Can Animism Save the World? Reflections on Personhood and Complexity in the Ecological Crisis

Sociologus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-92
Author(s):  
Guido Sprenger
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Moral Commitment ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Human World ◽  
Communicative Processes ◽  
Politics Of Life

The term “animism” is at once a fantasy internal to modernity and a semiotic conduit enabling a serious inquiry into non-modern phenomena that radically call into question the modern distinction of nature and culture. Therefore, I suggest that the labelling of people, practices or ideas as “animist” is a strategic one. I also raise the question if animism can help to solve the modern ecological crisis that allegedly stems from the nature-culture divide. In particular, animism makes it possible to recognize personhood in non-humans, thus creating moral relationships with the non-human world. A number of scholars and activists identify animism as respect for all living beings and as intimate relationships with nature and its spirits. However, this argument still presupposes the fixity of the ontological status of beings as alive or persons. A different view of animism highlights concepts of fluid and unstable persons that emerge from ongoing communicative processes. I argue that the kind of attentiveness that drives fluid personhood may be supportive of a politics of life that sees relationships with non-humans in terms of moral commitment.

scholarly journals On the Dialogue of Aesthetics and Philosophical Anthropology

wisdom ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-11
Author(s):  
Georgia APOSTOLOPOULOU
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Open World ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Human World ◽  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Pictorial Form ◽  
The Human Condition

After the alleged ‘ends’ of metaphysics, of history, and of art, aesthetics reorganises the field of its enquiry. While retaining the question of the meaning of art for the human as the background justification of its theorising, aesthetics meets philosophical anthropology and enlarges its field. Philosophical anthropology explains that the instability of the human condition demands culture as the artificial stabilisation of the human world as well as of the human in the world. Expressivity, artificiality, and the aesthetic are interweaved with the meaning of the human world. In this context, pictures have priority over concepts and justify art as the eminent pictorial form of meaning. Since the human lives in nature and culture, the stabilisation of its open world is possible through creation of spatial correlates and of objects as well. Thus, aesthetics does need to expand enquiry beyond the discourse on art, so that it includes the issues concerning the aesthetic character of the human world and its spatial correlates. While Wolfgang Welsch and Richard Shusterman argue for a revision of aesthetics, Joseph Margolis and Helmuth Plessner support the stronger dialogue between philosophical anthropology and aesthetics in different ways. Further, Arnold Berleant explores aesthetics of human space.

Psalm 104: The Panorama of Life

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-14
Author(s):  
Robert Gnuse
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The World ◽  
Formal Presentation ◽  
Genesis 1 ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Insight Into

Psalm 104 is a majestic hymn to creation, a dynamic corollary to the more formal presentation of the creation of the world in Genesis 1. Reflection upon some of the passages provides us with insight into the biblical author’s appreciation for nature, an attitude that needs to inspire us in this age of ecological crisis. Though the biblical text is unaware of such an ecological crisis; nonetheless, passages shine forth that can speak to us in our modern age of global warming and environmental collapse.

Feeling Film: Time, Space, and the Third Image

2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110180
Author(s):  
Luke Hockley
Keyword(s):  
Present Moment ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The World

This article explores what it means to feel film. It does so through an exploration of the interconnections between Bergson, Deleuze, and Jung. Central to the argument is the ontological status of the image in these different philosophical and psychological traditions. In particular, image is seen as an encapsulation of coming into being, or what Bergson terms durée. To feel film is to engage with its therapeutic capacity to bring us into being. In the consulting room and in the cinema, this process is embodied and in some way created either between client and therapist or viewer and screen. The elusive present moment is the site at which the past permeates the present, creating as it does feeling toned entry into the process of becoming. Jung thought of this as central to individuation and Bergson as central to being. Feeling film from this perspective becomes a way of finding ourselves in both the world of the film and in our individual psyche.

Decolonizing Science, Digitizing the Occult: Theory from the Virtual South

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-104
Author(s):  
Sasha Newell
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Western Science ◽  
The World ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University ◽  
Second World ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

AbstractIn this article Newell uses two case studies to explore one of the central threads of Mbembe’s Abiola lecture, the idea that there is a relationship between the plasticity of digital technology and African cosmologies of the deuxième monde. One case concerns the viral YouTube video #sciencemustfall, in which students at the University of Cape Town criticize “Western” science and demand that African forms of knowledge such as witchcraft be incorporated into the meaning of science. The second case considers fieldwork among the brouteurs of Côte d’Ivoire, internet scammers who build intimate relationships on false premises using social media. They acquire shocking amounts of wealth in this way which they display on their own social media accounts. However, they are said to use occult means to seduce and persuade their virtual lovers, trapping their prey in the sticky allure of the world wide web. Newell uses both examples to highlight the overlaps between the transformational efficacies embedded in both occult ontologies and digital worldings, calling for the possibility of using African cosmologies of the second world to produce a ‘theory from the south’ of virtual sociality.

Aesthetics of the presence of women in Afghan cinema

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbas Mohammadi
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Positive View ◽  
The World ◽  
Human World ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
The 19Th Century

Cinema consists of two different dimensions of art and instrument. A tool that mixes with art and represents society in which anything can be depicted for others. But art has always sought to portray the beauties of this universe. The beauty that lies within philosophy. Since the advent of human beings, men have always sought to dominate and abuse women for their own benefit. In the 19th century, cinema entered the realm of existence and found its place in the human world. With the empowerment of cinema in the world, filmmakers tried to achieve their goals by using this tool.Many filmmakers use women as a propaganda tool to attract a male audience. In many films, when the hero of a movie succeeds in reaching a woman, or in doing so, she is succeeded by a woman. In this way, of course, women themselves are not faultless and have helped men abuse women. Afghanistan, a traditional and male-dominated country, has not been the exception, and in many Afghan films women have been instrumental zed and used in various ways to benefit men, and we have seen fewer films in which women be a movie hero or a woman in a movie like a man. This kind of treatment of women in Afghan films has caused other young Afghan girls to not have a positive view of Afghan cinema.

Symbolic Macroconcept of the Universe in the Aspect of the First Cognitive Sign in Russian Linguoculture

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-101
Author(s):  
Marina V. Pimenova ◽  
◽  
Aigul A. Bakirova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Part ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
The World ◽  
Symbolic Meanings ◽  
New Type ◽  
Human World ◽  
Internal Volume ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Universe Structure ◽  
The Universe

The article analyzes the cognitive signs of the macroconcept universe in Russian linguoculture. The relevance of the research is determined by the prospect of studying a new type of mental structures - symbolic macroconcepts. The purpose of the article is to describe the specifics of the macroconcept universe structure formation from the standpoint of the definition of syncretic primordial signs. The main methods in the work are the historical and etymological analysis of the studied macroconcept representative, descriptive and interpretive methods. During the study, seven motivating signs of the macroconcept universe were noted: 'earth', 'live', ‘world’，‘inhabit’，‘inhabited’，‘settlement’，‘light’. All identified motivating signs are syncretic symbolic primordial signs 'house' (conceptum, according to V. V. Kolesov). Motivating signs express two main symbolic meanings of Russian linguoculture: home is a place where people live, settle; home is the world of people and all living beings, this world-light (unlike that world-light where the souls of the dead go: that world-light is located in the sky), it is built on earth. The macroconcept universe is objectified by erased metaphors of a closed space (in particular, the metaphor of a key), which has an internal volume, center-middle, limits, parts, edges, corners, people live in this house, they live and exist in it, it is inhabited and settle down in Russian linguoculture. The model of the universe in the Russian language picture of the world is three-parted: the middle part in it represents the human world, in which the principle of anthropocentrism is manifested - a person measures space and chooses himself as a reference point. The syncretic primary sign ‘house’ unites in itself all the motivating signs of the studied macroconcept, keeping their relevance to our days. Keywords: macroconcept, motivating signs, first sign, language picture of the world, linguoculture, comparative studies

Cultural and communicative formulae as a reflection of the concepts of culture as an expression of the spiritual content of civilizations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nataliya Alekseevna Zavyalova
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Educational Institution ◽  
Cultural Codes ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Standards ◽  
Human World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Similarity And Difference ◽  
And Behavior

The analysis of civilizational pictures of the world through the prism of linguistic universals allows one to reveal the general and the particular in the «human — world» system, which contributes to a more complete understanding of their cultural semantics. Cultural standards vary across civilizations. Their description on the material of multi-structural, genetically heterogeneous languages, civilizations and cultures makes it possible to reveal the common foundations of people's social life despite the fact that their cultural codes are different, often creating the impression of a complete incompatibility of the thinking and behavior of their representatives. Therefore, studies based on the description of fundamentally dissimilar civilizations and cultures, demonstrating the groundlessness of such impressions, are relevant. The article examines cultural and communicative formulae as a reflection of the civilizational pictures of the world. Cultural and communicative formulae (CCF) are defined by the author as the simplest, stable, high-frequency units of culture used at all levels of social and cultural life, which, being a combination of signs, compactly represent the culture in its similarity and difference with other cultures and make it possible to establish a dialogue of cultures in minimum of data involved. CCF provide communication through verbal forms of language, gestures, styles, etc., i.e. through all cultural forms that can be translated into signs of a given culture and are sufficient to have a minimal idea of it. The article examines the CCF using the example of concise verbal forms belonging to folk speech, which include proverbs and sayings, «winged words», precedent phrases that are a component of the civilizational picture of the world. The materials of the article may be of interest for preparation at the higher educational institution in the framework of the fields of «Linguistics», «International relations» and «Culturology».

The Detraditionalization of Intimacy Reconsidered

2005 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Gross
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sexual Intimacy ◽  
Moral Communities ◽  
Cultural Frameworks ◽  
The World ◽  
Relative Decline ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
The U.S

This essay challenges those strains of contemporary social theory that regard romantic/ sexual intimacy as a premier site of detraditionalization in the late modern era. Striking changes have occurred in intimacy and family life over the last half-century, but the notion of detraditionalization as currently formulated does not capture them very well. With the goal of achieving a more refined understanding, the article proposes a distinction between “regulative” and “meaning-constitutive” traditions. The former involve threats of exclusion from various moral communities; the latter involve linguistic and cultural frameworks within which sense is made of the world. Focusing on the U.S. case and marshaling various kinds of empirical evidence, the article argues that while the regulative tradition of what it terms lifelong, internally stratified marriage has declined in strength in recent years, the image of the form of couplehood inscribed in this regulative tradition continues to function as a hegemonic ideal in many American intimate relationships. Intimacy in the United States also remains beholden to the tradition of romantic love. That these meaning-constitutive traditions continue to play a central role in structuring contemporary intimacy suggests that detraditionalization involves the relative decline only of certain regulative traditions, a point that calls into question some of the normative assessments that often accompany the detraditionalization thesis.

scholarly journals A Global Environmental Constitution for the Anthropocene?

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Kotzé
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Regulatory Reform ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
International Environmental Law ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
The World ◽  
Un General Assembly

AbstractInternational environmental law (IEL) has been unable to respond effectively to the Anthropocene’s global socio-ecological crisis, which is critically existential and requires radical interventions and regulatory reform. This article explores the potential of the recent United Nations (UN)-backed initiative to adopt a Global Pact for the Environment as an opportunity to reform IEL. It does so by (i) reflecting on the Anthropocene’s demands for a constitutionalized form of IEL through the lens of global environmental constitutionalism; (ii) investigating the extent to which the Global Pact could contribute to such a vision; and (iii) suggesting ways in which to strengthen the constitutional potential of the Global Pact in this endeavour. To this end, the article revisits the World Charter for Nature of 1982, which seems to have slipped off the radar in academic as well as policy circles. A case is made for renewed support of the Charter – which already enjoys the backing of the majority of UN General Assembly member states, and which has constitutional qualities – to serve as a ‘best-practice’ example during the ensuing negotiation of the Global Pact.

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