scholarly journals The Genealogy of Civilization

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 139-152
Author(s):  
Boštjan Marko Turk
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
The West ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
History Of ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Kingdom Of Yugoslavia ◽  
Present Text

Civilization is a concept that ontologically defines the individual and the communities in which it develops. The most global civilization is the one that has emerged in the West. Civilization is not something static, but an organism that draws its roots from the distant past. In this sense, it is fundamental to answer the question of what are the constitutive elements that define Western civilization. This question only makes sense if it is asked in a historical perspective. In this direction the Freemasonry, A Very Short Introduction is a crucial one. It presents the analysis revealing how the history of freemasonry is related to the evolution of Western identity. It has to be read in the light of Niall Ferguson’s monograph The West and the Rest. The present text does so. The book then brings to light the contribution of the brotherhood to the intellectual habitus of what is called the Judeo-Christian civilization, at the present time still predominant on the Planet. The intellectual apparatus of the Freemasonry, A Very Short Introduction permits to elucidate the history of the masonic movement and its influence on events that seem unconnected and coincidental. Thus, this article tries to explain certain historical turning points in South-Eastern Europe, precisely in the light of the masonic alliances, in particular the case of the Illyrian Provinces and the first Slovenian poet, Valentin Vodnik, and secondly, what concerns the emergence of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which the author of the article defines as the result of the masonic strategy (the Grand Lodge of France and the Grand Orient of France).

Emerson's Atom and the Matter of Suffering

2009 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-47
Author(s):  
Mark Noble
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Classical Field Theory ◽  
Classical Field ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Solid Bodies ◽  
Lines Of Force

This essay argues that Ralph Waldo Emerson's interest in the cutting-edge science of his generation helps to shape his understanding of persons as fluid expressions of power rather than solid bodies. In his 1872 "Natural History of Intellect," Emerson correlates the constitution of the individual mind with the tenets of Michael Faraday's classical field theory. For Faraday, experimenting with electromagnetism reveals that the atom is a node or point on a network, and that all matter is really the arrangement of energetic lines of force. This atomic model offers Emerson a technology for envisioning a materialized subjectivity that both unravels personal identity and grants access to impersonal power. On the one hand, adopting Faraday's field theory resonates with many of the affirmative philosophical and ethical claims central to Emerson's early essays. On the other hand, however, distributing the properties of Faraday's atoms onto the properties of the person also entails moments in which materialized subjects encounter their own partiality, limitation, and suffering. I suggest that Emerson represents these aspects of experience in terms that are deliberately discrepant from his conception of universal power. He presumes that if every experience boils down to the same lines of force, then the particular can be trivialized with respect to the general. As a consequence, Emerson must insulate his philosophical assertions from contamination by our most poignant experiences of limitation. The essay concludes by distinguishing Emersonian "Necessity" from Friedrich Nietzsche's similar conception of amor fati, which routes the affirmation of fate directly through suffering.

scholarly journals OIL AND GAS MODELING GENERARION IN THE JURASSIC SEDIMENTS IN THE SOUTH-EASTERN OF THE WEST SIBERIAN PETROLEUM PROVINSE

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-43
Author(s):  
Elena A. Glukhova ◽  
Pavel I. Safronov ◽  
Lev M. Burshtein
Keyword(s):  
Heat Flow ◽  
Thermal History ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Flow Density ◽  
Basin Modeling ◽  
Heat Flow Density ◽  
The West ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The article presents the one-dimensional basin modeling performed in four wells to reconstruct the thermal history of deposits and reconstruct the effective values of the heat flow density.

scholarly journals Posthumanism and the New Ethics of Medical Practice—Epidemiology as the New Deontological Paradigm

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-118
Author(s):  
Timea Vitan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Medical Practice ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Medical Specialty ◽  
Medical Doctors ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Vantage Points

In the context of the COVID19 pandemic, during last year all public attention has been focused on Medicine. Epidemiology is no longer just one medical specialty among many others, but became the main paradigm and the unique background of medical science. The individual pacient has turned into the collective pacient. Medical policies are not centered on the pacient anymore, but on its social group. In this article I will try to show how the characteristics of medical practice changed since the pandemic began and which are the deontological implications of such changes. With a short introduction on the medical policies proposed by the WHO during the last decades, I wish to underline the recent history of medical practice and its obvious turning point occasioned by the pandemic. Once the new bioethical vantage points are set, I wonder to which extent posthumanist philosophy foresaw this new deontological paradigm. Having Rosi Braidotti`s “The Posthuman” as my starting point, I maintain that medical doctors no longer practice on a humanist background, but with a sort of commitment that goes beyond the individual. However, this is not an antihumansit pledge, because contemporary medical doctors still adhere to certain humanist principles. As it so often happens, we will be left with even more questions. If the pacient is no longer the individual, but the group of individuals, which is the nature of a symptom and how should we decipher its meaning? How would a new medical science look like if we are to build it not on a human but on a posthuman biology?

Postmodernism, French critics of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reginald Lilly
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Rational Discourse ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Second World

French anti-postmodernism emerged with the generation of philosophers that came of age in the late 1970s and early 1980s and counts among its ranks some of the most visible and prolific young scholars in France. Unlike schools of thought such as phenomenology, existentialism or Marxism, French anti-postmodernism has no founding figure, central text or core doctrine; anti-postmodernism (a term seldom, if ever, used by the French) therefore is less a philosophical school than a characterization for a diverse group of thinkers who react against those trends that have dominated French intellectual life since the Second World War, especially Marxism, structuralism, existentialism and deconstruction. These trends, grouped together under the heading of ‘postmodernism’, are seen by anti-postmodernists as the last episodes in a failed intellectual adventure whose origins go back at least to the French Revolution. Critical of nineteenth-century philosophy as having produced, on the one hand, totalizing, speculative philosophies such as those of Hegel and Marx, and, on the other hand, the anti-rationalism of Nietzsche and his postmodern scions, anti-postmodernists (or neo-moderns as the French prefer to say) represent a return to the concept of the individual and of history as the product of free human agency. Reaffirming the efficacy of public, rational discourse, they tend to be interested in political philosophy, taking democracy and its ideals as a model for raising and addressing philosophical issues. Pluralist in their outlook, they value the disciplinary structure of scholarly work; fields such as epistemology, theology, philosophy of science and the history of ideas which were neglected or marginalized by much postmodern thought have enjoyed renewed prestige and interest among the anti-postmodernists.

Sermons as Practical and Linguistic Performances: Insights from Theory and History

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-144
Author(s):  
Abdulkader Tayob
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Ritual Studies ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Historical View ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Marking Time

Abstract Sermons lend themselves to ambiguous identification in the study of religions. On the one hand, they are easily recognisable practices, delivered on particular days of the week, or when special occasions or needs arise. They are usually given in clearly defined places at clearly defined times. They are given by designated or recognized individuals that vary according to the respective religious traditions. On the other hand, sermons are speech performances that may and often do vary from one occasion to the next. While prone to a certain formalism, sermon speech acts are open to variation from time to time, and from preacher to preacher. To extend the possibilities offered by sermons for reflection and analysis, I explore some of the theoretical insights suggested for sermons in ritual studies and from the history of sermons within religious traditions. There is no consensus within ritual studies, but there are some useful ideas and suggestions that cover and extend the practices and speech acts that constitute sermons. More significantly, I found the longue durée of the sermon in the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to be more resourceful. The historical view of the sermon in comparable religious traditions brings forth enduring elements such as reading texts, employing rhetoric, producing effects (including affect), signifying and challenging authority, and marking time and space. More than the theoretical models for rituals from anthropology and religious studies, this historical perspective brings out the value of the practices and speech elements that constitute sermons.

scholarly journals The Philosophical Proof for God’s Existence between Europe and the Islamic World: Reflections on an Entangled History of Philosophy and Its Contemporary Relevance

2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Rudolph ◽  
Roman Seidel
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Cosmological Argument ◽  
The West ◽  
Islamic Theology ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Ontological Proof ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

AbstractThe Argument for God’s Existence is one of the major issues in the history of philosophy. It also constitutes an illuminating example of a shared philosophical problem in the entangled intellectual histories of Europe and the Islamic World. Drawing on Aristotle, various forms of the argument were appropriated by both rational Islamic Theology (kalām) and Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna. Whereas the argument, reshaped, refined and modified, has been intensively discussed throughout the entire post-classical era, particularly in the Islamic East, it has likewise been adopted in the West by thinkers such as the Hebrew Polymath Maimonides and the Medieval Latin Philosopher and Theologian Thomas Aquinas. However, these mutual reception-processes did not end in the middle ages. They can be witnessed in the twentieth century and even up until today: On the one hand, we see a Middle Eastern thinker like the Iranian philosopher Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī re-evaluating Kant’s fundamental critique of the classical philosophical arguments for God’s existence, in particular of the ontological proof, and refuting the critique. On the other hand, an argument from creation brought forward by the Islamic Theologian and critic of the peripatetic tradition al-Ghazāli has been adopted by a strand of Western philosophers who label their own version “The Kalām-cosmological Argument”. By discussing important cornerstones in the history of the philosophical proof for God’s existence we argue for a re-consideration of current Eurocentric narratives in the history of philosophy and suggest that such a transcultural perspective may also provide inspiration for current philosophical discourses between Europe, the Middle East and beyond.

Hope, Despair, and Justice in Postwar European Culture: Bicycle Thieves, The Plague, and The Man Outside as Case Studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-82
Author(s):  
Amir Engel
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
European Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Emotional Disposition ◽  
Do So

Abstract While there is growing interest in the postwar era, the cultural characteristics of the period after World War II and the period’s historical scope are still largely underdetermined. The purpose of this article is to offer a more nuanced use of the term postwar and insights into the cultural landscape of this enormously significant moment in the history of the West. To do so, it examines three major works of what is termed here the immediate postwar. These works are fundamentally dissimilar and yet, it is argued, share an emotional disposition. As shown, all three works exhibit a complex dialectical coupling of horror and anticipation. In other words, this article demonstrates that the cultural production of the postwar period (in the exact sense of the term) is characterized, on the one hand, by a sincere depiction of suffering and depravity but, on the other, by an intense engagement with questions about the moral and social future.

Means And Seas

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (46) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Siegfried Zielinski
Keyword(s):  
Close Contact ◽  
The Other ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
World Community ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Bodies Of Water

In this article, the author examines the contrasting worldviews of specific philosophers, architects, and physicists in an attempt to identify a position that would represent a viable alternative to the concept of universalization. In the history of civilization, he asserts, almost all wars have been of a territorial nature. Territories tend toward uniformity and universalization. He contrasts this worldview with reflections on oceanic thinking, which perceives bodies of water such as the Mediterranean as mediators between continents as well as between opposing worldviews, connecting and dividing at the same time. The sea, however, does not connect in order to homogenize but rather creates distance as an important prerequisite for true communication, thus linking multiplicity in all its variety as a viable alternative to universalism. The author moves on to scrutinize the cosmopolitan attitude as a paradox that on the one hand is oriented to the particular individual and on the other hand to an imaginary world community, that is, the universal. Taking this notion further to consider today’s world that is saturated with the imaginary and symbolic power of the Internet, the author proposes that cosmopolitanism could be understood as an adequate expression for the technologically advanced world community by its capability to strike a balance between the individual and the world as a whole, on one side, and synthetic identity generated by culture and technology, on the other. Nevertheless, deviating from all of these worldviews, the author concludes with a short reflection, inspired by two films, on an alternative to cosmopolitanism that he calls cosmoethics, which employs ethics as the guiding principle of thought and action and commits to a practice that stays in close contact not only with real but also with diverse realities.

Assessing Families (Not Just Individuals) for Missionary Service

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 329-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred C. Gingrich
Keyword(s):  
Family Relationships ◽  
Family Assessment ◽  
Family Unit ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Assessment Techniques ◽  
Missionary Service ◽  
Mission Service ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

The assessment of missionaries tends to focus on the adult members of the family unit being approved for service. Yet, the family is the one consistent relational network that missionaries are connected to throughout the pre-field, on the field, and post-field phases of mission service. In addition, throughout the history of missions sending bodies have struggled to balance the needs of the missions context, the ministry gifts that the adult members of the family bring to the field, and the dynamics of their marital and family relationships. While the literature on missionary children has grown significantly, adopting a perspective that prioritizes the family unit as the unit being “sent” may result in helpful information regarding missionary attrition and longevity. Therefore, assessing missionary families, not only the individual members of the family, at the various stages of missionary service is warranted. Using concepts and techniques from systems theory, a model and logistical factors for assessing missionary families are presented, along with suggestions for whom to assess, what to assess, and how to conduct family assessment. Resources and possible assessment techniques are also provided.

Chinese and Western Biography: A Comparison

1962 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Garraty
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Western World ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Chinese View

These papers throw a great deal of light upon the history of biography. There are a number of striking similarities between Chinese biography and that which developed in the Western world. These similarities, at least until recent times, do not seem to have resulted from any influence of one form upon the other, and thus they serve to illuminate the nature of the form itself. First of all, although the traditional Chinese view of the relation of the individual to society seems to have been quite different from that common in the West, the earliest motives in writing biography were essentially the same. Eulogy, for example—what Nivison calls the “paying of final respect to the dead”—seems to be a universal motive for writing biography. So also does the desire to use the life of a person to teach a lesson—the didactic motive which all three of these papers refer to and which dominated Western biography for centuries. The idea mentioned by Nivison of burying a brief biography along with departed worthies has its parallel in the tomb inscriptions of the Egyptian pharaohs.

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