Human finitude 1

The Infinite ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 218-234
Author(s):  
A.W. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Human Finitude

scholarly journals Metaphysics and the Existential Problematic of Human Finitude

Lumen et Vita ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Nutter
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Practical Importance ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Finite Horizon ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Intentional Structure ◽  
Working Out ◽  
Human Finitude

Rather than being of little practical importance, the metaphysical underpinnings of a given horizon determine the character of its existential problematic. With the breakdown of classical metaphysics concomitant with the modern turn to the subjective, the existential problematic of finitude as ultimate horizon arose. According to this subjective turn, the human person can no longer engage the world as though it were in itself constituted by transcendently grounded meaning and value. Standing within this genealogical lineage, Martin Heidegger undertook a phenomenological investigation into the existential constitution of the human person which defines authenticity in terms of finitude. For the early Heidegger, human life is essentially ‘guilty’. This guilt, however, is not the traditional cognizance of one’s sinfulness, but the foundational Nichtigkeit (‘nullity’) of life and its attendant possibilities in the light of the ultimate finality of death. Authenticity, then, consists of a resolute working out of one’s life in the face of such inevitable finality. For the later Heidegger, the finite horizon of a particular epochal disclosure gifts Being to thought and determines it thereby. Authenticity in this case consists of giving oneself over to be appropriated by an event of Being. In contrast, Lonergan understands authenticity as being true to that primordial love which beckons us to intellectual probity and responsibility in working out life’s possibilities. This essay will illustrate how Lonergan’s analysis of the intentional structure of human conscious operations stands as a corrective to Heidegger’s early existential analysis of human being-in-the-world and later thought about Being. While Lonergan defines authenticity as loving openness to transcendent Being, Heidegger, because of his forgetfulness of the subject in her conscious operations, does not allow for a transcendence which stands beyond any finite horizon. 

Existence and Freedom: Towards an Ontology of Human Finitude.

1963 ◽  
Vol 13 (52) ◽  
pp. 272
Author(s):  
David R. Bell ◽  
Calvin O. Schrag
Keyword(s):  
Human Finitude

Images, perceptions and representations of choosing where, how and when to die

2011 ◽  
pp. 121-136
Author(s):  
Giuseppina Cersosimo
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Right To Die ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
General Design ◽  
Educational Backgrounds ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Human Finitude

The aim of this research is to explore the theme of death using qualitative study tools as part of the general design, in order to investigate two main issues: an ethical and value funded perspective, connected to the "meanings" and values, regarding the internal and personal experience of the respondents, as well as a practical-behaviour, expressing the choices made by people about their own lives. The key respondents in the survey were physicians, as well as ill and healthy citizens, both male and female. They were all from different educational backgrounds, as well as locations (north, centre, south of Italy). The final report reaffirms the awareness of human finitude as well as a frequent personal aspiration to go beyond that. The main outcomes of study outline the dichotomies of life, death, illness, health, and how their symbolic declinations form the basis upon which the term self-determination can be traced. Thus, they become the semantic device through which it is possible to express ideas and opinions in relation to the context in which people live. There is no evidence that there is an area in the country, more or less emancipated on the themes of death. In addition, education and gender do not seem to influence the way death and right to die are perceived.

Theory-Making, Transference, and Anthropology: on D. Z. Phillips’ Rejection of Nonfoundationalist Theorizing

Horizons ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiina Allik
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Transference And Countertransference ◽  
Psychoanalytic Understanding ◽  
Epistemological Debate ◽  
Human Finitude

AbstractThe article argues that the motivations for Phillips' construal of all theory-making as necessarily foundationalist go beyond the epistemological debate about foundationalism vs. nonfoundationalism and that his construal is rooted in the anthropological assumption that the subjectivity of human persons is inevitably violated by analyses in terms of objective categories that are not derived from the self-understanding of the subjects under study. The article uses the distinction between etics and emics in linguistics and cultural anthropology and a psychoanalytic understanding of the inevitability of transference and countertransference in order to argue that an appreciation of human finitude and contingency should lead Phillips and others to anthropological views in which the inevitability of theory, transference, and the experience of the otherness of oneself and others is construed as not only inevitable but as pleasurable, i.e., as part of the goodness of created human nature.

Human Finitude, Ineffability, Idealism, Contingency

Noûs ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 427 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Human Finitude

Religious fundamentalism: a conceptual critique

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 561-579
Author(s):  
RICHARD McDONOUGH
Keyword(s):  
Religious Faith ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Religious Fundamentalism ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Extreme Form ◽  
Human Finitude

AbstractThe article argues that religious fundamentalism, understood, roughly, as the view that people must obey God's commands unconditionally, is conceptually incoherent because such religious fundamentalists inevitably must substitute human judgement for God's judgement. The article argues, first, that fundamentalism, founded upon the normal sort of indirect communications from God, is indefensible. Second, the article considers the crucial case in which God is said to communicate directly to human beings, and argues that the fundamentalist interpretation of such communications is also incoherent, and, on this basis, argues that religious fundamentalism is actually an extreme form of irreligiousness. Finally, the article considers Kierkegaard's prima facie defence of unconditional religious faith, and argues that, despite some similarity with the fundamentalists, Kierkegaard's appreciation of human finitude leads him to a profoundly anti-fundamentalist stance.

“He made her feel the beauty”

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-239
Author(s):  
Paul Sopčák
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Literary Reading ◽  
Denial Of Death ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Human Finitude

In this paper, I discuss claims according to which literary reading may initiate a form of reflection that leads to “a shift in understanding” (e.g., Miall, 2006, p. 145). I focus particularly on reflection on one’s own finitude and draw on phenomenology to distinguish between two current models of “shifts in understanding” through reading literature: one involves shifts in abstract beliefs and the other involves shifts in embodied and experiential understandings. I argue that for some readers the engagement with literary texts not only moves them from the denial of death to the understanding of their own finitude, but that it also affords them an embodied experience of this finitude, as opposed to an abstract acknowledgement of it. I begin by describing the difference between knowing about one’s death and the experience of one’s finitude. I then present a phenomenological alternative to current suggestions for how literary texts may initiate “a shift in understanding.” Finally, I present a series of empirical studies that investigate readers’ engagements with texts dealing with human finitude.

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