Grieving Our Way Back to Meaningfulness

The deaths of those on whom our practical identities rely generate a sense of disorientation or alienation from the world seemingly at odds with life being meaningful. In the terms put forth in Cheshire Calhoun's recent account of meaningfulness in life, because their existence serves as a metaphysical presupposition of our practical identities, their deaths threaten to upend a background frame of agency against which much of our choice and deliberation takes place. Here I argue for a dual role for grief in addressing this threat to life's meaningfulness. Inasmuch as grief's object is the loss of our relationship with the deceased as it was prior to their death, grief serves to alert us to the threat to our practical identities that their deaths pose to us and motivates us to defuse this threat by revising our practical identities to reflect the modification in our relationship necessitated by their deaths. Simultaneously, the emotional complexity and richness of grief episodes provides an abundance of normative evidence regarding our relationship with the deceased and our practical identities, evidence that can enable us to re-establish our practical identities and thereby recover a sense of our lives as meaningful.

Logics, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics in Georges Florovsky’s Historical Philosophy and Theology of History

В статье предпринята попытка экспликации теоретико-концептуальных оснований философии и богословия истории о. Георгия Флоровского на основе новых архивных документов, прежде всего, из архива выдающегося православного богослова, который хранится в библиотеке Свято-Владимирской духовной семинарии (г. Крествуд, штат Нью-Йорк, США). Утверждается, что в основании методологии исторической философии мыслителя лежит синтез логики, феноменологии и герменевтики. Философия истории Георгия Флоровского обретает устойчивые черты уже в 1920-е гг. Он защищает магистерскую диссертацию «Историческая философия Герцена» (1923), пишет серию статей, посвящённых постижению смысла истории: «Смысл истории и смысл жизни» (1921), «О типах исторического истолкования» (1925), «Метафизические предпосылки утопизма» (1923-1926), «Эволюция и эпигенез (к проблематике истории» (1930). Осмысление «исторического синтеза» дано в magnum opus о. Георгия «Пути русского богословия». Контуры «богословия истории» очерчены в статье «Затруднения историка-христианина» (1959), перекликающейся с работой «О типах исторического истолкования», вместе составляющих своеобразный философско-исторический диптих. Логические, феноменологические и герменевтические презумпции в этих работах не проявлены в полной мере. Для их обнаружения следует обращаться к другим источникам. В поле нашего внимания три новых архивных источника, которые мы вводим в научный оборот. Это - первое издание первого тома «Логических исследований» Э. Гуссерля (1909), принадлежавшее Г. В. Флоровскому в одесский период с надписью «Г. В. Флоровский, 1911». В книге огромное количество пометок, сделанных его рукой, что позволяет сделать вывод о глубине феноменологических студий. Это - «Софийская логическая тетрадь» (1921) Г. В. Флоровского, конспект его серьезных занятий логикой и план-конспект задуманной диссертации «Теория индуктивного доказательства». Это - письмо-отзыв на магистерскую диссертацию Г. В. Флоровского «Историческая философия Герцена» от П. М. Бицилли, профессора историко-филологического факультета Императорского Новороссийского университета, оказавшегося в эмиграции. В письме к своему бывшему студенту и молодому коллеге подчеркнута важность диссертации для формирования нового, герменевтического подхода к философскому осмыслению истории. Новые архивные источники помогают выявить теоретико-методологические основания интеллектуального наследия выдающегося философа и богослова. The article attempts to explicate the theoretical and conceptual foundations of Georges Florovsky’s philosophy and theology of history on the basis of new archival documents from collection: Fr. Georges Florovsky Papers. The Father Georges Florovsky Library, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. It is argued that the synthesis of logic, phenomenology and hermeneutics is at the heart of the methodology of the thinker’s historical philosophy. The Georges Florovsky’s philosophy of history gains its stable features already in the 1920s. He defends his master’s thesis «Herzen’s Historical Philosophy» (1923), writes a series of articles: «The Meaning of History and the Meaning of Life» (1921),«On Types of Historical Interpretation» (1925),«Metaphysical Presupposition of Utopianism» (1923-1926), «Evolution and epigenesis (to the problems of history)» (1930). The interpretation of «historical synthesis» is given in Father Georges’ opus magnum «Ways of Russian Theology». The contours of the «theology of history» are outlined in the article «The Difficulties of a Christian Historian» (1959), echoing the work «On the types of historical interpretation». The logical, phenomenological, and hermeneutical presumptions in these works are not fully expressed. To identify these presumptions, we employ new archival sources.

Semantic analysis of corporeality in the poetic discourse of Momčilo Nastasijević

The paper semantically analyzes the corporeality in the poetic discourse of Momčilo Nastasijević. The verses indicate the semantic structure of the body through its sensuous, affective and ontological segment. The conceptual distinction between the body and corporeality is emphasized, by pointing to the body as a conceptual domain that is conceptualized through the plant world and corporeality as a quality that arises in bodily intercommunication. Corporeality is semantically formed in the fusion of bodily relationship and the dynamics of its meaning finds the words whose semantic content is dynamic, and in most cases these words are lexemes that denote processes in the vegetative world. Corporeality is not limited to the material appearance of the body, but is recognized as a space in which the body exists incorporeal and immaterial. Corporeality arises in the human physical-physiological substance of the body, but at the same time it is in the human being an inseparable form with the soul (feelings). There is an ontological component of meaning of the corporeality based on Christian ethical theses. Corporeality is also a metaphysical presupposition of human existence. It is confirmed in the songs with verses about the insatiability of thirst, i.e., eros, which is not bare libido sexualis, but longing and necessity for another being, i.e., the necessity to know the spiritual and divine principle through another body (another being). The function of desire is also shown in conceptual representations of corporeality. According to the poet's essays, desire is the disharmonization of the human personality, and that connotation predetermines the negative meaning of corporeality. In that sense, the body is a state of death and carries the potential for perversion. Hence, the thought of bodily renunciation and prohibition of bodily desire appears in the verses, which is also the influence of Christian views on Nastasijević's poetics and semantics of corporality.

The False Notion of Intention, Choice, and Inhibition

A ubiquitous metaphysical presumption in medicine, particularly in neurology, derives from Aristotle’s notion of contraries. The variety within a domain of phenomena can be considered as some mixture of a few components. For example, a grayscale continuum is not an infinite number of shades of gray but rather varying mixtures of black and white. This metaphysical presupposition provides an enormous economization of principles critical to allopathic medicine and research. Epistemically and ontologically, this results in methodological, ontological, and theoretical reductionism. The presupposition leads to one-dimensional push–pull dynamics. In neurology, this metaphysical presupposition resulted in a notion of hierarchy in the physiology of the nervous system affected by inhibition. This led to notions of potentiality, intention, and choice creating problematic notions and misunderstandings. For example, the popular notion that the role of the frontal lobes prevents antisocial behavior, suggesting its potentiality, leaves unanswered the question of what is inhibited by the intact frontal lobe?

Geloof sonder sekerhede: Perspektiewe op die gesprek met Ernst Conradie

This article continues the discussion with Ernst Conradie in view of his earlier and critical review of the revised edition of Anton van Niekerk’s book Geloof sonder sekerhede [Faith without certainties]. The author provides further clarity on his notion of the nature of religious faith which, for him, essentially coincides with the life of love proclaimed and demonstrated by Jesus of Nazareth. The rest of the article contains Van Niekerk’s analyses of the three “creative tensions” that Conradie identified in his original discussion of the book. These are the alleged tensions between orthodoxy and orthopraxis, between faith and certainty, as well as between scientific knowledge and the knowledge of faith. Most attention is paid to the last tension which, according to Van Niekerk, reveals an unfounded metaphysical presupposition in Conradie’s position, as well as the yielding of too much intellectual territory to scientism in Conradie’s insistence on the ontological continuity between God and creation.

AFRICAN LITERATURE AND INDIGENOUS RELIGION: A STUDY OF WOLE SOYINKA’S DEATH AND THE KING’S HORSEMAN AND D.O. FAGUNWA’S ADIITU OLODUMARE

Religious bigotry pervades our world today. As the 21st century oscillates between what Ramin Jahanbegloo (2015) has described as the politicisation of religion and its accompanying ideologisation, this study examines the vast array of literary creativity and indigenous religion/knowledge from an ecocritical viewpoint. By indigenous, it is meant those systems of knowledge and production of knowledge that are sometimes perceived as antithetical to the Western empirical systems. Encapsulated in myths and mythical wisdom, these indigenous values have at the centre of their philosophical presuppositions a symbiotic strategy that seeks to integrate man with nature. The study examines Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman and D.O. Fagunwa’s Adiitu Olodumare [The Mysteries of God, Olu Obafemi (trans)], in particular, and the indigenous religious/knowledge system that they reiterate, in general, as distinct from the Western monotheistic system in ontological and metaphysical terms. Also, largely because the metaphysical presupposition of Yoruba religion is essentially performance poetry in motion, a carnivalesque perspective is employed to account for the folkloric and other elements of carnival often described as ‘the feast of time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal’.