scholarly journals Tożsamość i kondycja człowieka

2005 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-108
Author(s):  
Irena Grochowska

Human aims for internal integrity and unison at all levels of human are identity and all dimensions of human existence. According to Rull integrity is a gift from God, but also a task for everybody, only possible when a human being is open for autotranscendency. Unity of mankind is based on condition. The key word condition means that a human being is not neutral. The conditions indicates limitations and burdens of human being, although more and more frequently modern man tries to deny it, defining by himself who he wants to be and taking the place of God. Modern individualism is a lonely following of traditional utopia of society. Delsol claims that the most certain thing, which we can say about a man, is the existence of his condition, which acceptance is possible under condition of leaving the theory of ruling. We are not independent from our condition, we can free ourselves from it like we cannot deny the way we look, the condition is like terminal illness. A person’s dignity grows from the wound of finiteness. Greatness of man is about receiving and solving problems, a constant struggle, not owing a panacea for all human problems. A man who rejects reality, wanting to create his own self loses form and falls. To realise about the human condition would mean leaving the possibility of existence, potentiality for act. Human being who does not accept the human condition becomes undefined, he does not know his identity, he is restricted to mass, to biological body, he looks after it, improves it looking for fulfilment. But identity requires defining, one cannot be oneself if one does not know what one should be.

2015 ◽  
Vol 64 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristoforo Ricci

Le questioni di “fine vita” sono attualmente oggetto di un acceso dibattito. Infatti, sono sorte numerose correnti di pensiero volte al conseguimento della legittimazione di condotte tese ad anticipare o posticipare la morte di un individuo rispetto alla sua fine naturale. Questo dibattito si è concentrato soprattutto su aspetti legati alla qualità della vita, alla dignità nel morire ed alla prevalenza del diritto all’autodeterminazione del singolo o del principio di indisponibilità della vita. Lo scopo del presente studio è quello di esaminare il problema sotto una diversa luce. Infatti, si vogliono esaminare le questioni di “fine vita” alla luce del senso di attesa connaturato alla condizione umana al fine di individuare la soluzione più ragionevole. Orbene, siccome la condizione umana risulta essere intrinsecamente caratterizzata da un’attesa di infinito, l’uomo in ogni circostanza si trova davanti ad una scelta. Infatti, ogni essere umano può trascurare tale desiderio o dare ad esso risposte parziali, ripiegandosi in se stesso, oppure può aprirsi all’infinito. Questa scelta ha delle rilevanti conseguenze circa il modo di vedere e vivere le circostanze della vita. Infatti, nel primo caso, nulla sembra veramente appagare il desiderio e l’attesa dell’uomo e, pertanto, in ogni circostanza ciò che finisce per prevalere è alla lunga il lamento, la tristezza e l’ansia. Nel secondo caso, invece, ogni circostanza acquista un senso poiché, per quanto negativa o banale possa essere, costituisce la modalità attraverso la quale il Mistero chiama l’uomo a Sé per non farlo cadere nel nulla e questa consapevolezza finisce per generare letizia. Pertanto, sembra più ragionevole ed umano aprirsi al Mistero e, conseguentemente, laddove le cure abbiano un’efficacia reale e vi siano concrete ed oggettive possibilità di sopravvivenza, non sembrano condivisibili le richieste di legittimazione di tutte quelle condotte tese ad anticipare la morte di un individuo rispetto alla sua fine naturale come l’eutanasia, il suicidio assistito, e la rinuncia o il rifiuto di cure salva-vita proporzionate. ---------- In the field of bioethics, the “end of life” issues are currently motive of an inflamed debate. In fact, many schools of thought have arisen in consideration of legitimization of behaviors destined to anticipate or postpone the death of individuals in relation to their natural end. This debate has focused primarily on issues related to the quality of life, the dignity in dying and the prevalence of the right to self-determination of the individual or principle of the unwillingness of life. The purpose of this study is to examine the problem in a different light. In fact, we want to examine the “end of life” issues in the light of the sense of waiting innate to the human condition in order to identify the most reasonable solution. Now then, since the human condition is intrinsically characterized by a waiting of infinity, the human being is continually called to make a choice. In fact, every human being can ignore this desire or give partial answers to it, withdrawing into oneself, or it can be open to infinity. This choice has important consequences on the way to see and live the circumstances of life. In fact, in the first case, nothing seems to really satisfy the desire and waiting of individuals, and, therefore, in every circumstance prevails in the long run lament, sadness and anxiety. In the second case, instead, every circumstance makes sense because, though it may be negative or trifling, it’s the way of the Mystery to call the individuals to Himself so as to not drop them in the nothingness and, ultimately, so as to generate gladness. Therefore, it seems more reasonable and humane the opening to Mystery and, consequently, where treatments are really effective and there are concrete and objective chances of survival, it does not seem shareable the requests of legitimization of all those behaviors destined to anticipate the death of individuals in relation to their natural end, such as euthanasia, assisted suicide and withholding or withdrawing of proportionate life-sustaining treatments.


Author(s):  
Roland Végső

The chapter examines Hannah Arendt’s critique of martin Heidegger and concentrates on the way Arendt tries to subvert the Heideggerian paradigm of worldlessness. While for Heidegger, the ontological paradigm of worldlessness was the lifeless stone, in Arendt’s book biological life itself emerges as the worldless condition of the political world of publicity. The theoretical challenge bequeathed to us by Arendt is to draw the consequences of the simple fact that life is worldless. The worldlessness of life, therefore, becomes a genuine condition of impossibility for politics: it makes politics possible, but at the same time it threatens the very existence of politics. The chapter traces the development of this argument in three of Arendt’s major works: The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and The Life of the Mind.


Author(s):  
Jarred A. Mercer

The Conclusion provides a summary of the arguments of each chapter and shows how they cohere in Hilary of Poitiers’s trinitarian anthropology. In his autobiographical section of De Trinitate Hilary claims to have found “a hope greater than expected” (Trin. 1.11) in his contemplation of the infinite God, in which humanity, aided by its educative embodied existence (1.14), is destined for life and progress, not death and regress. Hilary’s theology reconstructed within his framework of trinitarian anthropology illuminates his own thought and provides avenues to reassess the nature of fourth-century theology and its controversies in a way that implicates the nature of humanity in that theological discourse. For Hilary, imperfect, mutable, finite human existence is defined by God’s perfect, immutable, and infinite life, so as to place the human condition in a state of perpetual progress from potentiality to perfection.


Author(s):  
Justine Lacroix

This chapter examines a number of key concepts in Hannah Arendt's work, with particular emphasis on how they have influenced contemporary thought about the meaning of human rights. It begins with a discussion of Arendt's claim that totalitarianism amounts to a destruction of the political domain and a denial of the human condition itself; this in turn had occurred only because human rights had lost all validity. It then considers Arendt's formula of the ‘right to have rights’ and how it opens the way to a ‘political’ conception of human rights founded on the defence of republican institutions and public-spiritedness. It shows that this ‘political’ interpretation of human rights is itself based on an underlying understanding of the human condition as marked by natality, liberty, plurality and action, The chapter concludes by reflecting on the so-called ‘right to humanity’.


2013 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. David Smith ◽  
Edward A. Polloway

Abstract Most cultures have respect for and respond positively to individuals who make significant literary contributions to the way that people understand life and society. While the impact of literature may vary widely, those individuals deemed to have added important perspectives through their writing are often elevated to positions of high regard and influence. Thus, their work becomes important to our understanding of the human condition, including the meaning of disability.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
Agapov Oleg D. ◽  

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


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-35
Author(s):  
Alexandre A. Martins ◽  

This paper argues that Simone Weil developed an anthropology of the human condition that is a radical ontology of the human spirit rooted in reality. Weil begins her account from the real, but this real is not only the historical or social reality. It is also what is true about the human person as a created being in connection with the transcendent reality. She believes that affliction reveals the human condition and provides an openness to transcendence in which the individual finds the meaning of the human operation of spirit. Therefore, Weil’s radical ontology is based on a philosophy of the human being as an agent rooted in the world. In order to be rooted, a human being needs decreation (the creation of a new human) and incarnation (cross and love in the world). In her radical ontology derived from attention to the real, Weil argues for an active incarnation in social reality that recognizes others, especially the unfortunates, for the purpose of empowering them and promoting their dignity. Her radical ontology incarnates the human in the world between necessity and good, that is, between the natural and the supernatural.


Author(s):  
Johannes Bartuschat

This chapter examines the way the poet represents his exile. It is composed of three parts: the first considers the way Dante handles his exile in relation to authorship, and reveals how he constructs his authority from his position as an exile in the Convivio, De vulgari eloquentia, and his Epistles. The second analyses exile as a major element of the autobiographical dimension of the Commedia. It shows that the necessity to grasp the moral lesson of the exile constitutes the very heart of the poem. The third part explores the relationship between exile and pilgrimage, the latter being, from the Vita Nuova onwards, a symbol of the human condition, and demonstrates how Dante interprets his experience both as an exile and as a wanderer in the other world in the light of pilgrimage.


2018 ◽  
pp. 25-56
Author(s):  
S. Mark Heim

Section one, “What to Study?”, describes the choice of comparative topics in the two traditions. Section two, “Bridging Gaps,” explains the structural similarity in the role of the Bodhisattva and of Christ in that each addresses and resolves a key paradox constituted by the distinctive analysis of the human condition in Buddhism and Christianity. Section three reviews the basics of the bodhisattva’s role and significance in Buddhism in relation to enlightenment. Section four reviews the basics of Christ’s role and significance in Christianity in relation to salvation. The final section discusses the way in which these two figures are “too similar to be contrary, too distinct to be exchanged.”


Author(s):  
Natasha Vita-More

This chapter focuses on human achievements accomplished with the use of technology and science as methods to explore humanity’s most daunting challenges. Each era of human achievement reveals previously unimaginable goals that, once attained, impact and positively transform the world and the future of humanity. Transhumanism offers a social construct for action-oriented strategies to inform and mitigate many of these threats. These strategies stem from diverse fields of inquiry, research, and analysis of possible future scenarios, and suggest the processes for implementing them. Notably, counterarguments to an intervention in the human condition—the characteristics and key events concerning human existence—often expose themselves as biases in moral perception that, in due course, fall short. Yet humans continue to be fueled by curiosity and a need for amelioration to transcend limits. What is lacking and most imminently necessary to address the exponentially increasing technology in our midst, and society’s varied perceptions and reactions, is straightforward guidance in navigating towards the telos of our humanity.


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