still retains a vestige of Cartesianism that the Beauvoirian form eliminates.

Jonathan Edwards on the Sense of the Heart

1948 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Perry Miller
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
American Mind ◽  
Freedom Of The Will ◽  
The World ◽  
Real Work ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Mind

The reputation of Jonathan Edwards, impressive though it is, rests upon only a fragmentary representation of the range or profundity of his thinking. Harassed by events and controversies, he was forced repeatedly to put aside his real work and to expend his energies in turning out sermons, defenses of the Great Awakening, or theological polemics. Only two of his published books (and those the shortest), The Nature of True Virtue and The End for which God Created the World, were not ad hoc productions. Even The Freedom of the Will is primarily a dispute, aimed at silencing the enemy rather than expounding a philosophy. He died with his Summa still a mass of notes in a bundle of home-made folios, the handwriting barely legible. The conventional estimate that Edwards was America's greatest metaphysical genius is a tribute to his youthful Notes on the Mind — which were a crude forecast of the system at which he labored for the rest of his days — and to a few incidental flashes that illumine his forensic argumentations. The American mind is immeasurably the poorer that he was not permitted to bring into order his accumulated meditations.

Aesthetics

2021 ◽  
pp. 295-308
Author(s):  
William Dyrness ◽  
Christi Wells
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Self Disclosure ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Physical Beauty ◽  
Will Of God

Edwards’s aesthetics grounded in the ongoing work of God communicated in creation, not only lies at the centre of his thought but is increasingly recognized as one of his most original contributions to theology. Edwards’s reflection on God’s beauty emerged in the context of his work as a pastor, which allowed him to frame God’s dynamic presence in dramatic and multi-sensory categories. For Edwards Beauty glimpsed in the form of images formed in the mind reflects a consent of being; the visual beauty of symmetry and proportion is meant to move the heart to consent to the will of God reflected in creation—what Edwards calls respectively secondary and primary beauty. All creatures are types and shadows of spiritual realities; beauty and morality are linked, though only the Holy Spirit allows believers to consent to God’s self-disclosure in creation. Edwards’s neo-platonic framework allowed his reflections on the revivals to affirm physical beauty while subordinating its meaning to the spiritual, enhancing its role as revelation but diminishing its value as an end in itself.

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