scholarly journals A bitter diagnostic of the ultra-liberal human: Michel Houellebecq on some ethical issues

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 190-196
Author(s):  
Zuzana Malinovská ◽  
Ján Živčák
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Michel Houellebecq ◽  
French Writer ◽  
Last Man ◽  
The Last Man

Abstract The paper examines the ethical dimensions of Michel Houellebecq’s works of fiction. On the basis of keen diagnostics of contemporary Western culture, this world-renowned French writer predicts the destructive social consequences of ultra-liberalism and enters into an argument with transhumanist theories. His writings, depicting the misery of contemporary man and imagining a new human species enhanced by technologies, show that neither the so-called neo-humans nor the “last man” of liberal democracies can reach happiness. The latter can only be achieved if humanist values, shared by previous generations and promoted by the great 19th-century authors (Balzac, Flaubert), are reinvented.

Afterword

2019 ◽  
pp. 172-176
Author(s):  
Andrew Huddleston
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Moral Tradition ◽  
Last Man ◽  
The Last Man

The Nietzsche I have tried to bring into view in this book is not primarily an exponent of certain philosophical doctrines that we can neatly bring into dialogue with contemporary discussions in meta-ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and the like. This book’s Nietzsche is instead a philosopher of culture, concerned with diagnosing how Western culture has gone wrong and with putting forward an alternative ideal of what it could become. Although Nietzsche has a number of important philosophical insights for the former sort of contemporary debates, my interest is in Nietzsche in this role as a cultural critic. He offers a withering take on the Christian-moral tradition and the specter of the “last man” that we find ourselves caught between. However overblown his attack is, it is something to be taken seriously, if with several grains of salt. We should take even more seriously his guiding idea in the background that our ideals, institutions, and practices stand in need of such genealogy and critique. This is not to say, as a result of this reflection and scrutiny, that we will abandon these commitments entirely, but instead that we may come to treat them with greater suspicion and ambivalence than we hitherto have. This genealogy and critique—and style of genealogy and critique—is to my mind Nietzsche’s greatest contribution to philosophical thought....

scholarly journals A socially committed literary work: perspectives on Elliot Zondi’s Insumansumane

Literator ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 83-106
Author(s):  
N.N. Mathonsi
Keyword(s):  
Social Values ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Historical Drama ◽  
Last Man ◽  
The Last Man

In this article Elliot Zondi’s historical drama, “Insumansumane”, is discussed as a committed literary work. The main character, Bhambada, urges his contemporaries to challenge the ideological domination of the apartheid system and to fight for their freedom to the last man, if necessary. According to Elliot Zondi, the 1906 Bhambada Rebellion was caused by a lack of consultation and utter disregard for the feelings of the African majority regarding taxation. The rebellion was also caused by the forceful introduction of Western culture and social values. The play in itself is actually a metaphor for the Zulu people living in the 1980s under the iron rule of President P.W. Botha. In this play the Zulu are urged to live up to the freedom ideals for which their forefathers had been ready to fight and to die. The development of the plot in the play emphasises that the “winds of change” at that time were becoming stronger, causing the undercurrent that was to bring about liberation in 1992 and in 1994.

Mary Shelley's Malthusian Objections in The Last Man

2012 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Population Change ◽  
William Godwin ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Political Justice ◽  
Food Scarcity ◽  
Population Reduction ◽  
Last Man ◽  
The Last Man ◽  
Random Nature

This essay considers Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826) as intervening in the ongoing debate between Thomas Malthus and William Godwin. Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) in large part as a response to Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) and “Of Avarice and Profusion” (1797); Godwin later wrote an extended refutation of Malthus in Of Population (1820). Mary Shelley uses The Last Man, a story of the end of the human species, in part as a meditation on the merits of Malthus's philosophical positions in the Essay on the Principle of Population, but she seems to disagree with a number of the mechanisms he identifies: in contrast to Malthus, Shelley identifies a blind and random nature rather than any divine plan as controlling population change, and disease rather than food scarcity as the primary cause of population reduction, but insists upon the importance of individuating and empathizing with the suffering.

Challenge to International Agencies

1975 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl E. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Growth And Development ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
International Health ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
International Agencies ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Transfer Of Technology ◽  
Health Agencies ◽  
Role Shift

International health agencies face major changes requiring basic adjustments in approaches and values. The ethical issues include moral criteria for allocating scarce resources, relation of health to population growth and development, iatrogenic social consequences of health measures, and inappropriate transfer of technology. A proposed new style of international health work is summarized in five principles and ten guidelines. The principles are: development from below; a role shift from adviser collaborator; sequential research, demonstration, and implementation; concentration on problems of motivation; and partnership in approaches to mutually shared complex problems.

The Survival of Non-Productive Labour in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-412
Author(s):  
Konstantinos (Kos) Pozoukidis
Keyword(s):  
Productive Labour ◽  
Last Man ◽  
The Last Man
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