scholarly journals TO THE QUESTION OF THE NATURE OF CONSCIENCE. CRISIS OF CONSCIENCE

This article is dedicated to understanding the nature of conscience, its essential manifestations and features. Conscience is the “core” of a person’s moral life. The conscience acts activate and accumulate the internal energies of the person, which help him/her to be fully connected with the world and to carry out a thorough evaluation of both his/her actions and Others. Therefore, the phenomenon of conscience is inextricably linked to the freedom of a person and his/her efforts to exercise himself/herself as a Human, to find his/her own inner voice. Despite its intimacy, conscience never closes within the limits of individual existence, but has unconditional openness to the world, is a keen awareness of responsibility for our actions. Conscience is a testament of the fact that, at a deep (implicative) level, we are rooted in, and inextricably linked to, one Reality. As a result of critical analysis, it is argued that conscience emerges as an internal potentiality of a person, a continuous process of self-determination and formation. Conscience is dialectic in nature, combining internal/external, individual/social, subjective/objective, rational/irrational aspects. The complexity of the phenomenon is manifested in the attempts to symbolically identify it as Call, Witness, Demon, Worm, Judge, etc. Conscience is impossible outside the dialogue of the person with himself/herself and Others, because in the communication process the inner growth and formation of the person take place. Conscience defines a “coordinate system” within which a person’s life moves and divides the line between Good and Evil, Real and Ideal, Existent and Desired. Accordingly, conscience is ideal in essence and is an indispensable structure of human consciousness, linked to the boundary questions of a person regarding his/her own nature.

Author(s):  
Nikos C. Apostolopoulos

On the basis of their corporeity humans are not only beings of distance but also the beings of proximity, rooted beings, not only inner worldly but also beings in the world (Patocka, 1998)Over the centuries the dialectical confluence of metaphysics and epistemology has been at the forefront in the attempt to define the concept of what it is to be human and ultimately human existence. The union of several aspects conceived from these two opposite elements has been responsible for the genesis of numerous philosophical terms and ideas such as: rationalism, materialism, socialism and idealism. Although these terms reference something different, what is primarily at the core has been the endeavour to analyse and demonstrate that it is through man’s relationship with nature that one garners the understanding of self. Human consciousness in conjunction with a spatio-temporal perception, defined as movement through the time-space continuum, creates the condition where the possibility of defining the essence of existence may blossom. In this commentary, an effort is made to present movement, specifically its relationship to the “body” as the physical construct for the meaning of self.


2003 ◽  
pp. 97-106
Author(s):  
Zagorka Golubovic

Freedom as an authentic and willed process, characteristic of man as a human rational being, enables the individual to act in accordance with the principles of morality, since the individual can choose between good and evil (between two possibilities), and in this way to get out of the sphere of the given to which the rest of the living world is limited. We should recall the forgotten Marx and his famous text on the essential difference between the animal world and humanity as a genus: "The animal is immediately united with its vital activity. It does not differ from it. It is vital activity. Man makes his own vital activity the subject of his will and consciousness. He has conscious vital activity. This is not a determination with which he merges immediately. Conscious vital activity distinguishes man directly from animal vital activity. It is exactly in this way alone that he is a generic being. Or a conscious being, i.e. his own life is a subject for him precisely because he is a generic being. It is only for this reason that his activity is free activity..." (K. Marx, "Alienation", Early Works). In other words, while animals live just the life of their species and cannot choose anything else, since the choice has been made by the fact of their belonging to a species, man can choose the world in which to live, overcoming in this way the natural givens. Here lies the core of the anthropological explanation of the principle of morality, inconceivable without man's ability to be an authentic free being.


Author(s):  
Seungeun Choi ◽  
Youngsoon Kim

The changes are rapid and multi-faceted golablly; and, the issues and people in the world are interconnected and interrelated. Transformative cultural change engages a process at the crossroads of our social and political, while challenging historical narratives. Intercultural education aims to achieve a developing and sustainable way of living together in multicultural societies through the creation of understanding of, respect for and dialogue between the different cultural groups. Narrative is a characteristic of human consciousness that draws the sequence of experienced events and proposed actions into unified episodes. Moreover, narratives are closely tied to culture and identity and serve as a medium for constructing our understanding of reality. It is the core of intercultural education that the members who participate in society understand the narrative that mutual cultures have. This paper explores the discourse on the narrative of coexistence for intercultural education. The circular interpretation to the process means narratives are tools for conceptualizing and creating change among diverse others in differnet cultures.


Philosophia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 1725-1751
Author(s):  
Konrad Werner

Abstract Philosophical intuition has become one of the most debated problems in recent years, largely due to the rise of the movement called experimental philosophy which challenged the conviction that philosophers have some special insight into abstract ideas such as being, knowledge, good and evil, intentional action, etc. In response to the challenge, some authors claim that there is a special cognitive faculty called philosophical intuition which delivers justification to philosophical theses, while some others deny it based on experimental results. A relatively smaller group of researchers aim at clarifying what the alleged intuition is. I follow the latter path. In this paper I argue that philosophical intuition is in the first place the capacity enabling one to what I refer to as the recognition of one’s epistemic position. The latter means becoming aware of the seemingly trivial “fact” that the way in which the world manifests itself depends on the cognitive apparatus one has, thereby propelling one to draw a distinction between appearances and reality. The recognition at stake is a very specific capacity to approach the world solely as it is experienced. This capacity, I argue, is the core and the defining feature of philosophical intuition. As part of my argumentation I also distinguish between the intuition in question and its different manifestations; and then introduce a novel notion of erotetic intuition. My argument is called “old-fashion” to emphasize the fact that I draw mostly on four figures who were pivotal in the twentieth- century philosophy and whose influence on the current debate concerning philosophical intuition should be, I believe, stronger than it is; I mean Russell, Carnap, Wittgenstein, and Husserl.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Syarifudin Syarifudin

Each religious sect has its own characteristics, whether fundamental, radical, or religious. One of them is Insan Al-Kamil Congregation, which is in Cijati, South Cikareo Village, Wado District, Sumedang Regency. This congregation is Sufism with the concept of self-purification as the subject of its teachings. So, the purpose of this study is to reveal how the origin of Insan Al-Kamil Congregation, the concept of its purification, and the procedures of achieving its purification. This research uses a descriptive qualitative method with a normative theological approach as the blade of analysis. In addition, the data generated is the result of observation, interviews, and document studies. From the collected data, Jamaah Insan Al-Kamil adheres to the core teachings of Islam and is the tenth regeneration of Islam Teachings, which refers to the Prophet Muhammad SAW. According to this congregation, self-perfection becomes an obligation that must be achieved by human beings in order to remember Allah when life is done. The process of self-purification is done when human beings still live in the world by knowing His God. Therefore, the peak of self-purification is called Insan Kamil. 


2011 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leszek Koczanowicz

The Dialogical concept of consciousness in L.S. Vygotsky and G.H. Mead and its relevance for contemporary discussions on consciousness In my paper I show the relevance of cultural-activity theory for solving the puzzles of the concept of consciousness which encounter contemporary philosophy. I reconstruct the main categories of cultural-activity theory as developed by M.M. Bakhtin, L.S. Vygotsky, G.H. Mead, and J. Dewey. For the concept of consciousness the most important thing is that the phenomenon of human consciousness is consider to be an effect of intersection of language, social relations, and activity. Therefore consciousness cannot be reduced to merely sensual experience but it has to be treated as a complex process in which experience is converted into language expressions which in turn are used for establishing interpersonal relationships. Consciousness thus can be accounted for by its reference to objectivity of social relationships rather than to the world of physical or biological phenomena.


Imbizo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Oyeh O. Otu

This article examines how female conditioning and sexual repression affect the woman’s sense of self, womanhood, identity and her place in society. It argues that the woman’s body is at the core of the many sites of gender struggles/ politics. Accordingly, the woman’s body must be decolonised for her to attain true emancipation. On the one hand, this study identifies the grave consequences of sexual repression, how it robs women of their freedom to choose whom to love or marry, the freedom to seek legal redress against sexual abuse and terror, and how it hinders their quest for self-determination. On the other hand, it underscores the need to give women sexual freedom that must be respected and enforced by law for the overall good of society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 20-24
Author(s):  
Ponomareva L.I. ◽  
Gan N.Yu. ◽  
Obukhova K.A.

In the presented study, the authors raise the question of the need to include in the educational process of a preschool institution to familiarize children with some philosophical categories. The educational system in which the child is included, starting from preschool childhood, provides him with the opportunity to gradually and continuously enter the knowledge of the world around him. It is in preschool childhood that the child is exposed to various relationships, values of culture and health, diverse patterns in the field of different knowledge. This contributes to a broader interaction of the preschooler with the world around him, which, in turn, ensures the assimilation not of disparate ideas about objects and phenomena, but their natural integration and interpenetration, which means understanding the integrity of the picture of the world. The authors prove the idea that the assimilation of philosophical categories by children contributes to the understanding of the structure of the surrounding world. The analysis of research is presented, proving that children's fiction in an understandable and accessible language, life examples and vivid images is able to explain to children the laws of the functioning of nature and society, as well as to reveal the world of human relations and feelings. Fiction surrounds the child from the first years of his life. It is she who contributes to the development of thinking and imagination, enriches the sensory world, provides role models and teaches you to find a way out in different situations. Philosophical categories such as "love and friendship", "beautiful and ugly", "good and evil" are represented in children's literature very widely, and the efficiency of mastering philosophical categories depends on the skill of an adult in conveying the content of a work, on correctly placed accents.


2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-78
Author(s):  
Petr Kouba

This article examines the limits of Heidegger’s ontological description of emotionality from the period of Sein und Zeit and Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik along the lines outlined by Lévinas in his early work De l’existence à l’existant. On the basis of the Lévinassian concept of “il y a”, we attempt to map the sphere of the impersonal existence situated out of the structured context of the world. However the worldless facticity without individuality marks the limits of the phenomenological approach to human existence and its emotionality, it also opens a new view on the beginning and ending of the individual existence. The whole structure of the individual existence in its contingency and finitude appears here in a new light, which applies also to the temporal conditions of existence. Yet, this is not to say that Heidegger should be simply replaced by Lévinas. As shows an examination of the work of art, to which brings us our reading of Moravia’s literary exposition of boredom (the phenomenon closely examined in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik), the view on the work of art that is entirely based on the anonymous and worldless facticity of il y a must be extended and complemented by the moment in which a new world and a new individual structure of experience are being born. To comprehend the dynamism of the work of art in its fullness, it is necessary to see it not only as an ending of the world and the correlative intentional structure of the individual existence, but also as their new beginning.


Screen Bodies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Lara Bochmann ◽  
Erin Hampson

This article is a theoretical, audiovisual, and personal exploration of being a trans and non-binary person and the challenges this position produces at the moment of entering the outside world. Getting ready to enter public space is a seemingly mundane everyday task. However, in the context of a world that continuously fails or refuses to recognize trans and non-binary people, the literal act of stepping outside can mean to move from a figurative state of self-determination to one of imposition. We produced a short film project called Step Out to delve into issues of vulnerability and recognition that surface throughout experiences of crossing the threshold into public space. It explores the acts performed as preparation to face the world, and invokes the emotions this can conquer in trans and non-binary people. Breathing is the leading metaphor in the film, indicating existence and resistance simultaneously. The article concludes with a discussion of affective states and considers them, along with failed recognition, through the lens of Lauren Berlant’s concept of “cruel optimism.”


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