Meditation in the Classical Daoist Tradition

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold D. Roth
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Cultivation Practices ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

The classical Daoist textual corpus, while often treated as abstract philosophy, emerged from a tradition of teachers and students that was primarily based on a common set of meditative techniques, and goals. These techniques emphasized proper posture (aligning the body and keeping it still), breath cultivation (concentrating, patterning, guiding, relaxing and expanding the breath), the use of attention (focusing on the one or on the center), as well as a variety of apophatic training regimes designed to restrict or eliminate desires, emotions, thoughts, knowledge and sense perceptions and reveal a deeper reality known as the Way, believed to underlie these faculties. With time, a tradition emerged for viewing these self-cultivation practices as particularly beneficial for rulership, connecting the ruler to a correlative web of cosmic energies.

The Justified Body: Hauerwas, Luther and the Christian Life

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-78
Author(s):  
Justin Nickel
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Stanley Hauerwas ◽  
The One ◽  
God's Grace ◽  
Ethical Significance ◽  
The Way

Stanley Hauerwas and others argue that Luther’s understanding of justification denies the theological and ethical significance of the body. Indeed, the inner, spiritual person is the one who experiences God’s grace in the gospel, while the outer, physical (read: bodily) person continues to live under law and therefore coercion and condemnation. While not denying that Luther can be so read, I argue that there is another side of Luther, one that recognizes the body’s importance for Christian life. I make this argument through a close reading of Luther’s reflections on Adam and Eve’s Fall in his Lectures on Genesis (1545) and the sacramental theology in ‘Against the Heavenly Prophets’. For this Luther, disconnection from our bodies is not a sign of justification but rather the sin from which justification saves us. Accordingly, justification results in a return to embodied creatureliness as the way we receive and live our justification.

Be[ing] You

2015 ◽  
pp. 18-32
Author(s):  
Lorna Ann Moore
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mirror Stage ◽  
Head Mounted Display ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way ◽  
Video Performance

This chapter discusses the one-to-one interactions between participants in the video performance In[bodi]mental. It presents personal accounts of users' body swapping experiences through real-time Head Mounted Display systems. These inter-corporeal encounters are articulated through the lens of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and his work on the “Mirror Stage” (1977), phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1968) and his writings on the Chiasm, and anthropologist Rane Willerslev's (2007) research on mimesis. The study of these positions provides new insights into the blurred relationship between the corporeal Self and the digital Other. The way the material body is stretched across these divisions highlights the way digital media is the catalyst in this in[bodied] experience of be[ing] in the world. The purpose of this chapter is to challenge the relationship between the body and video performance to appreciate the impact digital media has on one's perception of a single bounded self and how two selves become an inter-corporeal experience shared through the technology.

scholarly journals Exploring Weak Signals to Design and Prototype for Emergent Futures

2020 ◽  
pp. 70-89
Author(s):  
Tomas Diez ◽  
Oscar Tomico ◽  
Mariana Quintero
Keyword(s):  
Living Systems ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Weak Signals ◽  
Emerging Trends ◽  
The World ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
The One ◽  
Technology And Design ◽  
The Way

While technology and design have progressed greatly, they have also produced imbalances that affect the way we live and work. Additionally, they have also contributed to the use of the planet’s resources to fill our homes with unnecessary devices and objects. We must de-objectify and de-colonise the way we design technologies to make for more inclusive and diverse futures. One way to do that is to recognise our shortcomings and experiment with them in a way that is productive and promotes a more peaceful coexistence among living systems. This research explores the concept and practice of identifying these shortcomings via the “Atlas of Weak Signals”. The Atlas is a tool for combatting future challenges by actively creating opportunities for design interventions to dissolve the troubling problems of our times. In order to support this claim, we present and analyse a series of projects developed over the course of a master’s programme. Specific emphasis is placed on how the Atlas of Weak Signals was generated between students and faculty as a methodology to better understand the view of the world in which we live today from the one in which we design from. The projects are mapped in relation to emerging trends in both local and global contexts and the interconnections between these trends as generators of design opportunities. To conclude, we present the lessons we learned in the form of a toolkit so other design practitioners, researchers, teachers, and students can generate their own methods and tools.

CHURCHLAND, KANDEL AND DOOYEWEERD ON THE REDUCIBILITY OF MIND STATES

2002 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerrit Glas
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Brain Functioning ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Eric Kandel ◽  
The Way

This article is devoted to the conceptual analysis of two texts of leading scholars in cognitive neuroscience and its philosophy, Patricia Churchland and Eric Kandel. After a short introduction about the notion of reduction, I give a detailed account of the way both scientists view the relationship between theories about brain functioning on the one hand and consciousness and psychopathology, respectively, on the other hand. The analysis not only reveals underlying philosophical mind/brain conceptions and their inner tensions, but also the conceptual relevance of distinctions that are fundamental in the work of Dooyeweerd, such as the distinction between modes and entities, between law and subject and between subject function and object function. After a brief clarification of the way these distinctions function in Dooyeweerd’s theory of the body as an ‘enkaptic structural whole’, I try to explain how the conceptual framework, developed here, could be applied to brain functioning and leads to greater clarity in neuroscientific theorizing.

scholarly journals Сharms and spells from a dislocation in the oral tradition of the Middle Irtysh region

2019 ◽  
pp. 26-32
Author(s):  
V. A. Moskvina
Keyword(s):  
Functional Groups ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Structural Elements ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

The article deals with the spells of one functional-thematic group recorded in the Middle Irtysh region. The features of existence of these spells in the regional tradition of the Middle Irtysh region and versification of their plots are re- vealed. The prevalence of spells in cause of a wrench in the two Northern districts of Omsk region is caused by the settle- ment of Belarusians in these places in the late XIX – early XX centuries. This suggests that the place of the exodus tra- dition of the spells from a wrench is in Belarus. The analysis of the plots of these spells confirms this assumption. The method of examining the Siberian plots is based on the systematization of structural elements of plots proposed by T. A. Agapkina and A. L. Toporkov which researchers call episodes. The article compares the episodes of the second Mersebourg spell in Belarusian spells with Siberian texts. The comparison shows that the language of this spells being subjected to Russification. On the one hand, this leads to the loss of some motives and formulas, i.e. the violation of the integrity of the plot, on the other hand, the rhythm of the text is enhanced, the rhyme appears. These processes open the way to the penetration of verbal components from other functional groups into the considered spells. As the result, one can observe the extension of ideas that this disease is not necessarily associated with the violation of integrity of the body.

scholarly journals La enfermedad y la escritura

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 73-84
Author(s):  
Asunción Rangel
Keyword(s):  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
The Body ◽  
Japanese Poetry ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Degenerative Process ◽  
The Family ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

The topic of the illness reveals at various points in Peruvian-Japanese poetry José Watanabe. Born in 1945 in Laredo, Peru, he died at the age of 62, suffering from throat cancer. It is not strange to find allusions to the degenerative process of the body – derived from the disease – and to the cure in, for example, “Krankenhaus” (hospital, in German), a section of the book El huso de la palabra (1989). In his poetry about disease, Watanabe involves, on the one hand, knowledge derived from medicine and, in addition, knowledge that is outside the frame of writing: advice, family or community stories, what lives and arises –to put it with one of his verses– “en la honda boca de los mayors”. The notion of disease that is poetically devised, links medical knowledge and those that come from the family. The idea of the disease must be incorporated into the way of living it. The sick body to which Watanabe refers is one who feels, perceives and experiences the ailment as a way of living, but also as a way of dying: the agony. His poetry is a way of living dying and dying in living, within the framework of disease that is nothing other than agony. This comparison is significant if we take into account that the process of writing and reading are seen as the life of poetry (in its writing, in its reading) that goes, as it progresses verse by verse, irremediably to death. At the end of reading the poem, it dies; while reading, agonizes. This allows you to venture a path of reading that splices writing, body, disease, life and death.

scholarly journals Becoming Mountain

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (46) ◽  
pp. 215
Author(s):  
Ian Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
First Person ◽  
Body Without Organs ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Practical Dimension ◽  
The Way

Like the concept of the assemblage, the body without organs is much written about, but unlike the assemblage there are no specific schools of thought associated with the body without organs, much less any agreed definitions. As such, it tends to be used in a very vague manner, with most accounts of it ignoring its practical dimension and instead focusing on its aesthetic (Artaud) and philosophical (Spinoza) origins. However, Deleuze quite explicitly positions the assemblage as a contribution to an understanding of behaviour, so the purely philosophical accounts of the body without organs that give no account of how it can be used analytically are not helpful in my view. I demonstrate that the practical conception of the body without organs is an effective way of understanding the concept. I use the example of George Mallory’s attempt to climb Everest to illustrate this point. I argue that if we focus only on the symbolic attainment of being the first person to climb the world’s tallest mountain and consign the actual act of climbing to the realm of mere entry price, then we effectively destroy the assemblage by rendering it teleological. Now, one might think that this means one should balance the equation by focusing on the bodily dimension of the climb, and certainly that is the direction we need to take, but to do that we need to conceive of a space where that physical dimension can be registered in something other than purely biological terms. If, as Spinoza and after him Deleuze have argued, we do not know what a body can do, it is because we do not have the conceptual means of capturing and expressing its capabilities. We can record its achievements, but we cannot map its capabilities because the body seems always to be capable of doing more than anyone thought possible. Until 1953 when Hillary and Norgay reached the peak of Everest climbing Everest was generally regarded as impossible. A view that was reinforced by the dozen or so failed attempts, not to mention the many deaths occasioned by those attempts, that preceded Hillary and Norgay’ success. This is why Mallory’s insouciance in 1923 was so captivating. His answer ‘because it’s there’ shrugged off the one thing that was standing in the way of the conquest of the peak, the conviction that it was impossible. It also explains why his answer passed into history.

scholarly journals Deontological Feeling: The Tranquil, the Familiar and the Body

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Nörenberg
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Practical Significance ◽  
Existential Feelings ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Theoretical Claim ◽  
The One ◽  
Empirical Material ◽  
The Way

This paper contributes to filling a lacuna in recent research on common normative backgrounds. On the one hand, discussions of common normative backgrounds tend to underexpose the role the feeling body plays in relation to the agent’s recognition of deontic powers (obligations, compelling reasons or rights). On the other hand, discussions of bodily background orientations and their role in the agent’s sensitivity to practical significance tend to underexpose the recognition of deontic power. In this paper, I argue that bodily background orientations can contribute to an agent’s sensitivity to deontic power. Developing further on Ratcliffe’s conceptualization of existential feelings, I propose that a person’s bodily background orientation implies responsiveness to an ethically significant kind of affordance. In order to flesh out this theoretical claim, I draw on empirical material concerning a specific existential orientation labelled as “quietism.” Reconstructing its central patterns, I explicate the bodily dimension involved in the quietist orientation as well as the way in which it shapes the responsiveness to felt demands in terms of preserving tranquillity and protecting the familiar. Finally, I discuss the broader theoretical implications of my claim and suggest to categorize ethically relevant bodily background orientations such as the one implicated in the quietist orientation as deontological feelings.

THE SOUL OF, THE SOUL IN ITSELF, AND THE FLYING MAN EXPERIMENT

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tommaso Alpina
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
General Investigation ◽  
Argumentative Move ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

AbstractIn Avicenna's Nafs there are two investigations that run in parallel from its very beginning: (a) the investigation of the soul as a relational entity, always considered in connection with the body, and (b) that of the human soul in itself. Both investigations aim at ascertaining the existence and the essence of the soul, in relation to the body, of which it is the soul, and in itself respectively. The aim of this contribution is to reconstruct the phases of these investigations, in order to single out the way in which they are mutually related to each other, and to detect what acts as an indicator of the transition from the first, more general investigation to the second, more specific one. In my reconstruction, this role is assigned to the Flying Man experiment. In order to corroborate this interpretation, passages from three other Avicennian works (Ḥikma mašriqiyya or al-Mašriqiyyūn, Kitāb al-Išārāt wa-l-Tanbīhāt, and Risāla Aḍḥawiyya fī l-ma‘ād) are taken into account, since they contain the three other attested formulations of the Flying Man experiment, and an argumentative move similar to the one detectable in the Nafs.

‘If you shoulder a rifle […] let it be for Ireland’: James Connolly's War on War

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 364-381
Author(s):  
Margot Gayle Backus ◽  
Spurgeon Thompson
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
The Body ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Irish Nationalism ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Communications Networks ◽  
Easter Rising ◽  
Trade Unionist ◽  
The One ◽  
National Governments

As virtually all Europe's major socialist parties re-aligned with their own national governments with the outbreak of World War I, Irish socialist and trade unionist James Connolly found himself internationally isolated by his vociferous opposition to the war. Within Ireland, however, Connolly's energetic and relentless calls to interrupt the imperial transportation and communications networks on which the ‘carnival of murder’ in Europe relied had the converse effect, drawing him into alignment with certain strains of Irish nationalism. Connolly and other socialist republican stalwarts like Helena Molony and Michael Mallin made common cause with advanced Irish nationalism, the one other constituency unamenable to fighting for England under any circumstances. This centripetal gathering together of two minority constituencies – both intrinsically opposed, if not to the war itself, certainly to Irish Party leader John Redmond's offering up of the Irish Volunteers as British cannon fodder – accounts for the “remarkably diverse” social and ideological character of the small executive body responsible for the planning of the Easter Rising: the Irish Republican Brotherhood's military council. In effect, the ideological composition of the body that planned the Easter Rising was shaped by the war's systematic diversion of all individuals and ideologies that could be co-opted by British imperialism through any possible argument or material inducement. Although the majority of those who participated in the Rising did not share Connolly's anti-war, pro-socialist agenda, the Easter 1916 Uprising can nonetheless be understood as, among other things, a near letter-perfect instantiation of Connolly's most steadfast principle: that it was the responsibility of every European socialist to throw onto the gears of the imperialist war machine every wrench on which they could lay their hands.

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