scholarly journals Psychological obstacles to multiculturalism: how stereotypes and mechanisms of defence may cause adverse behaviours to multiculturalism.

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
Guido Amoretti

Abstract Migration flows are part of human history. The process of globalization, if on the one hand it seems to favour the movement of human beings, on the other hand it is creating the conditions for the recovery of migratory flows, especially within some areas of the world and, in part, directed towards advanced development countries. This creates problems of acceptance on the part of the host with respect to the customs and habits of the guest. Resistance to reception, used for political ends by populist parties, has deep roots that have to do with psychological and social factors: defence mechanisms, stereotypes and prejudices. The article stresses the importance of training in overcoming these obstacles to building a society that is first multicultural and then intercultural.

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg W. Bertram

AbstractThe concept of second nature promises to provide an explanation of how nature and reason can be reconciled. But the concept is laden with ambiguity. On the one hand, second nature is understood as that which binds together all cognitive activities. On the other hand, second nature is conceived of as a kind of nature that can be changed by cognitive activities. The paper tries to investigate this ambiguity by distinguishing a Kantian conception of second nature from a Hegelian conception. It argues that the idea of a transformation from a being of first nature into a being of second nature that stands at the heart of the Kantian conception is mistaken. The Hegelian conception demonstrates that the transformation in question takes place within second nature itself. Thus, the Hegelian conception allows us to understand the way in which second nature is not structurally isomorphic with first nature: It is a process of ongoing selftransformation that is not primarily determined by how the world is, but rather by commitments out of which human beings are bound to the open future.


2016 ◽  
pp. 225-239
Author(s):  
Chung-ying Cheng

There are two aspects of the hermeneutic: the receptive and the creative. The receptive of the hermeneutic consists in coming to know and acknowledge what has happened, observing what there is as historically effected, foretelling what will happen as a matter of projection of future possibilities, and disclosing / discovering transcendental conditions, fore-structures or horizons of human understanding and interpretation; the creative of the hermeneutic, on the other hand, consists in realizing and demonstrating human sensibilities and human capabilities and needs, conceptualizing what is factual and real based on human cognitive and volitional faculties and experiences, developing values and pursuing regulative ideals of actions, and searching for best possible ways or methods to reach for individual and communal end-goals which will enhance human beings as autonomous entities and moral agents in the world. The receptive is represented by the phenomenological approach to Being and reality whereas the creative is conveyed by an ontology of reflection of human being for self-definition and self-cultivation of human faculties. This amounts to bringing out an existing distinction between ming (what is imparted) and li (the presupposed ground) on the one hand and xing ( human potentiality for being in oneself) and xin (human understanding and interpretation toward action) on the other in the tradition of Confucian metaphysics.Next, I shall focus on Heidegger and Gadamer as taking ontological receptivity (as a matter of fore-structures of Being or Language of human understanding) as the source of meaning of existence and meaningfulness of texts. Th ere are of course creative elements to be identifi ed with forming investigative projects of the Dasein for disclosing truth of the Being, but the main tone is to realize the Being or Language as base structures of our hermeneutic consciousness or hermeneutic space of understanding. Because of spacelimitation, however, I shall leave to another occasion the discussion of the creative formation and positive projection of a transformative cosmological philosophy in the Yijing tradition as represented in my onto-hermeneutics which takes experiences of ≫comprehensive observation≪ (guan) and ≫feeling- refl ection≪ (gan) as two avenues toward human understanding and hermeneutic enterprise of interpretation.


Author(s):  
Leo-Paul Bordeleau

Can sport claim to be an educative means, and what becomes of Greek paideia in the world of sport? The author intends to answer these questions through the use of a semantic and historical clarification of the notions of sport and education. Indeed, on the one hand, sport appears like a social practice not much propitious to education; on the other hand, modern education seems to have deviated from the Greek paideia’s trajectory. Therefore, to take into account this deviation and, by doing so, to make precise the idea of education, and then demonstrate that sport carries all characteristics of modern rationality which has produced it, will allow the author to conclude that sport could be considered one of the preferential means of human beings’ formation. Nevertheless its educative function more likely belongs to the nature of "poïèsis" than to the nature of "praxis."


Author(s):  
Alexander Noyon ◽  
Thomas Heidenreich

This chapter introduces five central concepts of existential philosophy in order to deduce ethical principles for psychotherapy: phenomenology, authenticity, paradoxes, isolation, and freedom vs. destiny. Phenomenological perspectives are useful as a guideline for how to encounter and understand patients in terms of individuality and uniqueness. Existential communication as a means to search and face the truth of one’s existence is considered as a valid basis for an authentic life. Paradoxes that cannot be solved are characteristic for human existence and should be dealt with to turn resignation into active choices. Isolation is one of the “existentials” characterizing human life between two paradox poles: On the one hand we are deeply in need of relationships to other human beings; on the other hand we are thrown into the world alone and will always stay like this, no matter how close we get to another person. Further, addressing freedom and destiny as two extremes of one dimension can serve as a basis for orientation in life and also for dealing with the separation between responsibility and guilt.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Dal Gobbo ◽  
Emanuele Leonardi

The discourse of the ‘Anthropocene’ has quickly become pervasive, cross-cutting different fields of knowledge. However, it is also a deeply contested category. In the critical light shed by political ecology, we reflect on the conceptual blindspots that mark its narrative, identifying it as a symptom of a broader impasse of the neoliberal governmentality of nature and of the ecological crisis today. On the one hand, the Anthropocene narrative proposes a post-humanist vision, which potentially de-centres anthropocentrism. On the other hand, this same vision becomes an alibi for ever deeper and less reflective interventions of human beings on the biosphere, in particular through technoscientific developments. This paradox responds to a specific need for capitalist valorization of ‘Nature’ and, at the same time, does not seem capable to elaborate solutions to the ecological crisis as a whole. However, if the Anthropocene becomes visible only in the present historical contingency and due to specific kinds of knowledge, we suggest that reflecting on epistemological issues is key to the search for more ecological ways of situating in the world. Which forms of knowledge allow us to understand the emancipatory potential of post-humanism within the Anthropocene while avoiding new predatory effects on the biosphere?


2021 ◽  
pp. 258-283
Author(s):  
Brady Bowman

Post-Kantian philosophers historicize the world soul, reconceiving it as an implicitly rational, progressive, yet impersonal agency, at work throughout nature as a formative principle, more especially, however, in the progressive liberation and self-determination of spirit in human history. This chapter outlines the concept’s career in the thought of Kant, Maimon, Schelling, and Hegel, focusing especially on the overlapping functions they accord to the world soul. On the one side, it serves to mediate within nature between the opposing spheres of mechanism and organic life; on the other, between those of unconscious currents of historical development and self-consciously free human action. In thus tasking the world soul with mediating between nature and the history of human freedom, German idealists are faithful to their Platonic source of inspiration, even as they refashion the concept in a distinctively modern, post-Enlightenment spirit.


1975 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 441-457
Author(s):  
J. O. Wisdom

The problem to be discussed here concerns ontology so far as it may not be formed by scientific theory. In brief terms, the problem arises in the following way. On the one hand, the world surely consists of whatever is there, irrespective of whether human beings are around or not, and irrespective especially of whether human beings have constructed any scientific theories depicting the nature of the world; on the other hand, scientific theories are subject to the limitation that we can never verify them or prove them to be true, so that the ontology prescribed by scientific theory is not firmly established but is only what is attributed to the world by a fallible scientific theory at any given time. The problem could also be put in terms of ‘conceptual networks’ or in terms of language-systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 296-302
Author(s):  
Juan Camilo Perdomo Marín

Anthropology has a complex relationship with science modern. On the one hand, this discipline registers its investigative work within a scientific bet that monitors and builds criteria of validity, rigor and generality to objectively understand the social reality. On the other hand, anthropology not only studies scientific the multiple possibilities of existence of human beings, but in turn critically assesses disputes, legacies, and limits by means of which modern science thinks, represents and interrogate the world.


2012 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Kampowski

Nella sua enciclica Caritas in veritate Papa Benedetto XVI afferma che le domande connesse alla biotica impongono la scelta tra due razionalità: da una parte una razionalità che è aperta alla trascendenza e che si percepisce come risultato della creazione e d’altra parte una ragione chiusa nell’immanenza che non riesce a spiegare la sua origine. Per una razionalità di questo tipo la ragione stessa diventa un fatto inspiegabile e viene in ultima analisi ridotta all’irrazionale in quanto deriva dal caso. Per la bioetica la scelta tra queste due razionalità è di grande significato. Una visione del mondo come risultato del caso, governato dalle leggi meccaniche senza novità, senza significato e senza ragione facilmente conduce ad un’astrazione scientifica, che potrà permettere all’agire biotecnologico dell’uomo di dimenticare il fatto che la vita non è un mero fatto bruto ma esistenza con interesse che prosegue degli scopi. Se trascuriamo la vita come vita, non ci sono più limiti a ciò che potremmo permetterci di fare con un essere vivente, l’uomo incluso. In una visione del mondo come creato, come proveniente dal Logos, dalla ragione divina, invece, si trovano scopi e significati e con ciò anche limiti e criteri per il nostro agire, incluso il nostro agire biotecnologico. ---------- In his encyclical Caritas in veritate, Pope Benedict XVI suggests that it is precisely in bioethics that the problem of a choice between two kinds of rationality emerges in force. There is, on the one hand, a rationality that is open to transcendence and that knows that it is the result of creation; on the other hand, there is a reason that is closed in immanence and that does not succeed in explaining its own origin. For the latter kind of rationality, reason itself becomes a fact that is inexplicable and that in the final analysis is reduced to the irrational inasmuch as it derives from chance. We will argue that what is at stake here for bioethics is this: a vision of the world as the result of chance, governed by mechanical laws without novelty, without meaning and without reason easily leads to scientific abstraction, which can cause us to forget the fact that life is not a simple brute fact, but existence with concern that pursues its goals. If we fail to look at life as life, there will no longer be any limits to what we may permit ourselves to do with living beings, human beings included. In a vision of the world as created, as coming from the Logos, from divine reason, in contrast, there are goals and meanings and with that also limits and criteria for our action, including our biotechnological action.


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