Historicizing Distinctions

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 153-172
Author(s):  
Beltrán Undurraga ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Western Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
New Varieties ◽  
Human World ◽  
Vita Activa ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Human Condition

This article expands Patchen Markell’s (2011) seminal problematization of The Human Condition by examining the impact that the modern developments in science and technology had on Arendt’s signature categories. Whereas Markell is interested in the systematic “architecture” of the book, I attempt to historicize Arendt’s distinctions in light of the story she tells about science and technology. From the invention of the telescope to the splitting of the atom, technoscience has provoked shifts in the hierarchies within the vita activa; spawned new varieties of “labor,” “work,” and “action”; and blurred the traditional boundaries between “nature” and the “human world.” These reconfigurations draw the contours of a new, “modern world” that is different from the world whose story and conceptual tradition Arendt set out to articulate. Largely as a result of the activities of science and technology, the experiences that informed the categories of the “Western tradition” correspond to a world that is no longer our own.

Bodily Selves: Identity and Shared Realities among Humans and Spirits in Zanzibar

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kjersti Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Social Positioning ◽  
People’S Daily ◽  
The World ◽  
Human World ◽  
People's Daily ◽  
The Human Condition

AbstractThe paper explores the ways in which spirits calledmasheitaniormajinni(singl.sheitaniorjinni)engage in people’s daily lives in Zanzibar Town, Zanzibar. It is argued that the phenomenon of spirits and other forms of ‘spectral’ beings may offer clues to an improved understanding of society and a more precise perception of the various concerns and paradoxes people cope with in their everyday lives. Reflecting on matters of identity, the concept of the person, and the human condition, it is suggested that to most people the human world appears to be rather unpredictable and chaotic while the world of spirits, in contrast, is seen as stable and predictable. The spirits’ involvement in people’s everyday lives and, moreover, the extent to which peoples’ relationships with different kinds of spirits affect negotiations of identity and social positioning are discussed with reference to the ethnographic material.

scholarly journals On the Dialogue of Aesthetics and Philosophical Anthropology

wisdom ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-11
Author(s):  
Georgia APOSTOLOPOULOU
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Open World ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Human World ◽  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Pictorial Form ◽  
The Human Condition

After the alleged ‘ends’ of metaphysics, of history, and of art, aesthetics reorganises the field of its enquiry. While retaining the question of the meaning of art for the human as the background justification of its theorising, aesthetics meets philosophical anthropology and enlarges its field. Philosophical anthropology explains that the instability of the human condition demands culture as the artificial stabilisation of the human world as well as of the human in the world. Expressivity, artificiality, and the aesthetic are interweaved with the meaning of the human world. In this context, pictures have priority over concepts and justify art as the eminent pictorial form of meaning. Since the human lives in nature and culture, the stabilisation of its open world is possible through creation of spatial correlates and of objects as well. Thus, aesthetics does need to expand enquiry beyond the discourse on art, so that it includes the issues concerning the aesthetic character of the human world and its spatial correlates. While Wolfgang Welsch and Richard Shusterman argue for a revision of aesthetics, Joseph Margolis and Helmuth Plessner support the stronger dialogue between philosophical anthropology and aesthetics in different ways. Further, Arnold Berleant explores aesthetics of human space.

scholarly journals Robak i robactwo w twórczości Władysława Syrokomli

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 5-26
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Igliński
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Frequency Of Occurrence ◽  
Pest Insect ◽  
Literary Traditions ◽  
Metaphorical Meaning ◽  
The World ◽  
Human World ◽  
The Human Condition

The aim of this article is to determine the frequency of occurrence of the terms “worm” and “insects” in the works of Władysław Syrokomla. An assumption is made that these themes have animportant function in the poet’s works, and that their occurrence indicates something of significance. The article considers both the functionality and repeatability criteria, which is the necessary foundationfor recording these items. The conducted analyses indicate that Syrokomla’s insects (regardless of whether they have a literal or metaphorical meaning) in most cases signal something evil. Sometimes it is an ordinary pest (insect) damaging plants, but more frequently the insect refers to the human condition, characterising it in three dimensions: as the worm of death, as the worm of internal suffering or as the worm of insignificance. In other cases, worms or insects represent curses or sin. The diversity of how such zoomorphic connotations are presented and applied deserves attention. Moreover, although the majority of them have long-established cultural and literary traditions, in Syrokomla’s works they gain a new context (for example, historical, folk or social). They indicate sensitivity to injustice and evil. The poet frequently presents the human world by analogy to the world of nature.

scholarly journals The human condition of the nursing worker from the perspective of Hannah Arendt

2020 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanna Gomes de Sousa ◽  
Soraya Maria de Medeiros ◽  
Viviane Euzébia Pereira Santos ◽  
Rayrla Cristina de Abreu Temoteo ◽  
Jovanka Bittencourt Leite de Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
Psychosocial Care ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Mental Health Workers ◽  
Work Context ◽  
Vita Activa ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Human Condition

ABSTRACT Objective: This study intends to analyze how the human condition of the nurse is established in the context of Psychosocial Care Centers (Caps). Method: theoretical-reflexive study, anchored in three essential parts: 1) Theoretical and philosophical conception of the human condition from Hannah Arendt’s perspective; 2) The nurse’s work in the Caps; and 3) Human condition to think about the work of the nurse. Results: in the context of the Caps, the work can be represented by the psychic significations; the work, through the production of nurses’ practice of care; and the action by the relations established between worker and institution, worker and user. Final considerations: the understanding of the vita activa allows to reflect on the human condition of the nurse in their work context and (re) considers a better understanding about the impact of the work on the life of these mental health workers in the contemporaneity.

scholarly journals Portugal, Europa e o mundo: condição humana e geopolítica na filmografia de Manoel de Oliveira

2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (43) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Carolin Overhoff Ferreira
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
Universal Method ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Human Condition

<p>Este ensaio visa esclarecer como Manoel de Oliveira  desenvolveu o seu método universalista, ou seja, a sua  tendência de buscar no particular conclusões generalizantes  sobre os dilemas da condição humana perante as alterações  geopolíticas sofridas por Portugal, a Europa e o mundo  ao longo dos últimos oitenta anos da sua atividade.  Reconstroem-se, consequentemente, as relações entre a sua  preocupação com a condição humana e o impacto dos  cambiantes contextos nos quais tem filmado , desde 1931.  Estas dimensões compreendem o local – sobretudo através  da região do Porto e do Douro –, o nacional – em relação  à identidade do seu país –, o supranacional – devido à  adesão de Portugal à Comunidade Europeia, em 1986 –,  o transnacional – devido à história portuguesa e às  explorações marítimas, bem como o global – como  resultado dos efeitos da globalização que Portugal sofreu  a partir dos anos noventa.</p><p>This essay analyses how Manoel de Oliveira has framed  his universal method, that is, his tendency to look for  generalising conclusions about the dilemma of the human  condition within specific contexts during the eighty years  of his filmmaking activity, by taking into consideration the  geopolitical changes suffered by Portugal, Europe and the  world. Accordingly, I will reconstruct the relationship  between his interest in the human condition and the impact of the changing conditions in which he has produced films since 1931. The scales include the local –  mainly Porto and the Douro region –, the national – with  regard to his countries’ identity –, the supranational – given  Portugal’s history and the maritime explorations, as well  as the global – as a result of globalisation’s effects on  Portugal from the 90s onwards.</p>

Los avatares del logos

2001 ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Leticia Flores Farfán
Keyword(s):  
Georges Bataille ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Mircea Eliade ◽  
The World ◽  
The Human Condition

Assuming with Georges Bataille that men is a being who is not in the world “like water within the water”, that is to say, in an immanent and lack of distinction state, but that its destiny is shaped in the permanent significant joint or logos to which its unfinished nature jeopardizes him, we analyze the form in which the mythical story, characterized like a sacred word with symbolic and ontological quality within the perspective of Mircea Eliade, gives account of the wound or the original tear that constitutes the human condition.

With and Beyond Epistemologies from the South: Ontological Epistemology of Participation, Multi-topial Hermeneutics and the Calling of Planetary Realisations

2021 ◽  
pp. 003802292110146
Author(s):  
Ananta Kumar Giri
Keyword(s):  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The South ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Multiple Cultures ◽  
The World ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
Universe Of Discourse ◽  
The Human Condition

Our contemporary moment is a moment of crisis of epistemology as a part of the wider and deeper crisis of modernity and the human condition. The crisis of epistemology emerges from the limits of the epistemic as it is tied to epistemology of procedural certainty and closure. The crisis of epistemology also reflects the limits of epistemology closed within the Euro-American universe of discourse. It is in this context that the present essay discusses Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. It also discusses some of the limits of de Sousa Santos’ alternatives especially his lack of cultivation of the ontological in his exploration of epistemological alternatives beyond the Eurocentric canons. It then explores the pathways of ontological epistemology of participation which brings epistemic and ontological works and meditations together in transformative and cross-cultural ways. This helps us in going beyond both the limits of the primacy of epistemology in modernity as well as Eurocentrism. It also explores pathways of a new hermeneutics which involves walking and meditating across multiple topoi of cultures and traditions of thinking and reflections which is called multi- topial hermeneutics in this study. This involves foot-walking and foot-meditative interpretation across multiple cultures and traditions of the world which help us go beyond ethnocentrism and eurocentrism and cultivate conversations and realisations across borders what the essay calls planetary realisations.

Gaston Bachelard and Phenomenology: Outline of a Theory of the Imagination

1999 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Thiboutot ◽  
A. Martinez ◽  
David Jager
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
Phenomenological Psychology ◽  
Gaston Bachelard ◽  
Human Habitation ◽  
Human World ◽  
The Human Condition

AbstractGaston Bachelard's thought remains a continual source of inspiration for a phenomenological psychology that takes human habitation as a fundamental given and as an abiding mystery of the human condition. the following essay explores the ideas Bachelard developed in the course of his study of poetry. It examines in particular his vision of imagination as a unique passage way by means of which we reach an inhabitable, intersubjective and fully human world. Within that perspective, our lives are constantly renewed by the appearance of a revealing image or a telling metaphor. Each time that we are awakened by this appeal we commemorate the birth and rebirth of a human world.

On the Harm of Genocide

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Paul Kucharski
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Community Or ◽  
The World ◽  
Scholarly Discussion ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Individual Human ◽  
The Human Condition

My aim in this essay is to advance the state of scholarly discussion on the harms of genocide. The most obvious harms inflicted by every genocide are readily evident: the physical harm inflicted upon the victims of genocide and the moral harm that the perpetrators of genocide inflict upon themselves. Instead, I will focus on a kind of harm inflicted upon those who are neither victims nor perpetrators, on those who are outside observers, so to speak. My thesis will be that when a whole community or culture is eliminated, or even deeply wounded, the world loses an avenue for insight into the human condition. My argument is as follows. In order to understand human nature, and that which promotes its flourishing, we must certainly study individual human beings. But since human beings as rational and linguistic animals are in part constituted by the communities in which they live, the study of human nature should also involve the study of communities and cultures—both those that are well ordered and those that are not. No one community or culture has expressed all that can be said about the human way of existing and flourishing. And given that the unity and wholeness of human nature can only be glimpsed in a variety of communities and cultures, then part of the harm of genocide consists in the removal of a valuable avenue for human beings to better understand themselves.

Qoheleth and the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch

2008 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias Henze
Keyword(s):  
Human Condition ◽  
First Century ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
Wisdom Tradition ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe roots of early Jewish apocalypticism are diverse. Within the realm of ancient Israel, one of the main contributory streams is the wisdom tradition. The present essay examines the impact of Israel's sapiential tradition, and specifically of that of the book of Qoheleth, on the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, a Jewish apocalypse of the late first century C.E. My thesis is that, while both authors agree in their assessment of the present human condition, they draw dramatically different conclusions. Qoheleth persistently points to the limits and fallibility of this world and advises his readers to enjoy life before they die, whereas the author of 2 Baruch looks to the world to come and, in the meantime, calls on his readers to live their lives in compliance with the Mosaic Torah.

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