scholarly journals The rhetorical purpose of Israel's notion of the 'whole body' as the ideal body in the psalms: A comparative study of selected psalms from four different genres

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelius J.J. Wessels ◽  
Johan H. Coetzee

The authors of the psalms implemented body rhetoric, especially the notion of the �whole body� as the ideal body, in the various genres of psalms, with specific purposes in mind. The whole body as ideal body served as a defining paradigm within the ancient Israelite culture. In this article, the relationship between the embodied God-concept, the ideal societal body and the individual body is investigated in order to determine the purpose of the implementation of this ideology of whole-bodiedness in selected psalm genres. In Psalm 2, the political body as cultural construct plays a prominent role in directing the individual to think of the body in a specific manner. In Psalm 6, the �broken body� drives the lamentation of the psalmist towards recovery. Psalm 29 reflects the poet�s ability to sketch, in hymnic-embodied language, God�s relationship with his creation and his people and the poet�s worship for God�s fullness of existence and activity. Psalm 32, as a psalm of thanksgiving, pictures God as the whole body in terms of the saviour, protector and healer of the broken (sinful) body.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1354067X2110040
Author(s):  
Josefine Dilling ◽  
Anders Petersen

In this article, we argue that certain behaviour connected to the attempt to attain contemporary female body ideals in Denmark can be understood as an act of achievement and, thus, as an embodiment of the culture of achievement, as it is characterised in Præstationssamfundet, written by the Danish sociologist Anders Petersen (2016) Hans Reitzels Forlag . Arguing from cultural psychological and sociological standpoints, this article examines how the human body functions as a mediational tool in different ways from which the individual communicates both moral and aesthetic sociocultural ideals and values. Complex processes of embodiment, we argue, can be described with different levels of internalisation, externalisation and materialisation, where the body functions as a central mediator. Analysing the findings from a qualitative experimental study on contemporary body ideals carried out by the Danish psychologists Josefine Dilling and Maja Trillingsgaard, this article seeks to anchor such theoretical claims in central empirical findings. The main conclusions from the study are used to structure the article and build arguments on how expectations and ideals expressed in an achievement society become embodied.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-125
Author(s):  
Sreedeep Bhattacharya

The article addresses how popular imageries of ideal body types and their circulation inspires the construction of similar body ideals to be achieved through body work, body care and body control. While demonstrating a composite relationship between the ‘image’ and the ‘body’, it renders the interdependency and inseparability of these two entities, capturing the dual process of consuming images of the ideal body and transforming body into images for consumption. The article also advances a theoretical model of image–body unification in contemporary India. Citing a wide range of visual representations of the body/image, the article illustrates how the imageries of the ideal body type are often negotiated through body work, and how the worked-out body is then converted to similar body-image for circulation, thereby creating replicas of predominant ideal types and inspiring the production of bodies and images that are identical to that type. The article situates such practices of image production, circulation and emulation within the larger context of greater levels of tolerance, acceptance and dissemination of the eroticised body. It is argued that the acceptance of the eroticised body as lifestyle choice is an integral part of a larger global visual trend. The erosion of the stigma against representation of the body as a legitimate site of pleasure determines our temporal identities by inviting us to participate in the articulation of the desiring self through image-conscious bodies and through images that make the body more desirable.


2008 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alec Basson

AbstractThe book of Job recounts the story of an individual who grapples with the enigma of suffering. In addition to his personal loss, the supplicant's body also comes under attack. Furthermore, the physical distress experienced by Job is exacerbated by the attitude of his kinsmen. His disintegrated body has lead to severed social relations. Given the fact that the body mediates the plaintiff's involvement in society and represented social unity in ancient Israel, Job longs for a whole body as the ideal body image. The ancient Israelites only regarded the whole body as pure, real and acceptable. This contribution argues that to appreciate fully the allusions to bodily degeneration in the book of Job, the importance of wholeness of the physical body in ancient Israel and the impact it had on the socio-religious structure should be taken into account.


Neophilology ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 530-540
Author(s):  
Elena O. Sycheva ◽  
Anatoly А. Serebryakov

The work is devoted to the study of F.M. Dostoevsky’s aesthetics, in particular, the writer’s aesthetic ideal. Following Kant, Hegel, and Schiller, the Russian writer considered the ideal in an anthropological aspect. The writer’s aesthetic ideal is a person who synthesizes the moral and spiritual in himself. The idea of moral beauty is expressed in the theoretical thought of the Russian writer. Harmony, comeliness serve only as an outer shell, when moral height appears as the aesthetic ideal of F.M. Dostoevsky. His works strive for this beauty and truth. Following the examples of “positive beauty” of world and domestic literature and art, F.M. Dostoevsky recreated in his works positively beautiful characters. The Russian writer speaks of the duality of beauty, the “two abysses” of the human soul: “Sodom” – low, sinful, connected with the beauty of the body, sensual, and “Madonna” – high, connected with spiritual beauty, a person can combine both. The writer’s aesthetic ideal is turned to spiritual beauty. Of particular interest is the “A Writer’s Diary” by F.M. Dostoevsky. It is in this work that the writer’s idea of the aesthetic ideal clearly expressed. The question of the ideal person is considered in the context of underground (afterlife) life in the story “Bobok” and above-ground space in “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”. In these stories and journalistic texts framing them, the internal dynamics of the writer’s worldview position are revealed: from stating the corruption of the spirit and immortality of the soul (“Bobok”) to the tragic insight of the truth (“A Gentle Creature”) and the affirmation of the “living” image of truth (“The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”). The story explicitly expresses the overcoming of such a painful contradiction between the individual and the general, between a positively beautiful person and society.


Author(s):  
Shofwatul 'Uyun ◽  
Toni Efendi

Classification of human weight can be determined by body mass index. The body mass index can be calculated by dividing the height by the square of the body weight. According to researchers, this is less practical, so it needs to make a tool that can be used to determine ideal body weight more practically. One way is to use an Android smartphone camera. The camera is used to capture the image of the human body. Then the image is processed by using digital image processing and by using certain algorithms, so it may conclude the person's ideal weight category. The data used in this study are human photos, body weight and height. There are four stages to determine the weight and height based on the image. First, performing an analysis of the calculation of the derived formulas. Second, analyzing the edge detection algorithm. Third, conducting unit convertion, and fourth, proposing several algorithms to calculate the height and weight used to determine the ideal body weight. The results of the evaluation show that Algorithm C (measuring the width of an object starting with the height of the image adjusting half of the height of the object in the image) is the best algorithm with deviation value of 1.85% of the height and 8.87% of the weight, while the system accuracy rate in determining the ideal body weight has reached 78.7%. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (14) ◽  
pp. 13-25
Author(s):  
Magali Ollagnier-Beldame

Over the last twenty years, researches within cognitive sciences has massively grown in the field of the ways of knowing. For instance, in recent years, the paradigm of 4-E cognition suggests that cognition involves the whole body, as well as the situation of the body in the environment. This article argues that a first-person approach enriches the understanding of the ways of knowing in their complexity - particularly by seeking to re-question classical dichotomies - through the re-integration of subjective experience. In the heart of first-person epistemology, the micro-phenomenological interview - based on the explicitation interview - consists in “guided retrospective introspections”, and allows to scientifically access subjective experience. This technique relies on the epoché – the suspension of judgement – a process at first investigated by philosophers that was made accessible to psychology to empirically investigate and study subjective experience. How does the epoché happen? What concrete acts make it up? More broadly, what is the relationship between the epoché and embodiment? This paper sheds lights on possible relations between researches describing concrete practices of the Husserlian epoché and Gendlin’s work concerning the process of Focusing, which aims at accessing the inner felt sense of experience. The process of Focusing, is a way of paying attention to one’s being-in-the-world, one’s interaction as it is experienced through the individual (but not separate) body. We will especially consider the process of “clearing a space” that Gendlin describes, as well as the rupture that occurs during the “bodily felt shift” which can be compared to the conversion happening within the process of epoché. Finally, we discuss how our proposition can allow the construction of new models of knowledge processes, the challenge of such a proposal being not only epistemological, but also ethical and societal. KEYWORDS Subjective experience, embodiment, micro-phenomenology, epoché, focusing.


2020 ◽  
pp. 79-112
Author(s):  
Sreedeep Bhattacharya

This chapter concerns itself with the body and the circulation of its image in the consumerist landscape of contemporary India. It argues how the body is constantly under the influence of the ideal body type, which inspires consumers to reconfigure their bodies to emulate the ideal body type. This requires sufficient attention, visibility, disciplining, and display. It also explains how this emulative process reproduces similar body types through work on and care of the body, thus transforming bodies into images for visual consumption. It advances a conceptual model of image–body inseparability and situates such emulative practices within the larger context of erosion of the stigma against the eroticized body in recent times across various platforms of contemporary visual and popular media. The author argues that such stigma has significantly diminished.


Author(s):  
Thomas Fuchs

AbstractAnorexia nervosa is often regarded primarily as a disorder of the body image, with affected individuals submitting themselves to the dictate of a predominant model of slenderness. However, even though this frequently functions as a gateway to the disorder, the paper intends to show that the actual conflict in anorexia consists in a fundamental alienation of the self from the body. In order to analyze this alienation from a phenomenological point of view, the paper introduces the polarity of lived body (body-as-subject) and physical body (body-as-object). It then explores the phenomenology of anorexia, drawing on characteristic self-reports as well as on the phenomenological, psychoanalytic and cultural science literature. The anorexic conflict of embodiment arises in adolescence, where the body becomes an object of the other’s gaze in a special way. Starting with an attempt to comply with the ideal body image, the anorexic patient increasingly fights against her dependency on her body and its uncontrollable nature, above all its hunger and femininity. To be in total control of her body and to gain independence from it, becomes the source of a narcissistic triumph. Thus, in striving for autonomy and perfection, the anorexic patient alienates herself from her embodiment. This results in a radical dualism of ‘mind’ and ‘body’: pursuing the ideal of an asexual, angelic, even disappearing body. Anorexia is thus conceived as a fundamental conflict of embodiment.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Bernardo-Filho ◽  
Danúbia da Cunha de Sá-Caputo ◽  
Adérito Seixas ◽  
Redha Taiar

Bipedalism in humans is associated with an upright spine, however, this condition is not found in other animals with that skill. This may have favored the ability to harness the influence of the gravitational forces on the body. Furthermore, it is suggested that human feet have evolved to facilitate bipedal locomotion, losing an opposable digit that grasped branches in favor of a longitudinal arch that stiffens the foot and aids bipedal gait. Gait is a repetition of sequences of body segments to move the body forward while maintaining balance. The bipedal gait favors the contact of the feet of the individual with the floor. As a result, the mechanical vibration (MV) generated during walking, running or other activity with the feet are, normally, are added to the body. In these various situations, the forces would induce the production of MV with consequent transmission to the whole body of the individual and there is the generation of whole-body vibration (WBV) exercise naturally. However, when a person has a disability, this normal addition of the MV to body does not occur. This also happens with the sedentary or bedridden individual due to illness. In this case, there are the MV yielded in vibrating platforms. The exposure of the individual to the WBV leads to physiological responses at musculoskeletal, neurological, endocrinological, and vascular levels. Considering the state of the art of this theme and the previously cited scientific information, it is plausible to assume that WBV could be a useful tool to be used on the management of individuals with neurological conditions, such as in Parkinson’s disease, stroke, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries, spinocerebellar ataxia and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and neuropathy (diabetes- and chemotherapy-related), among others. Indeed, improvements due to the WBV have been described regarding motor, and other impairments, in patients with neurological conditions, and these approaches will be presented in this chapter.


2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-130
Author(s):  
PJJ Botha

An introduction to aspects of the erotic and sexuality in Greco-Roman antiquity requires some understanding of how people saw their bodies. What is considered  erotic is related to the “ideal” body: sexuality manifests itself as culturally and historically determined. In this article relevant parts of the Greco-Roman cosmology is briefly discussed and concepts of the body analysed before an overview of love relations between women and men is presented. In the final section the shift in views about the body among the early Christians, is specified.


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