Introduction

1991 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Keyword(s):  
Way Of Life ◽  
Loving Kindness ◽  
Moses Maimonides ◽  
The World ◽  
Virtuous Life ◽  
Active Intellect ◽  
Guide Of The Perplexed ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Ideal

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Moses Maimonides’ discourse. Was the ideal of human perfection theoretical or practical? For Maimonides, it appears, the ultimate vision vouchsafed man is not a union with the active intellect, nor with the spiritual forms; it is contemplation of God’s governance in the world, of the orderly structure of the universe. True human perfection, then, is achieving, according to one’s capacity, apprehension of God and knowledge of his providence as expressed in creation and in his governance of the world. Having attained this apprehension, the way of life of this person will be assimilation to divine actions, and this comes about by always pursuing loving-kindness, righteousness, and judgement. Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed ends on this motif of assimilation to divine actions. Representing contrasting viewpoints and interpretations, this book discusses the contrast between Maimonides’ ideal of human perfection as intellectual fulfilment achieved in solitude and his extolling a virtuous life pursued within society.

Introduction: The Veil

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Harris
Keyword(s):  
Professional Autonomy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Specialized Training ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Dinner Party ◽  
The World ◽  
Technical Material ◽  
The Veil

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book is about how it feels to live a mathematician's double life: one life within this framework of professional autonomy, answerable only to their colleagues, and the other life in the world at large. It is written for readers without specialized training, which means it is primarily an account of mathematics as a way of life. Technical material is introduced only when it serves to illustrate a point and, as far as possible, only at the level of dinner-party conversation. The reader is warned at the outset that the author's objective is not to arrive at definitive conclusions but rather to elaborate on what Herbert Mehrtens calls “the usual answer to the question of what mathematics is,” namely, by pointing: “This is how one does mathematics.”

scholarly journals The Rights of Pastoralist Peoples. A Framework for their Recognition in International Law

2016 ◽  
pp. 83-107
Author(s):  
Miguel Ángel Martín López
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Ideal Situation ◽  
Specific Category ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law ◽  
Access Rights ◽  
The Ideal

Pastoralists are one of the most poverty stricken and underdeveloped existing human groups in the world. Until now, having remained practically invisible in the eyes of international law, it is desirable to open a debate concerning the recognition of their rights. The ideal situation would be to create a specific category of rights dedicated expressly to these pastoralist peoples. Therefore, one can surmise that there are two laws that constitute its essential content: the law protecting their way of life and their access rights to the land

scholarly journals Moses Maimonides on Job's Happiness and the Riddle of Divine Transcendence

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 125-141
Author(s):  
N. Verbin
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
The Third ◽  
Moses Maimonides ◽  
The World ◽  
Divine Transcendence ◽  
Guide Of The Perplexed

The paper explores the nature and role of divine transcendence in Maimonides by focusing on the figure of Job as he is understood by him. In the first part, I discuss Maimonides’ diagnosis of Job’s suffering. In the second, I focus on Maimonides’ analysis of the nature of its defeat, and the manners in which that defeat involves the mediation of divine transcendence and hiddenness. In the third, I discuss some of the difficulties involved within the picture presented in the second part, namely, Maimonides’ seeming commitment to two incompatible conceptions of divine transcendence. I argue that the incompatible accounts need not be harmonized since the Guide of the Perplexed is not a textbook that attempts to provide a doctrine concerning the nature of divine transcendence and its relation to the world. Rather, its purpose is to present a riddle, the great riddle of divine transcendence, around which Jewish life, as he understands it, is built. This riddle, for Maimonides, cannot be solved or dissolved; rather, it has to be recognized and embraced.

Сolor and Space in the Traditional Сulture of the Оirats of Мongolia and the Kalmyks of Russia

Secreta Artis ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 86-95
Author(s):  
Svetlana G. Batyreva ◽  
Damdin Gantulga
Keyword(s):  
Close Contact ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Border Culture ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Nomadic Life ◽  
Heaven And Earth ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Vast Area

The traditional culture of homo mobilis has been the subject matter of research both in Russia and abroad. It is the nomadic way of life, largely of the past, that has come into the focus of scholars. This applies, in particular, to Kalmyks, the heirs of the Oirats, who came in the 17th century from Western Mongolia to the steppes of the Northern Caspian region. Nomadic herders explored and developed a vast area resorting to the traditional form of farming. Thousands of years in the constant movement of nomadic life and close linkages with the natural environment affected not only their way of living, but also their cosmovisions, i. e. perceptions of the world. From the point of view of nomads, the “middle world” (the world of people) exists in close contact with heaven and earth. Heaven is the founding father, the creator of all things, the source of everything that happens on earth. This image of the world is associated with a dialectical idea of the mutually exclusive and complementary phenomena of arga and bilig. The philosophical teaching of the Mongols, arga-bilig, extends to the traditional symbolism of color, which expresses ideas about interrelation between the Universe and a Man. The artistic embodiment of religious and philosophical ideas, developed in detail within the worldview of the Oirats of Mongolia, has been further elaborated in the cross-border culture of the Kalmyks of Russia. They preserved and transformed the traditional symbolism of color and space. Comparative analysis of artistic traditions accompanied by the usage of methodologies of history, ethnocultural studies, art history and philosophy enables one to identify the common and different between the cultures of the Oirats of Mongolia and the Kalmyks of Russia.

Pythagoreanism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hermann S. Schibli
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Cosmological Context ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Structural Principles ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Universe

Pythagoreanism refers to a Greek religious-philosophical movement that originated with Pythagoras in the sixth century bc. Although Pythagoreanism in its historical development embraced a wide range of interests in politics, mysticism, music, mathematics and astronomy, the common denominator remained a general adherence among Pythagoreans to the name of the founder and his religious beliefs. Pythagoras taught the immortality and transmigration of the soul (reincarnation) and recommended a way of life that through ascetic practices, dietary rules and ethical conduct promised to purify the soul and bring it into harmony with the surrounding universe. Thereby the soul would become godlike since Pythagoras believed that the cosmos, in view of its orderly and harmonious workings and structure, was divine. Pythagoreanism thus has from its beginnings a cosmological context that saw further evolution along mathematical lines in the succeeding centuries. Pythagorean philosophers, drawing on musical theories that may go back to Pythagoras, expressed the harmony of the universe in terms of numerical relations and possibly even claimed that things are numbers. Notwithstanding a certain confusion in Pythagorean number philosophy between abstract and concrete, Pythagoreanism represents a valid attempt, outstanding in early Greek philosophy, to explain the world by formal, structural principles. Overall, the combination of religious, philosophical and mathematical speculations that characterizes Pythagoreanism exercised a significant influence on Greek thinkers, notably on Plato and his immediate successors as well as those Platonic philosophers known as Neo-Pythagoreans and Neoplatonists.

Survey of the Active Intellect in Transcendent Theosophy

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 139-163
Author(s):  
Maryam Salem ◽  
Maryam Kheradmand
Keyword(s):  
General View ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
The World ◽  
Active Intellect ◽  
The Universe

Mull? ?adr? (1572–1640) can, as we will argue in this article, be considered the greatest philosopher in Islamic world, because he has tried to eliminate the shortcomings of all previous schools. He claimed that man unites with the Active Intellect in the process of his intellectual perception, which is the highest perceptive status of the soul. This union, in its intense form, dissolves the human soul in the Active Intellect. In this theory, Mull? ?adr? assimilates some specific principles which belong only to what Seyyed Hossein Nasr has defined as Transcendent Theosophy: the primacy of existence, graded unity of being, substantial motion, the evolutional motion of the soul in all perceptive steps, the unity of the intellect, the intelligent, and the intellegible and identity of knowledge and being. Since the Active Intellect is the archetype of humanity from Mull? ?adr?’s view, i.e. among the horizontal intellects or the same Platonic Ideas, and there is no plurality in the world of intellect, the main problem raised is how an Active Intellect is distinguished from other intellects, and the human soul is united with and eventually destroyed. Hence, Mull? ?adr?, in his theory of expanded emanation, envisages that the plurality of the universe is due to the quiddity, which is an ideational (?i?tib?ri) thing. Thus, according to him, we can say that the plurality of the world of the intellect is subjective and comes to the fore to justify the relation of God to the world of pluralities; so the theory of intellects is based on the substantive and natural view into the universe, which is the general view of the philosophers; however, the theory of expanded emanation is a particular view of Mull? ?adr?, which is in full harmony with important philosophical foundations of him. The present study tries to explain these issues through Mull? ?adr?’s texts.

scholarly journals Budaya Petung Dalam Masyarakat Jawa : Kajian Antropologi

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-280
Author(s):  
PANA PRAMULIA
Keyword(s):  
Way Of Life ◽  
The People ◽  
Living Things ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Life Behavior

Javanese society is identical with mysticism. Everything that Javanese people do cannot be separated from the physical and metaphysical worlds. The physical and metaphysical worlds are interrelated, as these would form harmony of life between living beings and God. The harmony built by the Javanese community is not only for the people, but also for the whole living things in the world. That is what the Javanese community call the bebrayan agung. One of the patterns carried out by Javanese people to lead a bebrayan agung is by practicing the culture of petung. This culture is not only a calculation of life behavior, but also as a dialectic between humans and fate and the universe. Many people perceive that petung culture is only a prophecy, but in fact, it teaches wisdom ​​as a way of life. This is due to that the culture of Petung or Petungan in Javanese society is closely related to birthdays, pasaran, and neptu. All of these have to do with birth, sustenance, matchmaking, illness, and death. In short, everything is strung together based on the standard calculations contained in the primbon and the Javanese calendar. In this regard, Petung culture is a mathematical civilization technology that uses calculations of numbers in the Javanese calendar.This study, therefore, is focused on exploring the culture of petung in Javanese society framed within the anthropological analysis.

The Lyre and the Cloak

2020 ◽  
pp. 243-276
Author(s):  
Emma Gee
Keyword(s):  
Ideal World ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Complete Synthesis ◽  
The World ◽  
Spherical Universe ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter studies Plato’s Phaedo. In the Phaedo, the afterlife journey and the synoptic vision of the universe are collapsed into one another. In the myth of the dialogue, we are all, all the time, said to be on an underworld journey, since we live in the “creases” of the earth, not on its surface. At the same time, the True Earth of the Phaedo mirrors in its shape the spherical universe of the vision, as we also see it in the Spindle of Necessity in Plato’s Republic, and in the flight of souls around the universe in Plato’s Phaedrus. The Phaedo is a true geography of soul, in that the fate of the soul is integrated with the shape and motive forces of the earth seen as a whole. What we have in the Phaedo is a complete synthesis of the mythical underworld with the “geographic” earth. Tartarus (Phaedo 111e7–112e3) is the lowest point of the world, but it is also the center of the sphere. The result of Plato’s assimilation of the underworld, the landscape of the soul, with the “scientific” earth, is that earth and soul become analogous. They can be studied in the same way. In the ideal world, the universe itself is our eschatology.

God of Abraham, God of Aristotle: Soloveitchik’s Reading of The Guide of the Perplexed

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-232
Author(s):  
Alex Sztuden
Keyword(s):  
Classic Work ◽  
Loving Kindness ◽  
The World ◽  
Jewish Philosophy ◽  
Long Course ◽  
Fundamental Insight ◽  
Guide Of The Perplexed ◽  
Working Out ◽  
New View

Abstract R. Joseph Soloveitchik’s profound engagement with The Guide of the Perplexed is amply attested by Lawrence Kaplan’s recent publication of Soloveitchik’s lectures on this classic work of Jewish philosophy, delivered in 1950–1951 during a year-long course on the Guide. Soloveitchik’s reading is situated outside the boundaries of the Guide’s usual interpretations, and his lectures offer an entirely new view of the essence of the Guide. For Maimonides, hesed, or loving-kindness, is the foundation of the world. Soloveitchik’s lectures offer an elaborate working out of this fundamental insight.

scholarly journals RUSSIAN OPINION ON THE KAZAKH ISSUE. WAY OF LIFE AND EXISTENCE IN THE STORY «WHITE CELESTIAL BUTTERFLIES» BY R. OTARBAYEV

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (80) ◽  
pp. 75-80
Author(s):  
M.A. Dudareva ◽  
◽  
V.V. Nikitina
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
National Image ◽  
National Space ◽  
Primary Element ◽  
The World ◽  
Training Courses ◽  
Cis Countries ◽  
The Universe

The research object is the Kazakh national image of the world, namely the Kazakh people’s idea of the life and death. The research subject is the symbolic meaning of the story “White Celestial Butterflies” from the cycle “Gifts from China” by Rakhimzhan Otarbayev. The research material is the artistic legacy of the modern Kazakh writer. The ethos of life and death in the story are hermeneutically reconstructed. Much attention is paid to the folklore and Sufi traditions in the literary work, which were expressed both explicitly and implicitly. The research methodology is reduced to a holistic ontohermeneutic analysis aimed at highlighting the folklore, ethnographic paradigm of the literary text. Much attention is paid to the musical code in the story, since in Kazakh culture, music is the primary element from which the universe, the world tree emerges. Parallels are drawn with the Russian national space, in which one of the leading codes, national constants is also a tree embodying the functions of the world axis. The research results are in identifying the cultural potential of the story by the modern Kazakh writer for further research on the national topic of Kazakhstan. The results can also be used in training courses on the culture and literature of the peoples of Russia and the CIS countries, culturology, philosophy.

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