The Posthuman Promise of the Earth

Author(s):  
Philippe Lynes

In the last interview before his death, Derrida claimed that the concept of survivance or living-on informed the entirety of his work. This chapter attempts to develop this notion in order to designate an ethics of ecological relationality extrapolated from Derrida’s infrequent but highly important references to the Earth, along a strategy building on Derrida’s use of ‘general economy,’ which I call general ecology. Through an ex-propriation of three temporalities of life, Husserl’s living present, Heidegger’s auto-affective temporalization of Dasein, and Freud’s death drive, the chapter suggests that all three for Derrida rest upon a certain decision concerning the restricted ecological reappropriations of life and death and their relations to the subject, the human, the individual: the Living Present as the pure form of absolute subjectivity, auto-affective temporalization as the proper of the human and its death, and the death drive as the detour within the ecology of immanence in the individual living organism. The chapter concludes by proposing the an-archic temporality of the promise of the earth as opening onto an-other thought of sharing the earth more justly in the life death we share with its others.

Author(s):  
Miriam Leonard

In …Pleasure Principle, Freud juxtaposes his discussion of the life and death instincts in “elementary organisms” to the tragic drama he sees enacted in his grandson’s fort-da game. Freud’s insights into the death drive are given an added tragic dimension in Lacan’s reading of Oedipus at Colonus. Here Lacan establishes the anti- or even post-humanist credentials of tragedy by insisting that it is the death of the subject which is Sophocles’ ultimate preoccupation. By placing Greek tragedy’s confrontation with the death drive in dialogue with the instincts of the “germ-cell”, the chapter demonstrates how psychoanalysis offers a perfect model for understanding antiquity’s contribution to posthumanism.


Author(s):  
Dr Varsha Sharma

Environment is a boon given to each and every living organism on the earth. Being with the nature is always a rich source of mental peace and wellbeing. Connectivity with the nature always gives a sense of being blessed by the Almighty God; it leads to enhance the sense of fully functioning self of the individual as well. Environmental Psychology is an interdisciplinary field which focuses on the application of interaction with environment on the mental, physical, social and spiritual wellbeing. Several research studies have indicated that involvement with natural surroundings is beneficial for the enhancement of overall wellbeing of the society in general and of individuals in particular. Nature is significantly important for the mental health as it helps to reduce the level of stress, irritation, anxiety, aggression, cardiovascular disease etc. The need of the hour is to encourage the health promoting lifestyle which ensures the interaction with the environment in the form of morning walks, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, breathing exercises, cycling, skipping, playing outdoor games etc.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (01) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anjali Dwivedi ◽  
Mohit Kumar Tiwari

Environment regulates and affects the life besides, all the vital activities on the earth. It is not only the fundamental basis of life but also helps in controlling the activities of living organism. Environment is mainly divided into abiotic and biotic components. Among biotic components man itself is the major culprit which severely affects all other components of the environment. Man plays the major role in disturbing and destroying the natural ecosystem which not only affects the human life but also the life of other plants and animals on the earth. That is why it is now very important to make the human beings aware about the environment. Study of environment is not only the subject of study for science students, but is also necessarily to be taught and informed every human being from his early childhood to make him understand how to protect and maintain the environment not only for himself but also for the safe future of the earth. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce study of environment in the syllabus of all levels of education.


2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Françoise Dastur

AbstractIt has often been considered that the most important part of Derrida's work consisted in the five books published between 1967 and 1972. This paper intends, by way of a re-reading of Derrida's most powerful text from this period, Speech and Phenomena, to bring to light Derrida's specific manner of uniting the question of the disruption of presence to the question of writing. What is therefore questioned is Derrida's emphasis on death, considered as the very condition of possibility of language and writing. As Derrida rightfully shows, Husserl, in spite of the importance he conferred upon writing in the process of idealization, was not aware of the fact that the relationship to death constitutes the concrete structure of the living present. But on the other hand, by still opposing in a too dualistic manner presence and absence, life and death, Derrida himself was not able to see that the condition of language is not so much the death of the subject as the being toward death and the finitude of Dasein.


Antiquity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (340) ◽  
pp. 441-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Blanco-González

Pottery has sometimes been compared to a living organism in its cycle of birth, life and death or discard. A biographical approach to an unusual assemblage of pottery from the Late Bronze Age site of Pico Castro in central Spain suggests that they had been used together at a communal feast. The shared social memory that they acquired thereby conferred on them a special status that resulted in their eventual placement in the pit, fine wares and coarse wares together. Thus the varied biographies of the individual vessels—and the individual sherds—eventually converged not only in their discard but in the episodes that preceded it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 183-198
Author(s):  
Wiktor Soral ◽  
Mirosław Kofta

Abstract. The importance of various trait dimensions explaining positive global self-esteem has been the subject of numerous studies. While some have provided support for the importance of agency, others have highlighted the importance of communion. This discrepancy can be explained, if one takes into account that people define and value their self both in individual and in collective terms. Two studies ( N = 367 and N = 263) examined the extent to which competence (an aspect of agency), morality, and sociability (the aspects of communion) promote high self-esteem at the individual and the collective level. In both studies, competence was the strongest predictor of self-esteem at the individual level, whereas morality was the strongest predictor of self-esteem at the collective level.


2013 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-187
Author(s):  
E. S. Burt

Why does writing of the death penalty demand the first-person treatment that it also excludes? The article investigates the role played by the autobiographical subject in Derrida's The Death Penalty, Volume I, where the confessing ‘I’ doubly supplements the philosophical investigation into what Derrida sees as a trend toward the worldwide abolition of the death penalty: first, to bring out the harmonies or discrepancies between the individual subject's beliefs, anxieties, desires and interests with respect to the death penalty and the state's exercise of its sovereignty in applying it; and second, to provide a new definition of the subject as haunted, as one that has been, but is no longer, subject to the death penalty, in the light of the worldwide abolition currently underway.


1970 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-103
Author(s):  
Svitlana Kuzikova

The author's approach to the empirical study of the peculiarities of self-development of a person has been  considered. The criteria of self-development as a subject activity have been characterized. Its indicators have been  given.  The  psychological  resources  of  personal  self-development  have  been  singled  out:  the  need  for  self- development as its source and determinant; conditions that ensure its success; mechanisms as functional means and  conditions  for  its  implementation.  Their  essence  has  been  revealed.  The  need  for  self-development  has  been  determined by the actualization of the characteristics of self-development (self-activity, vital activity, development of  self-consciousness) and has been occurred when the content structure of the individual consciousness and the  transformation of semantic entities changed. Conditions of self-development has been defined by mature I of  personality, openness, tolerance to the new, the presence of a conscious goal of self-realization and active life  strategy. Reflection, self-regulation and feedback have been considered as mechanisms of self-development. The  methodical approaches and means of studying the peculiarities and factors of the development of the subject of self- development in adolescence in the process of professional training have been offered, and the results of their  integrated empirical research have been highlighted. Particular attention has been paid to the analysis of the level  of actualization of self-development resources among students, discovered with the author's diagnostic method  "DCPSD" (Dispositional Characteristic of Personality of Self-development). It has been proved that psychological  resources as a set of possibilities of development already exist in the psychological reality of a person. It has been  shown that the dominance of the level of self-development resources’ actualization of the individual (and their  combination) can be correlated with the dimensions of the individual psychological space, indicating the individual  peculiarity of the personal self-development organization. It has been noted that, at the same time, actualization,  strengthening and harmonization of all psychological resources of a person self-development, enrichment of its  relations with the environment and other people, and increasing spirituality is necessary for the implementation of  progressive conscious personal self-development. У  статті  розглянуто  авторський  підхід  до  емпіричного  вивчення  особливостей  саморозвитку  особистості. Охарактеризовано критерії саморозвитку як суб’єктної діяльності, наведено його показники.  Виокремлено психологічні ресурси особистісного саморозвитку: потребу в саморозвитку як його джерело і  детермінант; умови, які забезпечують його успішність; механізми як  функціональні засоби і умови його  здійснення.    Розкрито    їх    сутність.    Потреба    в    саморозвитку    визначається    актуалізованістю  характеристик саморозвитку (самоактивність, життєдіяльність, розвиненість самосвідомості) і виникає  при зміні змістової  структури індивідуальної свідомості та трансформації смислових утворень. Умови  саморозвитку  окреслюють  зріле  Я  особистості,  відкритість,  толерантність  до  нового,  наявність  усвідомленої   мети   самоздійснення   та   активної   життєвої   стратегії.   Як   механізми   саморозвитку  розглядаються рефлексія, саморегуляція та зворотній зв'язок. Запропоновано методичні підходи і засоби  вивчення особливостей та чинників становлення суб’єкта саморозвитку в юнацькому віці в процесі фахової  підготовки, висвітлено результати їх комплексного емпіричного дослідження. Особливу увагу приділено  аналізу  рівня  актуалізації  ресурсів  саморозвитку  у  студентів,  виявленого  за  допомогою  авторської  діагностичної методики «ДХСО». Доведено, що психологічні ресурси  як сукупність можливостей розвитку  вже існують у психологічній реальності людини. Показано, що домінування рівня актуалізації ресурсів  саморозвитку особистості ( та їх поєднання) можна співвіднести з вимірами психологічного простору  особистості,   що   свідчить   про  індивідуальну   своєрідність   організації   особистісного  саморозвитку.  Зазначено,  що  в  той  же  час  для  здійснення  прогресивного  усвідомленого  особистісного  саморозвитку  необхідна   актуалізація,   взаємопосилення   і   гармонізація   всіх   психологічних   ресурсів   саморозвитку  особистості, збагачення її зв’язків із навколишнім середовищем та іншими людьми, підвищення духовності.


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Kozma ◽  
E. Molnár ◽  
K. Czimre ◽  
J. Pénzes

Abstract In our days, energy issues belong to the most important problems facing the Earth and the solution may be expected partly from decreasing the amount of the energy used and partly from the increased utilisation of renewable energy resources. A substantial part of energy consumption is related to buildings and includes, inter alia, the use for cooling/heating, lighting and cooking purposes. In the view of the above, special attention has been paid to minimising the energy consumption of buildings since the late 1980s. Within the framework of that, the passive house was created, a building in which the thermal comfort can be achieved solely by postheating or postcooling of the fresh air mass without a need for recirculated air. The aim of the paper is to study the changes in the construction of passive houses over time. In addition, the differences between the geographical locations and the observable peculiarities with regard to the individual building types are also presented.


Author(s):  
Emily Robins Sharpe

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.


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