Lethargy: The ideal Ego and the Dead

Keyword(s):  
The Dead ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Brunet

This article proposes a model of individual violent radicalisation leading to acts of terrorism. After reviewing the role of group regression and the creation of group psychic apparatus, the article will examine how violent radicalisation, by the reversal of the importance of the superego and the ideal ego, serves to compensate the narcissistic identity suffering by “lone wolf” terrorists.


Author(s):  
Sinéad Moynihan

This chapter examines fictional Returned Yanks – notably in Julia O’Faolain’s No Country for Young Men (1980), Benedict Kiely’s Nothing Happens in Carmincross (1985) and Roddy Doyle’s The Dead Republic (2010) – who become involved in and/or comment on the Northern Irish ‘Troubles.’ This conflict, through its resurgence in the late 1960s, challenged optimistic and prematurely celebratory attitudes towards Irish modernisation that claimed that nationalism and ‘atavistic’ ideological attachments would disappear through the modernisation process. However, an understanding of nationalism that sees insurgency as antithetical to modernity is fallacious for, as Benedict Anderson argued so influentially in Imagined Communities (1983), nationalism is a product of modernity. Many Troubles narratives feature Irish Americans whose parents or grandparents were involved in the nationalist struggle in the 1920s and who retain a recalcitrant commitment to the ideal of a united Ireland. In narratives of the Troubles, then, the Returned Yank is a kind of revenant or ghost from a past which the southern state – whose authority was profoundly undermined in the 1970s and 1980s by Northern republican challenges to its legitimacy – wishes to disavow.


2015 ◽  
pp. 52-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose Henrique Rodrigues Torres

he project of life is linked to freedom, as a right of each person to choose their own destiny. (...) The project of life fully encompasses the ideal of the American Declaration (of the Rights and Duties of Man) of 1948, which proclaims the spiritual development as the supreme end and the highest expression of human existence. Colombia's Constitutional Court, at guaranteeing the fundamental right to live and die with dignity, in the liberating expression of human rights, did not forget the mythical image of Charon ferrying the dead in his boat to Hades . In Colombia, the struggle against death, stubborn and limitless, contrary to the expression of the patients' will, cannot anymore be accepted as a duty or as a right of the doctors, who now must resign themselves to the conscious and independent decision of their patients, understanding the dimension of existence and of human dignity against the limits of medicine and science, to lead them, just with the necessary palliative care, in crossing the River Styx, to the "world of the dead ". Denying euthanasia, in terms of the decision of the Constitutional Court, constitutes a flagrant violation of the patients' "life project", who have, in the established circumstances, the right to legitimate anticipation of death.


Numen ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 56 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 141-160
Author(s):  
Walter Burkert
Keyword(s):  
The Dead ◽  

If the ideal of justice includes effective punishment of offenders, an extension into afterlife must be postulated. This still involves all the questionable aspects and paradoxes of punishment that make rational and enlightened argumentation difficult. A historical survey of ancient tentatives at hell lore shows diverse starting points and interests. There is just a germ of such speculations in Sumerian. When hell fire first appears in Egypt, it goes together with the fear of magic from the dead; in Zoroastrianism and Judaism it is partisan interest which makes the adherents of the wrong religion destined for hell. In Greece we find various ethical and poetical motifs interfering, from the powerful yet enigmatic images in the Odyssey to a general proclamation of punishments in the Hymn to Demeter. The most graphic and horrible descriptions of something like hell are finally found in Plato, whose sources — besides Homer — can be postulated but not identified.


Author(s):  
Martin Olando

For a long time, most African Christian have preferred burial as the most acceptable way in disposing dead bodies. However, this method of disposing the dead has been affected by diverse factors such as globalization, various interpretations of Scripture, and the decline of African perception on burial rights among others. In the nature of things, there has been an increase of cremation amongst African Christians. This has created a rift between two contrasting groups regarding the emerging culture of cremation as opposed to burial. Cremation seems to be a new concept that has not been embraced in most African societies. Those African Christians who insist on burial contend that it is the ideal godly way in the disposition of bodies. They cite biblical and Africa values in order to justify the status quo. For those who believe cremation is the right disposal method of the dead, they argue that it is less expensive and is positively sensitive to land use. In view of this, the article will examine success and challenges regarding burial and cremation. The materials in this presentation have been gathered through interviews, extensive reading of published works, and via general observation of unfolding practices.


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