THE ANALYSIS OF SARTRE’S ‘ESENSE’ AND ‘SUBJECTIVITY’ IN DISNEY PIXAR’S SOUL ANIMATION

<p>From the start, the philosophical movement that came to be known as existentialism was associated with literature. This possibility happens because there is a natural affinity between existential philosophy and narrative forms of art. On one hand, existentialist concur on the primacy of individual existence, of the lived experience of concrete human beings. On the other hand, cinematic narratives tell stories of beings such as ourselves, helping us to make sense of our existence and opening up probabilities that we might never have pondered otherwise (Shaw, 2017). Interestingly, Time.com stated that Pixar films are the philosophical of the animation world. Here lies the reason why the writer decided to analyze the portrayal of Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous phrase ‘Existence Precedes Essence’ in the latest Disney Pixar animation, Soul. Sartre argued that for human beings, our existence precedes our essence. In addition, Sartre’s notion of ‘existence’ characterized in terms of consciousness, free choice and ‘subjectivity’. For Sartre, the first act of consciousness is to choose. This study shows that Disney Pixar’sSoul does portray Sartre’s ‘existence precedes essence’ through Joe’s life – human beings have no fixed preordained essence or definition. Moreover, Sartre’s idea of consciousness or subjectivity can be seen from 22’s decision to be dared to live.</p>

“A Kind of Magic”: Emotions, Imagination, Language – A Reading of Sartre

This paper maintains that Sartre’s concept of magic has to be considered as a full-fledged and quite technical phenomenological concept. Such concept (a) describes a very specific way in which one is able to be conscious-of-something and (b) reveals some structural features of consciousness and its mode of existence. Moreover (c) the “magical” cluster emotions-imagination-language also appears to be the existential matrix, as it were, from which fictions are generated: starting from the most original fiction of all, namely the constitutive fiction upon which each individual existence is built, i.e. the fiction of one’s own essence.

Russian cosmism and transhumanism in the polemic between anthropological voluntarism and providentialism

Comprehension of the finitude of individual existence entails the need to find the answer to question of overcoming death, a salvation path that would allow pass through the abyss of nonexistence. Solution to this question implies various forms of immortality: naturalistic, theological, technocratic, creative, sensually-transcendental, etc. Prolongation of life and gaining immortality has become a central problem of such philosophical movements as Russian cosmism and modern transhumanism, which view the victory over death as the project and purpose of mankind. The object of this research is the ethical content and key ideas of the philosophy of Russian cosmism and modern transhumanism. The subject is the origins and evolution of transhumanist worldview in its genetic link with the ideas of cosmic philosophy. This article aims to analyze the methods and means of how a human can improve and obtain immortality, which are advanced by transhumanists, and juxtapose them with the ideas of Russian cosmist philosophers. The conclusion is made that the central idea of cosmism and transhumanism, which lies in overcoming the finitude of human existence, does not find its global humanistic realization: both concepts offer partial and unnatural solutions (autotrophy, resurrection, cyborgization). Emphasis is placed on solution of the problem of immortality in the Christian anthropology in spiritual-moral ethical-philosophical context

A Metaphysics of Love

The book is the third and final part of a philosophy of Christian life. The first part applied a phenomenological approach to the literature of the devout life tradition, focussing on the feeling of being drawn to devotion to God; the second part examined what happens when this feeling is interpreted as a call or vocation. At its heart, this is the call to love that is made explicit in the Christian love-commandment but is shown to be implied every time human beings address each other in speech. A metaphysics of love explores the conditions for the possibility of such a call to love. Taking into account contemporary critiques of metaphysics, Dante’s vision of ‘the love that moves the sun and other stars’ challenges us to account for the mutual entwining of human and cosmic love and of being/God and beings/creatures in love. Conditions for the possibility of love are shown to include language, time, and social forms that mediate between immediate individual existence and society as a whole. Faced with the history of human malevolence, love also supposes the possibility of a new beginning, which Christianity sees in the Incarnation, manifest as forgiveness. Where existential phenomenology sees death as definitive of human existence, Christianity finds life’s true measure in love. Thus understood, love reveals the truth of being.

Media Use and Well-being: Understanding the Interplay in the Context of Tibetan Youth in India Amid COVID-19 Crisis

The advent of the positive psychology has shifted the focus of a wellbeing from a clinical perspective to a social perspective which further complemented the post-modern construction of wellbeing in the form of happiness and positive thinking. The contribution of media in this construction is significant, since media has pervaded each and every aspect of our socio-cultural as well as individual existence at an unprecedented rate during the past few decades. This study delineates the potential benefits of media exposure on wellbeing within the disciplinary boundaries of media psychology, while looking at the Indian and Tibetan understanding of the wellbeing construct. It explores the intrinsic effects of media usage on social and cultural wellbeing of young Tibetan people living in various settlements in India. The study delves into the ways in which the young Tibetans interact to ensure the wellbeing of their family, relatives and community in a connected, yet physically distant world endeavouring to explore the evolving implications of the media exposure, especially of ‘new media’, on wellbeing.

Heidegger’s Angst and apocalyptic anxiety

In this article I distinguish between the existential anxiety evoked by a confrontation with human finitude and what I call Apocalyptic anxiety signaling the end of human civilization itself. The end of civilization would terminate the historical process that gives meaning to individual existence. Apocalyptic anxiety announces the collapse of all meaningfulness, a possibility so horrifying that it commonly leads to evasion of its source.

Concerning the latent content of psychoanalytic concepts: Some con-jectures

Many psychoanalysts understand their concepts as metaphors, yet they do not question what is expressed metaphorically in these concepts. Based on the view that the real cognitive subject is society and the cognizing individual is their individual existence, the authors show by means of some of these concepts that such metaphors are mystified expressions of the socially unconscious as described by Marx & Engels.

The psychological aspects of social integration of a person

The socio-economic transformations identified the necessity to improve the socio-pedagogical work in the penitentiary system. This is important for the humanization of the rehabilitation process through the educational activities’ organization, the search for effective forms, methods and means of influencing the consciousness and behavior of convicts. The most important values for convicts are those that will ensure their individual existence, and the values that reflect the social essence are relegated to the background in conditions of social isolation. A temporarily socially isolated person, who disconnected from the usual environment, reduces adaptive capabilities. It determines to analyze the influence of educational technologies on the process of socio-pedagogical work in conditions of the necessity of decreasing the recidivism. To stimulate appropriate social integration, which is in demand by the society and aimed at mastering new social roles and necessary skills of constructive social behavior after release. Method of theoretical analysis and systematization of scientific ideas; theoretical analysis of the resources; the study and generalization of the experience of social educators-innovators; observations, conversations, were used. The conclusions create prerequisites for updating the existing technologies of socio-pedagogical work in penitentiary institutions.

Das Subjekt als Gemeinwesen

Following Marx s dictum that man ‘in his individual existence is at the same time a social being’, this book explores the question of collective agency. The author’s argument is that, thanks to its social construction as a collective being, the subject is afforded the chance to engage in collective practices. This socioontological justification of collective agency brings with it an anti-normative view of collective struggles, which are no longer subject to the burden of moral regulations and identical policies. In a first step, the author interprets Karl Marx’s concept of the subject as a social being and explicates it through the concept of communist subjectivity based on Jean-Luc Nancy. In a second step and by applying the theories of Georg Lukács, Louis Althusser and Judith Butler, the author shows how the subject emerges at the intersection between labour, language and bodily practices. In a third step, the concept of the plastic body, which the author borrows from Catherine Malabou’s concept of plasticity, serves to illustrate how the different identities encounter each other in the subject’s body and how they relate to one another. Seen this way, the subject, which is originally structured as a collective, can determine itself if it acts according to its structuration, i.e. if it acts collectively.

Flowers for Louise Gluck, or On the Possible Uses of Poetic Pragmatism

May not a “sorceress”/poet be “a pragmatist at heart” (Louise Gluck)? How does her “sorcery” — to quote the Nobel jury: using “poetic voice” to make “individual existence universal” — communicate and work in her readers? How may the notion of language as experience inherited from the pragmatist tradition inform literary pedagogy in the age of globalization? A sample of recent (December 2020) readings of Louise Gluck’s poems by Moscow University students is considered, including their judgments on the measure and scope of the poet’s “universality”. Slow motion, experiential reading inviting “disentrenchment” of the subject position is suggested as a useful alternative to text-centredness and insistence on the unique and holistic nature of the cultural context.