scholarly journals The Joy of Being as Anthropological Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
Agapov Oleg D. ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Human Condition

The joy of being is connected with one’s activities aimed at responding to the challenges of the elemental forces and the boundlessness of being, which are independent of human subjectivity. In the context of rising to the challenges of being, one settles to acquire a certain power of being in themselves and in the world. Thus, the joy of being is tied to achieving the level of the “miraculous fecundity” (E. Levinas), “an internal necessity of one’s life” (F. Vasilyuk), magnanimity (M. Mamardashvili). The ontological duty of any human being is to succeed at being human. The joy of being is closely connected to experiencing one’s involvement in the endless/eternity and realizing one’s subjective temporality/finitude, which attunes him to the absolute seriousness in relation to one’s complete realization in life. Joy is a foundational anthropological phenomenon in the structure of ways of experiencing the human condition. The joy of being as an anthropological practice can appear as a constantly expanding sphere of human subjectivity where the transfiguration of the powers of being occurs under the sign of the Height (Levinas) / the Good. Without the possibility of transfiguration human beings get tired of living, immerse themselves in the dejected state of laziness and the hopelessness of vanity. The joy of being is connected to unity, gathering the multiplicity of human life under the aegis of meaning that allows us to see the other and the alien in heteronomous being, and understand the nature of co-participation and responsibility before the forces of being, and also act in synergy with them.The joy of being stands before a human being as the joy of fatherhood/ motherhood, the joy of being a witness to the world in creative acts (the subject as a means to retreat before the world and let the world shine), the joy of every day that was saved from absurdity, darkness and the impersonal existence of the total. Keywords: joy, higher reality, anthropological practices, “the height”, subject, transcendence, practice of coping

scholarly journals O HUMANISMO PERSONALISTA DE LIMA VAZ: UMA RESPOSTA FILOSÓFICA AO PROBLEMA DO ABORTO

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (106) ◽  
pp. 233
Author(s):  
Eleandro Teles
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Person ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Broad Category ◽  
The World ◽  
The Absolute

Uma posição contrária ou favorável ao aborto depende da resposta à questão bioética elementar: quando tem início a vida qualitativamente humana no feto? Adotando o princípio da inviolabilidade da vida humana como critério ético fundamental de análise, busca-se responder à pergunta sobre o status do embrião a partir da antropologia personalista de Lima Vaz. Conforme o autor, a pessoa humana é compreendida na tríplice estrutura: somática, psíquica e espiritual. Uma nova e ampla categoria de pessoa é proposta: ser humano, unidade de estrutura e relações, convocada a realizar-se pelo movimento dialético de expressão do dado somático, através das relações fundamentais com o mundo, o outro e o Absoluto, abrangendo toda a existência, desde a fecundação até a morte. O humanismo personalista de Lima Vaz oferece uma resposta filosófica contundente ao problema do aborto.ABSTRACT: A stand against or in favor of abortion depends on the answer to the elementary bioethical question: when is the beginning of the human life in a fetus? Adopting the principle of inviolability of human life as the fundamental ethical criterion of analysis and using Lima Vaz’s personalistic anthropology, we search for an answer to the question about the embryo status. According to the author, the human person is comprehended in the triple structure: somatic, psychic and spiritual. A new and broad category of person is proposed: the human being, unity of structure and relations, is called to self realization by the dialectical movement of expression from the somatic base, through the fundamental relations with the world, the other and the Absolute, including the entire existence, from fecundation until death. Lima Vaz’s personalistic humanism offers a forceful philosophical answer to the problem of abortion. 

Agency, Identity and Technology

Janus Head ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
John Pauley ◽  
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Practice ◽  
The Human Condition

America has become a spiritual wasteland. Three aspects of the human condition are crucial for human beings to recognize if they are to develop a proper identity and agency within the world: these aspects are finitude, contingency, and the spiritual (which follows from the other two). The notion of the spiritual can be filled out with an understanding of faith. American culture is antithetical to faith, as is demonstrated through a discussion of the basic human practice of conversation. In America, conversation works against faith because conversation has become brutal. Contemporary debate literally works against faith because conversation has become brutal Contemporary debate literally works to annihilate the reality of others. These reflections support the conclusion that brutality is the antithesis of faithfulness.

A Liberdade e a Justiça: horizontes para uma racionalidade socioambiental

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Sepúlveda Ferriz
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Great Opportunity ◽  
The World ◽  
Authentic Development ◽  
Sense Of Justice

Freedom and Justice have always been challenged. Since the most remote times, and in the most varied circumstances of places and people, human beings have tried to clarify and put into practice these two controversial concepts. Freedom and Justice, in effect, are words, but also dreams, desires and practices that, not being imperfect, are less sublime and ambitious. Reflecting on them on the basis of an ethics of development and socioenvironmental sustainability is still a great challenge in our contemporaneity. This book is born from the need that we all have to reflect, understand what our role is in relation to the OTHER, understood as the other as Environment. Doing this from such disparate areas and at the same time as current as Economics, Philosophy and Ecology, is still a great opportunity to discuss complexity, transdisciplinarity and the inclusion of diverse themes, but which all converge in the Human Being and its relationship with the world. Endowing human beings with Freedom and a sense of Justice means RESPONSIBILITY. To be free and to want a better and fairer world is to endow our existence with meaning and meaning. Agency, autonomy, functioning, dignity, rights, are capacities that must be leveraged individually and collectively for authentic development to exist. Development as Freedom is a valid proposal for thinking about a socio-environmental rationality that interferes in the controversial relations between economics, ethics and the environment.

On the Harm of Genocide

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Paul Kucharski
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Community Or ◽  
The World ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Individual Human ◽  
The Human Condition

My aim in this essay is to advance the state of scholarly discussion on the harms of genocide. The most obvious harms inflicted by every genocide are readily evident: the physical harm inflicted upon the victims of genocide and the moral harm that the perpetrators of genocide inflict upon themselves. Instead, I will focus on a kind of harm inflicted upon those who are neither victims nor perpetrators, on those who are outside observers, so to speak. My thesis will be that when a whole community or culture is eliminated, or even deeply wounded, the world loses an avenue for insight into the human condition. My argument is as follows. In order to understand human nature, and that which promotes its flourishing, we must certainly study individual human beings. But since human beings as rational and linguistic animals are in part constituted by the communities in which they live, the study of human nature should also involve the study of communities and cultures—both those that are well ordered and those that are not. No one community or culture has expressed all that can be said about the human way of existing and flourishing. And given that the unity and wholeness of human nature can only be glimpsed in a variety of communities and cultures, then part of the harm of genocide consists in the removal of a valuable avenue for human beings to better understand themselves.

Prologue

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Self ◽  
Objective Truth ◽  
The World ◽  
Subjective Truth ◽  
The Human Condition

Introduces some of the central ideas of existentialism—including subjective truth, finitude, being-in-the-world, facticity, transcendence, inwardness, and the self as becoming—as relevant to an individual living in the contemporary moment. Highlights existentialist concern both for human individuality and for commonly-shared features of the human condition. Emphasizes existentialist attention both to the despairing aspects of human life and to the affirmation of existence as worthy of wonder. Introduces a few key thinkers—Kierkegaard, Marcel, Heidegger, Sartre, Nietzsche—while also indicating the diversity of existentialism to be emphasized throughout the book. Addresses what existentialism may have to offer in the context of contemporary challenges to objective truth and communal forms of meaning.

From consumer to construer: Travels in human subjectivity

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 504-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Fuat Fırat ◽  
Nikhilesh Dholakia
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Extant Literature ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
The Human Condition

A key component of how human beings organize their lives is how they perceive and make sense of what it means to be human, that is, their subjectivity. Human subjectivity has taken on different dominant forms across history, the consumer being one of the most dominant contemporary forms. Based on current and potential trends, we argue, with a deliberate tone of optimism about transformative potential of the human condition, that if the contemporary iconographic culture is transcended, there is the possibility of a subject that transcends the consumer, a construer subject. In contrast to what largely exists in extant literature – extrapolating from the consumer subjectivity to posthuman subjects – we envision the possibility of an epochal cultural change that will provide the ground for a construer subjectivity to emerge. We offer some preliminary insights into what such subjectivity may entail.

Pedagogika wobec problematyczności bytu ludzkiego. O konfliktach w życiu człowieka

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (2 (252)) ◽  
pp. 70-85
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Rumianowska
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Existential Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
Complex Mechanisms

The purpose of the article is to outline the problem of widely understood conflicts in human life from the perspective of existential philosophy. Without questioning the importance of psychological research on complex mechanisms underlying conflicts, the author points to the issue of the problematic nature of human existence, the category of freedom, the problem of the authenticity of being and the sense of meaning. In the second part of the paper, the essence of educational process in the context of experiencing difficulties and conflicting situations by human beings has been introduced. The necessity of taking into account the problem of being oneself and constituting a human being in relation to himself, the world and others has been presented.

Existential Philosophy and Psychotherapy Ethics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Noyon ◽  
Thomas Heidenreich
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Principles ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
Existential Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Authentic Life

This chapter introduces five central concepts of existential philosophy in order to deduce ethical principles for psychotherapy: phenomenology, authenticity, paradoxes, isolation, and freedom vs. destiny. Phenomenological perspectives are useful as a guideline for how to encounter and understand patients in terms of individuality and uniqueness. Existential communication as a means to search and face the truth of one’s existence is considered as a valid basis for an authentic life. Paradoxes that cannot be solved are characteristic for human existence and should be dealt with to turn resignation into active choices. Isolation is one of the “existentials” characterizing human life between two paradox poles: On the one hand we are deeply in need of relationships to other human beings; on the other hand we are thrown into the world alone and will always stay like this, no matter how close we get to another person. Further, addressing freedom and destiny as two extremes of one dimension can serve as a basis for orientation in life and also for dealing with the separation between responsibility and guilt.

scholarly journals The Dialogue between Theology and Science as an Open-Ended Hermeneutics of the Human Condition

2020 ◽  
pp. 1338-1355
Author(s):  
Alexei V. Nesteruk
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The World ◽  
Theology And Science ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Science And Theology ◽  
Theology And Philosophy ◽  
The Human Condition

This paper represents a direct continuation and development of my stance on the sense of the dialogue between theology and science as it is seen through the eyes of phenomenological philosophy and its extension towards theology. I further interpret the paradoxical position of humanity in the world (being an object in the world and subject for the world) to be the cause in the split between science and theology. Since, according to modern philosophy, no reconciliation between two opposites in the hermeneutics of the subject is possible, the whole issue of the facticity of human subjectivity as the sensebestowing centre of being acquires theological dimensions, requiring new developments in both theology and philosophy. The intended overcoming of the unknowability of man by himself, tacitly attempted through the “reconciliation” of science and theology (guided by a purpose to ground man in some metaphysical substance), is not ontologically achievable, but demonstrates the working of formal purposefulness (in the sense of Kant). Then the dialogue between theology and science can be considered as a teleological activity without a purpose representing never-ending hermeneutics of the human condition

scholarly journals Modernitetens modsigelser. Konfigurationskonflikter og samfundstænkning i Grundtvigs »Om Mennesket i Verden«

1998 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
Henning Eichberg
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

Contradictions of Modernity. Conflicting Configurations and Societal Thinking in Grundtvig's »The Human Being in the World«A Worm - a God. About the Human Being in the World. Ove Korsgaard (ed.). With contributions of Niels Buur Hansen, Hans Hauge, Bosse Bergstedt, Uffe Jonas and Knud Bjarne Gjesing. Odense Universitetsforlag 1997.By Henning EichbergIn 1817, Grundtvig wrote »Om Mennesket i Verden« which can be regarded as a key to the understanding of his philosophy and psychology, but which is difficult to place in relation to his later folkelig, societal engagement. A recent reedition of this text together with some actual comments by Grundtvig researchers is an occasion to quest deeper about this relation.However, it is not enough to ask - as Grundtvig research has done for a long time - what Grundtvig wanted to say, but his text can be regarded as a document of how modem orientation in the world is characterized by conflicting linguistic and metaphorical patterns, which sometimes may tell another story than intended.On the one hand, Grundtvig's text speaks of a lot of dualistic contradictions such as life vs. death, light vs. darkness, truth vs. lie, God vs. devil, human fall vs. resurrection, body vs. spirit, nature vs. history and time vs. eternity. In contrast to the author's intention to produce clarity and lucidity - whether in the spirit of Christianity or of modem rationality - the binary constructions give rather a confusing picture of systematical disorder where polarity and polemics are mixed, antagonism and gradual order, dichotomy and exclusive either-or, paradoxes and dialectical contradictions. On the other hand,Grundtvig tries again and again to build up three-pole imaginations as for instance the threefold human relation to time, space and truth and the three ages of spiritual seeing, feeling and conceptualization resp. of mythology (childhood), theology (youth) and history (adult age). The main history, Grundtvig wants to tell in his text, is built up around the trialectic relation of the human being to the body, to the spirit and to itself, to the living soul.The most difficult to understand in this relation seems to be what Grundtvig calls the spirit, Aanden. Grundtvig describes it as Aandigt Samfund mellem Menneske og Sandhed, »the spiritual community between the human being and the truth«, and this may direct our attention towards samfund, meaning at the same time association, togetherness and society. Aanden is described by threefold effects - will, conscience and faith, all of them describing social relations between human beings resp. their psychological correlate. The same social undertone is true when Grundtvig characterizes three Aande-Livets Spor (»traces of spiritual life«): the word, the history and love. If »the spirit« represents what is larger or »higher« than the single human being and what cannot be touched by his or her hand, then this definition fits exactly to society or the sociality of the human being. Social life - whether understood as culture, social identity or folk (people) - is not only a quantitative sum of human individuals, but represents another quality of natural order. Thus it has its logic that Grundtvig places the human being in between the realms of minerals, plant and animal life on the one hand and the »higher« order on the other, which can be understood as the social existence.In this respect, the societal dimension is not at all absent in his philosophy of 1817. However, it is not enough to state the implicite presence of sociality as such in the earlier Grundtvigian thinking before his folkelig break-through. What was the sociality, more concretely, which Grundtvig experienced during the early modernity? In general, highly dichotomous concepts are dominating the modem discourse as capitalism vs. feudalism, materialism vs. idealism, modernity vs. premodemity, democracy vs. absolutism or revolution vs. restoration; Grundtvig was always difficult to place into these patterns. Again, it might be helpful to try a trialectical approach, transcending the dualism of state and market by civil society as a third field of social action. Indeed, it was civil society with its farmers' anarchist undertones which became the contents of Grundtvig's later folk engagement.

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