scholarly journals Reflections on Plato and Global Capitalism

Phronimon ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Cloete
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Ethical Challenge ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Human Happiness ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Point Of Departure

Global capitalism poses an ethical challenge similar in nature to the challenge of political materialism that Plato addressed in his assessment of the impact of the Sophist tradition of thought on the youth of Athens, in their search for the Good life. For Plato, a Good life is incompatible with a materialist conception of human happiness (in ethics) and justice (in politics); it presupposes an understanding of the significance of physical as well as spiritual dimensions of human life, in a social-political context. This article argues that Plato’s theory of economics offers an important point of departure for a critical engagement with the anti-humanist politics of global capitalism.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Dubal
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Lord's Resistance Army ◽  
Lord’S Resistance Army

This chapter introduces the lives of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in Uganda, suggesting that these lives are too complex to be understood through the simple moral lens of humanity. It uses “against humanity” as a heuristic to think about the problems posed by the uses of humanity (including the “crime against humanity”)—a social construct that must be critically interrogated rather than taken as natural. Being “against humanity” means thinking about the richness of human life that exists outside limited notions of the good—life beyond humanity. Also included is important historical context for the LRA war, including its leader, Joseph Kony, as well as ways in which LRA rebels have been expelled from humanity.

Virtue and the “Good Life” in the Book of Job

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Patricia L. Vesely
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Living Well ◽  
Presence Of God ◽  
Human Happiness ◽  
External Goods

Abstract In this article, I argue that Job 29 provides an eudaimonic depiction of human happiness whereby virtue, combined with a number of “external goods” is held up as the best possible life for human beings. I compare Job’s vision of the “good life” with an Aristotelian conception of εὐδαιμονία and conclude that there are numerous parallels between Job and Aristotle with respect to their understanding of the “good life.” While the intimate presence of God distinguishes Job’s expectation of happiness with that of Aristotle, Job is unique among other eudaimonic texts in the Hebrew Bible in that expectations of living well are expressed in terms of virtue, rather than Torah piety. In the second portion of the article, I assess Job’s conception of human flourishing from the perspective of the divine speeches, which enlarge Job’s vision of the “good life” by bringing Job face-to-face with the “wild inhabitants” of the cosmos.

The Effect of Instructional Gaming on Absenteeism: The First Step

1976 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Layman E. Allen ◽  
Dana B. Main
Keyword(s):  
Learning Environment ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Affective Dimension ◽  
The Core ◽  
Good Learning ◽  
Instructional Gaming

For Bertrand Russell, the essential features of the good life are affective and cognitive: The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. We submit that these dimensions are also at the core of good learning, which is a central part of human life. This study focuses on the affective dimension as it is influenced by a learning environment organized a round instructional gaming.

scholarly journals Den egyptiske revolution 2011 og det gode liv – en analyse af slogans og sange

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
Line Mex-Jørgensen
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Egyptian Revolution ◽  
Modern Context ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Revolution

Artiklen analyserer forestillinger om det gode liv, som de kom til udtryk i udvalgte sange og slogans på Tahrir-pladsen under den egyptiske revolution i 2011. Det gode liv forstås i denne artikel i kontekst af moderne forståelser om social orden og individets plads heri. I artiklen beskrives det, hvordan livet før revolutionen blev set som et kuet liv i ydmygelse, mens livet under revolutionen blev set som et stolt liv i handlen. Herfra konkluderes det, at omdrejningspunktet i forestillingerne om det gode liv, som de kom til udtryk i slogans og sange under den egyptiske revolution, er agens.The article analyses imaginaries of the good life as they were expressed in selected slogans and songs during the Egyptian revolution in 2011. In slogans and songs from the revolution, life before the revolution is described as a cowed life in humiliation whereas life during the revolution is described as a proud life where people can act on their own. From these descriptions, the article finds that agency is the focal point in the imaginaries of the good life as they were expressed in slogans and songs during the Egyptian revolution. Theoretically, the article takes its point of departure in theories of modernity and modern subjectivity formation. The article argues that the imaginaries of the good life expressed during the Egyptian revolution draws on global, modern imaginaries. These global imaginaries are, however, interpreted locally. By placing the Egyptian revolution and the slow social transformation it represents in a specific modern context, the article argues that it is indeed both possible andfruitful to analyze Egyptian social matters as belonging to the modern social order.

Antropocæn økopoesi og komplekse skalaforhold

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-234
Author(s):  
Jens Kramshøj Flinker
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Tipping Point ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Embodied Experiences ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Point Of Departure

Abstract The term Anthropocene is often tied to an anxious awareness of the incalculable complexity of anthropogenic environmental changes. As a concept transferred from geology, the term Anthropocene, for humanities scholars such as Timothy Morton (Morton 2013) and Timothy Clark (Clark 2015), installs a crisis in thinking that is bound to scales of mundane and embodied experiences. Instead, they demand thinking about the impact of human life on the whole planet in much broader scales of space and time than is customary. This article examines how contemporary Nordic ecopoetry responds to these environmental changes and challenges in the epoch of the Anthropocene. The point of departure for this work is Silja E. K. Henderson’s 1,7 tipping point (Henderson, Silja E. K. 2018. 1,7 tipping point. København) and Jonas Gren’s Antropocen: dikt för en ny epok (Gren, Jonas 2016: Antropocen: dikt för en ny epok. Stockholm). The article argues that Henderson’s and Gren’s ecopoetry zooms in on micro-levels and out on larger global macro-levels to represent the scale-dynamics of the Anthropocene. Overall, the article argues that this kind of ecopoetry can affect and transform the reader’s ecological imagination.

Il contenuto filosofico della psicoterapia corporea

GROUNDING ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 49-61
Author(s):  
Christoph Helferich
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Therapeutic Process ◽  
The Body ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Body Psychotherapy ◽  
Interactional Context ◽  
Major Attention ◽  
Point Of Departure

- The author presents an introductory clinical vignette and describes then the concept of the "good life" as a common ground between philosophy and body psychotherapy. But in comparison to the cura sui in the philosophical tradition, body psychotherapy pays major attention to the affective dimension of man. The body, too, is seen differently in body psychotherapy: it appears essentially in a biographic and interactional context, which represents the ground and the point of departure of the therapeutic process.Key words: Philosophy and life, body psychotherapy, man as an "inhibited being", spirituality of the bodyParole chiave: Filosofia e vita, psicoterapia corporea, l'uomo come "essere inibito", spiritualitŕ del corpo

Part II

Good Lives ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 125-224
Author(s):  
Samuel Clark
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Interesting Part ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Good For ◽  
Self Discovery

Part II works from the point of view of the reader of autobiography, and asks: what should we learn from autobiography? It argues for a lesson about selfhood and the good life, and specifically about the roles of narrative and of self-realization in those targets of human self-knowledge. This investigation addresses four questions: given that autobiographies are narratives, should we learn something from them about the importance of narrative in human life? Could our narration of our lives explain how their parts relate to them as wholes? Could it retrospectively unify them and thereby make them good for us? Could it create self-knowledge by interpretatively making the self? In each case it answers: no. The lesson we should learn here is instead about the centrality of self-realization to selfhood and the good life. To make that case, this part argues for pluralist realism about self-knowledge: autobiographies of self-discovery, martial life, and solitude show that the ‘self’ which is created and known by self-interpretation is, at best, one part of what we can know about ourselves, and not the most interesting part. These modes of self-discovery reveal a self that is unchosen, initially opaque to itself, and seedlike, which could not be a self-interpretation, and whose good is its realization.

Plato on Pure Pleasure and the Best Life

Phronesis ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Instrumental Value ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Positive Evaluation

Abstract In the Philebus, Socrates maintains two theses about the relationship between pleasure and the good life: (1) the mixed life of pleasure and intelligence is better than the unmixed life of intelligence, and: (2) the unmixed life of intelligence is the most divine. Taken together, these two claims lead to the paradoxical conclusion that the best human life is better than the life of a god. A popular strategy for avoiding this conclusion is to distinguish human from divine goods; on such a reading, pleasure has merely instrumental value, and it benefits human beings only as a result of their imperfect nature. I argue that certain ‘pure’ pleasures are full-fledged, intrinsic goods in the Philebus, which are even worthy of the gods (thus Socrates ultimately rejects thesis 2). This positive evaluation of pure pleasure results from a detailed examination of pleasure, which reveals that different types of pleasures have fundamentally different natures.

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