scholarly journals OEDIPUS PLOT: PARADOXES OF IDENTIFICATION

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-123
Author(s):  
Oleg B. Zaslavskii
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Human History ◽  
Discrete Sequence ◽  
Singular Transformation ◽  
Plot Structure ◽  
Ternary Structure

This article deals with the plot structure of the Oedipus myth. From the set of known sources we select a series of elements that form a plot representing an object of our analysis. The author takes into account the following elements: 1) piercing of Oedipus’s ankles and the subsequent displacement of Oedipus to the mountain Cithaeron, 2) the deadly clash between Oedipus and Laius, 3) the riddle of the Sphinx and the Oedipus’s answer, 4) the suicide of the Sphinx, 5) the accession of Oedipus to the throne in Thebes, 6) Oedipus’s discovery of his own origins, 7) the suicide of Jocasta, 8) the self-blinding of Oedipus. In the plot there is a series of correspondences related to the number 3. In the riddle of the Sphinx that Oedipus solves, 3 stages of human life are indicated: infancy, maturity, old age. In the Sphinx, 3 components are integrated in one whole: “man + lion + bird”. Oedipus commits murder in the point where 3 roads meet. It is shown that incest and clash with the unrecognized father are expressed in the myth in the framework of such a ternary structure. The relevant elements that normally are separated from each other, merge in one point that is nothing else than a singular transformation. The other cases consist in mapping a common human history (that is continual by its very meaning) to a discrete sequence of three phases in an individual story of Oedipus. We also discuss some aspects of the Sphinx riddle that were not given a proper attention before. The feature with respect to which different stages of human life are classified, is related to legs. In turn, this motif is correlated with the presence or absence of footing. Deprivation of it is acts as a source of danger. In turn, this motif is correlated with the presence or absence of footing. Deprivation of it is acts as a source of danger. Both the contents of the riddle and the process of asking and guessing can be correlated with further investigation carried out by Oedipus.

Performing the Self and Staging the Other: Scripting the Legend of Lucretia in Early Modern England

Paragrana ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-59
Author(s):  
Sarah D. R. Sallmann
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
National Identities ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Encounters ◽  
The Subject ◽  
English Identity ◽  
Plot Structure ◽  
And Control

AbstractIn England, throughout the early modern period and beyond, the Rape of Lucretia served as a central intertext for literary and non-literary works engaging with the subject of transgression. Not only did legal tracts and social pamphlets prescribe a woman to behave analogously to Lucretia after rape in order to contest the innocence of her soul through her bodily performance. Allegorically, the legend′s iteration within new cultural contexts in contemporary English historiography and drama provided a powerful subtext with which national histories and identities were scripted according to a familiar plot structure in order to represent 'the Turk′ and thereby to interpret and control what was perceived to be a threat to English identity and sovereignty at a time of intensifying Anglo-Ottoman encounters. This paper not only demonstrates the re-staging of the Rape of Lucretia in different texts and contexts; it examines the way in which the national identities and cultural encounters are represented and performed through the legend in order to stage the self and the Other within the radical discourse of alterity in contemporary proto-orientalist contexts.

scholarly journals ПОКЛИКАННЯ ТА ЕТИЧНА ВІДПОВІДАЛЬНІСТЬ ЛЮДИНИ: ЗВЕРТАЮЧИСЬ ДО ТЕМИ ІНШОГО У ФІЛОСОФІЇ ЛЕВІНАСА

2019 ◽  
pp. 100-111
Author(s):  
Є. І. Мулярчук
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Obligation ◽  
Fundamental Ontology ◽  
The World ◽  
Intersubjective Experience ◽  
Personal Understanding

The task of the research is to determine the possibilities of interpretation of the theme of calling on the basis of the ideas of the ethics of E. Levinas and his criticism of Heideggerian fundamental ontology. Following the main positions of Levinasian philosophy the author of the article proves the relevance of the understanding of calling as a common to mankind direction and requirement of holiness and awakening from interestedness in oneself to concern for the other people’s welfare and good. On the basis of Levinasian ideas of infinity and transcendence the purpose of calling reveals itself in devotion of person’s aims and values to over-personal aims and values. The phenomenon of call reveals itself not as the claim of authenticity of self-being and towards the truth of being as a whole, but as a need to answer to the Other. Not a Heideggerian fear and resoluteness of finiteness found the values in human life, but the infinity of living for the other people. The study follows the thought of Levinas that infinity reveals itself in the person and makes the person able to overcome anxiety of own death and overcome the limits of living towards it. The study examines the criticism by Levinas of phenomenological attitude to rely upon the self-certainty of subjectivity and his positioning of the certainty of ethical obligation based on the intersubjective experience and the requirement of responsibility towards the other people. The research determines the necessity of the search of the ways for harmonization in the concept of calling of the positions of ontology and ethics. Therefore the author foresees the possibility for solution of practical problems concerning ethical motivation of personality, of general understanding of the conditions for forming of personal virtues, of answering the various calls of living in the world, and of solving the collisions revealed in the realization of personal understanding of calling.

Montaigne on Aging

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Skenazi
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Investigation ◽  
Human Identity ◽  
Cognitive Capacities ◽  
The World

Scholars have long seen in Montaigne’s turn inward, toward a psychological and philosophical investigation of human identity a mark of the modernity of the Essays, but they have focused on a static conception of the self, without taking into account Montaigne’s emphasis on his decline. This article discusses the essayist’s pervasive references to his old age as a way to relate to oneself, the other, the world, and to his literary endeavor. The portrait of the writer as a man growing old is embedded in the systems of knowledge of the day, yet Montaigne’s pragmatic reflections on how to adjust to the damages of time on his physical and cognitive capacities still speak to us.

scholarly journals Doświadczenie przemijania i starości w twórczości Wiktora Paskowa i Stanisława Stratiewa

2017 ◽  
Vol 163 ◽  
pp. 701-709
Author(s):  
Dorota Gołek-Sepetliewa
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

The experience of passing and old agein the works of Victor Paskov and Stanislav StratievThe literary works of famous Bulgarian authors Stanislav Stratiev 1941–2000 and Victor Paskov 1949–2009 may be viewed in terms of athorough study of the human being and the multidimensionality of its existence. Their reflections about existential problems also involve the experience of passing and old age that have ontological, social, cultural, symbolic and metaphorical dimension. The novel A Ballad for George Henig 1987 by Paskov and the drama On the Other Side 1994 by Stratiev include clear and ambiguous images of the end of the human life. The experience of passing and old age affects aparticular person as apersonality and its relationship with the other people. This subject reveals, on the one hand, the crisis of human relations and values in contemporary Bulgarian society, on the other hand it emphasizes the fragility of the human condition, expressed in the experience of pain, illness, passing, old age and death.Опитът на преходност и старост в творчествотона Виктор Пасков и Станислав СтратиевТворчествотo на известнитe български автори Станислав Стратиев 1941–2000 и Виктор Пасков 1949–2009 можe да бъдe разгледанo кaто по-задълбочено изучаване на човешкото същество и на множествотo измерения на неговия живот. Интересът към екзистенциалните проблеми включва и описание на опита на преходност и старост, който притежава онтологично, социалнo, културнo, символично и метафорично измерение. Романът на Пасков Балада за Георг Хених 1987 и драмата на Стратиев От другатa страна 1994 представят изразителни и нееднозначни картини зa крайния етап от човешкия живот. Опитът на преходност и старост засяга човешкия индивид като личност и отношенията мy с близкитe и по-далечнaтa социална среда. Тeматa разкрива, от една страна, кризата на човешките отношения и на ценноститe в съвременното българското общество, от друга страна — подчертава крехкостта на човешкото съществуване, което се изразява в опита на страдание, заболяване, преходност, старост и смърт.

scholarly journals Incarnation, Posthumanism and Performative Anthropology: The Body of Technology and the Body of Christ

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S Burdett
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Intelligent Machines ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Church

Abstract This essay argues that a Christian incarnational response to posthumanism must recognize that what is at stake isn't just whether belief systems align. It seeks to relocate the interaction between the church and posthumanism to how the practices of posthumanism and Christianity perform the bodies, affections and dispositions of each. Posthuman practices seeks to habituate: (1) A preference for informational patterns over material instantiation; (2) that consciousness and the self are extended and displaced rather than discrete and localized; (3) that the body is merely a tool, the original prosthesis we learn to manipulate and (4) that human life is organized such that it is seamless with intelligent machines. The Christian performance of embodied life, on the other hand, has Christ as template and, in the Eucharist, Christians are marked by offering, sacrifice and celebration in a community that affirms the integrity of our common incarnate life.

scholarly journals Il concetto di Lavoro e la possibilità di una Filosofia Sociale in Sören Kierkegaard/The concept of labor and the possibility of a social philosophy in Søren Kierkegaard

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
João Marcelo Crubellate
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Productive Work

Sommario: Il mio obiettivo in questo testo è discutere la nozione di lavoro produttivo nell’ambito della opera di Kierkegaard, con speciale atenzione alla teoria degli stadi esistenziali. Partendo dal concetto di uomo come un essere relazionale cioè che si rapporta a sé stesso ed alle altre persone, cerco di esaminare come il teologo danese descrive il lavoro in ogni stadio (l’estetico, l’etico e poi il religioso). Mentre si può dire che nell’etico il lavoro (come approfondimento dell’interiorità e come lavoro produttivo) sia il dovere di ogni uomo, dovere che lo porta all’universale, e nell’estetico che il lavoro sia una noiosa attività almeno quando non si riesce ad svilupparsi qualche talento speciale, nel religioso tutto cambia. Nello stadio religioso l’altro è il prossimo cioè un somigliante e quindi l’esistenza umana prende come scopo un attuarsi del sé verso ad una possibilità che si trova oltre sé stesso, una possibilità che Kierkegaard designa come coscienza eterna. Dunque il lavoro diventa sfera anche per la manifestazione dello umano come coscienza e libertà e non soltanto uno sforzo per soddisfare le necessità materiale dell’uomo come individuo di una spezie animale.Abstract: My purpose here was to discuss the notion of productive work in the philosophy of Kierkegaard. I put special attention upon the so-called theory of the life’stages. Firstly I take the concept of man as a relational being, that is a being that related himself to himself and to the other people. Then I examine Kierkegaardian discussion of the concept of work in each stage: the esthetic, the ethical and the religious. It is possible to affirm that while in the ethical the work (both as the inner working of the personality and as productive work) is an universal duty, and for the esthetic it is a boring activity or at the best, is one occasion for exercising a special talent, in the religious everything changes. In the religious the Other person with whom the Self relates himself must be taken as the biblical-neighbour and so the human life takes a diferente purpose: become conscious of his own eternal calling. In the same sense working becomes a way of developing the most important atributes of human beings – his self-conscience and his liberty – more than a way of caring about the material necessities of life as an individual of an animal specie. Key words: Life’stages; Work; Subjectivity  

The oughtness of existence: Living and suffering by what we ought

2021 ◽  
pp. 095935432110369
Author(s):  
Joachim Meier
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings

Rooted in the fact–value dichotomy of the modern scientific outlook, psychology tends to render “ought” as distinguishable from and additional to “is.” The purpose of this article, however, is to disclose an “oughtness” at the center of human existence by which human beings inevitably live and suffer. In the first part, psychology’s neglect of oughtness is tracked down through significant albeit different theoretical strands. Second, through a threefold argument entailing (a) the other, (b) language, and (c) the self, it is revealed how people’s concrete lived lives as well as the very formation of a subject are incomprehensible without the oughtness of existence. Finally, the relation between suffering and oughtness is spelled out. Due to the oughtness of existence, guilt and inadequacy enter into the human life.

scholarly journals Levinas and Løgstrup on the Phenomenology (and Metaphysics?) of Moral Agency

The Monist ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-62
Author(s):  
Irene McMullin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Conditions ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Moral Force ◽  
The Face ◽  
Ethical Demand

Abstract For both Levinas and Løgstrup, the moral encounter is characterized by an asymmetrical prioritization of the other over the self. Some take Løgstrup’s account to be an improvement on Levinas’s, however, insofar as it appears to both foreswear the hyperbole of the latter’s view and ground the ethical claim in the natural conditions of human life (thereby avoiding Levinas’s alleged nominalism). This paper argues, in contrast, that Løgstrup’s own account is equally hyperbolic in its characterization of the self as fundamentally evil, and that his attempt to ground the ethical demand in structures of ‘life’ raises serious difficulties. I will argue that Levinas’s stronger commitment to phenomenology both rules out the problematic metaphysical claims on which Løgstrup’s ontological ethics depends and helps explain the methodological function of Levinas’s own hyperbole. Unlike Løgstrup, Levinas insists that the challenge is not eradicating the claims of the self, but rather resisting its pretention to a global normative priority. In making this case I refute the argument that Levinas, unlike Løgstrup, is committed to a ‘command’ view of morality—whereby it is the other person’s authoritative status that underwrites the moral force of the claim, not the content of the claim itself. But on Levinas’s view, ‘demand’ and ‘command’ accounts merge in his understanding of the face-to-face encounter because responding to the content of the demand—that I treat the other’s claim as reason-giving—just is to see the other person as an authority capable of making legitimate claims on me.

scholarly journals Spiritual culture as a foundation of psychosomatic health of an individual and society

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-102
Author(s):  
Nikolay I. Meshkov ◽  
Dmitriy N. Meshkov
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theoretical Modelling ◽  
Scientific Society ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Psychosomatic Health ◽  
Spiritual Culture ◽  
Synthetic Approaches

Introduction. The article examines the influence of spiritual culture on psychosomatic health of people. This topic, often worded as a problem, is a subject of studies for representatives of religions (the article deals with Orthodox Christianity) and scientists of different areas of scientific knowledge. Appropriate addressing and solution of this problem will benefit psychosomatic health of a person and society. Goal of Research. The authors base on the published materials (papers, books) and analyze the positions of the representatives of religion (Orthodox Christianity) and scientists on the topic/problem to determine the differences. Methods. Comparative analysis. Theoretical modelling. Results of Research. The main distinction of views of scientists from views of the representatives of religion consists in understanding of spirituality as an exceptionally sociocultural phenomenon, the result of education. In Orthodox Christianity is understood as the result of action of Holy Spirit and self-improvement in order to “gain” Holy Spirit; the self-improvement is aimed to forming such spiritual qualities as faith, hope, love, humility, meekness etc., that benefit psychosomatic health of people. Discussion and Conclusion. If among representatives of Orthodox Christianity engaged in the study of the problem there are no strong differences on the genesis of spirituality and its influence on all sides of human life, then among scientists there are rather different views on the problem. Some representatives of scientific society consider spirituality exceptionally from materialism approach, but the other use certain synthetic approaches, taking into account that materialism is not able to give answers for all questions.

Human Rights, Compassion and the Issue of the Pure Motive in the Ethics of Schopenhauer and Buddhism

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 64-81
Author(s):  
Panos Eliopoulos ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Specific Area ◽  
Human Action ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
Philosophical System ◽  
The Common

This paper focuses on a specific area of interest within the philosophical system of Schopenhauer and Buddhism which is human rights, the concept of compassion and the issue of the pure motive behind human action. Both theories express pessimism regarding the transitoriness of life and the pain caused, and how this deprives man of inner peace. The common acknowledgment of the fact that human life entails great suffering guides the two philosophies into an awareness of the need for salvation. In their metaphysics, there is a number of similarities that conclude to the point that moral truthfulness is a principal virtue in human life, practically indispensable for right living. In this particular context, while compassion is highlighted as the main ethical factor, it is a question of paramount importance in these doctrines whether the motive behind the action is a motive concentrated on the Self or purely on the Other.

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