scholarly journals THE HAND: A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY IN HUMAN BEING * Raymond Tallis 2003. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press * Price  19.99. * ISBN 0 7486 1738 8 * I AM: A PHILOSOPHICAL ENQUIRY INTO FIRST-PERSON BEING * Raymond Tallis 2004. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press * Price  19.99. * ISBN 0 7486 1951 8 * THE KNOWING ANIMAL: A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO KNOWLEDGE AND TRUTH * Raymond Tallis 2004. * Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press * Price  19.99. * ISBN 0 7486 1953 4

Brain ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 128 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-446
Author(s):  
J. Cornwell
Keyword(s):  
First Person ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry

scholarly journals Echoes of the Heart: Henry James’s Evocation of Edgar Allan Poe in “The Aspern Papers”

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Leonardo Buonomo
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
First Person ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Human Being ◽  
And Behavior

This essay re-examines Henry James’s complex relationship with Edgar Allan Poe by focusing on the echoes of one of Poe’s most celebrated tales, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), that later reverberate in James’s “The Aspern Papers” (1888). It highlights the similarities, both in mindset and behavior, between the two stories’ devious and deranged first-person narrators, whose actions result in the death of a fellow human being. It further discusses the narrators’ fear and refusal of their own mortality, which finds expression in their hostility, and barely contained revulsion against a man (in “The Tell-Tale Heart”) and a woman (in “The Aspern Papers”), whose principal defining traits are old age and physical decay.

Why Thinking in Faith? A Reappraisal of Edith Stein’s View of Reason

2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 401-412
Author(s):  
Tereza-Brindusa Palade
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Natural Light ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Edith Stein ◽  
Eternal Truth ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Fides Et Ratio

This paper intends to question the conventional wisdom that philosophy should limit its endeavours to the horizon of modern transcendentalism, thus rejecting the presuppositions of faith. By reappraising Edith Stein's views of faith and reason, which are also shared by the magisterial document of John Paul II, Fides et ratio, an argument for the possibility of “thinking in faith” is put forward. But why would it be important nowadays to engage in rational research in philosophy in a quest for truth which also draws its inspiration from faith? First of all, as I shall argue, because the two great modern transcendental projects, namely the Kantian and the Husserlian one, which were both in tune with Spinoza's project to liberate philosophical reason from theology, have failed. Secondly, because “faith” (fides) is not based on “irrational sentiments,” but is “intellectual understanding,” as Edith Stein argues. Third, because the natural light of the created intellect is, as was shown by St. Thomas Aquinas, a participated likeness of the supernatural light of the uncreated divine intellect. Therefore, even the natural philosopher gets their own light from the eternal Truth of faith. Finally, by following another Thomistic stance, one may argue that the end of human life is an intelligible one: the contemplation of God. In order to attain this end, the human being should endeavour to attain as much as is possible, in an intelligible way, the thing desired. Even if the philosophical inquiry has its own limits, it may however sustain such progress towards the end of human life.

scholarly journals Narrative Strategies Giving Voice to the Silenced Subject

Barnboken ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann-Sofie Persson
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
First Person ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Children And Young Adults

This article uses an ecocritical, posthumanist animal studies approach to fiction about horses for children and young adults in order to show how different narrative strategies co-exist within a framework of silence versus voice and Othering versus anthropomorphizing. The examples are taken from two Swedish series of books: the stories of Vitnos (1971–1980) by Marie Louise Rudolfsson, and those about Klara (1999–2008) by Pia Hagmar. The study shows that regardless of the narrative form chosen, be it placing the horse as a first-person narrator or introducing a human narrator and focalizer, the result is quite similar. The horse is alternately anthropomorphized and depicted as Other, many times through the technique of allomorphism, placing the horse above the human being. 

Philosophy and Childhood

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Kohan
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Affirmative Answer ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Language History ◽  
Matthew Lipman

Philosophy of childhood is an academic field born at least with Heraclitus and his connection between aion (time), pais (child), and basileie (kingdom). There are many ways of understanding the nature, scope, and interlocutors of a philosophy of childhood, depending basically on the way two questions are answered, explicitly or implicitly: “what is philosophy?” and “what is childhood?” Even more, a philosophy of childhood can begin by a consideration of the word “childhood.” In the ancient Greek language there were many words for “child” but no word for an abstract substantive (childhood). In Latin, infantia is a rather late word, meaning literally “lack of voice” but used in fact in court to refer to those who were not allowed to give testimony in their benefit. So, the lack designated by in-fantia is legal, political, and not linguistic. In romance languages all words designating childhood come from that one: enfance (French); infancia (Spanish); infanzia (Italian); infância (Português), etc. So that in English, infancy would be more literal but because of the common use, in this entry we’ll use childhood. Is childhood a stage of human life? Does childhood need to be associated with (aged) children? An affirmative answer to these questions is the “obvious” and normal response, but not the only one. When childhood is understood as a stage of life, the concept of childhood is intimately related to the concept of adulthood and child-adult is an intrinsic, contrastive pair, so that every conceptualization of childhood implies a conceptualization of adulthood as well. A concept of childhood, then, is closely associated to a concept of time. While the concept of childhood as a stage of life presupposes a chronological concept of time (numbered movements composed by the past and the future, being the present a limit between both), with alternative concepts of time, other concepts of childhood emerge. Examples of these hetero-chronological concepts of childhood in the so called Western tradition are: Nietzsche (In “The Three Metamorphoses,” the child is the last non-lineal but circular transformation of the Spirit; it is not at the beginning but at the end of life); G. Deleuze, who invented the concept of “becoming-child” which does not refer to any personal child but to an impersonal force, a space for the transformation of subjectivity; J.-F. Lyotard, according to whom childhood is a state that is present the whole life as a testimony of a debt taken by the being with the non-being before each human being is being born; G. Agamben, who proposed childhood as a condition for language, history, and experience; and Paulo Freire, who understood childhood as curiosity and as a possibility though the whole life of any human being regardless of her age. At the same time, philosophy of childhood in contemporary philosophy is closely connected to philosophical inquiry and practice with children, a field that received great support in the contemporary period from figures like Matthew Lipman, Ann Margaret Sharp, and Gareth Matthews.

scholarly journals Exhuming the Narrator in 'The Buried Giant': Genre and Intertextual Inference in the Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jay Campbell Forlong
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
General Public ◽  
First Person ◽  
Identity Performance ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Kazuo Ishiguro ◽  
Critical Response ◽  
Human Voice ◽  
James Phelan

<p>This thesis takes the critical response generated by Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, his most recent novel, as an invitation to re-examine the overall literary ‘experiment’ of his body of work. Ishiguro’s novels, regardless of their genre, message, or cultural moment, create experiences in which the reader engages with each narrator as if they were a human being. His attention to stylistic and formal detail foregrounds our awareness of his art in each text, and much scholarship focuses on overarching discussions of memory, identity, and history; however, this all relies upon the empathy that the texts generate between the character-narrator and the reader. The commitment to mimesis over the synthetic or thematic dimensions of the text, to draw on the theoretical model of character presented by James Phelan, often remains covert throughout each novel, but character mimesis nevertheless acts as both an accessible entry point to the novels, and a consistent touchstone throughout and across the texts.  Upon the publication of The Buried Giant, Ishiguro was met with criticism and dissatisfaction from numerous reviewers and scholars, despite general public appreciation of the novel. At the heart of this dissatisfaction lies a sense that Ishiguro’s foray into fantasy lacks the affective power of his iconic artlessness. Specifically, The Buried Giant appears to lack a central, consistent, human voice to hold together the synthetic and thematic work that the text performs.  This thesis presents an argument that finds within The Buried Giant the presence of a first-person voice that, rather than diverging from each of Ishiguro’s previous narrators, takes his experimentation with the first-person voice to a new extreme. This reading allows me to locate The Buried Giant more squarely back in conversation with the rest of Ishiguro’s oeuvre, by identifying a covert but vital thread that exists beneath the shifts in genre, thematic and synthetic choices, and context of the novel. I explore the establishment of character mimesis across Ishiguro’s body of work, how this feeds into both the dissatisfaction with The Buried Giant and my reconciliation of the novel to his earlier works, and finally how The Buried Giant and its shift to both a covert narrative voice and the genre of fantasy provides an opportunity to re-examine Ishiguro’s use of non-mimetic structures and generic conventions in his first six novels around the central, mimetic narrator.  As suggested, this approach draws significantly on the theory of character presented by James Phelan, which allows for comprehensive consideration of diverse textual functions that occur both throughout a given text and across several texts of widely varying genres and perspectives. I touch on notions of unreliability, memory and subjective history, trauma, and identity performance, each of which are central to many pieces of scholarship on Ishiguro’s novels; however, the aim of this project is to swiftly push beyond readings that prioritise synthetic and thematic dimensions of the novels to reach the heart of how the voices who capture their own stories completely entrance Ishiguro’s readership.</p>

scholarly journals Evolusie, Christologie en spiritualiteite – ’n Tweede (post-)aksiale perspektief

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Danie Dreyer
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
First Person ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Evolutionary Perspectives

Evolution, Christology and spirituality – a second (post-)axial perspectiveHow can theologians speak anew of Christ and our responsibility towards creation from an evolutionary perspective? It is a question that is embedded in the acknowledgement by scientists such as astro-physicists of the cosmos as mystery on its deepest level. It is a question that is prompted by the unmasking in the second axial period of the myth of autonomous man – a myth that led to the exploitation of the earth as part of a culture of consumerism. It is argued that the proposed answer to the question comes from evolutionary perspectives in which the human being has lost its place as being in the centrum of the cosmos. Instead, being human depends on everything else in the cosmos and is realised in interconnectivity. Making sense of the evolutionary unmasking from newly re-formulated theological perspectives lead to the acknowledgement of God as mystery that has been revealed in a unique way as the Logos in Jesus Christ. These theological perspectives on God find expression in ‘wider’ and ‘deeper’ understandings of Christ from what is called a second person approach. It is an approach that stands over against the objective-ontological third-person approach and the subjective experiential-expressive approach of the first person. The second-person approach is wide in a twofold sense, namely in being relational, and in communicating with human beings and the cosmos as a whole. It is also deep since from an understanding of ‘deep incarnation’ – and also ‘deep suffering’ – it reaches out to the roots (radixes) of creation. It ultimately finds expression in a cosmic Christology that demands of human beings responsibility for the cosmos as gift of God.

The first person: problems of sense and reference

2000 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 25-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Harcourt
Keyword(s):  
First Person ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Singular Terms ◽  
Proper Name ◽  
Sense And Reference

0 Consider ‘I’ as used by a given speaker and some ordinary proper name of that speaker: are these two coreferential singular terms which differ in Fregean sense? If they could be shown to be so, we might be able to explain the logical and epistemological peculiarities of ‘I’ by appeal to its special sense and yet feel no temptation to think of its reference as anything more exotic than a human being.

scholarly journals “Yu Jiyuan 余紀元 and Retrofitting ‘Metaphysics’ for Confucian Philosophy: Human ‘Beings’ or Human ‘Becomings’?

Asian Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-181
Author(s):  
Roger T. Ames
Keyword(s):  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Practical Activity ◽  
Past Work ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
History Of ◽  
Confucian Philosophy ◽  
Classical Greek Philosophy

In past work on Chinese “cosmology”, I have resisted using the term “metaphysics” because of the history of this term in classical Greek philosophy. Angus Graham has warned us of the equivocations that arise in eliding the distinction between Greek ontology and classical Chinese cosmology. In this essay, I have been inspired by my dear friend the late Yu Jiyuan’s distinction between classical Greek “metaphysics” and “contemporary metaphysics with ambiguous edges” to adapt the term “metaphysics” for use within the classical Confucian corpus. In the language of Confucian “metaphysics”, the ultimate goal of our philosophical inquiry is quite literally “to know one’s way around things’” (zhidao 知道) in the broadest possible sense of the term “things”. In the application of Confucian metaphysics, “knowing” certainly begins from the cognitive understanding of a situation, but then goes on to include the creative and practical activity of “realizing a world” through ars contextualis—the art of contextualizing things. I apply the insight that “metaphysics” so understood in the Confucian context provides a warrant for establishing a useful contrast between a Greek conception of the “human being” and a Confucian conception of “human becomings”.  

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