scholarly journals Seeing the Other Side of the Coin: (Re)Constructing the Normative Flipside to Marx’s Sociology.

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel A. Butler
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Salient Points ◽  
Ethical Project ◽  
The Way

This paper argues that, Marx’s insistences notwithstanding, there is an ethical core to Marx’s critique of capitalism. I attempt to establish this claim through presenting salient points of Marx’s critique. From this basis, I move on to discuss Marx’s conception of human nature and the way in which it is typically frustrated under pre-communist societies. This frustration is the basis for a moral preference for communism. After pausing briefly to consider the possible criticism that this moral preference is mere ideology, I conclude with the normative heart of the matter. This is addressed by underscoring principal similarities between Marx’s work and Aristotle’s ethical project, insofar as each comprehends an intuitive description of the good life and an analysis of the prerequisites for obtaining it. A grasp of this similarity opens the door to understanding the normative flip side of Marx’s intellectual project.

Cooking Up the Good Life with Socrates

2019 ◽  
pp. 235-252
Author(s):  
Russell E. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Important Ingredient ◽  
Pure Knowledge ◽  
The Way

At Philebus 59d10–64c4, Socrates offers a recipe for the good life. His recipe reveals pure knowledge as the most important ingredient. Not only is pure knowledge valuable on its own, but it must be present for the other ingredients to make their own distinctive contributions to the good life. It determines which other ingredients are to be included, and in what manner and what amounts. The passage thus prepares the way for knowledge, and particularly pure knowledge, to be ranked ahead of pleasure as most responsible for the good life.

Jeong Dasan's Interpretation of Mengzi: Heaven, Way, Human Nature, and Human Herat-mind

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-237
Author(s):  
Philip J. Ivanhoe
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Natural Order ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Ethical Philosophy ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Will ◽  
Human Emotions ◽  
The Way

This essay offers an introduction to Jeong Yakyong’s (Dasan’s) ethical philosophy as revealed by his commentary on the Mengzi. Following Mengzi, Dasan insisted that the Confucian Way was grounded in the will of Heaven but looked back to early views about the Lord on High and described ethical life in terms of an everyday, natural order decreed by the Lord on High. Not only did he see a wide range of human emotions as indispensable and central to the good life, he also insisted that Heaven and the Way must be understood in terms of their manifestations in this world.

scholarly journals The “A-theist” Christ

Kairos ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-205
Author(s):  
Teofil Stanciu
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Present Article ◽  
The Other ◽  
Secular World ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Way

For Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, the kenosis of Christ climaxes with his God-forsakenness on the cross. It is this aspect of kenosis that the present article tries to explore and build upon. One key element will be the meaning of the concept of “a-theist” Christ – coined by Bloom – and how this status of the incarnated Son can function as a basis for our identification and solidarity with today’s atheists. By the way of kenosis, the incarnation brings together in one hypostasis the divine and human nature. This reality endowed both our nature and created order with significant dignity. This paper explores the possibilities from this dignity and how it can serve as a bridge for dialogue with humanists and materialists. As Bloom suggests, this can open the discussion towards the secular world and Christians could take some responsibility for the process of secularization. The objective of this article is to demonstrate that Anthony Bloom’s controversial idea of “a-theist” Christ can become a connection point with the other and a mirror in which western Christians might look at some of their anthropological shortcomings that hamper their solidarity and dialogue with those who do not share the faith in God.

The Fourfold Division of Beings

2019 ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Mary Louise Gill
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Good Life

The fourfold division in Plato’s Philebus develops machinery to decide the contest between pleasure and reason for second place after the mixture in the debate about the good life. The machinery consists of the limit, the unlimited, the mixture of limit and unlimited, and cause of the mixture. Plato’s Socrates collects instances of the unlimited and mixture to determine their unified nature and marks off the cause from the other three kinds and argues for its priority. We gain understanding of the limit by considering its operation in relation to the other three kinds. The limit is responsible for external and internal boundaries in an unlimited, bringing definiteness either by marking something off from things outside it or by providing internal structure. Chapter 5 argues that one key function of the limit is omitted in the fourfold division: guaranteeing the goodness of a mixture.

5. Ethics

2018 ◽  
pp. 65-76
Author(s):  
Brad Inwood
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Self Control ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Wise Person ◽  
The Family

Ethics is the part of the Stoics’ legacy that is most prominent and influential today. Their theory of the good life for human beings falls into the family of theories associated with Socrates and his followers. This tradition includes Plato and most Platonists, Xenophon, the Cynics, Aristotle, and later Aristotelians, all of whom share the view that virtue, the excellence of a human being, is the highest value and is its own reward. ‘Ethics’ discusses the Stoics’ views on human nature and rationality; the four basic virtues: justice, courage, wisdom, and moderation or self-control; and the doctrine that the fully rational and wise person will be free of passions.

Prosperity and Prophecy in African Pentecostalism

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Quayesi-Amakye
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Good Life

AbstractThis essay discusses how prosperity is understood and articulated in Ghanaian Pentecostal prophetic circles. It seeks to show that in the peripheral prophetism of Pentecostalism, prosperity is perceived as the good life Christ offers those who believe in him. The good life is a religious and social quest of Ghanaians. The bad life is a privation of goodness in this life. Coping with the bad life has necessitated the patronage of Ghanaian prophetic services where rituals of transformation are employed to negotiate evil and suffering in the life of the faithful. Critical in the discussion is the role of the 'Other' who creates conditions of impoverishment for people and who justifies the necessity of prophetic negotiation. The paper also analyses the content of the bad life and finally attempts to show that Christ's parables in Luke 16 propose a guiding paradigm for conceiving prosperity as a tool for harmonious interhuman relations.

Nordic urban history and urban historians in the last decade

Urban History ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 65-77
Author(s):  
Jan Eivind Myhre
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Conference Report ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Urban Settlements ◽  
Hans Magnus Enzensberger

To people from the Continent, like the German essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Norwegians seem to be something of an urban puzzle. While crowding in towns and cities — about three-quarters of the population now live in urban settlements — the minds and lifestyles of Norwegians, their concept of the good life, are stubbornly rural. More or less the same applies to the Finns. The Danes, on the other hand, are conceived as quite the opposite, a fundamentally urban nation. The Swedes fall somewhere in between.Differences in urban attitudes, as well as other diversities between the Nordic countries, are cherished among the inhabitants themselves, although most people are well aware that the culturally unifying elements are strong, too. The variations are real, however, and different urban experiences may partly account for them. Take the case of nineteenth-century urbanization, with examples extracted from the 1977 Trondheim Nordic history conference report on urbanization.

Drawn to the Good? Brewer on Dialectical Activity

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-631
Author(s):  
Lorraine Besser-Jones
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life

In The Retrieval of Ethics, Talbot Brewer defends an Aristotelian-inspired understanding of the good life, in which living the good life is conceived of in terms of engaging in a unified dialectical activity. In this essay, I explore the assumptions at work in Brewer’s understanding of dialectical activity and raise some concerns about whether or not we have reason to embrace them. I argue that his conception of human nature and that towards which we are drawn stands in tension with empirical research on motivation. Given this tension, I conclude that it is implausible to construe living the good life as a unified dialectical activity.

scholarly journals Creatures Bound for Glory: Biotechnological Enhancement and Visions of Human Flourishing

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Burdett ◽  
Victoria Lorrimar
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
The One ◽  
Secular Humanist ◽  
Grand Vision

The human enhancement debate is fundamentally based on divergent ideals of human flourishing. Using the complementary, though often contrasting, foci of creaturehood and deification as fundamental to the good life, we examine these visions of human flourishing inherent in transhumanist, secular humanist and critical posthumanist positions on human enhancement. We argue that the theological anthropologies that respond to human enhancement and these other ideologies tend to emphasise either creaturehood or deification to the neglect or detriment of the other. We propose in response that understanding humans as creatures bound for glory integrates both dimensions of the human being into the one grand vision of flourishing God has for humanity.

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