scholarly journals A Neo-Platonic Dialogue on the Ethics of Love*

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-99
Author(s):  
Dimitrios A. Vasilakis
Keyword(s):  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Human Individual ◽  
Platonic Love ◽  
Platonic Dialogue ◽  
Ontological Entity ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Classic Paper ◽  
Erotic Desire ◽  
The Erotic

In his classic paper on “The Individual as an Object of Love in Plato” Gregory Vlastos denied that according to Plato’s Diotima in the Symposium a human individual can ever be the proper object of one’s erotic desire, because what one (should) be enamoured with is the Form of Beauty. For the true Platonic lover, the beauty of an individual is only the starting-point for one to understand that beauty can reside also in more abstract levels. Hence, Vlastos argues that the beloved individual is for his lover only a means to an end, so that the lover recollects and attains to true Beauty, and that this is morally objectionable. The systematic Neoplatonic philosopher Proclus (412–485 AD) had already given an answer to this accusation. I will first present the altruistic side of Eros as an ontological entity in Proclus’s metaphysical system. My guide in this will be Socrates, as well as the Platonic Demiurge from the Timaeus and Republic’s philosopher-king. It will be shown that, according to Proclus’s interpretation of various Platonic texts, Vlastos was wrong to accuse Plato of the abovementioned “instrumentality” on the erotic field. However, my paper will close with a critical engagement with Proclus too, since I discern that in his view of Platonic love another sort of instrumentality, one which is akin to Stoic ethics, arises. Vlastos was wrong, but we do not need to be wholeheartedly sympathetic to Proclus.

The Solidarity of Distance1

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 103-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Wicklund
Keyword(s):  
Physical Contact ◽  
Emotional Distance ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Shared Emotions ◽  
Common Goals ◽  
Full Interaction ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Social Incompetence

Abstract: Solidarity in the classic sense pertains to a cohesion among humans that entails physical contact, shared emotions, and common goals or projects. Characteristic cases are to be found among families, close friends, or co-workers. The present paper, in contrast, treats a phenomenon of the solidarity of distance, a solidarity based in fear of certain others and in incompetence to interact with them. The starting point for this analysis is the person who is motivated to interact with others who are unfamiliar or fear-provoking. Given that the fear and momentary social incompetence do not allow a full interaction to ensue, the individual will move toward solidarity with those others on a symbolic level. In this manner the motivation to approach the others is acted upon while physical and emotional distance is retained.

Stasis Anxiety

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew van der Vlies
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Black Writers ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Contemporary Writing

Two recent debut novels, Songeziwe Mahlangu’s Penumbra (2013) and Masande Ntshanga’s The Reactive (2014), reflect the experience of impasse, stasis, and arrested development experienced by many in South Africa. This chapter uses these novels as the starting point for a discussion of writing by young black writers in general, and as representative examples of the treatment of ‘waithood’ in contemporary writing. It considers (spatial and temporal) theorisations of anxiety, discerns recursive investments in past experiences of hope (invoking Jennifer Wenzel’s work to consider the afterlives of anti-colonial prophecy), assesses the usefulness of Giorgio Agamben’s elaboration of the ancient Greek understanding of stasis as civil war, and asks how these works’ elaboration of stasis might be understood in relation to Wendy Brown’s discussion of the eclipsing of the individual subject of political rights by the neoliberal subject whose very life is framed by its potential to be understood as capital.

scholarly journals Power, Agency, Relationality and Welfare Practice

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
RACHAEL DOBSON
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Practice Research ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Working Through ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article argues that constructions of social phenomena in social policy and welfare scholarship think about the subjects and objects of welfare practice in essentialising ways, with negativistic effects for practitioners working in ‘regulatory’ contexts such as housing and homelessness practice. It builds into debates about power, agency, social policy and welfare by bringing psychosocial and feminist theorisations of relationality to practice research. It claims that relational approaches provide a starting point for the analysis of empirical practice data, by working through the relationship between the individual and the social via an ontological unpicking and revisioning of practitioners' social worlds.

Homelessness or Symbolic Castration? Subjectivity, Language Acquisition, and Sociality in Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan

Hypatia ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Schmitz ◽  
Julia Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Julia Kristeva ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Forms Of Violence

How much violence can a society expect its members to accept? A comparison between the language theories of Julia Kristeva and Jacques Lacan is the starting point for answering this question. A look at the early stages of language acquisition exposes the sacrificial logic of patriarchal society. Are those forces that restrict the individual to be conceived in a martial imagery of castration or is it possible that an existing society critically questions those points of socialization that leave their members in a state of homelessness? The following considerations should help to distinguish between unavoidable and avoidable forms of violence.

Digital competences of the workforce – a research topic?

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 721-734 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Murawski ◽  
Markus Bick
Keyword(s):  
Research Topic ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Digital Competence ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Pros And Cons ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose Considering working in the digital age, questions on the consequences for the individual workers are, so far, often neglected. The purpose of this paper is to deal with the question of whether the digital competences of the workforce is a research topic. The authors argue for the thesis that it is indeed a research topic. Design/methodology/approach In addition to a literature analysis of the top IS, HR, and learning publications, non-scientific sources, as well as the opinions of the authors, are included. The authors’ thesis is challenged through a debate of corresponding pros and cons. Findings The definition of digital competences lacks scientific depth. Focussing on the workforce is valid, as a “lifelong” perspective is not mandatory for research. Digital competence research is a multidisciplinary task to which the IS field can make a valuable contribution. Research limitations/implications Although relevant references are included, some aspects are mainly driven by the opinions of the authors. The theoretical implications encompass a call for a scientific definition of digital competences. Furthermore, scholars should focus on the competences of the workforce, including occupations, roles, or industries. The authors conclude by providing a first proposal of a research agenda. Practical implications The practical implications include the alignment of multiple stakeholders for the design of “digital” curricula and the integration by HR departments of the construct of digital competences, e.g. for compensation matters and job requirements. Originality/value This paper is one of very few contributions in the area of the digital competences of the workforce, and it presents a starting point for future research activities.

Designing the Person: Sociological Assumptions Embodied within the Architecture of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Le Corbusier

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-162
Author(s):  
Clare Spencer
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Le Corbusier ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Architectural Practice ◽  
Individual Person ◽  
Interesting Insight ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Insight Into

This essay presents a comparative study of the sociological assumptions implicit, and to some extent explicit, in the work of two famous architects, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Le Corbusier. The inhabitant implied through the architectural practice of Le Corbusier resembles Elias's homo clausus (closed person), the mode of self experience viewed by Elias as the dominant one in Western society and one which sees the individual person as a ‘thinking subject’ and the starting point of knowledge. Mackintosh's designs, in contrast, imply individual people closer to Elias‘s homines aperti, social beings who are shaped through social interaction and interdependence. This paper demonstrates how, as well as fulfilling social, cultural and political needs, architecture carries, within in its designs, certain assumptions about how people and how they do, and should, live. The adoption of an Eliasian perspective provides an interesting insight into how these assumptions can shape self-experience and social interaction in the buildings of each architect.

scholarly journals RECAS9: Recombining wild species introgression via mitotic gene editing in barley

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelly Lazar ◽  
Manas Ranjan Prusty ◽  
Khaled Bishara ◽  
Amir Sherman ◽  
Eyal Fridman
Keyword(s):  
Wild Species ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Digital Pcr ◽  
Crop Wild Relatives ◽  
Linkage Drag ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Rnp Complex ◽  
Causal Genes ◽  
The Individual

AbstractGenetic loci underlying variation in traits with agronomic importance or genetic risk factors in human diseases have been identified by linkage analysis and genome-wide association studies. However, narrowing down the mapping to the individual causal genes and variations within these is much more challenging, and so is the ability to break linkage drag between beneficial and unfavourable loci in crop breeding. We developed RECAS9 as a transgene-free approach for precisely targeting recombination events by delivering CRISPR/Cas9 ribonucleotide protein (RNP) complex into heterozygous mitotic cells for the barley (Hordeum vulgare) Heat3.1 locus. A wild species (H. spontaneum) introgression in this region carries the agronomical unfavourable tough rachis phenotype (non-brittle) allele linked with a circadian clock accelerating QTL near GIGANTEA gene. We delivered RNP, which was targeted between two single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs), to mitotic calli cells by particle bombardment. We estimated recombination events by next generation sequencing (NGS) and droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). While NGS analysis grieved from confounding effects of PCR recombination, ddPCR analysis allowed us to associate RNP treatment on heterozygous individuals with significant increase of homologous directed repair (HDR) between cultivated and wild alleles, with recombination rate ranging between zero to 57%. These results show for the first time in plants a directed and transgene free mitotic recombination driven by Cas9 RNP, and provide a starting point for precise breeding and fine scale mapping of beneficial alleles from crop wild relatives.

scholarly journals Ideas of Civil Religion in the Creative Work of Cyril Methodians

2018 ◽  
pp. 53-63
Author(s):  
Leonid Kondratyk
Keyword(s):  
Civil Religion ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Social Force ◽  
Linear Character ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Main Ideas

Kondratyk L. "Ideas of Civil Religion in the Creative Work of Cyril Methodians". The author is based on the fact that the civil religion is such a sociocultural phenomenon in which, through the prism of a peculiar religious language and specific practices, the necessity of acquiring and establishing a national state is substantiated, which originates in the need of the community to find the sacral in the activity that is inherent in the transcendent, eternally -linear character and which is rooted in the history of the territory. It is proved that the soil on which the ideas of the Cyril and Methodius civil religion originated is Western European romanticism, religiosity, the starting point of which was the idea of religion as the focus of the spiritual world of the individual and community, the idea of the Higher Reason that sets the directions for historical development, Christianity a decisive role in the spiritual and moral and social renewal of mankind, the view of Ukraine as an independent cultural and historical and social force, the influence of creativity T. Shevche gt; The main ideas of the civil religion of the Cyril Methodians are as follows: the messianism of the Ukrainian spirit manifests itself in the ability to unite the Slavs in the best way, because Ukraine is inspired by self-sacrifice with the Christian spirit and has apostolic intercession; Kiev - the capital of the resurrected from the oppression of the Slavs, the city - in which the courts prevail, truth, equality; concepts "temple", "truth", "righteous judgment", "freedom", "brotherhood", "equality", "love", "Kiev", "Kiev mountains" - the basic concepts-symbols of the Ukrainian civil religion; in the Ukrainian community with the need to coincide Christian values and moral standards, which dominate it.

scholarly journals Hegelian Phenomenology of Spirit and Boxing Fight

2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-54
Author(s):  
Jerzy Kosiewicz
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Human Individual ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Low Culture ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Absolute Synthesis

Abstract In the presented text the author points out to anthropological as well as axiological foundations of the boxing fight from the viewpoint of Hegel’s philosophy. In the genial idealist’s views it is possible to perceive the appreciation of the body, which constitutes a necessary basis for the man’s physical activity, for his work oriented towards the self-transformation and the transformation of the external world, as well as for rivalry and the hand-to-hand fight. While focusing our attention on the issue of rivalry and on the situation of the fight - and regarding it from the viewpoint of the master - slave theory (included in the phenomenology of spirit), it is possible to proclaim that even a conventionalised boxing fight - that is, restricted by cultural and sports rules of the game - has features of the fight to the death between two Hegelian forms of selfknowledge striving for self-affirmation and self-realisation. In the boxing fight, similarly as in the above mentioned Hegelian theory, a problem of work and of the development of the human individual (that is, of the subject, self-knowledge, the participant of the fight) appears. There appears also a prospect of death as a possible end of merciless rivalry. The fight revalues the human way in an important way, whereas the prospect for death, the awareness of its proximity, the feeling that its close and possible, saturates the life with additional values. It places the boxer, just like every subject fighting in a similar or a different way, on the path towards absolute abstraction - that is, it brings him closer to his self-fulfilment in the Absolute, to the absolute synthesis. The Hegelian viewpoint enables also to appreciate the boxing fight as a manifestation of low culture (being in contrast with high culture), to turn attention to the relations which - according to Hegel - take place between the Absolute and the man, as well as to show which place is occupied by the subject both in the process of the Absolute’s self-realisation and in the German thinker’s philosophical system. Independently of the dialectical, simultaneously pessimistic and optimistic overtone of considerations connected with the very boxing fight (regarding destruction and spiritualisation on a higher level), it is possible to perceive farreaching appreciation of the human individual in Hegel’s philosophy since the Absolute cannot make its own self-affirmation without the individual, without the human body, without the fight aimed at the destruction of the enemy and without the subjective consciousness and the collective consciousness which appear thanks to this fight. Thus, it is justified to suppose that the foundation of the whole Hegel’s philosophy is constituted by anthropology and that in the framework of this anthropology a special role is played by the fight and by work, which changes the subject and his(her) environment. Admittedly Hegel does not emphasise it explicitly, nevertheless his views (with their centre, which, according to Hegel himself and his interpreters, is constituted by the Absolute) have, as a matter of fact, an anthropocentric character and the main source of the subject’s development is the struggle which, irrespectively of its result, always primarily leads to the destruction or even to the death of one of the sides, just like in the boxing fight. However, it is also a germ of the positive re-orientation of the subject, the beginning and a continuation of that what the phenomenology of the spirit describes as a movement towards absolute abstraction.

scholarly journals Managing individuality: myths versus art

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-44
Author(s):  
Hanne Nørreklit
Keyword(s):  
Basic Function ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Art And Science ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Symbolic Forms ◽  
Management Models ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Management Discourse ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Insight Into

The purpose of this article is to establish the symbolic forms that are presently used in selected mainstream management models and to assess whether the connection between leadership and individual human reality would be improved if the management models were fundamentally inspired by those used by a successful manager and artist.The theoretical starting point of this article is Cassirer’s (Cassirer 1999) philosophy of symbolic forms. A symbolic form is “a way of having a life world” (own translation) (Cassirer 1999). In a symbolic form, a person discovers and unfolds an ability to build his own universe as an ideal universe which enables the person to “understand and interpret, to articulate and organize, synthesize and universalize his human experience” (Cassirer 1962: 221). Symbolic forms such as art, science, myth and religion thus have common features and structures in their basic function of creating common human existence. When the symbolic form is science, ideals of objectivity and precision in the description of phenomena and their relations dominate man’s formation of his universe. In art, man unfolds an ability to be subjective and create empathetic insight into matters and their diversity (Cassirer 1962). Where science as symbolic form conceptualizes objects, art teaches us empathetic insight. The symbolic forms of art and science perceive a phenomenon differently. For example, science will perhaps see a constellation as a trigonometric function, whereas it may be considered by art as a “Hogarthian shape of beauty” (own translation) (Cassirer 1999: 62). Like the symbolic form of art, the symbolic form of myth builds on emotional sympathy, but differs by believing in the existence of the constellation. It is used to create a natural or magical unity of life. Monotheistic religions also include ideas of striving for a sense of unity, but here the idea is to achieve a universal, ethical sense of unity in an individualized society. Thus the symbolic form of religion helps the individual to choose between right and wrong.With this in mind, we examine the use of symbolic forms embedded in selected mainstream management models. Subsequently, we study the symbolic forms embedded in the management discourse as the concept is unfolded by the successful Artistic Director of the Royal Danish Opera, Kasper Holten, when he talks about management, with a view to determining the extent to which this practice differs from the symbolic forms embedded in the mainstream management models. The analysis shows that mainstream management models are primarily rooted in the symbolic form of science, although they tend to gradually include the symbolic form of religion or the symbolic form of myth. Generally speaking, the mainstream management models tend to exercise power over the individual’s emphatic insight and autonomous reflection and thereby constrain the scope for human creativity and individuality. Distinctively, Kasper Holten’s management discourse integrates the symbolic forms of art and science. With art as the dominant symbolic form, Kasper rejects new public management’s perception about opera and the management of art while at the same time – through discourses that bind to the individuality of the network of players – forming personal and social identities which come together to realize a world of existential ideas about operas in general as well as opera in particular.The article is relevant because it provides insight into the ways in which management models, through the use of myth and science as symbolic forms, exercise influence on human existence and interaction and thereby influence the scope for human freedom and exercise of power and also because it provides insight into the features and structures concerning human existence and co-existence from which mainstream management models cut themselves off by not using art as a form of consciousness. The constructive aspect is a parallel outline of features and structures in a new management discourse which are better suited for postmodern society.

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