Metaphor, magic, and mental disorder: Poetics and ontology in Mexican (Purépecha) curanderismo

This article offers an epistemological, poetic, and ontological reading of the ways of knowing regarding mental disorders that are characteristic of the traditional healers ( curanderas and curanderos) of an Indigenous group in Mexico. The study is based on ethnographic interviews with traditional Purépecha (Tarascan) healers in rural Michoacan. Interviews focused on local conceptions of emotional and mental illness, especially Nervios, Susto, and Locura (nerves, fright, and madness). We discuss the conceptual structure of these Indigenous illness notions, the nature of the associated imagery and notions of the soul, as well as the general sense of meaningfulness and reality implicit in Purépecha curanderismo. The highly metaphorical modes of understanding characteristic of these healers defy analysis in purely structuralist terms. They do, however, have strong affinities with the Renaissance “episteme” or implicit framework of understanding described in The Order of Things, Michel Foucault's classic study of modes of knowing and experiences of reality in Western thought—a work profoundly influenced by Heidegger's interest in the historical and cultural constitution of what Heidegger termed “Being.” After examining the individual illness concepts, we explore both the poetic and the ontological dimension (the foundational sense of reality or of Being) that they involve, with special emphasis on supernatural concerns.

Loneliness, Solitude and Isolation in the Family as Conceptualised by Jesper Juul

This article presents an analysis of the theory of relations and upbringing in the family as conceived by Jesper-Juul, whereby the focal point of the study rests on solitude, loneliness and isolation. The research was conducted using an analytical-synthetic method elaborated on the basis of the works of this pedagogue and therapist. The obtained results indicate an ontological dimension of loneliness in the family, and the need for its prior experience to guarantee one’s capacity to forge satisfying future relationships. The analysis of Juul's work leads to the conclusion that solitude and loneliness experienced in the family promote emotional growth of partners and that of the child. The work further focuses on destructive loneliness, i.e. isolation. The predominant conclusion drawn therefrom is that solitude and loneliness in the family carry a relationship-building potential. In the era of the Covid-19 pandemic, undertaking an in-depth analysis of this problem is particularly justified.

"Sensing – thinking with the Earth. An ecology beyond the Occident"

This book review is about the French translation of a book by the anthropologist Arturo Escobar that, though it has not been translated into English yet, deserves to be known by English readers. This book is quite important since it allows one to understand occidental, capitalist and modern hegemony not only as an economic domination but above all as a cultural, epistemological and ontological colonisation. Indeed, according to Escobar, this domination takes its roots in the Occident’s ontology which translates into hegemonic practices that are concrete threats to the other worlds and their dwellers. Thus, Escobar highlights the deep link between ontologies and practices and argues for a new field of study he calls political ontology or ontological politics. To accompany the proposition of a shift from a universal nature to a pluriverse composed of many worlds, Escobar does not only undermine the prejudices of modernity but also puts forward the relational ontologies from indigenous communities of Latin America that concretely resist colonisation, underlining the ontological dimension of their struggles. Such a framework enables one to overcome or at least minimize the distinction between theory and practice.

The Ontological Dimension of Everyday Life in the Mythopoetic Picture of the World

The article deals with the concept of a home in traditional culture. It is argued that in the mythopoetic tradition, universal principles of creating a house were formed. This deserves attention today, because the main thesis in the concept of a home was the idea of the ontological dimension of everyday life, of the close connection of the spiritual and the material, of the connection of philosophical ideas and everyday actions. In traditional culture, everyday life was associated with the origins of being, was the sphere of application of creative forces. The object of research is the practice of building peasant houses in the medieval period, as well as in the XVIII-XIX centuries, their architecture and interior, their relationship with the surrounding landscape. The author uses general historical, semiotic and hermeneutical methods of research. The article systematizes the architectural principles of building a traditional home, which made the peasant house a prototype of the cosmos, a model of the universe. The author analyzes such structural elements of the mythological picture of the world as the tree of life, the world axis, the cross, the sacrifice, and their application in architecture. The author considers the ideas about the heterogeneity of space in the mythological culture and how they were used in the construction of the house; the function of doors, windows, gates in the symbolic structure of the house is investigated. The conclusion is made about the trinity of information, energy and matter in traditional culture.

Life and Death Ethoses in the Short Story The Mystery of Foreseen Death by Aleksandr Grin: Imaginative Apophatic Reality

The paper is dedicated to the issue of the apophatic component of artistic culture associated with Thanatos that is developed in the literature oeuvre of Aleksandr Grin. Setting Grin’s short story The Mystery of Foreseen Death as the research object, this texts seeks to provide insight into the image of death and the examination of its spiritual and material manifestations that reflected the logocentric approach that was then popular among the Russian thinkers. To pursue this aim, the methodology of this study should allow identifying the ontological perspective of Grin’s story. Thus, the methodological foundations embrace the onto-hermeneutic approach to the analysis of literary work. In revealing the ontological dimension of the story much attention is paid to the ethos of life and death, the protagonist’s artistic imaginative experience of reality. In the story under study death is ambivalent: it is bodily, anthropological, as indicated by the repetitive image of neck on the execution block. At the same time, it is apophatic, as indicated by the darkened end of the story, the bewilderment of skeptical scientists that arose because of the main event of the story, namely the protagonist’s execution. In this regard, it appears to be effective to consider the anthroposophical thought of Rudolf Steiner that was absorbed by a large part of Russian intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century. This doctrine stresses the reflections on a person’s experience of death in reality. The imaginative aspect of anthroposophism was developed by Grin’s close friend, a neighbor in Crimean Cimmeria, Maximilian Voloshin, a disciple of the teachings of Steiner. The conclusions that can be drawn from the study are as follows: Grin’s story presents a detailed imaginative death experience, which makes it possible to raise the issue of it being part of the broader anthroposophical teaching. The Mystery of Foreseen Death indirectly expresses the Steinerian ideas and at the same time it fits into the framework of the Russian apophatic artistic tradition. The article also raises the issue of the apophatic component of Russian artistic culture, the thanatological experience of which can help in overcoming crisis situations nowadays. The findings of the research, in this way, can have an effect on better understanding in several fields: in literature studies (philology), in the history of Russian literature, in cultural studies and in philosophy.

Ontological diversity in urban self-organization: Complexity, critical realism and post-structuralism

As urban self-organization grows into a key concept in spatial planning—explaining spontaneous spatial transformations—the understandings and applications of the concept divert. This article turns to the ontological dimension of urban self-organization and scrutinizes how a critical realist and a post-structuralist ontology inspire theoretical practices, analytical tendencies, empirical readings, and subsequent planning interventions in relation to urban self-organization. This is illustrated with an example of the self-organized regeneration of a deprived street in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. With this contribution, we aim to create ontological self-awareness among planning scholars in studying urban self-organization and invite them to reflect on how their positions complement, deviate, and potentially challenge or inspire those of others. We argue that by clarifying ontological diversity in urban self-organization, theoretical practices and complexity-informed planning interventions can be further deepened and enriched.

Between Blindness and Touching. Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy on the Self-Portrait

The paper analyzes Jacques Derrida’s and Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of the self-portrait. It is argued that Nancy builds on Derrida’s approach but introduces two decisive modifications. Firstly, he develops the emergence of the painter on the canvas as constitution of the self – an aspect Derrida does not consider. Secondly, Nancy understands portraying – and thus images – on the basis of touching. In contrast, Derrida conceives portraying as coming from the invisible and two forms of blindness. In doing so, he remains ex negativo in a tradition which links images to vision, whereas Nancy tries to overcome it. Nancy’s alterations not only lead to a modified theory of the self-portrait but also refine Derrida’s influential concept of différance by highlighting its corporeal and ontological dimension.

Ordinary Transubstantiations: Gadamer’s Notion of ‘Speculative’ and Material Logic of Hermeneutic Experience

According to Gadamer, the main distinguishing feature of hermeneutic experience is its ontological dimension epitomized by complex and multilayered transformative processes expressed in such formulae as ‘increasing in being’, ‘transformation into the true’ or ‘total mediation’. This notion of ontological experience as a transformative event allows two readings. The weak reading of Gadamer’s hermeneutic ontology (favoured by Gadamer himself as well as by all his interpreters and critics), laying the stress on interpreter’s self-consciousness, contents itself with just ‘subjective’ side of transformative effects of hermeneutic experience. The strong treatment of transformative potential of hermeneutic experience, which corresponds better to the universality claim of philosophical hermeneutics, presupposes equally strong transformation affecting not only interpreter’s self-consciousness but also her body as well as material environments of interpretive experience. We find the elements of such a ‘strong’ treatment of the transformative (i.e. ontological) potential of understanding in Gadamer’s conception of the speculative, adumbrated in the concluding sections of his ‘Truth and Method’. Drawing on this conception, the paper proposes the notion of transubstantiation as a model for describing the bodily-material dimension of transformative processes making up the core element of hermeneutic ontology.

Formation of the Ontology of a Modern Subject. Origins and Articulation

The subject of the article is the process of forming a new ontological paradigm of the subject – the modern subject as a center of transformative activity aimed at the world (nature) – the object. Today, along with the classical concepts (M. Heidegger, M. Foucault) linking the genesis of the modern type of subject with the philosophy of Descartes, studies (P. Hajdu, A. De Libera), in which his Christian origins and nature are grounded, are gaining more and more in­fluence. The article focuses on the ontological dimension of this genesis, the author shows that in the process of forming the ontology of the Christian paradigm of the subject, three stages can be distinguished: 1) the formation of Christian ideas about God as a subject of being and at the same time a loving Person, whose incarnation removes the barrier between the divine and the hu­man; 2) articulation of ontological concepts in the form of doctrinal principles of Christianity; 3) conceptualization of the doctrine in the text of the Symbol of Faith, which provides a categorical apparatus and a specific vocabulary for ontological discourse of a new type, one of the central meanings of which is the new subject. The process of general secularization of the Christian doctrine in the rational discourses of modern philosophy, primarily in the concept of Descartes and German classical idealism, led to the consolidation of the Chris­tian type of subjectivity for a person as an existential center of a new ontologi­cal paradigm, whose activity turns into a new metaphysical foundation of the world of objects.