Subject to the Law of Reason while Belonging to the World of Sense: the Inevitable Randomness of Human Experience in The Brothers Karamazov and ‘The Garden of Forking Paths'

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 209-223
Author(s):  
Ruth Karin Lévai
Keyword(s):  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law ◽  
Brothers Karamazov ◽  
The Human Condition

Taking as its starting point the tension between the human condition as subject to the law of reason while belonging to the world of sense in establishing the categorical imperative as described by Kant, this article explores how belonging to the world of sense may be equated with randomness and the temporal as the presupposition for morality in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Borges's ‘The Garden of Forking Paths'. The article also discusses the two authors' views of time and eternity as expressed in their nonfiction.

scholarly journals Felix Culpa: Salvific Sin in the Play The Satin Slipper and in the Novel The Brothers Karamazov

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-179
Author(s):  
Tatiana Kashina
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
New Man ◽  
Spiritual Change ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Brothers Karamazov

The article attempts to compare the soteriological ideas of the play The Satin Slipper and the novel The Brothers Karamazov, two texts in which the authors express themselves most fully as theologians. For both texts, the theme of sin and atonement is central. The epigraphs to Paul Claudel’s play are two statements about the saving potential of sin. In Dostoevsky’s novel, it can be seen how sin becomes the most important starting point for further positive spiritual change of heroes. However, in his play, Claudel not only shows the possibility for sin to become the starting point for the conversion of protagonists, but also shows that in a certain sense the salvation of the world needs sin. For example, the main characters of the Satin Slipper make a kind of symbolic escape from paradise (Don Rodrigo leaves the Jesuit novitiate, Dona Prouhèze escapes from the “Garden of Eden” planted for her by her husband) and this allows them to reveal themselves in fullness and to realize their vocation, which is salvific for the world. Mitya Karamazov at the end of Dostoevsky’s novel says that the “new man” in him “would never have come to the surface” if certain things had not happened (and what happened includes a series of Mitya’s sins). This reminds of the idea of “happy guilt”, a term from the Latin hymn Exultet, which refers to the need for sin for the redemption. However, as Claudel shows, even by the very name of his play (Dona Prouhèze, before making her escape, donates her satin slipper as a gift to the Mother of God so that the Blessed Virgin would prevent her from taking the path of evil) suggests that sin becomes salvation only thanks to human freedom.

scholarly journals Motives of Home and Homelessness in the Novel by F.M. Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov”

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-244
Author(s):  
Meruert B. Yeleussizova
Keyword(s):  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Special Role ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Brothers Karamazov

The article is devoted to the study of the complex motive home-antidome in the work of F. Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov. Studying the motive as a key unit of narratology, the author comes to the conclusion that in Dostoevskys poetry a special role is played by antinomic motives, the multidirectional semantic potential of which contributes to the complexity of the poetic dialectic of the writer. Thus, the motive of the home in Dostoevskys novel is inextricably linked with the motives of homelessness, wandering, the search for the place in the world by the heroes of the novel. Each of the heroes of the novel is a bearer of the motive function of home. The image of old Karamazov is associated with the idea of desacralizing the house as an intimate, family space. Each of the brothers is in a transit situation, not having, according to the thesis of Yu.M. Lotman, fastening to a certain topos. Homelessness becomes for heroes of the work the starting point of a spiritual search. Using the methods of linguistic-poetic and literary analysis, the author of the article concludes that the motives of the anti-home in the Brothers Karamazov novelty explicate the writers idea of a person and his place in the world, and in a broader sense, of the past and future of Russia, which has lost touch with previous generations and faith in God.

scholarly journals Hamlet, or about Death: A Romanian Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur (2001)

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (35) ◽  
pp. 51-60
Author(s):  
Monica Matei-Chesnoiu
Keyword(s):  
Human Experience ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
First Century ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
The World ◽  
Existential Issues ◽  
The Human Condition

This essay looks at the 2001 Romanian production of Hamlet directed by Vlad Mugur at the Cluj National Theatre (Romania) from the perspective of geocriticism and spatial literary studies, analysing the stage space opened in front of the audiences. While the bare stage suggests asceticism and alienation, the production distances the twenty-first century audiences from what might have seemed difficult to understand from their postmodern perspectives. The production abbreviates the topic to its bare essence, just as a map condenses space, in the form of “literary cartography” (Tally 20). There is no room in this production for baroque ornaments and theatrical flourishing; instead, the production explores the exposed depth of human existence. The production is an exploration of theatre and art, of what dramatists and directors can do with artful language, of the theatre as an exploration of human experience and potential. It is about the human condition and the artist’s place in the world, about old and new, about life and death, while everything happens on the edge of nothingness. The director’s own death before the opening night of the production ties Shakespeare’s Hamlet with existential issues in an even deeper way than the play itself allows us to expose.

scholarly journals Motives of Home and Homelessness in the Novel by F.M. Dostoevsky “The Brothers Karamazov”

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-244
Author(s):  
Meruert B. Yeleussizova
Keyword(s):  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Special Role ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Brothers Karamazov ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Brothers Karamazov

The article is devoted to the study of the complex motive home-antidome in the work of F. Dostoevsky The Brothers Karamazov. Studying the motive as a key unit of narratology, the author comes to the conclusion that in Dostoevskys poetry a special role is played by antinomic motives, the multidirectional semantic potential of which contributes to the complexity of the poetic dialectic of the writer. Thus, the motive of the home in Dostoevskys novel is inextricably linked with the motives of homelessness, wandering, the search for the place in the world by the heroes of the novel. Each of the heroes of the novel is a bearer of the motive function of home. The image of old Karamazov is associated with the idea of desacralizing the house as an intimate, family space. Each of the brothers is in a transit situation, not having, according to the thesis of Yu.M. Lotman, fastening to a certain topos. Homelessness becomes for heroes of the work the starting point of a spiritual search. Using the methods of linguistic-poetic and literary analysis, the author of the article concludes that the motives of the anti-home in the Brothers Karamazov novelty explicate the writers idea of a person and his place in the world, and in a broader sense, of the past and future of Russia, which has lost touch with previous generations and faith in God.

Los avatares del logos

2001 ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Leticia Flores Farfán
Keyword(s):  
Georges Bataille ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Mircea Eliade ◽  
The World ◽  
The Human Condition

Assuming with Georges Bataille that men is a being who is not in the world “like water within the water”, that is to say, in an immanent and lack of distinction state, but that its destiny is shaped in the permanent significant joint or logos to which its unfinished nature jeopardizes him, we analyze the form in which the mythical story, characterized like a sacred word with symbolic and ontological quality within the perspective of Mircea Eliade, gives account of the wound or the original tear that constitutes the human condition.

With and Beyond Epistemologies from the South: Ontological Epistemology of Participation, Multi-topial Hermeneutics and the Calling of Planetary Realisations

2021 ◽  
pp. 003802292110146
Author(s):  
Ananta Kumar Giri
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The South ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Multiple Cultures ◽  
The World ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
Universe Of Discourse ◽  
The Human Condition

Our contemporary moment is a moment of crisis of epistemology as a part of the wider and deeper crisis of modernity and the human condition. The crisis of epistemology emerges from the limits of the epistemic as it is tied to epistemology of procedural certainty and closure. The crisis of epistemology also reflects the limits of epistemology closed within the Euro-American universe of discourse. It is in this context that the present essay discusses Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. It also discusses some of the limits of de Sousa Santos’ alternatives especially his lack of cultivation of the ontological in his exploration of epistemological alternatives beyond the Eurocentric canons. It then explores the pathways of ontological epistemology of participation which brings epistemic and ontological works and meditations together in transformative and cross-cultural ways. This helps us in going beyond both the limits of the primacy of epistemology in modernity as well as Eurocentrism. It also explores pathways of a new hermeneutics which involves walking and meditating across multiple topoi of cultures and traditions of thinking and reflections which is called multi- topial hermeneutics in this study. This involves foot-walking and foot-meditative interpretation across multiple cultures and traditions of the world which help us go beyond ethnocentrism and eurocentrism and cultivate conversations and realisations across borders what the essay calls planetary realisations.

On the Harm of Genocide

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Paul Kucharski
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Community Or ◽  
The World ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Individual Human ◽  
The Human Condition

My aim in this essay is to advance the state of scholarly discussion on the harms of genocide. The most obvious harms inflicted by every genocide are readily evident: the physical harm inflicted upon the victims of genocide and the moral harm that the perpetrators of genocide inflict upon themselves. Instead, I will focus on a kind of harm inflicted upon those who are neither victims nor perpetrators, on those who are outside observers, so to speak. My thesis will be that when a whole community or culture is eliminated, or even deeply wounded, the world loses an avenue for insight into the human condition. My argument is as follows. In order to understand human nature, and that which promotes its flourishing, we must certainly study individual human beings. But since human beings as rational and linguistic animals are in part constituted by the communities in which they live, the study of human nature should also involve the study of communities and cultures—both those that are well ordered and those that are not. No one community or culture has expressed all that can be said about the human way of existing and flourishing. And given that the unity and wholeness of human nature can only be glimpsed in a variety of communities and cultures, then part of the harm of genocide consists in the removal of a valuable avenue for human beings to better understand themselves.

The Time Machine; or, the Fourth Dimension as Prophecy

PMLA ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 530-535
Author(s):  
Robert M. Philmus
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Fourth Dimension ◽  
Time Machine ◽  
Essential Aspect ◽  
Active Audience ◽  
Logical Conclusion ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Human Condition

Most of the early science fantasies of H. G. Wells are, as he defines the term, prophetic: the myths that they develop to a logical conclusion represent a critique of some historical or essential aspect of the human condition. The Time Machine, his first scientific romance, explores the premises of prophetic fantasy at the same time that it embodies a myth of its own. In it Wells envisions the future devolution of man, already outlined in previous essays of his, as the ultimate consequence of what he perceived as a present attitude of complacent optimism, an attitude he dramatizes in the reaction of the Active audience to the Time Traveller's account of the world of 802,701 and beyond. Although the Time Traveller accepts this vision as literally true, his own theories about that world make it clear that its significance pertains to it only as a metaphoric projection of tendencies existing in the present. Thus the structure of The Time Machine reveals the Time Traveller's point of view, like that of his audience, to be limited: his final disappearance into the fantasied world of the future vindicates the rigorous integrity of Wells s prophecy.

Camus and Tragedy in Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Apparent Absence ◽  
The World ◽  
Educational Imagination ◽  
The Human Condition

Tragedy is a central theme in the work of Albert Camus that speaks to his 46 years of life in “interesting times.” He develops a case for the tragic arts across a series of letters, articles, lectures, short stories, and novels. In arguing for the tragic arts, he reveals an epic understanding of the tensions between individual and world manifest in the momentum of liberalism, humanism, and modernism. The educational qualities of the tragic arts are most explicitly explored in his novel The Plague, in which the proposition that the plague is a teacher engages Camus in an exploration of the grand narratives of progress and freedom, and the intimate depths of ignorance and heroism. In the novel The Outsider Camus explores the tragedy of difference in a society obsessed with the production of a normal citizen. The tragedy manifests the absurdity of the world in which a stranger in this world is compelled to support the system that rejects their subjectivity. In The Myth of Sisyphus Camus produces an essay on absurdity and suicide that toys with the illusion of Progress and the grounds for a well-lived life. Across these texts, and through his collection of letters, articles, and notes, Camus invites an educational imagination. His approach to study of the human condition in and through tragedy offers a narrative to challenge the apparent absence of imagination in educational systems and agendas. Following Camus, the tragic arts offer alternative narratives during the interesting times of viral and environment tragedy.

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