Uncommon Measure

Author(s):  
Yoon Sook Cha

This chapter, a reading of “L’Iliade ou le poème de la force,” considers Weil’s claim about the special character of force, that in being assumed and redeployed by those whom it subjects, flattens the relative power of humans. The chapter argues that the claim directs us to the possibility of a new relationality that forfeits sovereign modes of power without that forfeiture thereby signifying an equitable power between the self and the other, such as it is in supplication. Referencing Maurice Blanchot, it is argued that supplication establishes an “uncommon measure” between the suppliant and the one supplicated, not by virtue of any power the suppliant has, but by laying bare his human presence. In this context, one’s subjection to force offers a certain opening to the other even as it marks the precariousness of one’s own human being.

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha Th. Frederiks

In the past Christians have used various models in relating to people of other faiths. Most are still in use. Four dominant models immediately come to mind: those of expansion, of diakonia, of presence, and of interreligious dialogue. This article discusses the pros and cons of these models and then proposes a fifth model: the model of kenosis. The model of kenosis calls for imitation of the self-emptying act of Jesus in his Incarnation in relation to people of other faiths, based on a shared humanity. Kenosis demands, on the one hand, a total openness for the other, as a fellow human being and a religious person, while, on the other hand, it offers the possibility to be authentically different from the other, in religion, culture, etc. Thus is seems to offer a model for interreligious living and relating, which honors religious differences, give guidelines for relating to each other, and is firmly based in a shared humanity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-36
Author(s):  
Nisar Alungal Chungath

Identity is not a fixed and frozen prison-house for the self, but a liquid continuum, affected and shaped by the ‘outside’ or the world. The self, which is situated and which undergoes revisions and transformations, keeps identity as a frame within which it makes sense of things. On the one hand, there is a ‘history’ within which an identity is rooted and through which meaning-making is made possible, and on the other hand, every person aspires to be a ‘universal’ and recognition-worthy human being. Both inherent identity and inherent universality of the self should be considered in their interactions in the public sphere, which has been traditionally viewed as a space of discrete individualities. The ontological force of this argument aside, the paper demonstrates that reduction of an identity without crediting its aspiration for universality and consideration of universality without crediting the historical underpinnings of identity are both acts of violation. 


Author(s):  
Stefan Krause ◽  
Markus Appel

Abstract. Two experiments examined the influence of stories on recipients’ self-perceptions. Extending prior theory and research, our focus was on assimilation effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in line with a protagonist’s traits) as well as on contrast effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in contrast to a protagonist’s traits). In Experiment 1 ( N = 113), implicit and explicit conscientiousness were assessed after participants read a story about either a diligent or a negligent student. Moderation analyses showed that highly transported participants and participants with lower counterarguing scores assimilate the depicted traits of a story protagonist, as indicated by explicit, self-reported conscientiousness ratings. Participants, who were more critical toward a story (i.e., higher counterarguing) and with a lower degree of transportation, showed contrast effects. In Experiment 2 ( N = 103), we manipulated transportation and counterarguing, but we could not identify an effect on participants’ self-ascribed level of conscientiousness. A mini meta-analysis across both experiments revealed significant positive overall associations between transportation and counterarguing on the one hand and story-consistent self-reported conscientiousness on the other hand.


Trictrac ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petru Adrian Danciu

Starting from the cry of the seraphim in Isaiahʹ s prophecy, this article aims to follow the rhythm of the sacred harmony, transcending the symbols of the angelic world and of the divine names, to get to the face to face meeting between man and God, just as the seraphim, reflecting their existence, stand face to face. The finality of the sacred harmony is that, during the search for God inside the human being, He reveals Himself, which is the reason for the affirmation of “I Am that I Am.” Through its hypnotic cyclicality, the profane temporality has its own musicality. Its purpose is to incubate the unsuspected potencies of the beings “caught” in the material world. Due to the fact that it belongs to the aeonic time, the divine music will exceed in harmony the mechanical musicality of profane time, dilating and temporarily cancelling it. Isaiah is witness to such revelation offering access to the heavenly concert. He is witness to divine harmonies produced by two divine singers, whose musical history is presented in our article. The seraphim accompanied the chosen people after their exodus from Egypt. The cultic use of the trumpet is related to the characteristics and behaviour of the seraphim. The seraphic music does not belong to the Creator, but its lyrics speak about the presence of the Creator in two realities, a spiritual and a material one. Only the transcendence of the divine names that are sung/cried affirms a unique reality: God. The chant-cry is a divine invocation with a double aim. On the one hand, the angels and the people affirm God’s presence and call His name and, on the other, the Creator affirms His presence through the angels or in man, the one who is His image and His likeness. The divine music does not only create, it is also a means of communion, implementing the relation of man to God and, thus, God’s connection with man. It is a relation in which both filiation and paternity disappear inside the harmony of the mutual recognition produced by music, a reality much older than Adam’s language.


Author(s):  
Stacy Wolf

This chapter examines the eight female characters inCompany, what they do in the musical, and how they function in the show’s dramaturgy, and argues that they elicit the quintessential challenge of analyzing musical theater from a feminist perspective. On the one hand, the women tend to be stereotypically, even msogynistically portrayed. On the other hand, each character offers the actor a tremendous performance opportunity in portraying a complicated psychology, primarily communicated through richly expressive music and sophisticated lyrics. In this groundbreaking 1970 ensemble musical about a bachelor’s encounters with five married couples and three girlfriends, Sondheim’s female characters occupy a striking range of types within one show. From the bitter, acerbic, thrice-married Joanne to the reluctant bride-to-be Amy, and from the self-described “dumb” “stewardess” April to the free-spirited Marta,Company’s eight women are distillations of femininity, precisely sketched in the short, singular scenes in which they appear.


1966 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-139
Author(s):  
Donald J. Mcculloch

There is no convincing evidence to support the view that antisocial behaviour can be accounted for by reference to concepts such as learning defect, immaturity or lack of moral fibre. The criminal displays behaviour towards authorities identical to that displayed by a patriot in an occupied country towards the enemy. This identical behaviour, it is asserted by some, shows in the one case instability, cowardice, lack of resolve and in the other case, stability, courage, resolve and strength of will. These statements reveal the attitudes and bias of the observer without illuminating the situation of the observed. It is more relevant to examine what the psychopath has learned and the conditions in which his learning took place than to pursue enquiries aimed at demonstrating a learning defect. The human being is born without the attitudes, beliefs and sentiments towards e.g. property, sexual object etc., which are necessary for his successful incorporation into his ongoing social group. It is the intention of society's socializing agents, the family and the school, to inculcate in the developing human being these necessary attitudes, sentiments and beliefs. Psychopathic personalities are the consequence of the socializing process gone wrong. This paper describes the types of psychopath together with the learning situations which brought them about. The implications for treatment programs are examined.


Derrida Today ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-270
Author(s):  
Francesco Vitale

The paper aims to present a reading of the question of Testimony rising in Derrida's later works (from Faith and Knowledge to Poetics and Politics of Witnessing): the experience of Testimony as the irreducible condition of the relation to the Other, of every possible link among living human singularities and, thus, of the thinking of a community to come. This thinking is able to divert the community from the economy grounding and structuring it within our political tradition governed by the metaphysics of presence, which demands the sacrifice of the Other in its multiple theoretical and practical forms. We intend to read this proposal and to point out its rich perspectives by bringing it into the articulation of an ethical-political archi-writing. So we suggest going back to Derrida's early analyses of phenomenology and to De la grammatologie in order to present a reading of archi-writing as the irreducible condition of the relation to otherness and, thus, of the experience through which a living human singularity constitutes itself, a singularity different from the one our tradition compels us to think of within the pattern of the absolute presence to the self, free from the relation to the other.


2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franco Masciandaro

The principal aim of this study is to participate in the current renewed discourse on the meaning of friendship, initiated in 1994 by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida with his Politics of Friendship, by combining the philosophical method of inquiry with the hermeneutical approach to poetic representations of friendship in the Iliad, the Divine Comedy, and the Decameron. It examines friendship not only as the unique love between two persons based on familiarity and proximity, but as the love for the one who is far away, the stranger, for this is a natural extension of the implicit love of the distant other, of the other-as-stranger – what Emmanuel Levinas has called "the infinity of the Other" – which is concealed in our friend, and which, in the words of Maurice Blanchot, puts us "authentically in relation" with him or her.


2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-181
Author(s):  
Kirsten Linnemann

Abstract. With their donation appeals aid organisations procure a polarised worldview of the self and other into our everyday lives and feed on discourses of “development” and “neediness”. This study investigates how the discourse of “development” is embedded in the subjectivities of “development” professionals. By approaching the topic from a governmentality perspective, the paper illustrates how “development” is (re-)produced through internalised Western values and powerful mechanisms of self-conduct. Meanwhile, this form of self-conduct, which is related to a “good cause”, also gives rise to doubts regarding the work, as well as fragmentations and shifts of identity. On the one hand, the paper outlines various coping strategies used by development professionals to maintain a coherent narrative about the self. On the other hand, it also shows how doubts and fragmentations of identity can generate a critical distance to “development” practice, providing a space for resistant and transformative practice in the sense of Foucauldian counter-conduct.


2018 ◽  
Vol 167 ◽  
pp. 375-383
Author(s):  
Valentyna Gerasymchuk

Existence and nonexistence of death in the semantic picture of reality and artistic text on the material of romans Leonid Leonov Road to the Ocean and Maxim Gorkogo The Life of Klim SamginIn this article the problem of death is unfolding in the semantic space of its ontological and existential conception in reality and a literary text. On the one hand, death as the concept of being is presented as its continuation, spiritual content, confirmation. On the other hand, death as a concept of non-being is considered as nothingness, rejection of being and its spiritual content.In reality the concept of death becomes an issue of the questionary and transcendental philosophy, that takes place in the physical time and metaphysical space of thought and expression. When the matter concerns the death of human being, his death acquires an ontological status of being, a status of spiritual significance. In the contrary case, it is possible to consider death and even life in terms of the concepts of being and nothingness. In literary texts the concept of death is also considered to be being or non-being, but taking into account constitutive characteristics of the text, its figurative and notional polysemant, the concept of death acquires not only aesthetic but also conceptual focus. In the article the main points of the topic of death, its being and non-being, are illustrated on the examples of specific literary texts. Буття і небуття смерті в смисловій картині реальності і художньому текстіПроблема смерті у статті розгортається в смисловому просторі онтологічного і екзистенціалістського її розуміння в реальності і в художньому тексті. З одного боку, смерть — поняття буття — постає як його продовження, його духовна наповненість, його стверждення. З другого — смерть — поняття небуття — розглядається як ніщо, як заперечення буття і його духовної наповненості.У реальності поняття смерті стає проблемою запитальної, трансцендентальної філософії, що розгортається у фізичному часі і метафізичному просторі думки і слова. І якщо йдеться про смерть буттюючої особистості, то і її смерть набуває онтологічного статусу, статусу духовної значущості, інакше можна говорити про смерть і навіть життя у поняттях небуття і ніщо. У художніх текстах поняття смерті також розглядається як буття і небуття, проте з урахуванням конститутивних особливостей тексту, його образної і смислової багатозначності, образ смерті набуває, крім онтологічної, ще й естетичну спрямованість.


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