scholarly journals Strange strangers, epidemics and cosmological contagion: A reprise of the outside in three acts

Author(s):  
Theodoros Kyriakides

In this essay I attempt to draw some crucial theoretical parallelisms between ancient Greek cosmology and the Anthropocene. Taking inspiration from Marcel Detienne and Timothy Morton’s work, I deploy the figure of Dionysos as a conceptual persona which can help us think of strangeness as a non-human mode of relationality Anthropocene societies must urgently engage with. Events such as the ongoing Covid-19 epidemic, through which non-humans are brought to the forefront of politics and social relations, traditionally result to attempts of sublating strangeness through human modes of knowledge. As I argue, epidemics instead demand the creation of practices, collectives and techniques through which strangeness is not eliminated or ‘understood’, but rather elevated to a fundamental feature of social relations. In such sense, the ancient world presents a critical vector of intervention to the current state of the Anthropocene, since it showcases a cosmos in which human life and society is constantly embedded and negotiated amid non-human strangeness.

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-200
Author(s):  
David Kristanto

Perhaps there is no better time to reflect on the new creation than now, amid the Covid-19 pandemic. All aspects of human life are being impacted by the pandemic, not to mention the danger of death that it generates. This critical situation brings out legitimate questions to the current state of the world (or creation): whether it is perishing, being abandoned by God, or whether God is punishing the world into destruction due to its abundance of sin. Attempting to answer those questions, the author will argue alongside Kuyper and Bavinck that God would never abandon nor destroy his creation. Even though corrupted by sin, God has no intention to destroy the creation; instead, he intends to restore it according to his original plan. God’s intention is not just to redeem the elect but to redeem the whole creation, and that complete redemption will find its fulfillment in the new creation. Such a reflection would encourage the Christian proclamation that God’s salvation extends to all creation.


2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tzahi Weiss

AbstractJewish texts from Late Antiquity, as well as culturally affiliated sources, contain three different traditions about the creation of the world from alphabetic letters. This observation, which contradicts the common assumption that the myth of creation from letters stems from the holiness of the Jewish language, calls for comparative study. A structural approach to the letter as a founding ontological element is corroborated by the ancient Greek word stoicheion (στoιχειoν), which refers to both physical foundations and alphabetic letters. To analyze this attitude to the letter in the ancient world, I draw on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, which addresses the question of the letter in the framework of human discourse. I use Lacan's concepts to describe and illuminate the inherent connection between letters and the very foundations of the world.


2018 ◽  
pp. 5-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanislav Darula

Three elements mainly wind, water and sun seemed to determine in ancient ages the basic phenomena of life on Earth. Architectural history documented the importance of sun influence on urban and building construction already in layouts of Mesopotamian and Greek houses. Not only sun radiation but especially daylight played a significant role in the creation of indoor environment. Later, in the 20th century, a search of interaction between human life in buildings and natural conditions were studied considering well­being and energy conscious design recently using computer tools in complex research and more detail interdisciplinary solutions. At the same time the restricted daytime availability of natural light was supplemented by more efficient and continually cheaper artificial lighting of interiors. There are two main approaches to standardize the design and evaluation of indoor visual environment. The first is based on the determination of the minimum requirements respecting human health and visibility needs in all activities while the second emphasizes the behaviour and comfort of occupants in buildings considering year­around natural changes of physical quantities like light, temperature, noise and energy consumption. The new current standardization basis for daylight evaluation and window design criteria stimulate the study of methodology principles that historically were based on the overcast type of sky luminance pattern avoiding yearly availability of sky illuminance levels. New trends to base the daylight standardization on yearly or long­term availability of daylight are using the averages or median sky illuminance levels to characterise local climatological conditions. This paper offers the review and discussion about the principles of the natural light standardization with a short introduction to the history and current state, with a trial to focus on the possible development of lighting engineering and its standards in future.


Author(s):  
Nikolay S. Savkin

Introduction. Radical pessimism and militant anti-natalism of Arthur Schopenhauer and David Benathar create an optimistic philosophy of life, according to which life is not meaningless. It is given by nature in a natural way, and a person lives, studies, works, makes a career, achieves results, grows, develops. Being an active subject of his own social relations, a person does not refuse to continue the race, no matter what difficulties, misfortunes and sufferings would be experienced. Benathar convinces that all life is continuous suffering, and existence is constant dying. Therefore, it is better not to be born. Materials and Methods. As the main theoretical and methodological direction of research, the dialectical materialist and integrative approaches are used, the realization of which, in conjunction with the synergetic technique, provides a certain result: is convinced that the idea of anti-natalism is inadequate, the idea of giving up life. A systematic approach and a comprehensive assessment of the studied processes provide for the disclosure of the contradictory nature of anti-natalism. Results of the study are presented in the form of conclusions that human life is naturally given by nature itself. Instincts, needs, interests embodied in a person, stimulate to active actions, and he lives. But even if we finish off with all of humanity by agreement, then over time, according to the laws of nature and according to evolutionary theory, man will inevitably, objectively, and naturally reappear. Discussion and Conclusion. The expected effect of the idea of inevitability of rebirth can be the formation of an optimistic orientation of a significant part of the youth, the idea of continuing life and building happiness, development. As a social being, man is universal, and the awareness of this universality allows one to understand one’s purpose – continuous versatile development.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-156
Author(s):  
Hans-Christian von Herrmann

We are witnessing a return of cosmology in 20th and 21st century thinking. It is cosmology in the ancient greek sense of the word which addressed the entirety of what surrounds and carries us. Another term for this ongoing transformation is the ›planetary‹ which isn’t simply a synonym for the ›global‹. The planetary means a kind of boundless pervasion based on science and technology and transposing planet earth and human life from a culture-historical to a cosmic scale.


Author(s):  
Sarah Stewart-Kroeker

This chapter takes up the themes of Chapter 3—loving beauty’s formative power—in a dialogue with contemporary philosophers Alexander Nehamas and Elaine Scarry, as well as with (to a lesser extent) Iris Murdoch. It explores the nature of love, beauty, and morality through a dialogue across historical–contemporary, theological–philosophical lines. A number of prominent modern criticisms of Augustine focus on a fundamental feature of his thought: that everything in human life is ordered towards the promise of heavenly happiness. This chapter shows some of the resources Augustine offers contemporary discussions of aesthetics by arguing that the way he links beauty and morality accounts for the ethical demands of love elicited by attraction to beauty.


2021 ◽  
pp. medhum-2020-012061
Author(s):  
Lara Choksey

This article considers processes of environmental racialisation in the postgenomic era through their politics of difference and poetics of influence. Subfields like epigenetics promise to account for a plurality of possible influences on health outcomes. While this appears to present possibilities for historical reparation to communities whose epigenomes may have been chronically altered by histories of violence and trauma, the prevailing trend has been to compound processes of racialisation in the reproduction of good/bad environments. The postgenomic era has promised an epistemological transformation of ideas and values of human life, but its practices, technologies and ideology have so far prevented this. Epigenetics, rather, reproduces biomedical exclusions through imaginaries of embodied contexts, methods of occlusion and hypervisibility, and assignations of delay and deviance. This is more complex than both genetic reductionism and environmental racism: studies on epigenetics reveal a poetics of influence at work under liberal humanism complicit in the creation of death-worlds for racialised populations. Other experiments with life are possible and unfolding: Jay Bernard’s poem ‘Chemical’, set in the aftermath of London’s Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, unmoors its bodies from material environment, offering a spectral configuration of collective life. This configuration involves negotiating with the fixing of time and space on which genomic imaginaries depend.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gema Ramírez-Guerrero ◽  
Javier García-Onetti ◽  
Juan Adolfo Chica-Ruiz ◽  
Manuel Arcíla-Garrido

Purpose This paper attempts to fill the gap that exists in research regarding 20th-century heritage and its social appreciation. The purpose of this paper is to explore different ways of evaluating the heritage value and tourism potential and to propose an innovative model validated in the Zarzuela Hippodrome as an example of cultural asset from 20th century with important economic, social, cultural, aesthetic and architectural aspects. Design/methodology/approach This study opted for an interpretation of heritage from an ecosystem, integrating and global paradigm, understanding the asset as a set of resources that interact with each other, generating a common and enriched tourist experience among all the elements that make it up. From this perspective, it is conceived that by modifying one of the elements, the whole (tourist) ecosystem will be equally influenced. On the other side, it was incorporated non-parametric techniques based on the implementation of surveys for the validation of the tool to the case study of the Zarzuela hippodrome. Findings The results suggest that the hippodrome's internal values have been evaluated very positively, while its external values are low. Through this study, the paper has identified several weaknesses that impede its functioning as a viable “tourist product.” The distance from the city center, the lack of available information and the scarce diffusion and tourism promotion are its main weaknesses. The proposed analysis tool reveals the importance of the active participation of visitors to evaluate cultural assets through the combination of aspects related to the conservation of cultural assets and, in turn, elements that encourage their commodification as tourist products, break down barriers between these two disciplines. Research limitations/implications The management tool proposed in this study can be used to underpin the creation of tourism experiences in cultural or heritage assets by diagnosing the current state of its tourist potential, quantifying its value in relation to the visitors’ perception and making visible those problematic aspects to develop actions to solve them. Although the present study is support for future research, as well as for improving the marketing of heritage in tourist settings, an in-depth analysis of the technical elements of heritage, as well as of its intervention (if applicable), will be necessary for the managers who want to use the tool. Social implications One of the most differentiating characteristics between the construction typology of 20th-century historical buildings is perhaps the scarcity of decorative ornamentation, with exposed concrete being the main surface coating. Many of these constructions have an important cultural and historical relevance, however, the social perception, as regards its consideration as architectural and artistic heritage seems to reflect discordant aspects. This study provides support as a decision-making tool to determine the existing valuation of a building and how to enhance it. Originality/value This study takes steps toward the creation of a model that supports decision-makers and owners of cultural assets through a measurement system that makes it possible to quantify and determine the current state of tourism use through the social evaluation of heritage criteria. It defines which are the elements that favor the resilience of the property or, on the contrary, which are those that undermine its enhancement.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dewi Yermawati Enjhela

AbstractThe challenges in today’s global word are increasingle surprising human life, especially at the end of 2019, with the emergence of a pendemic, namely the Corona Virus (Covid-19). The emergence of this pandemic raises various concerns for the world and especially for social life. Of these challenges the autor treis to provide various explanations about these challenges and in relation to how our attitudes or interactions with others, especially in the world of cristian education. This article offers an approach using qualitative approach literature in Theological theory research, and qualitive desciptive research, that the application of cristianeducational behavior in responding to chelenges in this pandemic era is the value of applying the faith of a Cristian in social relations between people in the mids of challenges. In times of this pandemic.


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