scholarly journals Nature as a Healer against Anthropocentric Disposition in Anita Desai's Fire on the Mountain

The Batuk ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-87
Author(s):  
Raj Kumar Baral

In her novel Fire on the Mountain, Anita Desai, by making her characters burn the images related to the ill and superstitious law of the anthropocentric world, intends to revere the natural world, which for her possesses healing capacity to revive the dying identity. Nanda Kaul, the protagonist and her great-granddaughter, finds pleasure with nothing else but with the barrenness, stillness, calmness and voice of silent breeze and music of nature itself. The fresh air of the quiet breeze in the naturally painted house wins the heart of the protagonist over the stale air of the electric fan in the artificially painted house. By utilizing theoretical ideas of ecofeminism in communication with deep ecology, the article concludes that the proper tribute to nature is possible when hierarchies between human and non-human blur and biocentric world view exists.

Author(s):  
Subhra Roy ◽  

The Naga myth of origin underscores the co-existence of and the interconnectivity between the human and the natural world. It is believed that the Nagas once lived in Makhel and a tree stands there as the witness and symbol of Naga origin and unity. The Angami Nagas used to believe that before their dispersal to different parts of the world, three monoliths were erected at Makhrai-Rabu, and these structures represent the Tiger, the Man and the Spirit which stand for the flora and fauna, the human society and the spirit world. With the fall of the first monolith the destruction of the world is initiated and with the fall of the last one the earth witnesses complete doom. It has been reported that only one of these monoliths is standing erect, and it would not be too naive to say that it reminds us of the impending doom that perhaps has already been previewed in the form of natural disasters and other life threatening diseases. In the Naga cultural milieu, nature existed as an independent entity that breathed life into Naga myths, folklores and way of life. In short, it used to define the identity of the primordial Nagas, until their animist world view was replaced by that of Christianity. It was followed by the Indo-Naga conflict, and the Nagas were soon left with confused identities and crises that ran deep into their psyche. Easterine Kire Iralu, the author from Nagaland, tries to reorient the Naga identity by reclaiming the age-old myths and rituals.She tries to retrace the inherent Naga faith in deep ecology that gives equal importance to the distinct parts of the ecosystem that function as a whole.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan B. Van der Schyff

I demonstrate here how Aristotle's teleological conception of nature has been largely misunderstood in the scientific age and I consider what his view might offer us with regard to the environmental challenges we face in the 21st century. I suggest that in terms of coming to an ethical understanding of the creatures and things that constitute the ecosystem, Aristotle offers a welcome alternative to the rather instrumental conception of the natural world and low estimation of subjective experience our contemporary techno-scientific culture espouses. Among other things, I consider how his conception of orexis and eudaimonia (happiness or, as I prefer here, "the flourishing life") might be extended to include the eco-system itself, thus allowing us to better understand the moral meaning of nature. I conclude with a look at the way in which modern phenomenology re-addresses the fundamental Greek concern with ontology, meaning and human authenticity. I consider the ways in which phenomenology reasserts the value of direct human experience that was so important to Aristotle; and I consider how this view, and that of Deep ecology, may help us to experience nature - and all of Being for that matter - in a more authentic, meaningful and altogether ethical light.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-102
Author(s):  
Vilija Celiešienė ◽  
Saulutė Juzelėnienė

Abstract Metaphorical nomination is peculiar in every language, it is related to reality and world view perception, it also reveals the traits of nation mentality. However, there are universal models of metaphorical nomination. In both languages, special concepts can be nominated according to similar areas, e.g. human body, its physiological and mental peculiarities, mode of life, fauna, flora, objects of natural world, etc. The aim of this article is to analyse tendencies of metaphorical nominations in IT terminology in English and Lithuanian languages, reveal universalities and peculiarities of metaphorical nomination models. Research data of Lithuanian metaphorical terms and their English equivalents show that semantic loan-words constitute the major part of Lithuanian metaphorical terms. Consequently, their metaphorical meanings are borrowed but a substantial part of them are fairly motivated in the Lithuanian language and only a small part of them have a doubtful motivation. Having analysed various ways of metaphorical transference it is possible to claim that figurative nomination of concepts is the most universal with reference to flora names and items of mode of life. It is noted that there is a tendency to nominate concepts meaning particular objects in both English and Lithuanian languages whereas analogies of abstract things are less abundant.


Author(s):  
Daniel Juan Gil

In the seventeenth century, the hope for resurrection starts to be undermined by an emerging empirical scientific world view and a rising Cartesian dualist ontology that translates resurrection into more dualist terms. But poets pick up the embattled idea of resurrection of the body and bend it from a future apocalypse into the here and now so that they imagine the body as it exists now to be already infused with the strange, vibrant materiality of the “resurrection body.” This “resurrection body” is imagined as the precondition for the social identities and forms of agency of the social person, and yet the “resurrection body” also remains deeply other to all such identities and forms of agency, an alien within the self that both enables and undercuts life as a social person. Positing a “resurrection body” within the historical person leads seventeenth-century poets to use their poetry to develop an awareness of the unsettling materiality within the heart of the self and allows them to reimagine agency, selfhood, and the natural world in this light. In developing a poetics that seeks a deranging materialism within the self, these poets anticipate twentieth-century “avant-garde” poetics. They do not frame their poems as simple representation nor as beautiful objects but as a form of social praxis that creates new communities of readers and writers that are assembled by a new experience of self-as-body mediated by poetry.


2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
Daniel Garber ◽  

In this paper, I would like to examine the method that Bacon proposes in Novum organum II.1-20 and illustrates with the example of the procedure for discovering the form of heat. One might think of a scientific method as a general schema for research into nature, one that can, in principle, be used independently of the particular conception of the natural world which one adopts, and independently of the particular scientific domain with which one is concerned. Indeed, Bacon himself suggested that as with logic, his method, or as he calls it there his “system of interpreting” is widely applicable to any domain, and not just to natural philosophy. [Novum organum I.127] Now, recent studies of Bacon have emphasized his own natural philosophical commitments, and the underlying conception of nature that runs through his writings. In my essay I argue that the method Bacon illustrates in Novum organum II is deeply connected to this underlying view of nature: far from being a neutral procedure for decoding nature, Bacon’s method is a tool for filling out the details of a natural philosophy built along the broad outlines of the Baconian world view.


2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 18 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. C. Lefroy

Two fundamental changes in attitude are required before efforts to develop sustainable agricultural systems will be successful. Firstly, the deeply held and often unexamined views we have of our relationship with the natural world, particularly the view of nature as a commodity, must be challenged. Secondly, we must question our continuing faith in a knowledge-based world view as the best way to solve problems that are a consequence of that view. The history of agricultural settlement in Western Australia is an example of the view of nature as a commodity that led to failed agricultural schemes at great social and environmental costs.


Author(s):  
Kamran Hameed ◽  
Naveed Yazdani ◽  
Rana Zamin Abbas

Firstly, this paper describes a phenomenon of transnational organization and general condition of world and ‘man in the world’. For developing a comprehensive framework, it presents authentic literature review beginning from modernity to post modernity using the hermeneutic-interpretivism research tradition to show the similarities between modernism and post modernism. By revealing the missing link in the quantum paradigm of ralph Kilmann (scholar of quantum organization) on one hand, it develops the possibility of reviving revealed knowledge back into the main frame knowledge of organization theory, on the other hand. By raising and addressing the question of how can the revealed knowledge addresses the current economic dilemma, the paper describes the three lenses available used to understand natural world, socio economic world and behavioral world in Newtonian verses quantum assumptions on organization theory   along with their implications. For cross fertilization of ideas and better understanding of God, cosmos and human it presents an alternative of Islamic way forward suggested by scholarly views from East and West. To further substantiate, it presents the stunning insights from the renowned wisdom traditions (pragmatic civilizations) to highlight why religions matter to show (the levels of reality and levels of selfhood as well as relationship between Necessity being and contingent being), responding the situation of power and domination prevalent in organizing world by suggesting historical/civilizational ethical mode and adopting psycho, spiritual-pragmatic approach with holistic world view (Big picture).


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 22-26
Author(s):  
Qu Tang

The Night Watchman written by Louis Erdrich won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The core characters running through the novel are not only Thomas Wazhashk, but Patrice who bears the burden of narrating the natural world of the Turtle Mountain reserve. Louis Erdrich not only noticed the connection between females and nature with keen eyes, but also human and non-humans. The interaction among them reflects the author’s thoughts on the ecological environment, human survival, and indigenous tradition conflicted with modern appeal. Therefore, this article, using the Biocentric Equality of deep ecology, explores the Community Consciousness in the novel.


Author(s):  
Andrew Dobson

‘Ideas’ explains the key ideas driving environmental politics. It begins with The Limits to Growth (1972) that questioned the long-term future of the Earth as a life-support system for humans. The concepts of ecological modernization, moral extensionism, ethics and the environment, deep ecology, and anthropocentrism are considered. It goes on to explain the ideology of ecologism and how it can be distinguished from conservatism, liberalism, socialism, feminism, and environmentalism. A central belief of ecologism is that aggregate growth must be reduced, and that this is very unlikely to be achieved by efficiency gains alone. The other core belief turns on the question of why (if at all) we should value the non-human natural world.


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