scholarly journals Metaphysics and the Existential Problematic of Human Finitude

Lumen et Vita ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Nutter

Rather than being of little practical importance, the metaphysical underpinnings of a given horizon determine the character of its existential problematic. With the breakdown of classical metaphysics concomitant with the modern turn to the subjective, the existential problematic of finitude as ultimate horizon arose. According to this subjective turn, the human person can no longer engage the world as though it were in itself constituted by transcendently grounded meaning and value. Standing within this genealogical lineage, Martin Heidegger undertook a phenomenological investigation into the existential constitution of the human person which defines authenticity in terms of finitude. For the early Heidegger, human life is essentially ‘guilty’. This guilt, however, is not the traditional cognizance of one’s sinfulness, but the foundational Nichtigkeit (‘nullity’) of life and its attendant possibilities in the light of the ultimate finality of death. Authenticity, then, consists of a resolute working out of one’s life in the face of such inevitable finality. For the later Heidegger, the finite horizon of a particular epochal disclosure gifts Being to thought and determines it thereby. Authenticity in this case consists of giving oneself over to be appropriated by an event of Being. In contrast, Lonergan understands authenticity as being true to that primordial love which beckons us to intellectual probity and responsibility in working out life’s possibilities. This essay will illustrate how Lonergan’s analysis of the intentional structure of human conscious operations stands as a corrective to Heidegger’s early existential analysis of human being-in-the-world and later thought about Being. While Lonergan defines authenticity as loving openness to transcendent Being, Heidegger, because of his forgetfulness of the subject in her conscious operations, does not allow for a transcendence which stands beyond any finite horizon. 

Author(s):  
E. V. Zolotukhina-Abolina

The article discusses the relationship between the concepts of humanitarianism and humanity, which the author dissociates from each other, also separating them from the concept of humanism. The author believes that these concepts are often confused, they form a “semantic cloud,” intuitively comprehended as integrity and referring us to the image of man as the center of the world and the subject matter of discussion in ethics, aesthetics, psychology as well as philosophy and other “free arts.” However, these concepts need to be distinguished. Humanism represents a conceptual theoretical setting for considering a person as a free, independent and active being, while, in the author’s opinion, humanitarianism is a literary (philosophical and artistic) form of statements about a person. At the same time, humanity is meant as a characteristic of behavior and attitudes that motivate this behavior, such as the motives of kindness, philanthropy, benevolence. The article reveals the main features of humanitarianism and also shows that humanitarian texts are not always texts originating from attitudes of humanity and pursuing humanity. Literary reflection on the subject of a man does not necessarily need kindness and benevolence. The article provides examples of both the coincidence of humanitarianism and humanity and their divergence. The author draws attention to the existence of humanitarian but not humane texts, some of which cannot be attributed as philanthropic and other ones – as optimistic. The author considers it necessary not to confuse closely related concepts, denoting different aspects of human life and culture.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1(21)) ◽  
pp. 22-31
Author(s):  
David Bidzinashvili

The new Corona-virus and the contagious disease which it causes, the so called COVID 19, put forward the serious challenges for many countries all over the world and for Georgia among them. Almost the whole world is facing very serious obstacles on the international and national levels. Too many problems emerged in the world countries. To resist against the new disease has become the main priority for each country. The global processes caused by the pandemics have influenced the audit service as well. The uncertainty and unpredictability caused the new risks of deficiencies and activated already existed ones in the new environment. The situation became more complicated due to the fact that it can happen that the auditors do not consider the mentioned risks in the process of planning for audits or the risks may be considered mistakenly. The firms and other economical institutions in which the audit is carried out are obliged to adopt the new rules and changing environments in which their businesses function; they should change the rules of fulfilling the operation, preparing the financial accounts, the processes of their representing the information processes, safety of information shown in the financial accounts, the rules of their preparing; they also evaluate the possibilities of keeping on their activities in the nearest future. The qualified performing of the audit implies the basical elemenst which helps to create such environment where the possibility of the high level audit will be at the maximum. Implementing the quality control implies that such system will include two stages; each of them is directed towards providing the audit processes according the international standards There are several types of the quality improvement system. In all of them the main variable value represents the amount of costs for the proper system. All countries choose the system which provides benefits taking the costs into consideration. There are four main stages in the process of implementation the system which will ensure the high quality audit. Here are four main stages shown in the process of implementation:  The first stage: to carry out diagnostic observation;  The second stage: stating the view;  The third sage: working out the system;  The fourth stage: implementation of the system. The firms and other economical institutions where the audit is carried out are obliged to be reliable with their activities in the changing situation in which their businesses function. The subjects change the rules of carrying out the usual operations, change the open information given in the financial accounts, and estimate the possibilities of maintaining the existing possibilities for the nearest future. It is important to revise some standards out of Audit International Standards and to make them fit for revealing and assessing the risks of essential mistakes and discrepencies. The controlled variation of the standard regulates such issues as the newly corrected risks caused by influences of COVID-19 pandemic on the planned approaches to the audit and also, evaluation of the risks already defined and making changes in them taking into consideration the influence of the errors in the risk evaluations and influence made upon the planned evaluations and audits the changes of which will influence the evaluations of the risks in the inner control of the subject on the previously made imagination of the control environment, in order to define the measures to be taken in order to change the reactions to the mistakes using different measures in order to reach the trustful mechanisms to rely on. International standards of audit– answering to the assessed risks, the checked variation of the standard implies that it maybecome necessary to change the measures of reaction to the changes in the circumstances in order to obtain enough reliable measures and activities to control the situation by means of enough auditory evidences. The auditor has responsibilities to take into consideration that largening the deadlines will cause growth of the period and the risks of the dates of events which will happen in the time interval between accountability date and the date of the conclusion made by audit, the audit is also responsible for any event taking place later in relation to the Covid-19 situation. He is responsible also for evaluation of the fact about financial information. The enterprise functioning within nowadays complex environment taking into consideration the situation of COVID 19, should consider such priority issues as the uncertainty accompanying the Covid situation, related covenants, and others which accompany the pandemic period, among them the region, the financial state of customers and dealers, liquidating and paying capacity. During the process of the risk assessments it should considered that Covid 19 pandemic greatly influenced the global economics and the separate branches such as hotels business, retail sail, tourism and others. As a result of pandemic, it is possible that the number of audit considerations and thee circumstances can modify them which can be conditioned by different circumstances and the audit will state if there are incorrectable improper conditioned due to the circumstances. The audit will make it certain there are unimprovable mistakes which apart and together are essential for the financial accountability and the auditor will conclude that they cannot acquire the proper conditioned which apart or together could be essential financial accounts or the audit will conclude that they are not able to the essential accountability. Important researches were led to assess the appeared situation and it was concluded that the COVID 19 pandemic had influenced the financial situation which showed that the specific actions and procedures became complicated.


Author(s):  
Krzysztof Michalski

This chapter turns to Plato's Phaedo as well as the Gospel of Matthew: two narratives about death, and two visions of human nature. Christ's cry on the cross, as told by Matthew, gives voice to an understanding of human life that is radically different from that of Socrates. For Phaedo's Socrates, the truly important things in life are ideas: the eternal order of the world, the understanding of which leads to unperturbed peace and serenity in the face of death. The Gospel is the complete opposite: it testifies to the incurable presence of the Unknown in every moment of life, a presence that rips apart every human certainty built on what is known, that disturbs all peace, all serenity—that severs the continuity of time, opening every moment of our lives to nothingness, thereby inscribing within them the possibility of an abrupt end and the chance at a new beginning.


Author(s):  
Oleksandr Dzhuzha ◽  
◽  
Dmytro Tychyna ◽  
Valeriy Syuravchik ◽  
◽  
...  

The relevance of the article is due to the need to clarify the historical aspect, the genesis of victimology, as well as the content of its conceptual apparatus, the formulation of hypotheses and the improvement of its scientific tools. The concept of victimization is a reflection of essential means and relationships, phenomena and processes that are directly related to crime. The problematic aspects of the relatively complex nature of the conceptual apparatus of victimology have been identified, as a result of which a large number of concepts of non-legal origin in criminology are fraught with the danger of destroying the mechanism of legal assessments and conclusions on crime, its causes, the identity of the offender and the victim, and prevention measures. Elucidation of the historical aspect, genesis of victimology, as well as the content of its conceptual apparatus, is a dynamic process of reconciling hypotheses and positions, thoughts and views of criminologists, victimologists, lawyers, sociologists and psychologists, the results of which form the doctrinal basis of victimology. The stated positions are an attempt to somewhat streamline the diversity of scientific approaches to the content of individual elements of the subject of victimology, which, in turn, forms the motivation for further discussion of representatives of domestic and foreign criminological schools. Justification of the genesis and content of the conceptual apparatus of victimology, its individual theoretical provisions is an integral part of the development of the concept of combating crime and has not only scientific, but also important practical importance. Consequently, the tasks of victimology include the study of not only those who was the victim, but also those who have never acquired the status of a direct victim of the crime. The purpose of such studies are to identify a complex of certain properties capable of imported in criminal manifestations, which allows to carry out the victimological forecast for both individual and mass levels. The study of crime victims is necessary to solve many problems, especially related to the organization of their physical protection.


2020 ◽  
pp. 147-166
Author(s):  
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei

This chapter begins by examining the existentialist challenge to claims of absolute objective knowledge about the world and their rejection of any god’s-eye view of reality in favor of the world as a source of existential wonder. The situatedness of the subject is shown to be constitutive of the world as existentially described. In this context are presented Heidegger’s notions of being-in-the-world, and the attunement with which the world is accessed by an existential subject. Beauvoir’s notion that we experience the world as a detotalized totality is traced to the phenomenological notion of a world horizon and likened to Nietzsche’s promotion of perspectivism. The threat of nihilism and fragmentation, and the possibility of experiencing the world as inhospitable, alienating, or uncanny are also considered in existentialist terms through Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Camus, while existential wonder in the face of the world is considered in light of Camus and Marcel.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
Thom Van Dooren

In September 2011, a delicate cargo of 24 Nihoa Millerbirds was carefully loaded by conservationists onto a ship for a three-day voyage to Laysan Island in the remote Northwest Hawaiian Islands. The goal of this effort was to establish a second population of this endangered species, an “insurance population” in the face of the mounting pressures of climate change and potential new biotic arrivals. But the millerbird, or ulūlu in Hawaiian, is just one of the many avian species to become the subject of this kind of “assisted colonisation.” In Hawai'i, and around the world, recent years have seen a broad range of efforts to safeguard species by finding them homes in new places. Thinking through the ulūlu project, this article explores the challenges and possibilities of assisted colonisation in this colonised land. What does it mean to move birds in the context of the long, and ongoing, history of dispossession of the Kānaka Maoli, the Native Hawaiian people? How are distinct but entangled process of colonisation, of unworlding, at work in the lives of both people and birds? Ultimately, this article explores how these diverse colonisations might be understood and told responsibly in an era of escalating loss and extinction.


Horizons ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-84
Author(s):  
Marie L. Baird

AbstractJohann Baptist Metz has exhorted Christian theologians to discard “system concepts” in favor of “subject concepts” in their theologizing. This revisioning of Christian theology recovers the primacy of the uniqueness and irreplaceability of the individual from totalizing doctrinal formulations and systems that function, for Metz, without reference to the subject. In short, a revisionist Christian theology in light of the Holocaust recovers the preeminence of the inviolability of individual human life.How can such a revisioning be accomplished in the realm of Christian spirituality? This article will utilize the thought of Emmanuel Levinas to assert the primacy of ethics as “first philosophy” replacing ontology, and by implication the ontological foundations undergirding Christian spirituality, with the ethical relation. Such a relation is the basis for a new Christian spirituality that posits the primacy of merciful and compasionate action in the face of conditions of life in extremity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 113
Author(s):  
Adelino José de Carvalho Dias

O artigo se ocupa da discussão sobre os desafios postos à educação essencialmente popular no Brasil em face dos processos de formação humana definidos pela mundialização do capital no mundo atual. Interessa refletir acerca das dificuldades para a construção de uma educação coletiva e emancipadora diante de projetos educacionais que se amparam na narrativa que responsabilizam o sujeito por seu processo de formação, anunciando ainda que a sua busca por qualificação e preparação para o ingresso e permanência no mundo do trabalho define o aumento de sua “empregabilidade”, constituindo-se como caminho único para alçá-lo a melhores condições de existência.Palavras-chave: Formação humana; Educação popular; Contradição.Abstract: The article deals with the discussion on the challenges posed to essentially popular education in Brazil in the face of the human formation processes defined by the globalization of capital in the current world. It is interesting to reflect on the difficulties for the construction of a collective and emancipatory education in the face of educational projects that are supported by the narrative that hold the subject responsible for their training process, also announcing that their search for qualification and preparation for entering and remaining in the world of work defines the increase of its “employability”, constituting itself as a unique way to raise it to better conditions of existence.Keywords: Human education; Popular education; Contradiction.


2020 ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Joanna Szczęk

The constant presence of animals in human life influences language. It is not only a rich animal and zoonotic lexis but also a way of perceiving animals, the attributes assigned to them and the behaviour observed. Through the prism of language, one can show the linguistic image of the world of a selected fragment of reality. The subject matter of this study is the linguistic image of the world based on personal insults with an animalistic component in German and Polish. The work is confrontational. The research corpus is constructed of personal zoonotic names collected from the dictionaries of both languages. The aim is to present the linguistic picture of the world based on the collected units and indicate, on this basis, the similarities and differences in the mentioned scope. Based on the analysis of the corpus, the appropriate conclusions are drawn about the perception of animals in both language cultures. Due to similar experiences in contact with animals, one can expect mainly similarities in this regard.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
Agapov Oleg D. ◽  

The joy of being is connected with one’s activities aimed at responding to the challenges of the elemental forces and the boundlessness of being, which are independent of human subjectivity. In the context of rising to the challenges of being, one settles to acquire a certain power of being in themselves and in the world. Thus, the joy of being is tied to achieving the level of the “miraculous fecundity” (E. Levinas), “an internal necessity of one’s life” (F. Vasilyuk), magnanimity (M. Mamardashvili). The ontological duty of any human being is to succeed at being human. The joy of being is closely connected to experiencing one’s involvement in the endless/eternity and realizing one’s subjective temporality/finitude, which attunes him to the absolute seriousness in relation to one’s complete realization in life. Joy is a foundational anthropological phenomenon in the structure of ways of experiencing the human condition. The joy of being as an anthropological practice can appear as a constantly expanding sphere of human subjectivity where the transfiguration of the powers of being occurs under the sign of the Height (Levinas) / the Good. Without the possibility of transfiguration human beings get tired of living, immerse themselves in the dejected state of laziness and the hopelessness of vanity. The joy of being is connected to unity, gathering the multiplicity of human life under the aegis of meaning that allows us to see the other and the alien in heteronomous being, and understand the nature of co-participation and responsibility before the forces of being, and also act in synergy with them.The joy of being stands before a human being as the joy of fatherhood/ motherhood, the joy of being a witness to the world in creative acts (the subject as a means to retreat before the world and let the world shine), the joy of every day that was saved from absurdity, darkness and the impersonal existence of the total. Keywords: joy, higher reality, anthropological practices, “the height”, subject, transcendence, practice of coping


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