The Meaning of Denial

Could denial be a source of meaning? The meaning of denying death is clear, and most religions have been doing it for millennia. Claiming an immortal soul and thus denying the annihilation of our individual consciousness is something humans have embraced for more than 100,000 years. This chapter examines a group known as Physical Immortality, that many considered more bizarre than other belief minorities, because it promises its adherents eternal life in the same physical body they are inhabiting in this life. The author’s observations of the group and its members taught him that while the beliefs were indeed unusual, the members were ordinary and normal. It turned out to be an early manifestation of New Age activities in Israel. The group did not develop a distinct identity in its members, which was one reason for its decline. What characterized most followers was a playful openness to building up the self through support, belonging, and positivity, even if expressed in absurdities.

The Union of Substances

In this chapter, on Human Nature 2–5, Nemesius denies that the soul is a body, a harmony, a mixture, or a quality. His cosmopolitan anthropology rests on the conviction that the human soul is an incorporeal and immortal substance. Yet this creates two acute problems for the bishop. First, how is an incorporeal soul united to a body? And second, is it possible for an immortal soul to be united to a non-human body? In settling the first question, Nemesius draws on both Plato and Galen. ‘The body is an instrument of the soul’, he writes. This is a concept which underlies his physiology and psychology. In his handling of the second question, though, Nemesius uses Galen’s medical philosophy to refute Platonic theories of reincarnation. This is a far-reaching decision: it means that Nemesius’ idea of human nature, as such—as an idea—diverges from much of the Platonic tradition in late antiquity.

Body–Soul and the Birth and Death of Man: Benedict Hesse’s Opinion in the Mediaeval Discussion

This issue was discussed with regard to chosen commentaries to Aristotle’s treatise De anima, formed in the so-called via moderna mainstream, in particular those of John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Laurentius of Lindores. In such a context, the Cracovian commentaries referring to Parisian nominalists were presented by those of Benedict Hesse and Anonymus. The analyses carried out above allow one to ascertain that although William of Ockham’s opinion questioning the possibility of knowledge of the soul in the field of philosophy, nominalists of the late Middle Ages did not resign from speculation on the beginning (birth) and the separation (death) from the body of the soul, also the fate of the soul after death. They focused on the nature of the matter – human body (embryo, semen) and his relation with the soul (forma) – in the moment of birth. In the aspect of death 14th century scholars undertook the struggle, which was one with the justification of the psycho-physical unity of the human being existing after death solely as an immortal soul. In both thems, they tried to find their solutions, while if they could not solve these aporeticals questions – they had the courage to admit, that is not possible by solely relying on the natural forces of reason. They had to refer to the teaching of christianity, without however falling prey to fideism. This was a methodical endeavour based on the experience that natural reason in searching for the truth is not capable of its own efforts to attain to certain concepts and might on occasion err, it is then that faith becomes its guide and supplies it with more acceptable solutions. This is the courage of one of the greatest philosophers – Plato, who said that you have to have this “great courage” to undertake only probable knowledge, when another is not possible.

The Philosophical Lineage of Mr. Cogito (part 2)

The article constitutes the second part of a larger paper concerning the philosophical heritage of Mr. Cogito, the lyrical subject of Zbigniew Herbert’s poems. The self-consciousness of the title character is formed, quite like in P. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of existence, in relation to the sphere of history and culture, as well as to the other. Mr. Cogito, when confronted with the war and annihilation, cannot simply use the Cartesian deductive method of reasoning in order to intelligibly prove the existence of God and an immortal soul. Therefore, he refers in his philosophical thinking not merely to rationalism, but also to symbol, which more profoundly than ratio describes the nature of his existence. When challenged by boundary situations, he unsuccessfully attempts to find consolation in the Upanishads, Stoicism, or the wisdom of Chasidism. His attitude towards the modern philosophy of nature as well as to the relative motion theory is that of a sceptic; he juxtaposes them with Aristotle’s Logic. The propensity of contemporary Western civilization to follow magic or gnosis is perceived by him as a sign of self-delusion, or even self-destruction.

Kematian Seutuhnya Dalam Pengakuan Gereja Toraja Menurut Pandangan Antropologi Metafisik

Death is a reality that every human being must experience. In death all human power and effort during his life becomes terminated, meaningless and death stops everything. Even so, humans believe in themselves there is something that is not affected by death, namely the soul, so that only the body experiences death. Whether influenced by philosophical thinking or traditional views. The dead body and the immortal soul contain the notion of a soul containing divine elements. The description in this paper focus on understanding death as a whole using a metaphysical anthropology approach. With the research method of literature study and cursory observations, the result show that humans die completely and live completely. Humans experience death in both body and soul. However, on the other hand, in personal relationships with others, it is found that the body and soul remain intact in the memories of others, even though someone’s person has died. The concept og human death as a whole, in the view of metaphysical anthropology, has similarities with complete death, is the recognition of the Toraja church. Keywords: Death, Body, Spirit, Metaphysical Anthropology, Wholeness and Unity.

“Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese”

Leibniz wrote the “Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese” during the last year of his life. Previously, he had praised the polity and societal peace of the Chinese empire, deeming it superior to that of Christian Europe. Various thinkers used such a claim to argue that a pagan society could be ethical and politically stable without the belief in God. Leibniz sought to demonstrate that the intellectual and spiritual foundations of ancient Confucianism were indeed monotheistic and that this was the basis of their well-ordered society. He attempted to show that the classical Chinese believed in the tenets of a natural theology (i.e. belief in the existence of a monotheistic God and an incorporeal and hence immortal soul). He even attributed the discovery of binary arithmetic, not to himself, but to the ancient founder of the Yi Jing, thus further legitimating ancient Chinese knowledge (“science”).

From the Belief of the Immortality of the Soul, the Blessing or the Harassing of the Soul Towards People to the Worship of the Souls of Vietnamese People

Does the soul exist? If there exists where it is, what it is doing and if the soul does not exist why is it still appear in the daily lives of so many people, so many generations and many places in the world. Why is it so important for so many countries in the world to believe in the immortality of the soul and death? Faith in the dead and the next generation depends largely on a person’s religion and culture, on a community of people. For many Vietnamese, this belief goes from the belief that the soul only reaches its ultimate goal after many reincarnations, to the idea that life will now determine its final destiny. Consequently, one person can feel confident that he will eventually merge with the ultimate reality after death, others will surely reach Nirvana, and others will believe that he will be rewarded in heaven. So what is the truth? Because our beliefs affect our attitude, actions, and decisions, are we not interested in finding answers to that question? The dead are not finished but their souls still exist. Depending on the behavior of those who live with those who have died, they (those who are still alive) may be blessed by the soul or punished by the soul, encountering unfortunate things in life. This study provides a discussion of whether or not the existence of the immortal soul and the blessing or harassing of the soul for human life. How can humans limit the harassing and many blessings from the soul? Why does belief in the blessing and harassing of the soul become such a popular custom of worship among Vietnamese people?

Why Does Kant Think We Must Believe in the Immortal Soul?

Making sense of Kant’s claim that it is morally necessary for us to believe in the immortal soul is a historically fraught issue. Commentators typically reject it, or take one of two paths: they either restrict belief in the immortal soul to our subjective psychology, draining it of any substantive rational grounding; or make it out to be a rational necessity that morally interested beings must accept on pain of contradiction. Against these interpreters, I argue that on Kant’s view, belief in our immortality is necessary because it further determines and enriches the cognitive content contained in the concept of the highest good. Through this sharpened conceptual content, we acquire the resources to withstand theoretical skepticism about our moral vocation.

Human Forms

The 120 years between Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) and George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871) marked both the rise of the novel and the shift from the presumption of a stable, universal human nature to one that changes over time. This book reorients our understanding of the novel's formation during its cultural ascendancy, arguing that fiction produced new knowledge in a period characterized by the interplay between literary and scientific discourses—even as the two were separating into distinct domains. The book focuses on several crisis points: the contentious formation of a natural history of the human species in the late Enlightenment; the emergence of new genres such as the Romantic bildungsroman; historical novels by Walter Scott and Victor Hugo that confronted the dissolution of the idea of a fixed human nature; Charles Dickens's transformist aesthetic and its challenge to Victorian realism; and George Eliot's reckoning with the nineteenth-century revolutions in the human and natural sciences. Modeling the modern scientific conception of a developmental human nature, the novel became a major experimental instrument for managing the new set of divisions—between nature and history, individual and species, human and biological life—that replaced the ancient schism between animal body and immortal soul. The book explores the interaction of European fiction with “the natural history of man” from the late Enlightenment through the mid-Victorian era and sets a new standard for work on natural history and the novel.