Historicity and Christian Life-Experience in the Early Philosophy of Martin Heidegger

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-41
Author(s):  
Anna Jani

In his early Freiburg lectures on the phenomenology of religious life, published as his Phenomenology of Religious Life, Heidegger sought to interpret the Christian life in phenomenological terms, while also discussing the question of whether Christianity should be construed as historically defined. Heidegger thus connected the philosophical discussion of religion as a phenomenon with the character of the religious life taken in the context of factical life. According to Heidegger, every philosophical question originates from the latter, which determines such questions pre-theoretically, while the tradition of early Christianity can also only be understood historically in such terms. More specifically, he holds that the historical phenomenon of religious life as it relates to early Christianity, inasmuch as it undergirds our conception of the religious phenomenon per se, reveals the essential connection between factical life and religious life. In this way, the conception of religion that Heidegger establishes through his analyses of Paul’s Epistles takes on both theological and philosophical ramifications. Moreover, the historicity of factical life finds its fulfillment in our comprehension of the primordial form of Christianity as our very own historical a priori, determined by our own factical situation. Hence, historicity and factical life belong together within the situation that makes up the foundation of the religious life.

Philosophy ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 35 (133) ◽  
pp. 114-121
Author(s):  
G. P. Henderson

The word “beautiful” plays a surprisingly unimportant part in the language of sophisticated artistic appreciation; I mean in the informed criticism and comparison of specific works of art. Though in ordinary conversation it can be used naturally and easily, it does not serve readily as a technical term in expert writing or discussion. To become a technical term of this kind it would have to be definable, and definable in terms which commanded sufficient agreement: but attempts to define “beauty” and “beautiful” may well have become restrained by the popularity of philosophical discussion about the significance of these words. No philosophical question is discussed more commonly or from more firmly held opposite positions than the question whether beauty is “objective” or not. Discussion of this and related topics, however, not being the monopoly of professed philosophers but being familiar amongst artists and art critics themselves, tends to remove all shadow of technicality from the crucial terms discussed. Other terms come to serve for the “objective” features of works of art, and others again for the impressions which works of art may make upon us: “beauty” and “beautiful” tend to fall away between these two classes.


2014 ◽  
Vol 14-15 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-163
Author(s):  
Michael Mosely

The paper explores the substantial correlation of thought between Dostoevsky and Heidegger that exceeds Dostoevsky’s thematic concerns and stems from the heart of his poetics. Dostoevsky’s innovative presentation of the unfinalisability of consciousness constituted for Heidegger a powerful example of remaining within ‘life-experience’ and their denial of Kant’s a priori arguments marks them out as breaking from the philosophical traditions that preceded them.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-114
Author(s):  
Edison R.L. Tinambunan

The development of Christian morality takes a long journey which was started when the Church was born. There were many typical moral cases faced by the Church at each period of time. From one period to another one, moralists came out to solve the cases by giving the right assessment according to the Church’s way of life. A period which was well-known in the journey of Christian morality is the period of the Fathers of the Church. The principle of Christian morality is love which is based on the Gospel and the commandment of Jesus Christ. This was documented in Didache which was used by the Christians at that time. It was the principal moral document of early Christianity. In the development, it was then added by other principals: freedom and justice which were applied in the Christian life. The three principals (love, freedom and justice) formed Christian attitude in respecting other Christians and all people which is applied perfectly by Augustine. The following development of Christian morality was the development of the practice and the profound of what had been laid down before by the Fathers of the Church, with addition of the figure which is excelling in the life as Job, who had been interpreted by Gregory the Great. This writing is ended at this point, because the research is limited from the beginning up to the first development of Christian morality during the period of the Fathers of the Church.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (10) ◽  
pp. 1685-1693 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth A Perkins ◽  
Joshua L Karelitz

Abstract Introduction A method to assess acute reinforcement due to nicotine may aid identification of doses needed to maintain dependence. After describing development of a forced-choice procedure, results are presented from two studies using it to determine the relative reinforcing effects of nicotine dose per se. Aims and Methods Choice between a higher versus a very low or no nicotine option, via smoking (Study 1, n = 59) and via nasal spray (Study 2, n = 42), was assessed in nontreatment-seeking dependent smokers abstinent overnight. Using a within-subject design, different nicotine levels for each product were administered under blind conditions, initially to assess their discriminability (Study 1: 1.3–17 mg/g each vs. 0.4 mg/g nicotine Spectrum cigarettes; Study 2: 2.5 µg/kg vs. 0 µg/kg nicotine per spray). At the end of sessions for each study, participants engaged in forced-choice trials to assess preference, requiring a fixed number of puffs/sprays for one and/or the other. Results Confirming the procedure’s validity, the choice of the higher nicotine option was significantly greater than that for the very low or no nicotine option in both studies. In Study 1, choice relative to 0.4 mg/g was greater for cigarettes 5.3 mg/g or more but not 2.3 mg/g or less (p = .003 for the interaction of higher content vs. 0.4 mg/g comparison). In Study 2, choice was greater for the nicotine versus placebo spray (p < .005), as nicotine was preferred nearly twice as much as the placebo. Conclusion This forced-choice procedure may efficiently determine the relative reinforcing value of a nicotine dose per se. Implications The forced-choice procedure described here may identify nicotine doses that are acutely reinforcing in dependent smokers. A priori research of choice comparisons between small versus zero nicotine doses could inform clinical research in larger and more diverse samples to determine nicotine contents in cigarettes, and perhaps in other commercial products, that are not reinforcing and, thus, likely to reduce the risk of their addictiveness. This procedure may also be applicable to assessing changes in acute nicotine reinforcement due to different product formulations, novel drugs, or other manipulations, perhaps helping inform development of new interventions for cessation or harm reduction.


The Monist ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 103 (4) ◽  
pp. 468-480
Author(s):  
Jean-Philippe Narboux

Abstract Throughout his philosophical career, Hilary Putnam was preoccupied with the question of what survives of the traditional notion of a priori truth in light of the recurring historical phenomenon, made prominent by the scientific revolutions of the early decades of the twentieth century, through which “something that was literally inconceivable has turned out to be true” (1962b). Impugning the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, Putnam’s redefinition of “conceptual truth” in terms of “quasi-necessity relative to a conceptual scheme” is meant to accommodate the possibility of transitions of just this sort. In this essay, I trace the origins and development of Putnam’s account of “quasi-necessity.” I try to defend it against some objections naturally arising in connection with the interplay of modality and negation. My main contention is that the main tenets of Putnam’s semantic externalism inform his reconception of conceptual truth, and that they must be recognized to hold of such basic logical notions as those of judgment and negation.


2000 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-314
Author(s):  
Andrew Reynolds

Peirce is often credited with having formulated a pragmatic theory of truth. This can be misleading, if it is assumed that Peirce was chiefly interested in providing a metaphysical analysis of the immediate conditions under which a belief or proposition is true, or the conditions under which a proposition or belief is said to be madetrue. Cheryl Misak has exposed the subtleties in Peirce's discussion of truth, especially showing the difficulties faced by any ascription to him of an analytic definition of truth. In this paper I follow Misak in urging that Peirce's contribution to the philosophical discussion about the nature of truth was not of that kind. What makes his pragmatic approach distinctive is that rather than attempting to state the nature of truth per se, it attempts to uncover the beliefs and expectations we commit ourselves to when we make specific claims that such and such is true or is the case.


1911 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-46
Author(s):  
Kirsopp Lake

It was once remarked with much truth that the non-fulfilment of the expectation of the Parousia was the principal factor in the development of early Christianity. This is all the more important, because it was not the custom of the first Christians to speak of the “second” coming—that is a modern point of view—but of the “coming” of the Messiah. To them the Son of Man, Jesus, had come, and the resurrection proved that he was now the Messiah in heaven, but, as Professor Burkitt has recently pointed out, “Son of Man” does not mean “Messiah” in the full sense, but is rather the description given of the predestined and pre-existent Messiah, before he actually came as Messiah in function. The Parousia of the triumphant Messiah whom they expected was as much future for Christians as it was for Jews, and on this point the main difference between the two was that the former believed that they knew who the Messiah was.


2005 ◽  
Vol 61 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Osiek

In spite of numerous studies on the patronage system in Mediterranean antiquity, little attention has been paid to either how the patronage of women was part of the system or how it differed. In fact, there is substantial evidence for women’s exercise of both public and private patronage to women and men in the Greco-Roman world, by both elites and sub-elites. This information must then be applied to early Christian texts to infer how women’s patronage functioned in early house churches and Christian life.


2008 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 1045-1050 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Torralbo ◽  
Diane M. Beck

A growing literature suggests that the degree to which distracting information can be ignored depends on the perceptual load of the task, or the extent to which the task exhausts perceptual capacity. However, there is currently no a priori definition of what constitutes high or low perceptual load. We propose that interactions among cells in visual cortex that represent nearby stimuli determine the perceptual load of a task, and that manipulations designed to modulate these competitive spatial interactions should modulate distractor processing. We found that either spatially separating the task-relevant items in a display or placing the target and nontargets in different visual fields increased interference from a distractor that was to be ignored. These data are consistent with the idea that the ability to ignore such distracting information results in part from the need to actively resolve competitive interactions in visual cortex, and is not the consequence of an exhausted capacity per se.


2002 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-99
Author(s):  
Angelo A. Bignamini
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  

L’organizzazione sanitaria è l’insieme delle strutture, funzioni e responsabilità che dovrebbe garantire l’adeguata gestione della sanità in un ambito definito. I soggetti coinvolti nel sistema sanitario sono le persone afferenti (sane e malate); gli operatori (medici e operatori sanitari non medici); l’ambito in cui esso viene attuato (società). Essa è quindi il punto di incontro di tre realtà eminentemente umane: la medicina, l’etica, la società. I requisiti per un’adeguata organizzazione sanitaria implicano perciò la coesistenza dei principi fondamentali della medicina, dell’etica, della convivenza sociale. La medicina pone al suo centro il bisogno dell’essere umano che incontra il limite ai propri diritti nativi alla vita (cioè la morte) e alla salvaguardia di salute e integrità (cioè la malattia). La convivenza sociale impone la ricerca di un equilibrio tra i bisogni di ciascuno e la capacità di risposta della collettività nel suo complesso, incluse anche le capacità spontanee di aggregazione e di servizio, secondo priorità dettate dalla natura del soggetto del bisogno (la persona umana malata) e non pregiudizialmente definiti dall’osservatore. L’etica tutela i diritti nativi del soggetto (quoad justum), quindi determina procedure coerenti con la natura di quanti implicati nella progettazione e gestione dell’organizzazione sanitaria. In un approccio bioetico ontologicamente fondato, i criteri primi sono quelli che si riferiscono ai soggetti autonomamente esistenti, quindi alle persone. Subordinati e dialoganti con questi sono i criteri secondi, cioè quelli relativi alle entità per sé non esistenti se non in dipendenza dell’essere dei soggetti autonomi: la società e, in ulteriore subordine, il “governo”, sia esso regionale, sia nazionale. Esistono visioni alternative, nelle quali i criteri principali sono invece quelli, di stampo illuminista, relativi alla “collettività”, allo “stato”, cui si debbono subordinare i singoli “individui”. Già l’utilizzo di “individuo” contrapposto a “persona” mette in luce come questo approccio sia ideologico (basato su ipotesi astratte definite a priori) anziché scientifico (basato sull’osservazione della realtà). I due approcci originano sistemi organizzativi della sanità contrapposti tra loro, con ruoli diversi anche per gli operatori e soprattutto per il medico. Nel modello illuminista di stato etico gli strumenti matematico-statistici e matematico- economicisti (DRG, EBM, linee guida) diventano gabbie interpretative (ideologiche) della realtà. Nel modello sociale tutti gli strumenti disponibili vengono impiegati come uno dei mezzi possibili, insieme a scienza, coscienza e compassione, per descrivere la complessa realtà della singola persona che si pone in relazione con il medico portando i propri bisogni di salute, espressi ed inespressi. Secondo la bioetica personalista il criterio giustificante di qualunque “sistema” e qualunque “organizzazione”, inclusa l’organizzazione della sanità, è il “bene” di tutti i soggetti (malati e operatori con pari dignità), che si manifesta nel rispetto dei loro diritti, primo fra tutti il diritto alla difesa di vita e integrità, alla salvaguardia della salute, al rispetto dei criteri morali e religiosi di ciascuno. In questo contesto la persona rimane l’elemento centrale di riferimento della “organizzazione”, il rispetto della natura della persona rimane la misura della sua validità, la possibilità del “bene” della persona resta il criterio di valore. Esperienze in atto con questa visione non sembra siano, peraltro, meno efficienti di quelle basate sulla visione opposta. In questo contesto il medico, essendo l’operatore più prossimo al soggetto, ha però anche la responsabilità di agire come difensore dei diritti del malato (funzione etica) nei confronti del sistema organizzativo, anziché essere semplicemente un “fornitore di servizi”, dato che la salute non può essere ricondotta a “prodotto” o “servizio”, né può comprimersi nella definizione di “cliente” o “utente” la persona malata.


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