scholarly journals Biological and Anthropological Foundations of Arnold Gehlen’s Political Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 161-172
Author(s):  
Sonia Horonziak

The problem of the body-soul separation has long been the subject of both philosophy and science. There is no doubt that man is a biological being. What is not certain is how human biology influences our actions and decision processes. Does it constitute humanity or is it just an excess. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Arnold Gehlen, who laid the foundations of the institutional theory, stated that man is a being marked by a deficiency. This statement was derived precisely from man’s biological deficiencies. At the same time, those influenced the human’s ability to create complex institutional systems. From the biological foundations of the analysis of man as a psychophysical being, Gehlen derived the need to establish a system of rules and norms that helps us to survive. This article will primarily discuss the biological foundations of Gehlen's theory. It will show how this 20th century anthropologist moved from researching the biological aspects of individuals to the cultural challenges faced by modern humans.

Author(s):  
Alexander V. Markov

A recently published book of Irina Sirotkina on the specifics of the dance culture of the twentieth century is under review in this article. This book, compiled as an anthology or textbook, surpasses the objectives of such a manual, being a perfect generalization that takes into account the achievements of anthropology. Sirotkina shows the characteristics of dance as a social phenomenon marking “cultural” social practices, and proves that the 20th century was an era of emancipation, that turned dance from a marker of elitist appropriation into one of the universally relevant semiotic models of culture. The book is not constructed as an introduction to the subject or a consistent presentation of its history, but as a series of problem statements. In particular, the book indicates how Nietzsche’s philosophy influenced the change in body status. Dance is considered not as a form of leisure, but as a form of organization of movement, including labor, with reference to such theorists of proletarian labor as Alexey Gastev. The book analyzes the features of choreography and choreographic pedagogy, and how naturalistic approach, which at the beginning of the 20th century was a mask for emancipation, then itself required certain emotional reinforcements and a support system in the intermedial interactions. The book also shows the socio-political consequences of self-awareness of culture in the form of dance and plastic, and it is proved that ideology of plastic (classicism) now is succeeded by ideology of dance (modernism and postmodernism). At the same time, the author of the book argues that the dance metaphor based on general ideas about movement and the body is strong enough, so that the development of choreography in the 20th century is more lasting than contingent. The article raises the question of whether such a training book can refer to the specifics of dance as a cultural phenomenon of the twentieth century, relying only on the philosophy of dance and the difference between classical and non-classical philosophy in general.


2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-282
Author(s):  
JEFFREY WEEKS

Three obvious, superficially simple but actually intensely complex questions embodied in the title immediately confront the reader of Dagmar Herzog's important new book. First, what do we mean by the ‘sexuality’ that constitutes the subject matter? Second, what is demarcated by the Europe that provides the geo-political boundaries of this study? Third, does the ‘twentieth century’ provide a useful temporal unity for the narrative and analysis that is at the heart of the book? Such questions are not mere scholarly nit-picking or academic point scoring, but a tribute to the problematising of the body in space and time that has been a hallmark of the deconstructive and reconstructive energy of recent scholarship on the sexual, and that is now making a welcome entry into mainstream history.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-179
Author(s):  
Gabriela Vlahopol

Abstract The great stylistic epochs of the past mostly had syntaxes and specific forms, escaping in the context of the application of polyphonic syntax to the tonal system. The twentieth century, characterized by a continuous mobility and search in the field of the musical language, does not intend to create new musical forms but takes preexisting patterns, which adapt to the creative contexts specific to the composers. Thus, despite the blurring of some of the fundamental elements, other factors of configuration and construction were maintained and amplified, as well as the particular phenomenon, the most significant phenomenon being the development of the thematic principle, which will have its particular manifestations in the fugue form, the diversity of its interpretations bearing the mark of some new directions.


Author(s):  
Karolina Dąbek

The Metaphor of Movement and Its Materialisation in the Spatial Music of the 20th Century The article concerns the issue of experiencing spatial music. While discussing movement and space in music, Bohdan Pociej draws attention to two types of the spatiality of a musical work: the “inner” and “outer” spatiality. The first one comes from the nature of the sound material and the interaction of elements, it stays in the sphere of impressions, metaphors. The second one involves the physical parameters and the actual performance of the piece. The author notes that the works of composers of the 20th century tend to break through from the internal space, transforming it into the external one. The issue of the body as a centre is present in the works of Edmund Husserl, Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward Hall, and others. The metaphor of movement – concerning language and music – has become the subject of cognitive science. In the context of spatial music, the metaphorical level is combined with the physical level. During the performance of a composition, the listener may be have various relations with sound sources but always locates them concerning the location of their own body, which they treat as the centre. The two basic types of outer spatiality – the perspective of the observer and the perspective of the participant – correspond to the types of understanding of the metaphor of movement in music (internal spatiality) proposed by Steve Larson and Mark Johnson.


Janus Head ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Athena V. Colman ◽  

Much of the current research on the constitution of subjectivity has been grounded on attempts to conceptualize the body without collapsing into reductive materialism or, to the contrary, theorizing a completely historical subject in the hope of doing ontological and ethical justice to formative specificity. With the rationalism-empiricism struggle put to bed by Kant’s transcendental turn and tucked in tightly by Hegel’s dialectic, the twentieth century was greeted with a maelstrom of world wars and efficient technology which produced the greatest number of corpses in the shortest time in world history; and still, to use Hegel’s famous saying, thought stood “at the crossroads of materialism and idealism.” Wrestling with articulating the interpenetrating quagmire of consciousness and body marked the beginning of twentieth century thought. For instance, Freud’s science of childhood development aligned emerging aspects of subjectivity with the very development of the body itself. In another effort, Husserl identified eidetic constructs which structured experience and, most importantly for our purposes, he distinguished between the phenomenal lived-body of the Lebenswelt known as Leib, and the anonymous thing-like quality of the body known as Körper. In this context, the corpse is the very opposite of the body insofar as the body is the site of the unfolding of subjectivity whereas the corpse seems to be the limit of subjectivity: a spatial-temporal marker of a subject which was. For instance, although it has been suggested that the corpse has somehow been emptied of subjectivity, is it not just as likely that it is we who are emptied before it? What is it about the corpse that disgusts us, intrigues us, fascinates us and reveals us to ourselves? The notion of the ‘uncanny’ is frequently invoked as a placeholder for the specific and irreducible character of such threshold experiences (such as encountering a corpse). But what is the structure of the uncanny? Moreover, what are the broader considerations regarding limit experiences as integral to the constituting of the subject?


Semiotica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (212) ◽  
pp. 179-198
Author(s):  
Marianna Papastephanou

AbstractThe semiotic turn and the twentieth century critique of the philosophy of consciousness presented a unique challenge and stressed the problematic status of old binary oppositions such as the subject versus the object, the mind versus the body, and the private versus the public. Karl-Otto Apel has responded to this philosophical occurrence with a theory of transcendental semiotics, a highly original endeavor to avoid mere reversals of older binary oppositions and pernicious consolidations of new hierarchies. This article aims to unravel Apel’s semiotics and to make it relevant to the philosophical-educational themes that preoccupy edusemiotics. After a brief overview of how Apel reworks the theories that influenced him into his own transcendental-semiotic account, the article focuses on some specific points adding more depth to the venture of associating Apel’s theory and edusemiotics.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Gurtler, S.J.

AbstractIn examining Ennead VI 4[22], we find Plotinus in conflict with modern, i.e., Cartesian or Kantian, assumptions about the relation of soul and body and the identification of the self with the subject. Curiously, his images and exposition are more in tune with Twentieth Century notions such as wave and field. With these as keys, we are in a position to unlock the subtlety of Plotinus' analysis of the way soul and body are present together, with sensation structured through the body and judgment coming from the soul. The problem of the self concerns not only the unity of the self in terms of body and soul, but also how the self is constituted in relation to other selves, both keeping its individuality and sharing its experiences at the same time.


Author(s):  
Daved Anthony Schmidt

This essay examines the relationship between the thought and ministry of Carl McIntire and the subject of flying saucers. McIntire was a prominent American fundamentalist in the middle decades of the twentieth century. His interest in UFOs culminated in 1973 with the formation of the 20th Century UFO Bureau. McIntire and his associate Robert “Bob” Barry provide an opportunity to build upon recent scholarship that explores the ways Christians positively engaged the subject of flying saucers. I argue that his conservatism led to his interest the subject and that he drew from both theological and Theosophical influences to form his interpretation. I argue further that, understood within the context of his broader ministry, his interest arose from what he perceived to be the religious challenges brought about by space exploration. McIntire’s interests ultimately demonstrate the malleability of Christian “orthodoxy,” even among its most staunch defenders.


2021 ◽  
pp. 171-190
Author(s):  
Angela Longo

The question of the appearance of the body surges in a play of overwhelming forces, and its register in artworks assumes different shapes as their representation spreads towards other mediums. Firstly, following Aby Warburg’s thought, this article will analyse the process of the survival of bodies as potential motion in images. Warburg proposed an Iconological approach where the analysis of potential movement in the image yielded a formula for its analytic recomposition. Furthermore, he captured the transition at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the body representation moved to media that allowed movement reproduction, such as animation and cinema. The bodies' survival or capture contained an animist belief that gained propulsion with the first apparatuses and optical toys that allowed movement and live-action recording. This movement allowed for the production of a simulacrum of the living body and the power to recompose it in space. Therefore, this article will focus on the evolution of body representation and its survival to understand how images from the early twentieth century shaped and traveled around the world.


Author(s):  
Anna Manchin

SINCE THE 1989 collapse of communism in eastern Europe, newly democratic societies in the region have been struggling to come to terms with their twentieth-century past. These efforts, taking place in official politics, public spaces, historical scholarship, film, literature, and art, have become the subject of a vast scholarly literature, ranging from history to sociology and political theory to literary studies....


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