scholarly journals MNEMOTECHNIC OF PAIN: BETWEEN SUFFERING AND ENJOYMENT

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Relations Of Power ◽  
The Ideal

The article analyzed the problem of mnemotechnic of pain in the context of the historical transformation of thinking from archaic bodily practices of graphism of pain to the modern culture of anesthesia. The conceptual knot, which forms pain, suffering, memory, procedures of designation and enjoyment, is defined. Subject is defined to be central that goes beyond the opposition/dialectic of myth and reason. This allows us to turn to the premythic and to analyze the graphism of pain as the basis of human existence in the context of the formation of individual and collective memory. In the meantime, the myth is interpreted as an attempt to portray the labeled physical bodies of the world, given the distinction between them. The formation of relations of power is associated with the establishment of a correlation between sign and pain, which makes it possible to understand of pain as the basis of social memory. On the other hand, the historical-philosophical subject is distinguished, according to which the bodily topical of the perceptions and the metabodily topic of concepts are distinguished. The metaphysical shift laid down by the ancient philosophers transforms mnemotechnic into practice, which constantly takes into account the distinction between the sensual (physical) and the supersensual (spiritual), the ideal and the real, the true and the false, the one and the plural, being and non-existence. Mnemotechnic, which constitutes the metaphysical world, excludes the body as a matter of memory, leaving the pain beyond the added significance. Probably, it is possible to link the excesses of Sade’s search for enjoyment and cases of dramatic erosion of man to naked bodility, which captures the outbreaks of violence and torture in the century. In the end, it transforms modern culture into a culture of anesthesia, a culture of memory as an anesthetic, directed against the repetition of pain. Nevertheless, at the same time, it causes new pleasures to seek pain.

Cyborgs, Agents, and Transhumanists: Crossing Traditional Borders of Body and Identity in the Context of New Technology

Leonardo ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 361-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Becker
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
New Technology ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

In current discourses of technoscience, body, nature, and even life are often described as code, text, or information. On the one hand, classical dichotomies (body/mind, subject/object, man/machine) and their restrictions are dissolving; on the other hand, this discourse often reveals a hidden desire to ignore both the fragility and the sense-giving capacity of materiality. In this paper, the proper dynamic of materiality is explored by looking in particular at what it means to be in a permanent touch with the world with the body. Against this background, efforts at denying or transforming the body in the context of new technologies can be interpreted as the wish to control or avoid the unpredictable and unconscious dimensions of human existence.

scholarly journals Breaking Up the Unity of the World: Peter Fitzpatrick’s Conception of Responsive Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 174387212097533
Author(s):  
Johan van der Walt
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
Short Article ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law ◽  
The One ◽  
The Ideal

This short article on Peter Fitzpatrick’s conception of “responsive law” analyzes the ambiguous temporality that Fitzpatrick discerned in modern law. On the one hand, law makes the claim of being fully present and therefore already and completely contained in itself. This aspect of law reflects the law’s claim to “immanence,” that is, its claim of always being able to rely strictly on its own operational terms without having to take recourse to any consideration not already contained within itself. It is this aspect of law that renders the ideal of the “rule of law” feasible. On the other hand, the law’s claim to doing justice to every unique and therefore every new case also demands that it takes leave of that which is already settled within it. This aspect of law can be called its “imminence.” The imminence of the law concerns the reality that law always finds itself on the threshold of that which has not yet been said and must still be said. The article shows how Fitzpatrick relied on Freud’s concept of the totem to explain the “wondrous” unity of its immanence and imminence.

Existential Philosophy and Psychotherapy Ethics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Noyon ◽  
Thomas Heidenreich
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Principles ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
Existential Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Authentic Life

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.

scholarly journals Modernitetens modsigelser. Konfigurationskonflikter og samfundstænkning i Grundtvigs »Om Mennesket i Verden«

1998 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
Henning Eichberg
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

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.

scholarly journals УСПІШНІСТЬ ОБДАРОВАНОЇ ЛЮДИНИ У КОНТЕКСТІ ЇЇ ВЗАЄМОДІЇ ІЗ СОЦІОКУЛЬТУРНИМ СЕРЕДОВИЩЕМ

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
Георгій Балл
Keyword(s):  
Social Memory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Objective Criterion ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Real Presence ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

У статті окреслено теоретико-методологічні засади дослідження взаємодії обдарованої людини із соціокультурним середовищем, виокремлено характеристики цієї взаємодії, від яких залежить успішність людини. Обґрунтовано тезу, за якою об’єктивним критерієм такої успішності має бути внесок людини у буття, до якого вона залучена. На першочергову увагу заслуговують внески до культури як до системи носіїв соціальної пам’яті та соціально значущої творчості. Показано можливості, що їх надає для аналізу досліджуваної взаємодії поняття адаптації, трактованої за П’яже як єдність процесів акомодації й асиміляції. Наголошено на тому, що для збагачення культури мотиваційні та інструментальні ресурси обдарованих людей мають бути зосередженні не лише на створенні культурних продуктів, але й на такій комунікації з середовищем, яка забезпечить їх реальне впровадження у культурний простір. Обдарований творець культурного продукту має уникнути двох небезпек: нехтування комунікацією із середовищем, з одного боку, та підпорядкування звуженим і збоченим моделям адаптації, з іншого. The article outlines theoretical and methodological foundations of studying the interaction of a gifted person with his/her socio-cultural environment. The characteristics of this interaction which influence a person’s successfulness are specified. The author argues that a person’s contribution to the world to which that person is attached should be an objective criterion of such successfulness. Primary attention should be paid to a person’s contributions to the culture as to the system of carriers of social memory and socially significant creativity. The author shows possibilities which are offered for the analysis of the investigated interaction by the concept of adaptation interpreted, according to J.Piaget, as the unity of processes of accommodation and assimilation. The author insists that, for enriching the culture, motivational and instrumental resources of gifted people should be focused not only on the creation of cultural products, but on the communication with the environment as well, such communication providing them with a real presence in the cultural space. A gifted creator of a cultural product should avoid two dangers, that are: neglecting the communication with the environment, on the one hand, and subordinating to narrowed and perverted models of adaptation, on the other hand.

scholarly journals METAPHYSICITY OF EVIL

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Basic Principle ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Value System ◽  
Inappropriate Use ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

In this article, the author explores the metaphysical foundations of evil. Research shows that as a transcendental phenomenon, evil reveals itself in two “optics”. On the one hand, evil means certain ontological aspects, which are distortions of the mode of co-existence. On the other hand, evil is a deformation of the existential nature of man. Thus, evil is a condition for the deformation of the ontological foundations of being, penetrating the world through human. In other words, the metaphysical nature of evil appears as, firstly, “absence”, “void” (in being), and, secondly, “distortion”, “imperfection”. In this regard, evil appears as ontologically and chronologically secondary to good. It exists only on the basis of good as its distortion, defect, simulacrum. The emptiness, unreality of evil opens the sphere of its existence, that is, an illusion. This explains the fact that evil receives its “reality”, materiality and form only with the help of a person who is free in his choice and able to distort the nature of good and realize illusion. Good is knowledge, it can transform a person, it is a living spiritual knowledge that opens itself to a knowing person in the process of mastering the surrounding reality, it fills him / her with content and uniqueness. In this perspective, good is a universal value system, the basis of which is love, truth, faith, labor, spiritual perfection, etc. In contrast, evil realizes itself in the denial of higher values, distortion or inappropriate use of the Truth of human existence. The study shows that the nature of evil is selfish, atomic and separating. Evil is all that contradicts the interests of the whole, that is, love, good, truth, freedom. It is all that individualizes, fragmentes, distorts, destroys the Truth of the whole. Thus, the basic principle of evil is “It’s every man for himself, everyone is his own god”. Therefore, as noted by religious philosophers, evil in human is associated primarily with the loss of his / her integrity. A person who has embarked on the path of violence and self-destruction is evil. This person is mistaken and unhappy, because he has not formed as a person. Goodness in human is internal integrity, unity, submission of his / her mind and bodily life to a higher spiritual principles.

scholarly journals Spejlets gåde

2011 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-135
Author(s):  
Lars Albinus
Keyword(s):  
Life Story ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The World ◽  
Similar Vein ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Point Of Departure

In this article the point of departure for presenting a hermeneuticreading of Augustine’s Confessiones is taken in St. Paul 1 Cor. 13:12 where Paul speaks of our being earthly conditioned to see everything in a mirror as if in a riddle until we stand face to face with our creator. In a selective reading of Confessiones, I argue that the book is structured in a two layered manner in which the relationship between Augustine and his earthly parents is transposed to a relationship between these relatives, on the one hand, and their heavenly parents in God and his church, on the other. I further argue that Augustine’s individual life story in a similar vein gains its fulfilment in the creation and consummation of the world. Thus, in the concluding exegesis of the introducing verses of Genesis, in which God’s concreatio of time and matter mirrors human existence, Augustine unfolds the prospect of a totality only to be grasped face to face with the creator, that is, in the eschatological revelation of the love of God.

Plotinus and Posidonius

1930 ◽  
Vol 24 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 198-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. E. Witt
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of Thought ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Theory Of Ideas ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Platonic Theory

Probably no philosopher of antiquity has occasioned more daring speculations and the expression of graver doubts than Posidonius. On the one hand it has been argued that he was purely a man of science and hardly a Stoic philosopher at all. On the other hand he has been called the first and greatest Stoic mystic who under Oriental influence spurned the body as vile and earthly. Reinhardt has of late years resolutely maintained that the importance of Posidonius in the history of thought lies in his having originated a completely new Vitalism, and that his conception of the world is one in which ‘Subjekt und Objekt, Geist und Wissen, Mensch und Gott, νος und ζω durch eine im Bewusstsein neu erwachte Kraft sich einen und durchdringen: durch die “Sympathie.”’ Among other German scholars Geffcken holds that Plotinus borrowed much from Posidonius, and Jaeger roundly declares that if Posidonius had but found a place for the Platonic Ideas, there would have been nothing left for Plotinus to find. Schmekel and Bréhier have both stated that modifying the Platonic Theory of Ideas Posidonius established an identification between the Ideas and the Spermatic Logoi of Stoicism.

World Ages and the Body Politic

1961 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 131-140
Author(s):  
H. J. Rose
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
Early Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
The One ◽  
The Universe

When, at an unknown but manifestly early period, speculation regarding the duration and destiny of the world began, the thinkers of those days had two analogies to guide them, and consequently two divergent conclusions were reached. The first was the recurrent cycle of the seasons; the second, the growth, maturity, decay and death of the human and all other animal bodies. Reasoning from the one, some arrived at the conclusion that the world, at least the earth and mankind, had passed and would always continue to pass through a series of epochs, limited in number, which when they had ended would recommence, and so on indefinitely. From the other datum the result was reached that as a man dies and does not come to life again (for even the fairly wide-spread and early doctrine of reincarnation supposed only that the soul would be given a new earthly body of some kind, not that the whole individual would return), so the earth, or the universe generally, would grow old and die and that would be the end of it. It is the purpose of this paper to examine these two ideas and one or two offshoots of them as they are known to have appeared in the two classical civilizations of Europe, and especially in Greece, and if possible to draw some tentative conclusions as to which, if either, can be found more characteristic of native thought.

The Hermeneutic Conception of Culture

1998 ◽  
pp. 83-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Sampaio
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
Main Work ◽  
Traditional Account ◽  
Educative Process ◽  
The One ◽  
Radical Relativism ◽  
The Ideal

Heidegger, the founder of the hermeneutic paradigm, rejected the traditional account of cultural activity as a search for universally valid foundations for human action and knowledge. His main work, Sein und Zeit (1927), develops a holistic epistemology according to which all meaning is context-dependent and permanently anticipated from a particular horizon, perspective or background of intelligibility. The result is a powerful critique directed against the ideal of objectivity. Gadamer shares with Heidegger the hermeneutic reflections developed in Sein und Zeit and the critique of objectivity, describing the cultural activity as an endless process of "fusions of horizons." On the one hand, this is an echo of the Heideggerian holism, namely, of the thesis that all meaning depends on a particular interpretative context. On the other hand, however, this concept is an attempt to cope with the relativity of human existence and to avoid the dangers of a radical relativism. In fact, through an endless, free and unpredictable process of fusions of horizons, our personal horizon is gradually expanded and deprived of its distorting prejudices in such a way that the educative process (Bildung) consists in this multiplication of hermeneutic experiences. Gadamer succeeds therefore in presenting a non-foundationalist and non-teleological theory of culture.

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