Sartre and the Rationalization of Human Sexuality

1998 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
W. M. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Human Sexuality ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Bad Faith ◽  
The Way

Sartre rationalizes sexuality much like Plato. Rationalization here refers to the way Sartre tries to facilitate explanation by changing the terms of the discussion from sexual to nonsexual concepts. As a philosophy which, above all, highlights those features of human existence which seem most resistant to explanation, one would expect existentialism to highlight sexuality as a category that is crucial for considering human existence. Descartes comes immediately to mind when one focuses on Sartre's major categories. In Sartre's case however, it is not mind and matter but consciousness and its opposite: "nothingness" and "being." This irreducible dualism is the key to the trouble human beings have with existence. Humans try to deal with the tensions implied by this dualism by trying to pretend people are not subjects but objects. Sartre calls this "bad faith." He begins by attempting to take human sexuality seriously as a fundamental category, but ends by abandoning the effort in favor of other substitutes.

scholarly journals Being Towards Death: Tragic Aesthetics and Stoicism in W. B. Yeats’s Men Improve With The Years

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Shilong Tao
Keyword(s):  
Human Existence ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Way

Men Improve With The Years was written by W. B. Yeats in 1916 by the time he had turned 50 years old. This paper argues that in this poem, Yeats presents his philosophical thoughts of the tragic life among human beings, highlighting that the joy in tragedy is “the way to survive” while the sorrow in tragedy is “being towards death”. Influenced by Nietzsche’s aesthetic notions of the Apollonian and Dionysian art, Yeats holds a kind of tragic aesthetic view towards death—“the unity of being” of individual life and nature, and aims to seek the joy of growing old and the freedom to create life out of life. As Apollonian dream covers the tragedy of life and Dionysian intoxication discloses it, the nameless old protagonist in the poem or Yeats himself attempts to bear the plight with stoicism and fortitude like a marble Triton so as to conquer and welcome all the sorrows in the process of aging and dying. Since men improve with the years, “being towards death” is the nature of living. Yeats hopes to achieve the aesthetic redemption from the tragic life in his early fifties, thus giving enlightenment to the predicament of human existence.

Jugend—Alter—Tod

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 193-208
Author(s):  
Hermann Spieckermann
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Human Heart ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Way

Abstract Koh 11:7-12:8 is understood as the last part of Kohelet’s collected reflections, except for minor later additions. It resumes central topics addressed previously and correlates them to phases of human existence: youth and adulthood, (old) age and, finally death. It will be shown that the unique allusion to death by using the metaphor of “house of eternity” conveys the idea of a certain stability surrounded by examples how the beauty of creation and the products of human artistry are threatened by transitoriness, decay, and destruction. Consequently they become a paradigm of death—the way all human beings have to go. Joy pursued in the first decades of life and the “house of eternity” are not contradictory. Rather, both are regarded as positive options of human existence surrounded by the omnipresence of futility. It cannot even be excluded that Kohelet implicitly ponders a relation between the eternity God has given into the human heart (3:11) and the “house of eternity” (12:5). After all, these are the only significant instances of eternity in his collection.

Kierkegaard

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Kangas
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Thematic Content ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

This essay explores the intersection of religion and emotion in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855). Emotions—or, more generally, affectivity—play a central role in Kierkegaard's analyses of human existence. Coming after German idealism and Romanticism, and giving extraordinary new life to the heritage of pietism, Kierkegaard finds in the affective life of human beings the key disclosures concerning our being-in-the-world. In addition, Kierkegaardian “religion” takes shape in terms of certain affects and virtues that emerge in face of such existential disclosures. This essay examines how Kierkegaard frames the problem of emotion in terms of his understanding of selfhood. In particular, it looks at the way Kierkegaard's phenomenology challenges an understanding that links emotions to judgments (whether cognitive or evaluative). The latter understanding, an inheritance of Aristotle, depends on a classical ontology that privileges determination, measure, presence, and intentionality. For the “classical” tradition, emotions offer thematic content about the world, guide moral reasoning and decision-making, predispose one toward certain virtues or vices, and can be altered by a resolution toward right thinking.

scholarly journals Kunderowskie zmagania z kiczem – raz jeszcze o „Nieznośnej lekkości bytu”

2016 ◽  
pp. 72-84
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Hudymač
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Film Adaptations ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Popular Novel ◽  
The Way

This paper deals with the Kundera’s most popular novel as a passionate dialogue with kitsch. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is based on the antinomy of lightness and heaviness, as well as kitsch and individuality. The narrator treats his characters as the experimental ego and confronts them with the reality created on the cross-scheme of those key-words mentioned above. Kundera interprets the phenomenon of Kitsch as the tool to create a totalitarian reality and slave human beings, but also as something, that can be recognize and ‘domesticate’, and then comprise an inalienable part of human existence and its relation to the world. Paper also deals with the Kundera’s famous aversion to film his novels. He banned any further film adaptations of his work, having disliked the way The Unbearable Lightness of Being had been adapted by Philip Kaufman in 1988.

Being Born

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Stone
Keyword(s):  
Social Power ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Self ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophical Account ◽  
The Way

This book gives the first systematic philosophical account of how being born shapes our condition as human beings. Drawing on both feminist philosophy and the existentialist project of inquiring into the structure of meaningful human existence, the book explores how human existence is natal, that is, is shaped by the way that we are born. Taking natality into account transforms our view of human existence and illuminates how many of its aspects hang together and are connected with our birth. These aspects include dependency; the relationality of the self; vulnerability; reception and inheritance; embeddedness in social power; situatedness; and radical contingency. Considering natality also sheds new light on anxiety, mortality, and the temporality of human life. This book offers an original perspective on human existence which bears on many debates in feminist and continental philosophy and around death and the meaning of life.

scholarly journals The Elements of a Christological Anthropology

Perichoresis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-20
Author(s):  
Rowan Williams
Keyword(s):  
Image Of God ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Material World ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
In Christ ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
The Way

Abstract Human beings exist in one of two sorts of solidarity, according to St. Paul—the solidarity of sin or alienation ‘in Adam’ or the solidarity of life-giving mutuality in Christ. There can be no Christian theology of the human that is not a theology of communion—which converges with the conviction that our creation in the divine image is creation in relationality. The image of God is not a portion or aspect of human existence but a fundamental orientation towards relation. This understanding of the divine image in turn points to the way in which—as the Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky stresses—a proper understanding of the nature of personal being depends upon a proper grasp of the divine image, including the fact that it is always an image of the divine ‘filiation’—the eternal relation of Word to the Father in the Trinity. Our personal flourishing is a filial dependence that liberates and empowers. And what is ‘empowered’ is the human vocation to make reconciled sense of the material world of which we are part, articulating and serving its Godward meaning, so that we may see our humanity as essentially a priestly calling within the reconciling priesthood of Christ, in whom all things cohere.

نُدرة الموارد وعلاقتها بالبيئة من وجهة نظر إسلاميّة The Issue of Scarcity of Resources and Its Relationship to the Environment

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 01
Author(s):  
حسن بن إبراهيم الهنداوي (Hassan Hendawi)
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resources ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Modern Economy ◽  
The People ◽  
The World ◽  
Scarcity Of Resources ◽  
Economic Dilemma

الملخّصإنّ الفقر والإملاق من المشكلات الرئيسة التي يواجهها العالم اليوم، ومن أسبابها ندرة الموارد الاقتصادية الشديدة وندرة الغذاء والماء. فندرة الموارد وقلتها كانت ذات أثر مباشر في قتل الملايين من الأنفس البشريّة. وتعدّ ندرة الموارد عند الاقتصاديين الخطر الأساس الذي يهدد الوجود البشري في هذا العصر. ويعتبرها الاقتصاديّون كذلك معضلة اقتصادية ناتجة عن رغبات الإنسان غير المتناهية مقابل موارد محدودة ومتناهية. ومن الأمور التي يقترحها الاقتصاديون من اجل التغلب على هذه المشكلة أن النّاسن ينبغي عليهم أن يختاروا الموارد الضرورية والحاجية لتلبية رغباتهم. فمفهوم الندرة من منظور الاقتصاد التقليدي يعني موارد محدودة في العالم مقابل حاجات ورغبات غير محدودة. وسبب ذلك عند الاقتصاديين أن الطبيعة لا توفر موارد كافية لتلبية حاجات الناس ورغباتهم غير المتناهية. ونظرة الإسلام التي يمثلها القرآن الكريم والسنة النبوية الشريفة لمسألة الندرة نظرة مختلفة تماما عن نظرة الاقتصاد التقليدي. ويعنى هذا البحث ببيان أن الندرة ليست مشكلة الطبيعة التس سخّرها الله تعالى للإنسان،  ولكن المشكلة في أخلاقيات الناس وتصرفاتهم في الموارد الطبيعية وطريقتهم في الانتفاع بها التي أدت إلى إدخال الضرر والفساد على الموارد الموجودة.الكلمات المفتاحية: الإسلام، ندرة الموارد، الاقتصاد المعاصر، الموارد الطبيعية، الطبيعة. **************************************               AbstractAmong the main problems that the world is facing today are poverty and destitution caused by severe scarcity of economic resources and the scarcity of food and water. The lack of resources has already caused the death of millions of human beings. The scarcity of resources is counted by economists as the primary danger that threatens the human existence. Economists also consider it an economic dilemma caused by infinite human desires against limited and finite resources. In order to overcome this problem among the suggestions made by economists is that human beings should choose only necessary resources to satisfy their desires. The conventional concept of scarcity is that the resources in the world are limited vis-à-vis the unlimited human needs and desires. The reason for that according to economists is that the nature does not provide sufficient resources to meet people’s endless needs and desires. Islamic approach as represented by the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah to the issue of scarcity is essentially different from the conventional viewpoint of economists. This paper proposes and explains that the problem is not in the nature which Allah has made subservient to man, but it is in the ethics of the people and their behaviour and way of utilization of natural resources, which ultimately damage and corrupt the available resources.Keywords: Islam, Scarcity of Resources, Modern Economy, Environmental Resources, Nature.

Why Phenomenology?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Pattison
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Present Approach ◽  
The Self ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Pure Intuition ◽  
The Way

This chapter sets out the rationale for adopting a phenomenological approach to the devout life literature. Distinguishing the present approach from versions of the phenomenology of religion dominant in mid-twentieth-century approaches to religion, an alternative model is found in Heidegger’s early lectures on Paul. These illustrate that alongside its striving to achieve a maximally pure intuition of its subject matter, phenomenology will also be necessarily interpretative and existential. Although phenomenology is limited to what shows itself and therefore cannot pass judgement on the existence of God, it can deal with God insofar as God appears within the activity and passivity of human existence. From Hegel onward, it has also shown itself open to seeing the self as twofold and thus more than a simple subjective agent, opening the way to an understanding of the self as essentially spiritual.

The Atonement and the Solution to the Problems of Guilt and Shame

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonore Stump
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

This chapter considers shame in its major varieties and shows that each of these kinds of shame has a defeat in the atonement of Christ. It then considers guilt in all its elements, including the brokenness in the psyche of the wrongdoer and the bad effects on the world resulting from his wrongdoing, and it shows that, on the interpretation of the doctrine of the atonement argued for in this book, the atonement can remedy all human guilt. Consequently, through the atonement of Christ, a person in grace is freed from guilt and reconciled with God and with other human beings as well, and his guilt is defeated in his flourishing. On this interpretation of the doctrine, one can see the way in which the atonement of Christ makes sense as a solution to the main problem that the atonement was meant to remedy.

Law as a Malleable Artifact

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Schauer
Keyword(s):  
Natural Kind ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Way ◽  
Concept Of Law

Law is not a natural kind, but is instead an artifact. Like all artifacts, the artifact of law is created by human beings. But what human beings create can be re-created, and thus the artifact that is law is always open to modification or revision. And if law is open to modification or revision, then so too is our concept of it. This chapter explores the way in which one form of jurisprudential scholarship is that which seeks not to identify what our concept of law now is, but, rather, what our concept of law ought to be, in light of any number of moral or pragmatic goals.

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