Absent Felicity

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-58
Author(s):  
Andrew Sanders
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Pursuit Of Happiness ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Human Condition

‘Happiness’, as we now commonly understand the term, is not something we should expect to meet in Shakespeare’s work. When he employs alternative words – such as ‘felicity, ‘merry’ or ‘blessed’ – he rarely seeks to convey what latter-day readers might assume to be the concept of ‘happiness’ that we accept as an agreeable state of mind. Shakespeare’s ‘happy’ seems to apply to circumstances rather than to a state of mind. His characters often appear to be luckier in their happiness rather than actual achievers of happiness. The idea that the ‘pursuit of happiness’ is an essential part of the definition of the human condition (as in the founding documents of the American Revolution) may well owe far more to John Milton’s use of the words ‘happy’ and ‘happiness’ and the common acceptance of ‘happiness’ as a socially and politically desirable condition.

Introduction: almost nothing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Dezeuze
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Art Object ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Human Condition

This introduction introduces the term ‘precariousness’ by contrasting it with the ‘ephemeral’. Precarious practices that explore the ‘almost nothing’ are situated in the context of studies of ‘nothingness’ and empty exhibitions in contemporary art. Such debates focus on the ‘dematerialisation’ of the art object since the 1960s, which will be addressed from a new perspective following Lawrence Alloway’s 1969 definition of ‘an expanding and disappearing’ work of art. Re-readings of the materiality of contemporary art since the 1960s are related to continental debates concerning ‘precarity’ in the 1990s, and traced back to Hannah Arendt’s 1958 remarks on The Human Condition. Two different philosophical books — Vladimir Jankélévitch’s 1957 Le Je-ne-sais-quoi et le presque rien, and Simon Critchley’s 1997 Very little, almost nothing — point to some of the questions and methods raised by the study of precarious practices.

Epic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Living Culture ◽  
Master Plots ◽  
The Common ◽  
Globally Distributed ◽  
The Human Condition

An enumeration of generic qualities will define epic less helpfully than will an assessment of its behaviors. Among major literary kinds, epic offers the most long-standing and globally distributed evidence of the human habit of thinking by means of narrative. What it cherishes is the common good; what it ponders are the behaviors and values that forward or threaten collective welfare. What it reckons are the stakes of heroic risk that any living culture must hazard in order to prosper, by negotiating core identities with margins and adjusting settled customs to emergent opportunities; and it roots all these in the transmission of a tale that commands perennial attention on their account. Such dialectics underlie epic’s favorite narrative templates, the master plots of strife, quest, and foundation; and they find expression in such conventions as the in medias res opening and suspended closure; the epic invocation, ancestral underworld, superhuman machinery, and encyclopedic simile; the genre’s formal gravitation towards verse artifice and the lexical and syntactic mingling of old with new language. The genre steadfastly highlights the human condition and prospect, defining these along a scale of higher and lower being, along a timeline correlating history with prophecy, and along cultural coordinates where the familiar and the exotic take each other’s measure.

The Rights and Wrongs of Curiosity (Plutarch to Augustine)

1988 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. G. Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Common ◽  
Social Habits ◽  
Definition Of

One of the more endearing of the seventy-eight treatises which make up the Moralia of Plutarch is one entitled ‘On not minding your own business'. The Greek title, Περ Πολυπραγμοσνης, reminds us momentarily of Plato's famous definition of justice in Republic 4, which is to do your own thing (μ πολυπραγμονεῖν). Plutarch was indeed an ardent Platonist, but here he is concerned not with political philosophy but with social habits. The treatise reminds me of nothing so much as of a famous Lancastrian comedian of my youth called Norman Evans, who in a sketch called Over the Garden Wall assumed the transvestite role of a nosy female neighbour, simultaneously pegging out clothes and retailing juicy items of gossip. For Plutarch, after defining this nosiness or πολυπραγμοσνη as ‘an unhealthy and harmful state of mind, a fondness for learning the misfortunes of others, a disease apparently free of neither envy nor malice’, condemns the common tendency to pry into the social origins of neighbours, their debts, and their private conversations. He likewise condemns people who read their friends' letters, and who watch sacred ceremonies which it is μ θμισ ρν (perhaps he had in mind Clodius' gate-crashing of the rite of Bona Dea). Such inquisitiveness, says Plutarch, is invariably accompanied by a wagging tongue, for what these people gladly hear, they gladly blab about: a ἃ γἔρ δως κοουσιν, δως λαλοσιν Pascal in his Pensees says much the same thing: ‘Curiosity is only vanity. Most often we only wish to know in order to talk about it.’

The Two Faces of Janus

2020 ◽  
pp. 26-32
Author(s):  
Yael Tamir
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Common Perception ◽  
Information And Technology

This chapter argues that nationalism is a deceptive ideology; one of its faces looks to the past, the other looks to the future. It discusses the negative descriptions of nationalism that emphasize its backward-looking face. The chapter also explains how nationalism tried to revive (or invent) an image of a magnificent past. It examines the history of nationalism, and one of its most fascinating features, modernizing powers. Despite the common perception of nationalism as identified with primordial, tribal feelings, the chapter asserts that true power of nationalism in modern times is grounded in its ability to promote processes of modernization and industrialization that go hand in hand with the universalization of education, information, and technology. Ultimately, the chapter portrays nationalism as an expression of a populist state of mind. It further presents the most interesting definition of populism.

scholarly journals Re-visiting the Concept of Mens Rea: Challenging the Common Approaches Employed under Islamic Jurisprudence and Statute Law

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Ahadi
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The State ◽  
Mens Rea ◽  
Islamic Jurisprudence ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of

In the present paper the traditional and customary perspectives on the concept of Mens Rea are challenged and a new definition of the same is put forward. The challenge is based on the idea that the concepts in criminal law need evolution in order to keep their function and practicality. Such an evolution demands such a condition wherein, while granting the characteristics of adaptability with the contextual conditions and principles of criminal law, the maintenance of the same is ensured. The mens rea is customarily defined as ‘culpable state of mind of the accused when committing an offence under criminal law and ‘rebellion intent’ under Islamic Jurisprudence. Both definitions of the concept have the capability to undergo evolution and, thus, a new definition of the same is envisaged herein as such that the mens rea constitutes ‘the culpable linkage of mind with the forbidden conduct’. Two changes are observable in the new definition compared with the existing one: first, the ‘state of mind’ is replaced with ‘linkage of mind’; second, the interpretation of the term ‘culpable’ as an independent constituent shall differ as per the common sense and the contextual conditions. The new definition grants dynamism to the concept and resolves the problems long associated with the definition of the mens rea under the criminal law.

scholarly journals Gente alta é parente do tuiuiú, baixa é da anta: alteridades antropomórficas

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriana Werneck Regina
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Common ◽  
Body Shapes ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Human Condition

RESUMOSão partilhadas reflexões acerca de uma pesquisa sobre quais as qualidades são destacadas pelas pessoas panará quando se reconhece o estatuto de sujeito dos humanos e não humanos. A partir de narrativas da origem da mulher e das práticas sociais a elas conectadas, é explicitado que a condição de humanidade é incompleta para abarcar a identificação de uma subjetividade. O que é associado à animalidade parece ser incluído na configuração de pessoa, incidindo nas formas corporais humana e animal do mesmo sujeito ou de pessoas que dele descenderam. Tornar inteligível a afirmativa de que gente alta descende de jaburu e baixa de anta entremeia o texto, contornando um antromorfismo heterogêneo e sugerindo que o comum entre humano e não humano inclui aspectos físicos, afetivos e performáticos. A relação entre alimento, divisão e multiplicação com o corpo é enfática e problematizada, paralelamente. Palavras-chave: Panará. Jê. Corpo. Humano. Não Humano. ABSTRACT Reflections are shared about a research on what qualities are highlighted by people Panará when it recognizes the status of subject of human and non human. From narratives of women's origin and social practices connected to them, it is explained that the human condition is incomplete to include the identification of a subjectivity. What is associated with animality seems to be included in one configuration, focusing the human body shapes and animals of the same subject or who it descended. Make intelligible the assertion that high people descended from jaburu and low tapir intersperses text, bypassing a heterogeneous anthropomorphism and suggesting that the common between human and non human includes physical, emotional and performative. The relationship between food, divide and multiply in the body is emphatic and problematized in parallel. Keywords: Panará. Gê. Body. Human. Not human.

scholarly journals The Amazon Rainforest of Pre-Modern Literature: Ethics, Values, and Ideals from the Past for Our Future. With a Focus on Aristotle and Heinrich Kaufringer

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
Amazon Rainforest ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Stem Fields ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future Needs ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Human Condition

The tensions between the STEM fields and the Humanities are artificial and might be the result of nothing but political and financial competition. In essence, all scholars explore their topics in a critical fashion, relying on the principles of verification and falsification. Most important proves to be the notion of the laboratory, the storehouse of experiences, ideas, imagination, experiments. For that reason, here the metaphor of the Amazon rainforest is used to illustrate where the common denominators for scientists and scholars rest. Without that vast field of experiences from the past the future cannot be built. The focus here is based on the human condition and its reliance on ethical ideals as already developed by Aristotle. In fact, neither science nor humanities-based research are possible without ethics. Moreover, as illustrated by the case of one of the stories by Heinrich Kaufringer (ca. 1400), human conditions have always been precarious, contingent, puzzling, and fragile, especially if ethics do not inform the individual’s actions. Pre-modern literature is here identified as an ‘Amazon rainforest’ that only waits to be explored for future needs.

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