Constructing human agency

Author(s):  
Annabel S. Brett

This chapter argues that human agency is free agency. It is freedom, or dominium over one's own actions, which makes a human being different from all other animals; and it is the foundation of the world of the moral, the juridical, and the political, which are all continuous with one another and from which animals—and a fortiori all other natural agents—are excluded. However, during the sixteenth century, the idea that human beings are essentially and ineradicably free to control their own actions came under severe pressure from new and irreconcilable theological differences over the freedom of the human will—differences that therefore implicitly pressured the primary threshold of political space.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Luis Sepúlveda Ferriz

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.


Author(s):  
Hussein Ali Abdulsater

This chapter investigates the position of human beings in this theological system. Its point of departure is a definition of the human being, from which it develops an understanding of human agency in relation to God and the world. Divine assistance (luṭf) is highlighted as the bridge between human autonomy and divine sovereignty. Following is an elaborate description of religious experience: its origins, justification, relevant parties, responsibilities and characteristics. The concept of moral obligation (taklīf) is shown to be the cornerstone of Murtaḍā’s theory on religion. The chapter is divided into three sub-headings: The Human Being; Justification of Moral Obligation; Characteristics of Moral Obligation.


Other Others ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski

The “Introduction” formulates the question of the political, and in particular of the emergence and erasure of the political from the horizon of currently predominant political thought in political theology and political ontology. The “Introduction” further attunes the readers to the dynamic key of “effacement” as both emergence and erasure, thereby defining the main register in which the book is proceeding -- as distinct from the keys of chronological periodisation, linear history, paradigm shifts, or other stabilizing approaches. The “Introduction” further draws a distinction between politics and the political, and advances the question of the political in relation to the Talmud as both a text and a discipline of thinking able to shed a new, contrasting, light on the paradox driven modern political notions of a singularizing and even singling out notion of a “Jew,” and a universalizing notion of the “human being.” The “Introduction” concludes by gesturing towards a much closer connection between the question of the political in the Talmud, the notions of the Jews and of the human beings in modernity, and the question of earth and territory as a part of political equation these concepts spell out.


Classics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luc Brisson ◽  
Richard Dufour

Born at Athens in a family of noble descent, Plato (b. c. 428–427– d. c. 348–347 bce) naturally sought throughout his life to play a political role as councilor or legislator, not only at Athens but also abroad, especially in Sicily. A writer and philosopher, Plato was above all a citizen who, as is attested by the ten books of the Republic and the twelve books of the Laws (which constitute almost half of his work), wished to reform the political life of his city by assigning power not to wealth or to military force, but to knowledge. Against the traditional vision of culture in his time, essentially transmitted by poetry, Plato proposed a new system of education based on knowledge, in which mathematics plays an important role, and which culminates in the contemplation of true realities and of the Good. Plato’s life is therefore inseparable from his thought. Fairly early, a dogmatism (the term being taken in the minimal sense of the exposition of a doctrine) developed, with the appearance of a doctrine whose principal points became more specific over time. This doctrine is characterized by a twofold reversal. First, the world of things perceived by the senses is a mere image of a set of intelligible forms that represent true reality, for they possess the principle of their existence within themselves. Second, human beings cannot be reduced to their bodies, for their true identity coincides instead with an incorporeal entity, the soul, that accounts for all motion, both material (growth, locomotion, etc.) and spiritual (feelings, sense perceptions, intellectual knowledge, and so on).


2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (2 (252)) ◽  
pp. 70-85
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Rumianowska

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.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
DEIVASREE ANBU A ◽  
Makesh S

Interpersonal communication is an interactional process in which one person sends message to another. It encompasses of oral, written and non- verbal.People around the world are very cautious about their health. The nature of human beings differs from person to person. Communication is one of the normal activities which play the major role among every human being. Communication may be verbal or nonverbal. Verbal communication does not create an impact whereas non-verbal communication creates impact on the behaviour of human beings. Non- verbal communication consists of sign language, body language, eye contact, gesture, touch, space, ocalics and so on. Non- verbal communication creates an impact among every one. A person‘s expression says more than that of wordsconveyed verbally.


1998 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
Henning Eichberg

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.


Author(s):  
Aulia Fikriarini

Human being as a caliph, here related to the function of architect, has <br />responsibility for the environment. Hence, in doing their activities in this world, they have to cope with the nature considering the principal of balance and harmony. Architecture as one of the sciences should also go along with the Islamic values. The values based on the Quran should certainly be the foundation for all efforts of developing any sciences, including architectur. The application of Islam values will produce works of “Islamic architecture” that comprise a combination of culture and humans’ submission to their God, which characterizes the harmony of the human beings, environment, and their  Creator. Islamic architecture suggests a complex geometrical relation, hierarchy of shapes and ornaments, and deep symbolic meaning. This writing describes the fact that works of Islamic architectures in over the world that is based on Islamic ethical values and manners do not represent a single and identical shape. However, the varieties and wealth of shapes are unfield by one purpose, that is, as a medium of devoting to God. The varieties create a multitude of Islamic architecture products within Islamic civilization, which lead human beings to rahmatan lil alamiin. <br />


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


Paragrana ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Wulf

AbstractHuman beings create images of themselves in all cultures and historical periods. They need these images to communicate about themselves and to understand themselves. Images of the human being are designs and projections of the human being. They are formed in order to visualize representations of the human being or individual aspects of a person. These representations are simplifications of human diversity and complexity. Images of the human being are irreducible. They arise because we communicate about ourselves and must develop similarities and feelings of belonging with other people. They are the result of complex anthropological processes in which social and cultural power structures play an important role. Owing to their iconic character, they reduce the complexity of the person and his or her being-in-the-world to select features and do not create a complete view of the person.


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