scholarly journals “To Act or Not to Act”: Arendt, Hegel, and Shakespeare on Action

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirt Komel
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Starting Point

The contribution links three unusually connected suspects in order to tackle the question of human action, which is eminently at stake not only in the realms of politics and in the field of history, but also in philosophy, and, as a peculiar link between the two, theatre, namely: Hannah Arendt (Human Condition), G.W.F. Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit), and William Shakespeare (Hamlet). And In order to connect all three authors and their respective fields of philosophy, politics, and theatre as regards the particular issue of action, the starting point will be the figure of Achilles as portrayed in Homer’s Iliad.

The moral theology of John Paul II: Protestant reading

2007 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 326-340
Author(s):  
Stephanie Smith
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Human Action ◽  
John Paul Ii ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Analogia Entis ◽  
Social Realm ◽  
Normative Order ◽  
Moral Capacity

AbstractThis work critically examines the moral theology of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II. In his writings as Wojtyla, and later as John Paul II, the theme of human dignity served as the starting point for his moral theology. This article first describes his conception of human dignity as influenced by Thomist and by phenomenological sources. The Thomist philosophy of being provided Wojtyla with an optimistic view of the epistemic and moral capacity of human persons. Wojtyla argued that because of the analogia entis, humans gain epistemic access to the normative order of God as well as the moral capacity to live in accordance with the law of God. Built upon the foundation of his Thomist assumptions, Wojtyla's phenomenological research enriched his insight into human dignity by arguing in favour of the formative nature of human action. He argued that human dignity rested also in this dynamism of personhood: the capacity not only to live in accordance with the normative order but to form oneself as virtuous by partaking in virtuous acts or to form one's community in solidarity through acts of participation and self-giving. After presenting his moral theology, this article then engages critically with his assumptions from a Protestant perspective. I argue that, while human dignity provides a powerful and beneficial starting point for ethics, his Thomist ontology of being/substance and the optimistic terms in which he interprets human dignity ultimately undermine his social programme. I propose that an ontology of relation provides a better starting point for interpreting human dignity and for appealing for acts of solidarity in the social realm.

Public Things, Shared Space, and the Commons

Public Things ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie Honig
Keyword(s):  
Shared Memory ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Public ◽  
Shared Space ◽  
Long Line ◽  
Lincoln Memorial ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
The Human Condition

This epilogue compares the public things model with that of two others, the commons (or undercommons) and shared space. It argues that while all three models respond to the democratic need, public things have their own specific and necessary contribution to make. The Lincoln Memorial is the sort of thing Hannah Arendt has in mind as the basis of shared memory and action in The Human Condition. The commons model identifies the losses caused by dispossession, appropriation, and accumulation, and public things may well look like one more enclosure in a very long line of them. This epilogue discusses the contributions that all three models can make to the project of preventing ever-increasing privatization and promoting justice and equality in contemporary democratic societies.

Human Rights

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rex Honey
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Geographical Research ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Just Society

Scholarship addressing the geography of human rights— the geographical analysis of the ways cultures conceive of justice and understand just behavior—improves both our understanding of human rights and our understanding of geography. A full understanding of struggles over human rights requires a geographical perspective, a consideration of the contexts in which the struggles occur. Conceptualizations of human rights and the abuse of human rights do not just happen. They are the products of human action in particular cultural and environmental settings. They are place-based and socially constructed, products of processes not only tied to place but also altering the significance of place. Human rights scholarship that omits geographical background and geographical consequences misses the target because it fails to capture both the cultural struggles over what a just society is and the milieu of interrelated sites of injustice. If geographical research addressing oppression does not explicitly address human rights, then virtually by definition such work does so implicitly. At its core, human rights scholarship addresses oppression. Hence, such geographical scholarship as the work of Knopp (1997) addressing gay rights and of Monk (1998) addressing women’s rights fits into the scope of the geography of human rights in America. To fulfill its potential as a scholarly discipline examining the human condition, geography needs to focus on human rights. The spotlight of geographic education’s five themes—place, location, region, nature–society relations, movement—should be focused on what truly matters in people’s lives, including human rights. Likewise, the study of human rights, with its vexing examination of rights and wrong, needs the nuanced sensitivity of geography, with its study of cultural and environmental contexts. To wit, geography needs human rights and human rights needs geography. Geographical research that has been done or is in progress explains why. Indeed, the roster of former presidents of the Association of American Geographers contains many individuals whose professional and personal lives were committed to the furtherance of human rights. Among them are such luminaries as Richard Hartshorne, Harold Rose, Gilbert White, Julian Wolpert, and Richard Morrill, each of whom struggled for the advance of human rights in his personal life as well as his scholarly work.

Durkheim, Émile (1858–1917)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Orru
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Empirical Observation ◽  
Social Facts ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One

Émile Durkheim is generally recognized to be one of the founders of sociology as a distinct scientific discipline. Trained as a philosopher, Durkheim identified the central theme of sociology as the emergence and persistence of morality and social solidarity (along with their pathologies) in modern and traditional human societies. His distinctive approach to sociology was to adopt the positivistic method in identifying and explaining social facts – the facts of the moral life. Sociology was to be, in Durkheim’s own words, a science of ethics. Durkheim’s sociology combined a positivistic methodology of research with an idealistic theory of social solidarity. On the one hand, Durkheim forcefully claimed that the empirical observation and analysis of regularities in the social world must be the starting point of the sociological enterprise; on the other hand, he was equally emphatic in claiming that sociological investigation must deal with the ultimate ends of human action – the moral values and goals that guide human conduct and create the essential conditions for social solidarity. Accordingly, in his scholarly writings on the division of labour, on suicide, on education, and on religion, Durkheim sought to identify through empirical evidence the major sources of social solidarity and of the social pathologies that undermine it.

“I Am the One:” A Monist Looks at the Double Death and Life of Rabba bar Naḥmani

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-50
Author(s):  
Michael Baris
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Dual System ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Mode Of Transmission ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Dramatic Narrative ◽  
The One

Abstract The rabbis portray two arenas in which Torah is studied. Above the terrestrial academy of the sages, the Rabbis posit a transcendent, celestial yeshiva. This dual system seems central to the rabbinic doctrine of retribution in a sequential afterlife. In contrast to the standard dualist reading and accepted dogma, I propose a monist’s reading of these aggadic texts, which sees a single arena of human action and endeavor, with multivalent significance. My starting point is the dramatic narrative of the persecution, flight, and ultimate death of one of the leading Talmudic sages, Rabba bar Naḥmani. These esoteric stories go beyond familiar taxonomies as modes of concealment. Not cyphers to be cracked, they offer a nuanced way of thinking about the world, accessible through narrative as an adaptive mode of transmission.

Bounded action: Hannah Arendt on the history of science and the limits of freedom

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-451
Author(s):  
Roni Hirsch
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Professional Community ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Cautionary Tale ◽  
History Writing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post War ◽  
Experimental Scientist

The article asks why and how Hannah Arendt framed The Human Condition as a history of modern science. It answers that, in telling the history of instrumental rationality and the work of the experimental scientist, Arendt accomplished three main things. First, by identifying science as a form of ‘work’ she could demonstrate the significance of her threefold division of human activity into labour, work and action, highlighting the dangers of their indistinction. Second, Arendt used the form of organization typical of scientists – a professional community founded on standards of objectivity – to warn against the substitution of the appearance of publicity for true openness. Finally, she identified the transgression of the boundaries of action as the site where a political community might become visible to itself, taking the unsuccessful attempts of post-war ‘public scientists’ to reckon with their past as a cautionary tale. Her account of modern science thus allows her to define freedom through its dependence on human-made boundaries, politicizing the very act of history-writing.

VULNERABILIDADE E FINITUDE: A ÉTICA DO CUIDADO DO OUTRO

2013 ◽  
Vol 39 (125) ◽  
pp. 433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Newton Aquiles von Zuben
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Care Ethics ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Practical Orientation ◽  
Healthcare Environment ◽  
The Social

A ética do cuidar é uma das perspectivas da ética contemporânea que enfatiza as emoções e as relações humanas, em contraposição à ética da justiça, que privilegia os direitos e os princípios. Este estudo propõe-se apresentar um cenário com as categorias: a corporeidade, na articulação “finitude e transcendência”, e a vulnerabilidade, signos da fragilidade da condição humana. É nesse horizonte de sentido que almeja compreender o significado do cuidar, operando uma ampliação de seu campo semântico para além da prática social vinculada ao âmbito da saúde, podendo assim apresentar-se como uma relevante orientação ética para a ação humana.Abstract: Care ethics is one of the perspectives of contemporary ethics that emphasizes emotions and human relationships in contrast with the so-called ethics of justice, which deals with principles and rights. Through the category of corporeity, as the tension between “finitude and transcendence”, and that of vulnerability, this paper intends to identify signs of the fragility of human condition. The meaning of care-ethics must be comprehended within that horizon of sense, and its semantic field should go beyond the social practice related to the healthcare environment. It is in such a framework that care ethics can present itself as a relevant practical orientation for human action.

Autobiography, Mediated Action, and the Development of Moral Identity

2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark B. Tappan
Keyword(s):  
Identity Development ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Moral Identity ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Mediated Action ◽  
Childhood And Youth ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Identity Continuity ◽  
The Relationship

This paper explores a sociocultural approach to the development of moral identity, by considering the recently published autobiography of Ingo Hasselbach. Hasselbach, the founder (in 1991) of the National Alternative neo-Nazi party in East Germany, writes about his childhood and youth, how and why he embraced the neo-Nazi perspective, and how and why he ultimately repudiated the movement that he had helped to create. The analysis of Hasselbach’s story employs a “mediated action” approach to identity formation (Penuel & Wertsch, 1995; Wertsch, 1998). Such an approach entails taking human action as the starting point for the study of identity development, and understanding that mediated action, rather than an inner sense of identity, continuity, or sameness, provides the primary unit of analysis. In bringing a sociocultural perspective to bear on Hasselbach’s autobiographical narrative, this paper thus highlights the connections that emerge in his autobiography between his changing/developing sense of moral identity and his moral actions and interactions in the world. In so doing, it explores and explicates the relationship between Hasselbach’s moral identity and the sociocultural context in which it develops.

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