Santayana, George (1863–1952)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Lachs
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
George Santayana ◽  
Philosophical System ◽  
Literature And Religion ◽  
Josiah Royce ◽  
Naturalistic Account ◽  
The Human Condition

George Santayana was a philosopher, essayist, novelist and poet. Born in Spain, he moved to America as a child and attended Harvard, studying under William James and Josiah Royce. The philosophical world first took note of Santayana for his work in aesthetics. The Sense of Beauty (1896), his attempt to give a naturalistic account of the beautiful, remains influential. He wrote exquisitely crafted essays on literature and religion, viewing both as articulating important symbolic truths about the human condition. His mature philosophical system is a classical edifice constructed out of positions adopted from Plato and Aristotle, which he modified in light of the naturalistic insights of his beloved Lucretius and Spinoza and steeped in pessimism reminiscent of Schopenhauer. Although in close touch with the philosophical developments of his day, he always viewed human life and its problems in a calming cosmic perspective.

Prologue

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Self ◽  
Objective Truth ◽  
The World ◽  
Subjective Truth ◽  
The Human Condition

Introduces some of the central ideas of existentialism—including subjective truth, finitude, being-in-the-world, facticity, transcendence, inwardness, and the self as becoming—as relevant to an individual living in the contemporary moment. Highlights existentialist concern both for human individuality and for commonly-shared features of the human condition. Emphasizes existentialist attention both to the despairing aspects of human life and to the affirmation of existence as worthy of wonder. Introduces a few key thinkers—Kierkegaard, Marcel, Heidegger, Sartre, Nietzsche—while also indicating the diversity of existentialism to be emphasized throughout the book. Addresses what existentialism may have to offer in the context of contemporary challenges to objective truth and communal forms of meaning.

Robots and the Future of Retribution

2021 ◽  
pp. 93-101
Author(s):  
John Danaher
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Traditional Practices ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter studies the future of retribution and, in particular, the role that robots will play in shaping that future. It begins by describing the Bouphonia ritual, which speaks to two important features of the human condition: the enduring significance of practices of blame and punishment in human life, and the occasional absurdity of this desire. What happens when robots — or other sophisticated artificially intelligent (AI) machines — get embedded in our societies and have a part to play in criminal acts? Should they, like the knife in the Bouphonia ritual, be blamed for their contribution? Or should something else happen, something a little more radical? The chapter makes the case for radicalism. In particular, it suggests that the rise of the robots should lead us to reconsider the wisdom of our traditional practices of punishment and blame.

scholarly journals Elements of a History of the Soul in North-West Semitic Texts

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-176
Author(s):  
Joachim Schaper
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
North West ◽  
Literature And Religion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
The Human Condition

Abstract Amongst Hebrew Bible scholars the question of the understanding of biblical key terms and concepts pertaining to the human condition has attracted a fair amount of interest. And amongst those key terms and concepts it is the concept of nefeš that has proved to be particularly attractive and challenging. New light is thrown on the biblical concept by the recent discovery of the Katumuwa stele in Zincirli. The present article examines the evidence and draws conclusions with regard to the history of the concept of nefeš in the Hebrew Bible and in North-West Semitic literature and religion generally.

An Americanist's Take on Against the Grain

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-699
Author(s):  
Terence N. D'Altroy
Keyword(s):  
Social Complexity ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Food Sources ◽  
Human History ◽  
Formal Institutions ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
The Human Condition

In both public and professional accounts of the grand sweep of human history, a few questions recurrently beg for attention. How did technology—broadly understood to encompass everything from control of fire to domestication of food sources, to craft manufacture, to communication and transportation—transform human life? How did social complexity come into being: e.g. classes, formal institutions and the state? Why did some ancient societies invest so much effort in corporate constructions such as pyramids, temples and other monumental architecture? What were the effects of warfare and disease on the human condition? And why did the early societies of so many regions cycle between eras of concentrated power and its apparent dissolution?

scholarly journals The Joy of Being as Anthropological Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
Agapov Oleg D. ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Human Condition

The joy of being is connected with one’s activities aimed at responding to the challenges of the elemental forces and the boundlessness of being, which are independent of human subjectivity. In the context of rising to the challenges of being, one settles to acquire a certain power of being in themselves and in the world. Thus, the joy of being is tied to achieving the level of the “miraculous fecundity” (E. Levinas), “an internal necessity of one’s life” (F. Vasilyuk), magnanimity (M. Mamardashvili). The ontological duty of any human being is to succeed at being human. The joy of being is closely connected to experiencing one’s involvement in the endless/eternity and realizing one’s subjective temporality/finitude, which attunes him to the absolute seriousness in relation to one’s complete realization in life. Joy is a foundational anthropological phenomenon in the structure of ways of experiencing the human condition. The joy of being as an anthropological practice can appear as a constantly expanding sphere of human subjectivity where the transfiguration of the powers of being occurs under the sign of the Height (Levinas) / the Good. Without the possibility of transfiguration human beings get tired of living, immerse themselves in the dejected state of laziness and the hopelessness of vanity. The joy of being is connected to unity, gathering the multiplicity of human life under the aegis of meaning that allows us to see the other and the alien in heteronomous being, and understand the nature of co-participation and responsibility before the forces of being, and also act in synergy with them.The joy of being stands before a human being as the joy of fatherhood/ motherhood, the joy of being a witness to the world in creative acts (the subject as a means to retreat before the world and let the world shine), the joy of every day that was saved from absurdity, darkness and the impersonal existence of the total. Keywords: joy, higher reality, anthropological practices, “the height”, subject, transcendence, practice of coping

Compassion and Peregrinatio

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-73
Author(s):  
Joshua Hordern
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Healthcare Professionals ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Everyday Practice ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter begins to describe the response to Chapter 1’s diagnosis. The core of a social theory which will provide therapy is introduced, namely, peregrinatio, the wayfaring and pilgrim experience of life. Peregrinatio is explained and deployed to show how it reframes healthcare encounters, illuminating the nature of compassion, its civic context, and its everyday practice and fostering six attitudes which conduce to compassion: (i) interest in the human life-course; (ii) patience with plurality of perspective; (iii) curiosity in human encounter and companionship; (iv) humility in conversation; (v) recognition of the proper value of healthcare; and (vi) perseverance in preserving the communal nature of human life amidst suffering. The benefits of such a framing of the human condition for three aspects of healing are considered: (i) the healing of the affections; (ii) the healing encounter with God amidst suffering; and (iii) the healing role of healthcare professionals. Objections to peregrinatio are considered and addressed.

Time Flows, the Child Plays

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Michalski
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
With Memory ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter introduces the images of the grazing cows, the child at play, and the person observing them with envy and emotion. It argues that these images are supposed to confront us with human life, concentrated in the lived moment and simultaneously tearing the past from the future. It is life stretched out from “yesterday” to “tomorrow” and thereby burdened with memory and guilt—and at the same time innocent and oblivious, growing out of time in its every instant: the connection between time and its sickness, eternity. Such a concept of the human condition, the chapter shows, carries far-reaching consequences.

Systematicity to Excess

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedict Vischer
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Philosophical System ◽  
Integral Element ◽  
International Legal System ◽  
Fixed State ◽  
Self Transcendence ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter argues that pervading tensions constitute a crucial dimension of Kant’s international legal system. Kant did not intend to provide the conclusive plan for legislation that many readers seek. By contrast, following the fundamental insights of his philosophy, his sketch of the cosmopolitan system shows that the emancipatory project of law is an infinite endeavour we can never conclude. In its ultimate openness, the idea of the system points to the ongoing excess of any determined system. An integral element of Kant’s philosophical system, the system of law reflects the human condition of conscious finitude; it is shaped by our situation as worldly beings who act within a historical horizon. The full actualization of law lies not in a fixed state, but in a continuous process of self-transcendence.

Compassion and Time

2020 ◽  
pp. 153-204
Author(s):  
Joshua Hordern
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter explores how differing views of time and narrative give rise to different objects of hope and corresponding content to compassion. Reflection on the human life-course, increasingly influential in policy, practice, political thought, and ethics, provides a frame of reference for interrelating different interpretations of human life from conception to death. A faithfully secular enquiry is pursued to explore this possibility, being capacious enough to interweave various ways of conceiving the human condition. To show how compassion’s content is differentiated by varying accounts of time, the chapter examines the interrelation of tragedy, Christian theology, and compassion in conversation with Martha Nussbaum, with an excursus on Buddhism. The aim is to clarify how creation, sin, Christ’s death, and Christ’s resurrection influence the content of compassion. The account of time’s relationship to compassion which emerges—‘time suspended and reconciled’—is defined by Christ’s life-course and applied to obstetrics and palliative care.

scholarly journals Die lewe en werk van Frances Young (1939–) en Dorothee Sölle (1929–2003): ʼn Leksikografiese bydrae tot Reformasie 500

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanya Van Wyk ◽  
Neltjie C. Van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Human Condition

The contribution of two women to the Reformed heritage: The life and work of Frances Young (1939–) and Dorothee Sölle (1929–2003). This article is a lexicographical overview of the life and work of two specific women, Frances Young and Dorothee Sölle. The purpose of this is to highlight the reformed character of their respective theologies. Both are characterised by reflection on and reaction to the fragility of human life and the brokenness of the human condition. They are among the ‘cloud of witnesses’ that bear testimony to the impact and heritage of the Reformation.

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