Pessimistischer Liberalismus

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Realistic View ◽  
The Human Condition

Arthur Schopenhauer's influence on philosophy, art and psychology is indisputable. His political thinking, on the other hand, has remained almost completely unnoticed and insignificant up to the present day. Yet, the ‘thinker against the tide’ (Hübscher) creates a remarkable connection between pessimistic philosophy and liberal thinking in the field of politics. Schopenhauer's sceptical account of humanity and existence leads him to a political philosophy that highlights the limits of politics and statehood, taking into account the unalterable depths of life and thereby providing a realistic view of the human condition. This volume’s aim is threefold: to rediscover Schopenhauer for political philosophy, to reflect on the potential of a pessimistic philosophy for questions relating to society, law and politics, and finally to examine the connection between pessimistic anthropology and liberal thinking. With contributions by Dieter Birnbacher, Jutta Georg, Oliver Hallich, Henrik Holm, Dominik Hotz, Per Jepsen, Christina Kast, Jan Kerkmann, Thorsten Lerchner, Manja Kisner, Gabriele Neuhäuser and Christoph Sebastian Widdau.

“Words crumbled in my mouth like rotten mushrooms”

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 521-549
Author(s):  
Jana V. Schmidt ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ingeborg Bachmann ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Hermann Broch ◽  
The One ◽  
Exclusive Focus ◽  
The Human Condition

A near exclusive focus on Hannah Arendt’s concept of forgiveness from her major work The Human Condition has obscured the equally important model of reconciliation in her writings on aesthetics and in her Thought Notebook. By engaging Arendt in a dialogue with her contemporaries and friends Ingeborg Bachmann and Hermann Broch, on the one hand, and with the classic thinkers of tragedy, Aristotle and Goethe, on the other hand, I show how reconciliation responds to the situation of fatherlessness after 1945 and, as a “reconciliation with reality,” offers a new basis for intersubjectivity. Having, as Arendt writes, “enough of origin within” ourselves to do without pre-established categories cannot mean that we must begin to “father” ourselves but that, on the contrary, our inception as beings born to begin anew leaves us radically forlorn and yet equipped with everything we need to “make world” with one another. The essay contends that imagination, judgment, and understanding build a network of thought figures in Arendt that are tied to reality through the work of reconciliation.

scholarly journals A condição humana e a condição docente: das ilusões de onipotência ao reconhecimento do desamparo

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (71) ◽  
pp. 679-704
Author(s):  
Diogo Bogéa
Keyword(s):  
Educational Process ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
De Se ◽  
Human Teacher ◽  
The Human Condition

A condição humana e a condição docente: das ilusões de onipotência ao reconhecimento do desamparo Resumo: Partindo do princípio de que todo processo educacional é aberta ou veladamente guiado por uma determinada maneira de se compreender o ser humano, procuramos nesse artigo colocar em questão os ideais de “humano”, e consequentemente, de humano-professor, que a tradição ocidental nos legou. Em seguida, tentamos indicar alguns caminhos para repensarmos contemporaneamente o que significa ser humano e, por conseguinte, o que significa ser professor. Enquanto os antigos ideais insistem em projeções de poder e invulnerabilidade ao assumir uma essência imaterial para o humano, apostamos numa concepção de humano encarnado, afetivo e desejante que envolve, em contrapartida, a disposição para assumirmos o irremediável desamparo e a incontornável vulnerabilidade que são intrínsecos à condição humana. Palavras-chave: condição humana; ilusões de onipotência; desamparo The human condition and the teacher condition: from the illusions of omnipotence to the recognition of helplessness Abstract: Assuming that every educational process is openly or veiled guided by a certain way of understanding the human being, we seek in this article to question the ideals of "human," and consequently of human-teacher, that the Western tradition bequeathed to us. Next, we try to indicate some ways to rethink contemporaneously what it means to be human and, therefore, what it means to be a teacher. While the old ideals insist on projections of power and invulnerability by assuming an immaterial essence for the human, we bet on an incarnate, affective and desiring human conception that involves, on the other hand, the disposition to assume the irremediable helplessness and the unavoidable vulnerability that are intrinsic to the human condition. Keywords: human condition; omnipotence illusions; helplessness La condición humana y la condición docente: de las ilusiones de omnipotencia al reconocimiento del desamparo Resumen: A partir del principio de que todo proceso educativo es abierto o veladamente guiado por una determinada manera de comprenderse el ser humano, buscamos en ese artículo plantear en cuestión los ideales de "humano", y consecuentemente, de humano-profesor, que la tradición occidental en legó. A continuación, intentamos indicar algunos caminos para repensar contemporáneamente lo que significa ser humano y, por lo tanto, lo que significa ser profesor. Mientras los antiguos ideales insisten en proyecciones de poder e invulnerabilidad al asumir una esencia inmaterial para lo humano, apostamos en una concepción de humano encarnado, afectivo y deseante que envuelve, en contrapartida, la disposición para asumir el irremediable desamparo y la ineludible vulnerabilidad que son intrínsecos a la condición humana. Palabras clave: condición humana; ilusiones de omnipotencia; desamparo Data de registro: 20/05/2020Data de aceite: 02/10/2020

scholarly journals Epifania twarzy czy iluzja maski? O zmaganiu się człowieka w ujęciu filozofii dramatu Józefa Tischnera

2021 ◽  
pp. 255-269
Author(s):  
Inga Mizdrak
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Face ◽  
Freedom And Responsibility ◽  
Condition Today ◽  
The Human Condition ◽  
At Home

The aim of the article is to present human issues in the context of the face and the mask as its negative. This is to bring us closer to a better diagnosis of the human condition today and the changes that can be articulated on its basis. Both the face and the mask are multi-context, and any attempt to define them encounters a number of difficulties. In Józef Tischner’s philosophy of drama, the face is a condition for the essence of the meeting. On the other hand, the mask, as an appearance and falsification of the truth of the face, is placed in the ambiguous perspective of hiding, concealing, mystifying or obscuring or obscuring the image of the face. Thanks to the face, man is somehow “at home”, and in the bonds of the mask he is somewhat “out of place”, he is lying. The face is relational and the mask is reactionary. Inquiries about whether the face brings closer and reveals the naked being of a human intensified questions about the nature of the face itself and whether it is possible to reach the pure phenomenon of the face as such. Both the face and the mask reveal important moments in the characteristics of a human being as a dramatic being, in which questions about meaning, identity, freedom and responsibility, as well as what is “between” I and You, gain in intensity and imply new attempts to reveal who is a human.

The Modern Privilege of Life

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-49
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Ziarek
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
The Human Condition

Abstract This essay reconsiders the notion of “world” by looking critically at the idiom of life dominating current critical debates. Showing how and why life should be displaced from the privileged position it has assumed in modernity, it examines Arendt’s and Heidegger’s comments on the world. In The Human Condition, Arendt provides an interesting philosophical and cultural account of the rise of life to prominence in the modern age, pointing out its detrimental effects on the understanding of the world and human action. Heidegger, on the other hand, executes, through his idiomatic approach to mortality, perhaps the most radical displacement of life in an attempt to rethink and bring to eminence being and the event of the world. At stake is a different experience of the world and a change in the understanding of the human, situating the human (and) life always already in response to the nonrepeatable event of being.

scholarly journals Mimesis, interpretation and the human condition

Ars Aeterna ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Mária Kiššová
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
Vladimir Nabokov ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Artistic Creativity ◽  
The Real ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Human Condition

Abstract One of the most fundamental questions in the discourse on artistic creativity and interpretation is that of mimesis or representation; the relation and the ‘tension’ between experiential reality on one hand and an artistic construct on the other hand. In the present study, mimesis and the discussion about the connection between the experiential and the imaginary are understood as major characteristics by which man and the human condition are defined. From the context of the visual arts, the study proceeds to literature and, specifically, to an analysis of the novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) by Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977). The main aim of the study is to show the questions of representation and interpretation as part of the universal inquiry about humanity and the human condition.

Marginalia as narratives of ordinary lives: Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’s Down to This

2021 ◽  
pp. 002198942098111
Author(s):  
Silvia Julia Caporale-Bizzini
Keyword(s):  
Public Perception ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Personal Journey ◽  
The Public ◽  
Big City ◽  
The Human Condition

This article examines Canadian author Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’s 2004 memoir Down to This: Squalor and Splendour in a Big-City Shantytown through the notions of marginalia and the ordinary in order to question dichotomic representations of homelessness. It explores how the author moves beyond binaries, interrogating the dichotomy ordinary/out of the ordinary lives by narrating his ethical encounter with the other (Butler, 2004). The text is written as a journal where Bishop-Stall describes his personal journey through homelessness; and more importantly, it gives a voice to the other down-and-out people in notorious Toronto’s Tent City. The characters’ unreliable and fragmented storytelling uncovers the lives of the faceless others. I contend that in Down to This individuals’ life stories are connected to realities which question binaries through the re/mapping of ordinary experiences and affects; they disintegrate the opposition materiality vs abstraction, or as I argue, exclusion vs inclusion (out of the ordinary/ordinary). Down to These bridges the private details of the residents’ life stories, and the public perception of the problem of homelessness, illustrating how everyday moments of precarity intersect with wider political issues. In the process, the narrative also questions the binary attitudes of exclusion (disfranchisement) and inclusion (privilege). This literary strategy gives the constellation of stories a profound illuminating vision of the human condition. I show my point by drawing on the of marginalia (Kistner 2014), and by analysing the characters’ narratives of precariousness through the notions of editing and affective assemblage (Gerlach, 2015; Hamilakis, 2017).

BEYOND THE HUMAN CONDITION: DURATION AND VIRTUALITY IN HERACLITUS

Ramus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 41-69
Author(s):  
Richard Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Henri Bergson ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
The Human Condition

Gilles Deleuze's engagement with Heraclitus is long-standing, going back to his early work on Nietzsche, and persisting through the collaborative volumes produced with Félix Guattari in which Heraclitus becomes a key exemplar of their own philosophical method, whereby thought and nature are said to fold into one another in creative configurations. For Deleuze, as before him for Nietzsche, Heraclitus’ conception of universal becoming and of the constitutive flows across codes—be they ontological, epistemological, political, or ethical—demands a radical re-evaluation of the place of the human in time, and of the boundaries of subjectivity. Elsewhere, Deleuze states that the very meaning of philosophy is ‘to go beyond the human condition’ by opening us up to the other durations—inhuman and superhuman—with which, and by which, we are disclosed. A further key interlocutor here is Henri Bergson, whose work on time as duration, with psychological and ontological import, is central to the development of many of Deleuze's philosophical positions, including those subsequently nuanced by his work with Félix Guattari. Before attempting to map the plane of affiliations upon which these thinkers move, it is necessary to begin from Heraclitus’ own words on philosophical method and the opposition he draws between the correct, though elusive, practice of νόος (‘thought’, ‘understanding’) and the inadequate model of πολυμαθίη (‘much learning’) adopted by his intellectual predecessors.

scholarly journals Consuming Desire in Under the Skin

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Yael Maurer
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Fictional Narrative ◽  
Porous Boundaries ◽  
Destructive Potential ◽  
The Human Condition

Jonathan Glazer’s 2013 film Under the Skin is a Gothicized science fictional narrative about sexuality, alterity and the limits of humanity. The film’s protagonist, an alien female, passing for an attractive human, seduces unwary Scottish males, leading them to a slimy, underwater/womblike confinement where their bodies dissolve and nothing but floating skins remain. In this paper, I look at the film’s engagement with the notions of consumption, the alien as devourer trope, and the nature of the ‘other’, comparing this filmic depiction with Michael Faber’s novel on which the film is based. I examine the film’s reinvention of Faber’s novel as a more open-ended allegory of the human condition as always already ‘other’. In Faber’s novel, the alien female seduces and captures the men who are consumed and devoured by an alien race, thus providing a reversal of the human species’ treatment of animals as mere food. Glazer’s film, however, chooses to remain ambiguous about the alien female’s ‘nature’ to the very end. Thus, the film remains a more open-ended meditation about alterity, the destructive potential of sexuality, and the fear of consumption which lies at the heart of the Gothic’s interrogation of porous boundaries.

scholarly journals Jak możliwa (do pomyślenia) jest dobrowolna niewola? O nowożytnych formach rządzenia, ideologii i spektaklu władzy

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
Mateusz Falkowski
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Etienne De La Boetie ◽  
The One ◽  
Voluntary Servitude

The article is devoted to the famous The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude by Étienne de La Boétie. The author considers the theoretical premises underlying the concept of “voluntary servitude”, juxtaposing them with two modern concepts of will developed by Descartes and Pascal. An important feature of La Boétie’s project is the political and therefore intersubjective – as opposed to the individualistic perspective of Descartes and Pascal – starting point. It is therefore situated against the background of, on the one hand, the historical evolution of early modern states (from feudal monarchies, through so-called Renaissance monarchies up to European absolutisms) and, on the other hand – of the political philosophy of Machiavelli and Hobbes.

The Subversion of Plato's Quasi-Phenomenology and Mytho-Poetics in the Symposium

Janus Head ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-76
Author(s):  
Bert Olivier ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
The One

Is there a significant difference between Plato's texts and what is known as 'Platonism', that is, the philosophical tradition that claims Plato as its progenitor? Focusing on the Symposium, an attempt is made here to show that, far from merely fitting neatly into the categories of Platonism—with its neat distinction between the super-sensible and the sensible—Plato's own text is a complex, tension-filled terrain of countervailing forces. In the Symposium this tension obtains between the perceptive insights, on the one hand, into the nature of love and beauty, as well as the bond between them, and the metaphysical leap, on the other hand, from the experiential world to a supposedly accessible, but by definition super-sensible, experience-transcending realm. It is argued that, instead of being content with the philosophical illumination of the ambivalent human condition—something consummately achieved by mytho-poetic and quasi-phenomenohgical means—Plato turns to a putatively attainable, transcendent source of metaphysical reassurance which, moreover, displays all the trappings of an ideological construct. This is demonstrated by mapping Plato's lover's vision of 'absolute beauty' on to what Jacques Lacan has characterized as the unconscious structural quasi-condition of all religious and ideological illusion.

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