scholarly journals SQUATTING OUTSIDE THE WORLD: NOTES FOR AN ARCHITECTURE OF ETHICS

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-209
Author(s):  
Steven Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Human Presence ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Mind takes place in the world, and that matters. We are bodies among bodies, and, no matter what we think, what we do is a matter of where. And thinking about where is a problem for architecture. Richard Luecke’s pithy summary of Aristotle’s Politics was that we go to the city to live but stay to live the good life. The interplay of going and staying takes up a critical theme of Aristotle’s work. To understand the world, he said, we must understand both motion and stasis – not the going alone but the staying that takes place in the middle of it. Luecke took up William James’s figure of perchings in the flight of a bird and put it to work in thinking about cities. The city is a perch for the winged thing we are. To understand our flight, we must also attend to our perching. Aristotle speaks of the city as a place to go and a place to stay, but he also speaks of it as a koinonia turned toward good. That marks it as being human. Aristotle directs our attention to the necessity of the city (we go to live) and to its good (we stay to live the good life). But the staying, the dwelling, is understood within a structure of action: the good is that toward which all things aim. Dwelling, still, we turn. Which qualifies the going, because we are political animals. Going to the city to live, we go nowhere other than where we are. The city is the form of human presence.

Ecocritique and Anecdote

2020 ◽  
pp. 11-48
Author(s):  
Sean Cubitt
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Living Well ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Notion

Section 1 starts by considering the central notion of this book: a “ecocritique”. The ecocritique recognises that the good life for all includes the well-being of the world we are involved in at every level from the cellular to the cosmic. It is all encompassing. Section 1 then considers how the term “anecdote” relates to ecocritique. Anecdotes provide a peculiarly powerful tool for finding out the meaning of living well, as well as the answering the oft-asked question: who is this “we”? The beauty of anecdotes is that they operate in a non-contemporaneous time. They operate equally well in the past, present, and future. A primary political and ecocritical task of anecdotal method, therefore, is to recognise this hybrid temporality, and to free and maintain its capacity to generate new futures and new pasts.

Holding the Center

2012 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-255
Author(s):  
Michan Andrew Connor
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Central City ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
The City

Early television shows that focused on Los Angeles as subject, such as The City at Night (KTLA) and Jack Linkletter's On the Go (CBS), assured white, middle-class, suburban viewers that they had a place in the larger metropolis by presenting a selective knowledge of its features and issues. On the Go surpassed the entertainment level of The City at Night to address some serious social issues. By the mid-sixties, suburbanization had been fully embraced as the "good life." Shows such as Ralph Story's Los Angeles (KNXT), instead of engaging suburban viewers in metropolitan issues, entertained them with glimpses of the city's "oddities." The change in tone marked the passing of the center of cultural identity from the central city to the suburbs.

Vigilantism in Comparative Perspective

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Abrahams
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Twilight Zone ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
The World ◽  
Thing In Itself

Vigilantes have arisen at many times in different regions of the world, taking the law into their own hands as defenders, often by force, of their view of the good life against those they see to be its enemies. They have a strong attraction for some commentators and they rouse equally strong hostility in others. For yet others, who attempt to take a broader view, they are a source of deep ambivalence. Academic interest in the phenomenon has grown strongly over recent years, and this has contributed significantly to an increase in knowledge of its distribution beyond the bounds of western Europe, the United States, and particularly in many parts of Africa. Although vigilantes are most commonly male, increased evidence of women’s vigilantism has also come to light in recent years. Vigilantism is difficult to define in rigorous terms, partly because of general problems of comparative study, but there are also special reasons in this case. Vigilantism is not so much a thing in itself as a fundamentally relational phenomenon which only makes sense in relation to the formal institutions of the state. It is in several ways a frontier phenomenon, occupying an awkward borderland between law and illegality. Many of its manifestations are short-lived and unstable, nor is it always what it claims to be. For these reasons, definitions of vigilantism are best treated as an “ideal type,” which real cases may be expected to approximate to or depart from. This approach provides the possibility of comparing different cases of vigilantism and also allows one to explore the differences and similarities between it and other “dwellers in the twilight zone,” such as social bandits, mafias, guerrillas, and resistance movements.

Seeing Clearly

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bommarito
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Peace Of Mind ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
Practical Guidance ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Basic Ideas

Many of us, even on our happiest days, struggle to quiet the constant buzz of anxiety in the background of our minds. All kinds of worries—worries about losing people and things, worries about how we seem to others—keep us from peace of mind. Distracted or misled by our preoccupations, misconceptions, and, most of all, our obsession with ourselves, we do not see the world clearly—we do not see the world as it really is. In our search for happiness and the good life, this is the main problem. But luckily there is a solution, and on the path to understanding it, we can make use of the rich and varied teachings that have developed over centuries of Buddhist thought. This book explores the central elements of centuries of Buddhist philosophy and practice, explaining how they can improve life and teach us how to live without fear. Mining important texts and lessons for practical guidance, it provides a guide to the very practical goals that underpin Buddhist philosophy. After laying out the basic ideas, the text walks readers through a wide range of techniques and practices we can adopt to mend ingrained habits.

“Despite the contradictions”

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-194
Author(s):  
Christine Jeske
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Racial Inequalities ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Narrative

This chapter offers closing thoughts that reiterate and summarizes the main points of the book. The chapter explores the ways people make a careful survey of their situation and work out a method to yield growth despite life's contradictions and pressures. If their lives look at times like wind-torn shrubs, that does not mean that they are poorly adapted or lethargic. Instead, it offers evidence of the hard work it takes to thrive in a world where the good life is hard to find. It shows that a dominant myth blaming inequality on laziness has guided, upheld, and justified racial inequalities in South Africa and the world since the earliest mercantile and colonial encounters between Europeans and Africans, and this narrative was never eradicated, despite antislavery, civil rights, and anti-apartheid movements that achieved important legal and structural changes. The struggle to change this social narrative is an unglorified resistance with no clear ending point, but it is essential to the pursuit of the good life. It also shows evidence that in order to generate employment while aiming for the higher goal of seeking good, South Africa must address the history of antiblack disrespect that perpetuates dysfunctional employment structures. The people described in this book refuse to conform to narratives of inevitable happy endings or easy hope, but neither do their stories end only in despair.

Salo, the Ukrainian Pork Fat: Shrugs, Jokelore, and the “Six-Fingered”

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 102-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina Kollegaeva
Keyword(s):  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Contested Space ◽  
The World ◽  
Pork Fat

Salo—cured pork fat—is considered to be the quintessential national dish in Ukraine. This article is an ethnographic exploration of how salo has become a contested space where wider anxieties over the industrialization of food and Ukrainian identity are played out. Russian jokes about Ukrainians and their love for salo highlight the complex relationship between the countries. A certain shrug with which many Ukrainians respond when asked about their “national” dish articulates how ambiguous they see their place in the world: not wanting to be labeled as folksy and peasant-like at the periphery of Europe, but still seeing salo as a marker of the good life that could unite the contending parts of the country. The Museum of Salo employs salo to reimagine Ukrainian identity as cosmopolitan, ironic, and “European.”

A Sense of Style

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-250
Author(s):  
David Bentley Hart ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Modern Development ◽  
Imitation Of Christ ◽  
The World ◽  
Conception Of The Good

This essay addresses the alienation of aesthetics from ethics in the context of modernity. In examining the modern development of moral theory, it offers a critique of the dominant trends within that tradition, arguing that the result is a fragmented and disordered conception of the good life. Christian ethics, grounded in a conception of the beauty of God’s being as a disclosure of the true good, can reaffirm the connection between ethics and aesthetics, that beauty is not simply a matter of inward reflection but also of action toward the world, which gives content to moral life. Christian ethics ultimately requires a “sense of style” through which we are attracted to a life lived in imitation of Christ, and through which our conceptions of virtue are grounded in a desire to act in such a way as to manifest God’s beauty before the world.

scholarly journals Paradox in Plato's ‘Phaedrus’

1982 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 64-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Margaret Mackenzie
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Good Life ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Verbal Content ◽  
The Way

A paradox is like a pun. It is also like a Delphic oracle. For in all three cases, we escape puzzlement, or spoil the joke, when we interpret, when we follow the tracks of the words and disentangle their meaning. So paradoxes are about words - either about the relation between one word and another, or about the relation between words and the world; and the punch of the paradox is delivered by its verbal content. Thus it is characteristic of a good paradox that its verbal content is vicious: paradoxes are very often self-referential, such as ‘Please ignore this notice’.Paradoxes may be classified according to two main types. Firstly, there are the innocuous paradoxes which tell - or point the way to - a surprising truth. The Socratic Paradoxes, for example, are paradoxical because to say ‘No-one does wrong willingly’ is to contradict the phenomena. But deeper reflection upon Socrates' moral psychology and his account of the good life, might make us concede the truth of his dictum. Certainly it is Socrates' view that we all hold beliefs that entail his thesis. Similarly Heracleitus tells the truth that we cannot step into the same (in all respects) river twice; although if we concede that the waters may flow without damaging the identity of the river, what he says is false. Thus ordinary paradoxes tend to have two faces - their initial, paradoxical one, where they appear false, and their truth, apparent upon reflection.

scholarly journals Gerakan Anti-Globalisasi dan Pengaruhnya terhadap Perkembangan Demokratisasi di Indonesia

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Havidz Ageng Prakoso ◽  
Ahmad Juhairi
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Multinational Corporation ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World

AbstrakGlobalisasi, dalam klaim para globalis, akan membawa kehidupan demokratis ke seluruh dunia sebagai wujud kehidupan yang paling baik. Namun kenyataannya justru sangat kontradiktif, globalisasi telah menciptakan kekuasaan-kekuasaan global yang bersifat  otoriter-oligarkis melalui Lembaga-Lembaga Keuangan Internasional dan Perusahaan-Perusahaan Multinasional yang bekerja sama dengan negara-negara kaya. Karena itu, yang berdaulat dalam era globalisasi bukanlah rakyat sebagaimana dikehendaki demokratisasi, tetapi korporasi-korporasi internasional dan lembaga-lembaga keuangan internasional. Ada dua perspektif yang dapat menjelaskan hubungan demokratisasi dan gerakan anti-globalisasi, yaitu: perspektif anti- globalisasi dan perspektif demokratisasi. Anti-globalisasi adalah sebuah ideologi perlawanan untuk mengakhiri kekuatan korporasi multinasional, IMF, Bank Dunia, dan WTO sebagai instrumen kesepakatan global untuk pertumbuhan ekonomi. Sedangkan demokratisasi adalah realitas faktual perluasan demokrasi sebagai solusi bagi penciptaan kehidupan manusia yang lebih adil dan sejahtera. Gerakan Anti-Globalisasi lahir sebagai koreksi besar terhadap klaim para globalis. Gerakan ini menghendaki terwujudnya demokratisasi yang seutuhnya, yaitu, terwujudnya kedaulatan rakyat yang telah hilang akibat globalisasi dan terpenuhinya kesejahteraan sosial-ekonomi rakyat dan terjaminnya hak-hak sipil mereka.Kata Kunci: Anti-Globalisasi, Demokratisasi, Gerakan AbstractGlobalization in Globalist claim will make the better life in the world. But, in fact the reality is difference because globalization was made the dominance actors in the world which authoritarian-oligarchy like international financial organizations and multinational corporations in cooperation with developed countries. Therefore, in globalization era the sovereignty is always in international financial organizations and Multinational corporation hand, not in the society like what in democratization perspective. There are two prespectives explain about the relation between democratization and anti-globalization movement that is democratization perspective and anti-globalization perspective. Anti-globalization is the ideology which describe the opponent movement to finished the hegemony of Multinational Corporations, IMF, World Bank and WTO in economy consensus. Democratization in the other hand is the reality which explain that the enlargement of democracy is the solution to make the good life for peoples in the world. Anti-globalization movement is born as the correction to globalist claim. This movement has the purposes to make the sovereignty over the peoples which lost because of the globalization and in the other hand to fulfill their social welfare and civil right.Key Words: Anti-Globalization, Democratization, Movement

scholarly journals Confucian Harmony in Dialogue with African Harmony: A Response

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenyang Li
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Central Place ◽  
African Philosophy ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Confucian Philosophy ◽  
Equal Split

Engaging in dialogue with African philosophy, I respond to questions raised by Thaddeus Metz on characteristics of Confucian philosophy in comparison with African philosophy. First, in both Confucian philosophy and African philosophy, harmony/harmonization and self-realization coincide in the process of person-making. Second, Confucians accept that sometimes it is inevitable to sacrifice individual components in order to achieve or maintain harmony at large scales; the point is how to minimize such costs. Third, Confucians give family love a central place in the good life before extend love to the rest of the world. Fourth, the Confucian philosophy of gender equality is based on appropriate division of labor consistent with its yin-yang philosophy, rather than equal split of power in the family. Fifth, in the Confucian view, hierarchy and harmony do not necessarily contradict each other, though hierarchy is not essential to all forms of harmony. The two can co-exist.

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