Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world

Author(s):  
Emma Simone

Virginia Woolf and Being-in-the-world: A Heideggerian Study explores Woolf’s treatment of the relationship between self and world from a phenomenological-existential perspective. This study presents a timely and compelling interpretation of Virginia Woolf’s textual treatment of the relationship between self and world from the perspective of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Drawing on Woolf’s novels, essays, reviews, letters, diary entries, short stories, and memoirs, the book explores the political and the ontological, as the individual’s connection to the world comes to be defined by an involvement and engagement that is always already situated within a particular physical, societal, and historical context. Emma Simone argues that at the heart of what it means to be an individual making his or her way in the world, the perspectives of Woolf and Heidegger are founded upon certain shared concerns, including the sustained critique of Cartesian dualism, particularly the resultant binary oppositions of subject and object, and self and Other; the understanding that the individual is a temporal being; an emphasis upon intersubjective relations insofar as Being-in-the-world is defined by Being-with-Others; and a consistent emphasis upon average everydayness as both determinative and representative of the individual’s relationship to and with the world.

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Alexander Rubtsov

In the article, the relationship between the highest professional specialization of philosophy and its involvement in the realities of everyday life consciousness, collective and individual, are considered. Karl Jaspers defines philosophy precisely through the natural need and ability of human being as such, from the piercing questions of children to the revelations of anomalous geniuses. Great philosophers only concentrate this sleeping ability in a person to see the world directly and every time anew. Rightly considered the most closed type of intellectual activity, philosophy at the same time provides examples of live communication and direct appeal to people and society.  The fact that each of us is the bearer of philosophical ideas (whether we are aware of it or not) leads to the problem of ideology. By analogy with the constitution of the political by Carl Schmitt through the opposition "friend — enemy", ideology is constituted by the opposition of "faith — knowledge" in a single continuum between the poles of "almost religion" and "almost philosophy". If ideology asserts the non-obvious as obvious, then the mission of philosophy is a systematic criticism of the obvious.  This conflict manifests itself both in society and in the consciousness of an individual.  The classic understanding of ideology as a purely external manipulation (“consciousness for the Other”) is challenged by the presence in the consciousness of the individual subject of “internal dialogue” and “internal speech” with the effects of ideological work and ideological struggle with oneself (the individual as a micromodel of society and the state).  Postmodern all the more accentuates the non-professional dimension of philosophy by rejecting the schemes of progress and hierarchy, the logic of binary oppositions, including high and low, center and marginal, specialized and amateur.  The ability to reflect is the most important feature of a sovereign personality in its resistance to the "penetrating" ideology and new mythology, degrading to intellectual barbarism and political savagery.


2019 ◽  
pp. 002216781985909 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianfranco Buffardi

Modern neurosciences have now undermined the notion that so-called archetypes, as conceived of by C. G. Jung in his Analytical Psychology, are innate or preexistent to the psychic development of the individual. Most existential therapists today similarly dismiss the theory of archetypes as being overly deterministic and phenomenologically inaccurate. Nonetheless, archetypes as psychological “models” nonetheless exert a powerful influence on human existence. Thus, existential therapists cannot merely minimize the archetype’s central role in basic human experience and behavior. From an existential perspective, the archetype develops in the relationship between the individual and the information she or he receives from the world. The archetype itself changes over time and across different cultures, although it self-maintains quite uniformly due to the inextricable linkage it has with the most profound aspects of instinctual human behaviors, such as common emotional responses to specific situations. Therefore, there is undeniably a deep and abiding nexus between our emotions, our instincts, and our archetypes. In this article, the author, a psychiatrist and existential therapist, affirms that the analysis during existential therapy of how the individual has interpreted and elaborated the subjective significance of his or her own archetypes promotes the expansion of the client’s “internal maps,” and facilitates the creative search for new possibilities in life.


Author(s):  
Ayelet Shachar

“There are some things that money can’t buy.” Is citizenship among them? This chapter explores this question by highlighting the core legal and ethical puzzles associated with the surge in cash-for-passport programs. The spread of these new programs is one of the most significant developments in citizenship practice in the past few decades. It tests our deepest intuitions about the meaning and attributes of the relationship between the individual and the political community to which she belongs. This chapter identifies the main strategies employed by a growing number of states putting their visas and passports “for sale,” selectively opening their otherwise bolted gates of admission to the high-net-worth individuals of the world. Moving from the positive to the normative, the discussion then elaborates the main arguments in favor of, as well as against, citizenship-for-sale. The discussion draws attention to the distributive and political implications of these developments, both locally and globally, and identifies the deeper forces at work that contribute to the perpetual testing, blurring, and erosion of the state-market boundary regulating access to membership.


Author(s):  
John White

This chapter considers The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) in relation to its use of the key Christian concepts of forgiveness of sins and redemption. The central focus of Three Burials is seen as being its recourse to Christian ideas, not only in relation to eternal spiritual questions regarding the relationship of human beings to an all-powerful deity but also in relation to the contemporary historical/political moment. This chapter considers two types of detachment from the world: one in which the individual lives their life in a state of indifference and the other in which the individual exists within a space of thoughtful contemplation. The film moves away from the more normal Hollywood consideration of the world as a space for the contest between good and evil to encourage viewers to question the way in which the Mexican ‘Other’ is (and, by extension, all ‘Others’ are) viewed within the U.S. and represented within the media. Ultimately, however, it is argued the film neglects to consider the economics that underpins the contemporary political situation.


Author(s):  
Emma Simone

In Chapter 1 a comprehensive overview of the Heideggerian understanding of Being-in-the-world is presented, placing particular emphasis upon the ways in which this notion relates to Woolf’s writings. Providing a foundation and context for the discussions that are to follow in the remaining chapters, key Heideggerian concepts relating to Being-in-the-world are defined and discussed, including ‘Being-with-Others’; the average everyday mode of ‘theyness’; and ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’ modes of Being. Emphasised throughout this chapter are the ways in which Woolf and Heidegger’s understandings of the relationship between self and world lie in sharp contrast to the Cartesian dualism that separates subject and object, and self and Other.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


2005 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Klofft

[In the writings of Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov (1901–1970), Western theology can find new resources regarding the relationship between gender and moral development. The author presents Evdokimov's unique theological anthropology in the context of both the complicated question of gender, as well as the effects that gender has on the way women and men act. While the goal of the Christian life for both is the transformation of the individual through asceticism, the role each plays in the salvation of the world differs markedly.]


Author(s):  
Richard Whiting

In assessing the relationship between trade unions and British politics, this chapter has two focuses. First, it examines the role of trade unions as significant intermediate associations within the political system. They have been significant as the means for the development of citizenship and involvement in society, as well as a restraint upon the power of the state. Their power has also raised questions about the relationship between the role of associations and the freedom of the individual. Second, the chapter considers critical moments when the trade unions challenged the authority of governments, especially in the periods 1918–26 and 1979–85. Both of these lines of inquiry underline the importance of conservatism in the achievement of stability in modern Britain.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e15510110385
Author(s):  
Aline de Sousa Rocha ◽  
Benedita Maryjose Gleyk Gomes ◽  
Roberta Sousa Meneses ◽  
Marcos Antonio Silva Batista ◽  
Rosane Cristina Mendes Gonçalves ◽  
...  

The psychiatric reform that took place in Brazil carries characteristics of other movements that occurred in other parts of the world. The idea common to all movements is the struggle for the rights of the individual in mental suffering, seeking mainly the rupture of the mental model. These changes led to several transformations in the care scenario, for all professions directly linked to the patient. Nursing in turn has experienced and experiences significant changes in the provision of care. The aim of this study is to talk about nursing care for patients affected by mental disorder, making a temporal analysis of how this care occurred and how it presents itself in the current mental health conjuncture. The methodology is of the literature review type, which occurred through research in the databases BIREME, Lilacs, Scielo, BDENF and VHL. For this, the descriptors: nursing care for people with disorders were selected; nursing care for patients with mental disorders. In view of the results, it was evidenced that nurses are an important part of caring for patients with mental disorders, noting that these make up a multidisciplinary team and highlighting that care goes far beyond just caring for the patient, but that it consists mainly in the relationship with the patient's family, in bonding, in the work that aims at social reintegration and often also the family reinsertion of the individual. Profession that needs to undergo constant updates, but has experienced numerous transformations throughout this period of Reformation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (20) ◽  
pp. e2022491118
Author(s):  
Jeroen M. van Baar ◽  
David J. Halpern ◽  
Oriel FeldmanHall

Political partisans see the world through an ideologically biased lens. What drives political polarization? Although it has been posited that polarization arises because of an inability to tolerate uncertainty and a need to hold predictable beliefs about the world, evidence for this hypothesis remains elusive. We examined the relationship between uncertainty tolerance and political polarization using a combination of brain-to-brain synchrony and intersubject representational similarity analysis, which measured committed liberals’ and conservatives’ (n = 44) subjective interpretation of naturalistic political video material. Shared ideology between participants increased neural synchrony throughout the brain during a polarizing political debate filled with provocative language but not during a neutrally worded news clip on polarized topics or a nonpolitical documentary. During the political debate, neural synchrony in mentalizing and valuation networks was modulated by one’s aversion to uncertainty: Uncertainty-intolerant individuals experienced greater brain-to-brain synchrony with politically like-minded peers and lower synchrony with political opponents—an effect observed for liberals and conservatives alike. Moreover, the greater the neural synchrony between committed partisans, the more likely that two individuals formed similar, polarized attitudes about the debate. These results suggest that uncertainty attitudes gate the shared neural processing of political narratives, thereby fueling polarized attitude formation about hot-button issues.


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