scholarly journals Alterity, Otherness and Journalism: From Phenomenology to Narration of Modes of Existence

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Camila Freitas ◽  
Marcia Benetti

In a theoretical reflection, the aim of this paper is primarily to discuss alterity in journalism. We believe that journalism plays a fundamental role in the construction of knowledge on similarities and differences between human beings, stressing social diversity as one of its purposes. We associate the concept of otherness, understood as a singular mode of existence of the “other”, with the purpose of journalism and with actions of empathy, sympathy and compassion. Based on a phenomenological perspective, we discuss the importance of the meeting between the "self" and the "other", as well as the ability of journalists to perceive and narrate on the aspects that shape the identities of human beings. Moreover, we discuss otherness in journalistic narratives, approaching the relation between the lifeworld and the world of text, taking into consideration the elements of perception, mimesis, textuality and interpretation.Este artigo tem caráter teórico e visa discutir a alteridade no jornalismo. Consideramos que o jornalismo tem um papel fundamental na construção do conhecimento sobre as semelhanças e as diferenças entre os seres humanos, sendo a apresentação da diversidade social uma de suas finalidades. Propomos associar o conceito de outridade, compreendida como o modo de existência do “outro” em sua singularidade, a essa finalidade do jornalismo e a ações de empatia, simpatia e compaixão. Adotamos uma perspectiva fenomenológica, indicando a relevância da experiência do encontro entre o “eu” e o “outro” e a capacidade de o jornalista perceber e narrar os aspectos que configuram as múltiplas identidades dos seres. Tratamos ainda da outridade na narrativa jornalística, abordando a relação entre o mundo da vida e o mundo do texto e discutindo os princípios da percepção, da ação mimética, da textualidade e da interpretação. Este artículo de carácter teórico analiza la alteridad en el periodismo. Creemos que el periodismo tiene un papel fundamental en la construcción de los saberes acerca de las similitudes y diferencias entre los seres humanos, una vez que la presentación de la diversidad social és uno de sus propósitos. Combinamos el concepto de otredad, que se entiende como el modo de existencia del "otro" en su singularidad, con la finalidad del periodismo. Adoptamos un punto de vista fenomenológico, lo que indica la importancia de la experiencia del encuentro entre "yo" y "otro" y la capacidad del periodista para percibir y narrar características de las múltiples identidades de los seres. También trabajamos con la otredad en la narrativa periodista, presentando la relación entre el mundo de la vida y el mundo del texto, así tratando de los principios de la percepción, de la acción mimética, de la textualidad y de la interpretación.

Author(s):  
John L. Culliney ◽  
David Jones

We describe the foundations of the fractal self in relation to the Chinese notion of personal development and enhancement of adeptness in the world and mutualism with the other. This seeking, described in the codified system of Daoism, is a pathway that may progress to the highest level of achievement of such a self: that which defines a sage. The chapter introduces the view that a sage is a fractal self that achieves a peak of intimacy and constructive interaction with the world. We detail the development of human beings on this pathway, emerging beyond the core embodiments of empathy, sympathy, and rudimentary morality observed in apes. The self for the early Chinese was always a being that was embedded in the world and dynamic flow of forces. This self was defined in intimate terms as adaptable and adept, seeking to be a microcosmic contributor to some holistic macrocosm. In this chapter, Daoism leads our thinking on how the fractal self engages with the world. In turn, this way of understanding selfness and its potential to enrich its system from within resonates with discussions of the interactive self of Buddhism and was also in the minds of Pre-Socratic thinkers in the West.


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.


Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Chiara Imperato ◽  
Tiziana Mancini

The effects of intergroup dialogues on intercultural relations in digital societies and the growing conflict, inflammatory and hate speech phenomena characterizing these environments are receiving increasing attention in socio-psychological studies. Based on Allport’s contact theory, scholars have shown that online intercultural contact reduces ethnic prejudice and discrimination, although it is not yet clear when and how this occurs. By analyzing the role of the Dialogical Self in online intercultural dialogues, we aim to understand how individuals position themselves and others at three levels of inclusiveness—personal, social, and human—and how this process is associated with attitudes towards the interlocutor, intergroup bias and prejudice, whilst also considering the inclusion of the Other in the Self and ethnic/racial identity. An experimental procedure was administered via the Qualtrics platform, and data were collected among 118 undergraduate Italian students through an anonymous questionnaire. From ANOVA and moderation analysis, it emerged that the social level of inclusiveness was positively associated with ethnic/racial identity and intergroup bias. Furthermore, the human level of inclusiveness was associated with the inclusion of the Other in the Self and ethnic/racial identity, and unexpectedly, also with intergroup bias. We conclude that when people interact online as “human beings”, the positive effect of online dialogue fails, hindering the differentiation processes necessary to define one’s own and the interlocutor’s identities. We discuss the effects of intercultural dialogue in the landscape of digital societies and the relevance of our findings for theory, research and practice.


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.


Author(s):  
Roman Szubin

The article is devoted to the search for a new space in the methodological studies on Russian literature. The author takes as its basis the method of hermeneutics  of words by Vardan Hayrapetyan. Especially the basic categories such as the world man (homo mundi), the Other and its variants: the self (rus. самость), otherness (rus. дру­гость), the alien (rus. чужесть) and two triads, which postulate two types of intellectual situations. In this regard, the author identifies the concept of the hybrid man of the hero of Russian literature in which a small person is a representative of an impersonal collective personality of the world man, home, family, ideas, etc. The author demonstrates the type of a hybrid man on the example of the protagonist of the novel by Vasily Shukshin Stepan Razin.


LingVaria ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 179-198
Author(s):  
Zofia Sawaniewska-Mochowa ◽  
Małgorzata Kasner

SEMANTIC VARIATIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF KOŁTUN ‘POLISH PLAIT’ IN SELECTED TEXT OF POLISH AND LITHUANIAN CULTURES The paper discusses semantic changes and stylistic derivation of the cultural concept of kołtun ‘Polish plait’ (Plica polonica) in Polish and Lithuanian. Although today it is impossible to meet a person with a kołtun on their head, the concept itself, as an element of socially established knowledge of the world, has survived and is still used in various discourses (ranging from dialectal texts and folklore, belles-lettres and journalistic writing, to contemporary Internet messages), to communicate different meanings, both literal and metaphorical.There are similarities and differences between the conceptualizations of kołtun in texts of Polish and Lithuanian cultures. The unifying element is the perception of kołtun as a formation of entangled hair or a mysterious disease that is inscribed into the folk system of beliefs and magical rituals. On the other hand, what sets the analysed concept apart in the two languages, is a much richer resource of folk and colloquial forms (compounds, hybrid words, phrasemes) in Lithuanian, and in addition, the lack of negative evaluation of kołtun in Lithuanian, whereas in Polish the word is often used to describe a backward, small-minded person.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Cardinaletti

“A collateral victim”[1] of the Spanish flu epidemic: these are the words that Edgar Morin uses to define himself in his “Preamble: One hundred years of vicissitudes” (2020, p. 9), written during the lockdown imposed to stem the spread of Covid-19. Over a handful of pages, the French philosopher and sociologist gives a first-person account of his own personal life in relation to the history of the great crises of the 20th Century. His preamble to the book Let’s change lanes: Lessons of Coronavirus reads as follows: “The reader can now understand why I find it normal to expect the unexpected and to foresee that the unpredictable may happen”[2] (p. 22). Over the course of the text, Morin’s readers are also brought to understand why the author has not “completely lost hope” (ibidem). Hence, the beauty of the words of Morin, as a “transversal thinker” (Montuori, 2019, p. 408), is collateral: his lucid analysis does indeed retrace the catastrophic events that have arisen during the pandemic, underlining human beings’ predisposition to dystopian attitudes, yet it simultaneously highlights key steps towards fostering that humanism necessary to change the path. If aesthetics, according to the definition given by its founder Baumgarten (1750), is the “sensory theory”[3] (Tedesco, 2020, p. 9), perhaps the key to grasping the collateral beauty of adverse events lies in implementing knowledge of sensibilities, i.e. that ability to envisage the unexpected (Morin, 2020, 2001), to understand that pain is part of life (Han, 2020), to “think emotions, feel thoughts”[4] (Mortari, 2017), to listen to the Other because it concerns us (Levinas, 2002). This contribution aims to relate some findings of contemporary Italian pedagogy, which, in response to the Covid-19 crisis, are exploring those sensibilities able to deal with the unexpected, considering the concepts of uncertainty, margin and care from a phenomenological perspective (Mortari & Camerella, 2014). Educational practices, brought to the fore by the academic community in the field of education, become an active surveillance tool to provide a response to current issues that is not only theoretical, but also empirical and “operational”[5] – i.e. “capable of directing and orienting its choices in a strategic way in contexts where highly critical situations occur” (Isidori & Vaccarelli, 2013, pp. 16–17).


Author(s):  
Tayyaba Razzaq

Humans are spiritual beings and preferred to be an element (one way or the other) of this potent mighty power that fascinated him. Men have been urged to look or visualize the Mighty Lord. Different kind of tools and means were designed in various religious communities to offer a few beautified methods to meet this fundamental intuition. To attain spirituality, many ancient religions had their own rituals and ceremonial systems that mostly consist of external rites and practices. The purpose of the study is to examine and determine the importance of rituals that are being practice in the world religions? What the methods religious scriptures has mentioned for their followers to adopt to attain spirituality? The study is to find out similarities and differences in rituals & practices to attain spirituality as mentioned in their religious scriptures? Research methodology for this study adapted is descriptive. This research study has fined out that some ritual systems are concerned with inwards purification rather than outwards. The major purpose of all such practices; fasting, sacrifices, charity etc are all to free men from the entire evil deeds, make him pure as the will of the Lord and closer to it.


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.


2021 ◽  
pp. 29-70
Author(s):  
Christopher Coker

Human beings began hunting each other after dispatching the competition – the megafauna that once roamed the planet. From prey we became the Alpha predator. War has its origins in hunting, and the other criteria which distinguishes as a species – the use of language, the capacity for sacrifice and altruism; the use of tools and the ability to bind socially with small communities from clans to tribes which also encourages us of course to separate insiders from outsiders.  It owes much to the very human interplay of nature and nurture, and the way in which humans ha e gendered war from the very beginning. Above all, we are still lumbered with the brains of our Stone Age ancestors which is why evolutionary psychologists argue that we are so maladapted to the world in which we live


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