Existential Poiesis in Maḥmud al-Masʿadī’s Mawlid al-nisyān

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-57
Author(s):  
Hoda El Shakry
Keyword(s):  
Human Existence ◽  
Government Official ◽  
Spiritual Journey ◽  
Ethical Imperative ◽  
Spiritual Quest ◽  
Artistic Process ◽  
Trade Unionist ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Philosophical Writings

Chapter 1 examines Tunisian intellectual Maḥmūd al-Masʿadī’s 1945 mythical novella Mawlid al-Nisyān [the Genesis of Forgetfulness] about a physician on a spiritual quest for a drug to defeat time. Maḥmūd al-Masʿadī (1911–2004) was a prolific writer, educator, editor, trade unionist, and government official. The novella integrates Sufi philosophy, existentialism, and humanism in its exploration of the relationship between the human and divine. The chapter frames these concerns within the novella’s Qurʾanic intertextuality and al-Masʿadī’s broader philosophical writings on Islam and literature. Across his critical and literary oeuvre, al-Masʿadī explores literature as a creative praxis that speaks to broader existential and humanist concerns. Crowned the founder of “Muslim Existentialism,” he theorizes Islam as a philosophy of existence intimately connected to the artistic process. The chapter reads his novella Mawlid al-Nisyān as a Sufi spiritual journey that explores creation as an ethical imperative of human existence.

Idleness and Freedom in Michel de Montaigne’s “Essays”

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-202
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Spiritual Quest ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

The article advances a hypothesis about the composition of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Specialists in the intellectual history of the Renaissance have long considered the relationship among Montaigne’s thematically heterogeneous thoughts, which unfold unpredictably and often seen to contradict each other. The waywardness of those reflections over the years was a way for Montaigne to construct a self-portrait. Spontaneity of thought is the essence of the person depicted and an experimental literary technique that was unprecedented in its time and has still not been surpassed. Montaigne often writes about freedom of reflection and regards it as an extremely important topic. There have been many attempts to interpret the haphazardness of the Essays as the guiding principle in their composition. According to one such interpretation, the spontaneous digressions and readiness to take up very different philosophical notions is a form of of varietas and distinguo, which Montaigne understood in the context of Renaissance philosophy. Another interpretation argues that the Essays employ the rhetorical techniques of Renaissance legal commentary. A third opinion regards the Essays as an example of sprezzatura, a calculated negligence that calls attention to the aesthetic character of Montaigne’s writing. The author of the article argues for a different interpretation that is based on the concept of idleness to which Montaigne assigned great significance. He had a keen appreciation of the role of otium in the culture of ancient Rome and regarded leisure as an inner spiritual quest for self-knowledge. According to Montaigne, idleness permits self-directedness, and it is an ideal form in which to practice the freedom of thought that brings about consistency in writing, living and reality, in all of which Montaigne finds one general property - complete inconstancy. Socratic self-knowledge, a skepticism derived from Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus, and a rejection of the conventions of traditional rhetoric that was similar to Seneca’s critique of it were all brought to bear on the concept of idleness and made Montaigne’s intellectual and literary experimentation in the Essays possible.

Historical Foundations, Strategic Visions, and World Order

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Bolt ◽  
Sharyl N. Cross
Keyword(s):  
World Order ◽  
International Order ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
State Behavior ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 1 explores perspectives on world order, including power relationships and the rules that shape state behavior and perceptions of legitimacy. After outlining a brief history of the relationship between Russia and China that ranged from cooperation to military clashes, the chapter details Chinese and Russian perspectives on the contemporary international order as shaped by their histories and current political situation. Chinese and Russian views largely coincide on security issues, the desirability of a more multipolar order, and institutions that would enhance their standing in the world. While the Chinese–Russian partnership has accelerated considerably, particularly since the crisis in Ukraine in 2014, there are still some areas of competition that limit the extent of the relationship.

Use of Metaphors

2020 ◽  
pp. 408-425
Author(s):  
Göran Eidevall
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Book Of Isaiah ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Feminine Roles

This chapter reviews major trends and trajectories within previous research on metaphors in Isaiah, including rhetorical, structuralist, redaction-critical, ideological, and feminist approaches. In addition, it surveys recurring types of imagery that inform this prophetic book’s perspective on the relationship between Yhwh and his people. Various images of empires are discussed as examples of propagandistic rhetoric. Some metaphors are analyzed in more detail. It is thus demonstrated that the conceptual metaphor “people are plants,” with its emphasis on the transience of human existence, pervades the book of Isaiah. Among metaphors used about Yhwh, special attention is paid to “God is a parent.” The concluding section discusses the various feminine roles ascribed to personified Zion in several passages in chapters 40–66: daughter, wife, and mother.

scholarly journals Ethical Turn in Legal Analogy

2022 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 159-182
Author(s):  
Felicitas Opwis
Keyword(s):  
Human Existence ◽  
Ethical Content ◽  
The Law ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Lasting Influence ◽  
The Way ◽  
Divine Law

Al-Ghazālī’s articulation that the purposes of the divine Law (maqāṣid al-sharīʿa) are to attain maṣlaḥa for the five necessary elements of human existence was not only novel but had long-lasting influence on the way Muslim jurists understood the procedure of analogy (qiyās). The correctness of the ratio legis was determinable by its consequences in bringing about maṣlaḥa. This shift was possible only by intellectual shifts in understanding the relationship between ethics and law. This paper traces the development in conceptions of ethics and its impact on the procedure of analogy in three 5th/11th century predecessors of al-Ghazālī, namely al-Baṣrī, al-Dabbūsī, and al-Juwaynī. It shows that al-Ghazālī’s definition of the purposes of the Law was developed based on previous conceptual shifts in the ratio legis from being a sign for the ruling to reflecting the ethical content of the divine injunction.

scholarly journals Preface. Religion and education

2014 ◽  
pp. 5-7
Author(s):  
Liudmyla O. Fylypovych
Keyword(s):  
Human Existence ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
The World ◽  
Information Research ◽  
External Forces ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Negative Sense

Religion and education are a topic that has emerged relatively recently in the Ukrainian information, research, and educational space. The relationship between religion and education meditated before, but usually in a negative sense. New circumstances also dictate new approaches to the stated topic. Polyphony of thoughts holds in itself and explicit criticism of any possibility of coexistence of religion and education, vulgarly linking religion with obscurantism, which can not bear any enlightenment, blurring the brain of a person. Such pre-historic estimates of religion are less and less popular in society, which in those years has "opened" a religion (as opposed to the present and still existing perception of it as a fantastic reflection in the heads of people of those external forces that prevail over them) as a spiritually rich reality as something that fills the meaning of human existence, defines the vocation of the person asserting it in the world, in society, in their own lives.

Specific study of biblical parables in a pedagogical university

2021 ◽  
pp. 135-144
Author(s):  
Elena Evgenievn Tikhomirova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
Semiotic System ◽  
Spiritual Quest ◽  
Artistic Process ◽  
Aesthetic Taste ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
The Individual

The author of the article focuses on the analysis of specific methods and techniques for identifying the universal and unique cultural meanings of biblical parables in the study of the disciplines of the humanities cycle in a pedagogical university. The purpose of the article is to develop techniques for working with parables for practical classes in the cultural cycle at the Pedagogical University. Research methodology and methods. The work is based on the use of the methodology of the sociocultural and activity-based approach to the psychological development of the individual, as well as systemic and holistic approaches to education. When decoding the meanings of parables as texts of culture, it is proposed to use axiological, semiotic, cognitive and systemic approaches. The systemic culturological approach allows you to create conditions for the development of aesthetic taste, artistic thinking. Research results. As the scientific literature and the practice of teaching culturological disciplines at the Pedagogical University show, working with parables teaches us to personally and emotionally perceive the text of culture, to adequately assess the relationship in the system man-man and man-world, to recode the content from one semiotic system to another. Through the interpretation of the text, the individual creative abilities of students are developed, a steady interest in modern art practices is formed. Interpretation of the categories of culture, embodied in human and natural images of the transcendental, time, space, make it possible to essentially comprehend the texts of culture containing the plots of biblical parables. Conclusion. The consistent identification of the specifics of the study of parables in the context of the spiritual quest of a certain historical period contributes to the emergence of interest and the formation of a respectful attitude towards the cultural heritage, the values of world culture. Cultural practices of working with cultural texts contribute to an adequate understanding of the place of national culture in the world artistic process and its creative enhancement.

Toward a virtue account of science

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jacob Warren Wright
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Knowledge Model ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Scientific Goal ◽  
Zero Force Evolutionary Law ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This dissertation argues for a virtue account of science in which foundational scientific goals are achieved by scientists' employment of virtuous tools and practices. Chapter 1 discusses contemporary literature on the nature and success of biology, especially the realism/antirealism debate within biology. This chapter also provides background into the debate surrounding explanation and understanding. Chapter 2 challenges the idea that successful biology requires appeals to laws of nature by arguing that some foundational scientific goals best realized by unlawful tools and practices. This result provides a criterion for determining whether a discipline is more scientific than another another; disciplines are more or less scientific to the extent that they are able to achieve foundational scientific goals. Chapter 3 examines a test case for the result in Chapter 2 by analyzing McShea and Brandon's [2010] Zero Force Evolutionary Law (ZFEL). I show that the ZFEL's failure as a law does not impact its usefulness to scientists, who are able to use the ZFEL to achieve a number of important, foundational goals. Chapter 4 provides a strategy for determining foundational scientific goals by examining the debate surrounding the relationship between understanding and explanation. By analyzing Khalifa's [2013a] Explanatory Knowledge Model of Understanding, I demonstrate that understanding is not a species of explanation and is thus a foundational scientific goal. It is a goal that scientists aim at, has intrinsic benefit, and is not reducible to other scientific goals. Finally, Chapter 5 presents an outline of the virtue account. On this account, science is successful to the extent it regularly achieves foundational scientific goals. Science does so by employing virtuous tools and practices--those tools and practices that regularly allow for the achievement of foundational goals. The chapter concludes by examining several benefits of this view and considering future avenues for research.

Neoliberalism, Neocorporatism, and Worker Representation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Preminger
Keyword(s):  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Conceptual Approach ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Chapter 1 lays out the book’s theoretical framework. Accepting the claim that Israel is a neoliberalizing society, it asserts labor’s agency and its potential to thwart neoliberalism as part of a struggle taking place on the ideological or symbolic level too. It then proposes neocorporatism as a useful conceptual approach, and links this to union revitalization and concepts of power. These theoretical terms and concepts are used to anchor the three “spheres” of union activity which structure the book: union democracy, or workers’ relationship to their representative organization; the balance of power between labor and capital, and the way the potential clash of interests between them is viewed and played out; and the relationship of labor to the political establishment and wider political community. Finally, a short coda explains the research process and approach that led to the book.

An Archaeology of the Twentieth Century in the Anthracite Coal Region of Northeast Pennsylvania

2018 ◽  
pp. 7-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Roller
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Anthracite Coal ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Coal Region

Chapter 1 provides a broad theoretical, historical, and ethnographic context to the research, and an overview of the major research questions addressed in the book. Topics such as the approach to the structural violence of everyday life in the twentieth century, the relationship between migrants and the sovereignty of political states, racialization, and the labor needs of late industrial capitalism are addressed. Relevant theoretical concepts from scholars such as Giorgio Agamben, Walter Benjamin and Karl Marx are introduced here. The ethnographic and discursive context of immigrant discrimination in the present, and the manner in which it informs the broad trajectory of the research is presented. Lastly, the manner in which interdisciplinary data is applied to this research is also presented.

Specimen Collectors

2021 ◽  
pp. 151-188
Author(s):  
Reed Gochberg
Keyword(s):  
William James ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Henry David Thoreau ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Louisa May Alcott ◽  
Research And Teaching ◽  
Comparative Zoology ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Philosophical Writings

This chapter examines the early history of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology and broader conversations about the representation of the natural world as fixed and stable. While the museum’s founder, Louis Agassiz, emphasized the value of preserved specimens to research and teaching, many collectors and writers questioned such practices. After donating turtles to the museum, Henry David Thoreau contemplated the ethical and scientific implications of freezing nature for extended study. In children’s fiction, Louisa May Alcott emphasized the relationship between collecting specimens and moral order, while highlighting the growing gendered divide between scientific practice in the museum and the parlor. And in philosophical writings, William James drew on classification to consider more flexible possibilities to fixed theories. These accounts show how writers sought to promote a deeper understanding of flux and change both within the museum and beyond.

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