scholarly journals In search of Atheism: Benjamin and Nietzsche on secularity and occult theologies

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 150-175
Author(s):  
James Martel
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Response ◽  
Death Of God ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Way

In this article, I argue that atheism is different from secularism. Secularism is based on a faux elimination of theology which effectively preserves that theology in the guise of overcoming it. To achieve atheism (a term that I draw from the work of Maria Aristodemou), I argue that one needs to directly confront the theological element in order to come to terms with it. In this essay I look at how two political theological thinkers, Nietzsche and Benjamin, accomplish this. Nie-tzsche accomplishes atheism via his thesis of the “death of God,” a death that is not always literal but which creates a space for human life that is not determined by theological terms. Benjamin does the same thing with his idea that God vacates divine powers of judgment and determination in order to allow an atheistic space where human beings can engage in their own self-determination (even as the notion of God remains to challenge any would be human spokespersons for that role). I ultimately argue that atheism and anarchism are related concepts based not just on a rejection of certain forms of theology and all forms of archism, but also in terms of the way they allow a posi-tive and undetermined human response.

Can animals sing? On birdsong, music and meaning

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hektor KT Yan
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
A Value ◽  
Music And Meaning ◽  
To Come ◽  
Factual Issue ◽  
The Way

This article deals with conceptual questions regarding claims to the effect that humans and animals share artistic abilities such as the possession of music. Recent works focusing on animals, from such as Hollis Taylor and Dominique Lestel, are discussed. The attribution of artistic traits in human and animal contexts is examined by highlighting the importance of issues relating to categorization and evaluation in cross-species studies. An analogy between the denial of major attributes to animals and a form of racism is drawn in order to show how questions pertaining to meaning can impact on our understanding of animal abilities. One of the major theses presented is that the question of whether animals possess music cannot be answered by a methodology that is uninformed by the way concepts such as music or art function in the context of human life: the ascription of music to humans or non-humans is a value-laden act rather than a factual issue regarding how to represent an entity. In order to see how humans and animals share a life in common, it is necessary to come to the reflective realization that how human beings understand themselves can impact on their perception and experience of human and non-human animals.

scholarly journals The social struggle against death: Human strategies for immortality

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (13-14) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marko Galić
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Biological Part ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Social Struggle ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Human Death

Death is an infallible part of the human life, and what makes humandifferent from all other beings is fact that he knows that he isgoing to die. Knowing this, human beings are spending their wholelife knowing that the day of their end is going to come. It is clear thatdeath has its biological part, also as a huge event in the existenceof all life forms, including human, death has its philosophical pointof view, and finally, unlike some may disagree, death itself is a hugesocial phenomena as well, and as such, the social influence of deathdeserves close attention and its own part in the social science studies.This paper analyzes the presence of the death in human culture, includinginstitutions, rituals and beliefs following the discourse of lateZygmunt Bauman who left huge influence on this field of study. Sincethe earliest forms of communities, humans are trying to overcomethe death, the state of “after-life” and some form of immortality ofthe being is something that is common to all religions and beliefs everknown to mankind, which stands as a evidence that the final void ofnon-existence know to us as death is something that always presentedhorror in the mind of the humans.

The Sphere of the Human

2019 ◽  
pp. 267-322
Author(s):  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
J. M. Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Psychological Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Way

“Centric positionality” is a form of organism-environment relation exhibited by animal forms of life. Human life is characterized not only by centric but also by excentric positionality—that is, the ability to take a position beyond the boundary of one’s own body. Excentric positionality is manifest in: the inner, psychological experience of human beings; the outer, physical being of their bodies and behavior; and the shared, intersubjective world that includes other human beings and is the basis of culture. In each of these three worlds, there is a duality symptomatic of excentric positionality. Three laws characterize excentric positionality: natural artificiality, or the natural need of humans for artificial supplements; mediated immediacy, or the way that contact with the world in human activity, experience, and expression is both transcendent and immanent, both putting humans directly in touch with things and keeping them at a distance; and the utopian standpoint, according to which humans can always take a critical or “negative” position regarding the contents of their experience or their life.

scholarly journals Spaces, Semantics, and ‘Aesthetic Faculty’: Perspectives on Their Operative Plane of Concurrence, Constitution and Becoming

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 135-157
Author(s):  
Dhanesh M.
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Faculty Perspectives ◽  
Cultural Spaces ◽  
Potential Basis ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Way

This paper aims to look at one of the fundamental factors of human beings—the appreciation of things. Calling it ‘the aesthetic faculty’ this paper tries to see how it is inevitable to the way human beings as a species function. This paper aims to propose this idea of an ‘aesthetic faculty’ as a potential basis for our community life in its diverse operations in terms of cultural spaces and their semantics. Viewing the socio-systemic life from the point of view from the aesthetic faculty reveals how appreciation and evaluation are inevitable to human life and how an ideological ground cannot actually affect life without addressing this basic human faculty. This paper tries to take the term ‘aesthetic’ vis-a-vis ‘appreciation’ to a different semantic world altogether so that it is no longer a matter of artistic engagements alone, but something more fundamental and formative than that.

Pilgrimage as Moral and Aesthetic Formation in Augustine’s Thought

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Stewart-Kroeker
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
Return Journey ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Embodied Practice ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Augustine’s dominant image for the human life is peregrinatio, which signifies at once a journey to the homeland—a pilgrimage—and the condition of exile from the homeland. For Augustine, all human beings are, in the earthly life, exiles from their true homeland: heaven. Only some become pilgrims seeking a way back to the heavenly homeland, a return mediated by the incarnate Christ. Becoming a pilgrim begins with attraction to beauty. The return journey therefore involves formation, both moral and aesthetic, in loving rightly. This image has occasioned a lot of angst in ethical thought in the last century or so. Augustine’s vision of Christian life as a pilgrimage, his critics allege, casts a pall of groaning and longing over this life in favor of happiness in the next. Augustine’s eschatological orientation robs the world of beauty and ethics of urgency. In this book, Stewart-Kroeker sets out to elaborate Augustine’s understanding of moral and aesthetic formation via the pilgrimage image, which she argues reflects a Christological continuity between the earthly journey and the eschatological home that unites love of God and neighbor. From the human desire for beauty to the embodied practice of Christian sacraments, Stewart-Kroeker reveals the integrity of Augustine’s vision of moral and aesthetic formation, which is essentially the ordering of love. Along the way, Stewart-Kroeker develops an Augustinian account of the relationship between beauty and morality.

scholarly journals Meaning and Values in the Consumption of Fashion by Men

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Ana Paula Celso De Miranda ◽  
Eduardo Jorge Carvalho Maciel ◽  
Olga Maria Coutinho Pepece
Keyword(s):  
Social Group ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Northeastern Brazil ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Social ◽  
City State ◽  
The Way

<p>The objective of this study was to analyze the discourse on fashion consumption and fashion brands by male inhabitants of Caruaru city, State of Pernambuco, Northeastern Brazil. The findings include the way men understand fashion consumption and the values that direct them to buy fashion brands. These men see fashion consumption as the act of buying and consuming fashion brands in order to acquire various levels of status and express their values. When their discourse leaves the domain of fashion, the act of dressing becomes functional, an expression of personality and occupation. By doing this, it becomes part of the male universe. The following symbolic associations were identified, which were related to the motivational types of values proposed by Tamayo and Schwartz: Self-Realization/Self-Esteem, Belonging/Compliance, Contemporaneity/Hedonism, Rationality/Confidence, Distinction/Self-Determination, and Ostentation/Social Power. It may be concluded that the consumption of fashion and fashion brands by the men in the studied context are directly related to the social group they belong to, or would like to belong to (aspiring group). Regarding the group they belong to, the participating men, while consuming fashion and fashion brands, choose items that reflect the values of their group in order to feel part of it. However, insatiable desires, inherent to all human beings, do not allow that the Caruaru men are satisfied with the feeling of belonging to a group only, driving them to seek in the consumption of fashion and fashion brands those items that will make them feel valued and recognized as being unique.</p>

scholarly journals Kobieta i jej rola w historii zbawienia według Klemensa Aleksandryjskiego

Vox Patrum ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Stanisław Łucarz
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Clement Of Alexandria ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The article focuses on the notion of femaleness and its role in the history of salvation in the works of Clement of Alexandria. Although these are not the central themes of his considerations, he reflects on this subject against the back­ground of his magnificent vision of the incarnation of the divine Logos. The be­getting or generating of Logos by Father is the first stage of the incarnation, which is followed by the next stages: the creation of the world and of human beings, the revelation in the Old Testament and – although not directly – in the Greek philosophy. The last stage is the incarnation in Jesus Christ. All this leads towards the divinization and the unity in God. Femaleness in Clement’s work should be considered as a part of cosmic dimensions. For him, men and women are substan­tially – i.e. on the level of their souls – equal, hence in the spiritual and intellectual dimension both sexes are vested with identical dignity and enjoy equal rights. The differences between sexes are located in the body and affect various aspects of human life, mostly biological and reproductive ones, not to mention the family, community and religious reality. In practice, it is the woman who is subordinated to man due to the fact, as Clement holds, that the female body is weaker than the male one, more subjugated to passivity, less perfect and more susceptible to pas­sions. For that reason, on the way to salvation, it is the man who is the head of the woman. However, it is not an absolute subjection. If the woman goes on the way to salvation (a Christian woman), and the man does not, the Lord is the head of the woman (the divine Logos, whom she follows). All these differences resulting from the possession of a body are eliminated in eschatology, in which will be the total equality. On that way to the eschatological fulfillment, the divine Logos is indispensable. He incarnates himself and comes to the world through a woman. He chooses what is weaker in order to reveal His power. This way it is a woman, and not a man, who first experiences His divinizing closeness and action.

scholarly journals ANALISIS METODOLOGIS-FILOSOFIS KONSEP TAFSIR JAMÂL AL-BANNÂ

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mukhammad Zamzami
Keyword(s):  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Rational Method ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Specific Method ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Universal Values ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
To Come ◽  
Qur'anic Exegesis ◽  
The Way

<p>Abstrak: Artikel ini mencoba untuk mengulas metode penafsiran Jamâl al-Bannâ secara metodologis dan filosofis. Dimulai dengan upaya untuk mendekonstruksi interpretasi hasil dari semua mufasir klasik, Jamâl al-Bannâ mengusulkan tiga tahap dalam penafsiran al-Qur’an, yaitu pendekatan seni, pendekatan psikologis, dan pendekatan rasional. Ketiganya merupakan tahapan hierarkis untuk bisa sampai pada sebuah penafsiran. Setelah bisa sampai pada tahap penafsiran, Jamâl al-Bannâ tidak merekomendasikan metode tertentu atau membatasi ilmu pengetahuan tertentu sebagai metode analisa penafsiran. Ia menolak jika salah satu metode tertentu memiliki garansi sebagai satu-satunya cara untuk menemukan kebenaran, karena al-Qur’an tidak harus dibatasi. Dalam sosiologi pengetahuan, pemikirannya mirip denganAgainst Method (Anarkisme Metode) Paul K. Feyerabend. Bagi Jamâl al-Bannâ, manusia sangat otonom dan bebas untuk menafsirkan selama itu sejalan dengan prinsip-prinsip humanis dan universal yang terkandung dalam al-Qur’an.</p><p><br />Abstract: Methodological and Philosophical Analysis of Jamâl al-Bannâ’s Qur’anic Exegesis. This article seeks to analyze the method of Jamâl al-Bannâ’s interpretation. Beginning with an attempt to deconstruct the interpretation of the results of all classicalmufassir, Jamâl al-Bannâ proposed three stages in the interpretation of the Qur’an that include such approaches as stylistic, psychological, and rational method. All three approaches are utilized hierarchically in order to come to an interpretation. At the rational stage of Qur’anic exegesis, Jamâl al-Bannâ didn’t recommend a specific method or limit the science to a particular method. He refused that one particular method has the warranty as the only interpretation to seek the way for the truth, because the Qur’an should not be restricted. In the sociology of knowledge, his thinking is similar to that of Paul K. Feyerabend’s Against Method. According to Jamâl al-Bannâ, human beings are very autonomous and free to interpret the Qur’an as long as it is in line with the principles of humanistic and universal values as enshrined there in.</p><p><br />Kata Kunci: Tafsir al-Qur’an, Jamâl al-Bannâ, pendekatan seni, metode penafsiran</p>

Men in Love: Aspects of Plato's Symposium

Ramus ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Penwill
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Source Book ◽  
Middle Period ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Way

Plato's so-called ‘middle period’ saw the composition of what are generally agreed to be his finest philosophical dramas, and of these the Symposium is usually singled out for special praise. Yet it is only recently that serious attempts have been made to approach the Symposium as a work of literature rather than a philosophical treatise. Those who employ the work as a source-book for Platonist doctrines rarely venture beyond Socrates' dialectical refutation of Agathon and his report of what Diotima told him (199c-212b); and if they do, it is to point out the logical or perceptual fallacies — i.e. the philosophical deficiencies — of the other five encomia and to find in Alcibiades' contribution a glowing tribute by Plato to that most remarkable of human personalities, the philosopher Socrates. This, however, is not the way to arrive at a real understanding of the Symposium. The author clearly intends the reader to respond to this work not as a philosophical treatise on the subject of Eros but as a work of literature which portrays a group of thinking human beings engaged in appraisal of an issue which is of fundamental importance in their lives. His primary purpose in dramatising this intellectual event is thus not to expound the philosopher's conception of Eros or to expose our minds to auto to kalon (‘the beautiful itself’). Rather the true subject of the work is man the intellectual animal, whose logoi (‘speeches’) demonstrate his capacity for analysing, evaluating and idealising his feelings and aspirations. It depicts ‘philosophy brought down from the sky and located in the cities and homes of men’; we are shown how, and how successfully, philosophy can function as a vital constituent of human life, rather than a barren and essentially irrelevant dispute about the mechanics of the universe.

scholarly journals Reception Customs in Qajar Dynasty of Iran from the Point of View of European Tourists

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 371
Author(s):  
Hasan Asadi
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Food Culture ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Travel Writers ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Way

One of the first necessities of human life was nutrition and human beings from the very beginning tried to meet this need. Over time, the way food is prepared and how it is served has become a rich culture that varied among different nations. Attention has been formed to different geographical conditions and tastes. Perhaps the sensible food of one nation is not very pleasant for another nation. In this study, travel writers' perceptions of Iranian food culture have been written. Most reports indicate that Iranian food is not very diverse, but some have been introduced as very tasty, including rice. Iranian and kebab, which are very popular among Iranian dishes, have been reported from baking a variety of breads as well as very tasty and hearty Iranian syrups. Writers are located.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document