scholarly journals Stoic Theology: Revealing or Redundant?

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Whiting ◽  
Leonidas Konstantakos

With the notion of advancing a modern Stoic environmental ethical framework, we explore the philosophy’s call to “living according to Nature”, as derived from ancient Stoic theology. We do this by evaluating the orthodox (ancient) viewpoint and the contemporary criticisms levelled against it. We reflect on the atheistic interpretations of Stoicism and their associated call to “live according to the facts”. We consider the limitations that this call has when applied to societal, and particularly non-human matters. We do not undertake this research with the aim of determining which view of Stoic theology is right or wrong. However, we contest one of the assumptions of the heterodox approach, namely that the Stoic worldview is incompatible with modern scientific thinking. Indeed, we demonstrate how Stoic theology, far from being outdated or irrelevant, is actually refreshingly contemporary in that it provides the tools, scope and urgency with which to deliver a far more considerate ethical framework for the 21st century. Finally, we suggest where Stoic theology can help practitioners to reframe and respond to environmental challenges, which we argue forms part of their cosmopolitan obligation to take care of themselves, others and the Earth as a whole.

Author(s):  
Alexander P. Khomyakov

NOTE: This article was published in a former series of GEUS Bulletin. Please use the original series name when citing this article, for example: Khomyakov, A. P. (2001). The distribution of minerals in hyper-agpaitic rocks in terms of symmetry: evolution of views on the number and symmetry of minerals. Geology of Greenland Survey Bulletin, 190, 73-82. https://doi.org/10.34194/ggub.v190.5176 _______________ Among the unique mineral localities of the Earth the complexes of nepheline syenites with hyper-agpaitic differentiates are of special interest due to their extreme diversity of mineral species. The four best studied complexes of this type – Khibina, Lovozero, Ilímaussaq and Mont Saint-Hilaire – have yielded more than 700 mineral species of which about 200 are new. The great mineral diversity is due to the combination of several factors, the most important of which is the extremely high alkalinity of agpaitic magmas, causing about half of the elements of the periodic table to be concentrated together. Minerals from hyper-agpaitic rocks are characterised by the predominance of highly ordered, low-symmetry crystal structures resulting, in particular, from the markedly extended temperature range of crystallisation. Generalisation of available data for unique mineral localities underpins the hypothesis that there is no natural limit to the number of mineral species. It is predicted that by the middle of the 21st century, the overall number of minerals recorded in nature will exceed 10 000, with the proportion of triclinic species increasing from the present 9% to 14.5%, and that of cubic species decreasing from 10% to 5%.


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.


Author(s):  
Yuri P. Perevedentsev ◽  
Konstantin M. Shantalinskii ◽  
Boris G. Sherstukov ◽  
Alexander A. Nikolaev

Long-term changes in air temperature on the territory of the Republic of Tatarstan in the 20th–21st centuries are considered. The periods of unambiguous changes in the surface air temperature are determined. It is established that the average winter temperature from the 1970s to 2017, increased in the Kazan region by more than 3 °C and the average summer temperature increased by about 2 °C over the same period. The contribution of global scale processes to the variability of the temperature of the Kazan region is shown: it was 37 % in winter, 23 % in summer. The correlation analysis of the anomalies of average annual air temperature in Kazan and the series of air temperature anomalies in each node over the continents, as well as the ocean surface temperature in each coordinate node on Earth for 1880 –2017, was performed. Long-distance communications were detected in the temperature field between Kazan and remote regions of the Earth. It is noted that long-period climate fluctuations in Kazan occur synchronously with fluctuations in the high latitudes of Asia and North America, with fluctuations in ocean surface temperature in the Arctic ocean, with fluctuations in air temperature in the Far East, and with fluctuations in ocean surface temperature in the Southern hemisphere in the Indian and Pacific oceans, as well as air temperature in southern Australia. It is suggested that there is a global mechanism that regulates long-term climate fluctuations throughout the Earth in the considered interval of 200 years of observations. According to the CMIP5 project, climatic scenarios were built for Kazan until the end of the 21st century.


2018 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 412-431
Author(s):  
Srdjan Korac

The paper analyses how the (mis)use of the concept of international society in the context of the US and other Western countries` foreign policies legitimises an alleged defensive role of the interventionist imperial policy towards rogue, weak and failed states, as well as towards various non-state actors who contest the universality of liberal order. The starting assumption is that the asymmetric character of armed conflicts in the late 20th and early 21st century - combined with notions of international society, democratic peace, and world division into the ?civilised? (liberal) centre and ?uncivilised? periphery - has conditioned the planning and waging wars as disciplinary tools of the Western imperial control policy which is asserted over planetary periphery. The analysis focuses on several indicators which reveal how the methodology of the policing, the criminal justice system and the penalty system is embedded into the ontology of military interventions pursued by the United States, alone or within ad hoc coalitions with other Western and/or regional powers. The author concludes that war as a social practice lost in the early 21st century its traditional ontological features by assuming the structural characteristics of crime control policy, which caused the disruption of the ethical framework in the discursive and practical treatment of hostile states and their soldiers and non-state actors.


10.1144/sp508 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 508 (1) ◽  
pp. NP-NP
Author(s):  
G. Di Capua ◽  
P. T. Bobrowsky ◽  
S. W. Kieffer ◽  
C. Palinkas

This is the second volume focused on geoethics published by the Geological Society of London. This is a significant step forward in which authors address the maturation of geoethics. The field of geoethics is now ready to be introduced outside the geoscience community as a logical platform for global ethics that addresses anthropogenic changes. Geoethics has a distinction in the geoscientific community for discussing ethical, social and cultural implications of geoscience knowledge, research, practice, education and communication. This provides a common ground for confronting ideas, experiences and proposals on how geosciences can supply additional service to society in order to improve the way humans interact responsibly with the Earth system. This book provides new messages to geoscientists, social scientists, intellectuals, law- and decision-makers, and laypeople. Motivations and actions for facing global anthropogenic changes and their intense impacts on the planet need to be governed by an ethical framework capable of merging a solid conceptual structure with pragmatic approaches based on geoscientific knowledge. This philosophy defines geoethics.


2020 ◽  
pp. SP508-2020-16
Author(s):  
Margaret R. McLean

AbstractOver a decade ago, Stephen Hawking cautioned, ‘I don't think that the human race will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars’ (in Highfield 2001, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/01/stephenhawking-dangerous-time-planet-inequality). With plans afoot to pack our bags for life on the red planet in the 2030s, we should expand our ethical thinking from the Earth deep into space. This chapter proposes the development of a set of reasoning tools in the form of principles and virtue to guide scientists, the public and policy-makers in creating an ethical framework to steer and constrain our reaching out from Earth to the stars.


Elements ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 229-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Frings ◽  
Heather L. Buss

Weathering is the chemical and physical alteration of rock at the surface of the Earth, but its importance is felt well beyond the rock itself. The repercussions of weathering echo throughout the Earth sciences, from ecology to climatology, from geomorphology to geochemistry. This article outlines how weathering interacts with various geoscience disciplines across a huge range of scales, both spatial and temporal. It traces the evolution of scientific thinking about weathering and man's impact on weathering itself—for better and for worse. Future computational, conceptual and methodological advances are set to cement weathering's status as a central process in the Earth sciences.


2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Paulo Vianna Franco

Based on the ecological utopianism of Narodnik thinkers, this article assesses the programmatic concept of ecological neo-narodnism, as put forth by Martinez-Alier (1987), addressing (1) to what extent it conforms to the intellectual legacy of the Narodniki? (2) what are its main theoretical foundations and policy recommendations for a peasant economy in the 21st century? and (3) how it contributes to contemporary social and environmental challenges. It explores in detail the ecological economic theories which can be applied to the peasant economy according to the ideology of ecological neo-narodnism, the latter analyzed from the perspectives of the fields of political economy and political ecology. Peasant movements are addressed as the manifestation of such a worldview. Finally, the contributions of ecological neo-narodnism to overcome current social and environmental challenges are discussed and associated with economic degrowth.


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