scholarly journals Memory and History: The Overcoming of Traditional Theodicy in Levinas and Metz

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Losada-Sierra
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Ethical Responsibility ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Evolutionary Progress ◽  
Essential Question ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Power Of God

Grappling with the marginalization of the marginal in Western thinking, this paper sets up a dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy and Johann Baptist Metz’s political theology in order to learn from their thoughts on the suffering of victims. For both Levinas and Metz, the idea of theodicy as an explanation of suffering is linked to the ontological conception of time and history, and therefore useless and unjustifiable by nature. The essential question of this research is how to give meaning to the concrete suffering of humanity in order to redeem history from the concept of an evolutionary progress which limits the possibility of hearing the cries of the victims of history. This article will show how Levinas’s and Metz´s rejection of traditional theodicy is closely related to the concepts of memory and history and, therefore, the paper will demonstrate how traditional theodicy becomes for both thinkers an ethical theodicy. Consequently, the ethical account of theodicy replaces the attempt to negotiate the goodness and power of God with the pain of human beings. From this perspective, ethics is shaped by a response to the cry of victims which summons the subject to understand freedom as limited and subordinated to ethical responsibility. In responding to suffering, philosophy and theology can meet beyond idealism and dogmatism.

Jalan Kesempurnaan Menurut Jamaah Insan Al-Kamil di Cijati Desa Cikareo Selatan Sumedang

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Syarifudin Syarifudin
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Religious Sect ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

Each religious sect has its own characteristics, whether fundamental, radical, or religious. One of them is Insan Al-Kamil Congregation, which is in Cijati, South Cikareo Village, Wado District, Sumedang Regency. This congregation is Sufism with the concept of self-purification as the subject of its teachings. So, the purpose of this study is to reveal how the origin of Insan Al-Kamil Congregation, the concept of its purification, and the procedures of achieving its purification. This research uses a descriptive qualitative method with a normative theological approach as the blade of analysis. In addition, the data generated is the result of observation, interviews, and document studies. From the collected data, Jamaah Insan Al-Kamil adheres to the core teachings of Islam and is the tenth regeneration of Islam Teachings, which refers to the Prophet Muhammad SAW. According to this congregation, self-perfection becomes an obligation that must be achieved by human beings in order to remember Allah when life is done. The process of self-purification is done when human beings still live in the world by knowing His God. Therefore, the peak of self-purification is called Insan Kamil. 

Panpsychism versus Panprotopsychism and the Subject-Summing Problem

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Goff
Keyword(s):  
Macro Level ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Combination Problem ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Russellian Monism ◽  
Nature Of Matter

This is the first of two chapters discussing the most notorious problem facing Russellian monism: the combination problem. This is actually a family of difficulties, each reflecting the challenge of how to make sense of everyday human and animal experience intelligibly arising from more fundamental conscious or protoconscious features of reality. Key challenges facing panpsychist and panpsychist forms of Russellian monism are considered. With respect to panprotopsychism, there is the worry that it collapses into noumenalism: the view that human beings, by their very nature, are unable to understand the concrete, categorical nature of matter. With respect to panpsychism, there is the subject-summing problem: the difficulty making sense of how micro-level conscious subjects combine to produce macro-level conscious subjects. A solution to the subject-summing problem is proposed, and it is ultimately argued that panpsychist forms of the Russellian monism are to be preferred on grounds of simplicity and elegance.

Kant, Marginal Cases, and Moral Standing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Korsgaard
Keyword(s):  
Life Stage ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Standing ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Identity Problem ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Moral Difference

According to the marginal cases argument, there is no property that might justify making a moral difference between human beings and the other animals that is both uniquely and universally human. It is therefore “speciesist” to treat human beings differently just because we are human beings. While not challenging the conclusion, this chapter argues that the marginal cases argument is metaphysically misguided. It ignores the differences between a life stage and a kind, and between lacking a property and having it in a defective form. The chapter then argues for a view of moral standing that attributes it to the subject of a life conceived as an atemporal being, and shows how this view can resolve some familiar puzzles such as how death can be a loss to the person who has died, how we can wrong the dead, the “procreation asymmetry,” and the “non-identity problem.”

Responsibility before the World: Cinema, Perspectivism and a Nonhuman Ethics of Individuation

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 386-410
Author(s):  
Andrew Lapworth
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Ethical Responsibility ◽  
Experimental Film ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences

The recent ‘nonhuman turn’ in the theoretical humanities and social sciences has highlighted the need to develop more ontological modes of theorising the ethical ‘responsibility’ of the human in its relational encounters with nonhuman bodies and materialities. However, there is a lingering sense in this literature that such an ethics remains centred on a transcendent subject that would pre-exist the encounters on which it is called to respond. In this essay, I explore how Gilles Deleuze's philosophy offers potential opening for a more ontogenetic thinking of a ‘nonhuman ethics’. Specifically, I focus on how his theory of ‘individuation’ – conceived as a creative event of emergence in response to immanent ontological problems – informs his rethinking of ethics beyond the subject, opening thought to nonhuman forces and relations. I argue that if cinema becomes a focus of Deleuze's ethical discussions in his later work it is because the images and signs it produces are expressive of these nonhuman forces and processes of individuation, generating modes of perception and duration without ontological mooring in the human subject. Through a discussion of Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor's experimental film –  Leviathan (2012)  – I explore how the cinematic encounter dramatises different ethical worlds in which a multiplicity of nonhuman ‘points of view’ coexist without being reduced to a hierarchical or orienting centre that would unify and identify them. To conclude, I suggest that it is through the lens of an ethics of individuation that we can grasp the different sense of ‘responsibility’ alive in Deleuze's philosophy, one oriented not to the terms of the already-existing but rather to the nonhuman potential of what might yet come into being.

scholarly journals Az orvosi antropológia című tantárgy helye és szerepe az orvosképzésben. Az úgynevezett szegedi modell

2019 ◽  
Vol 160 (39) ◽  
pp. 1527-1532
Author(s):  
Bettina Pikó ◽  
Erzsébet Kapocsi ◽  
Gergely Tari ◽  
Hedvig Kiss ◽  
Katalin Barabás
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
Medical Students ◽  
Medical Anthropology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Major Goal ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Biological Reality ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Globalized World

Abstract: It is a necessary part of modern medical education that medical students should learn about the binary nature of human beings – biological and cultural – since both have an impact on our behavior. The subject of medical anthropology helps with understanding the mechanisms and lay concepts behind patients’ decisions which is particularly important in our globalized world. The major goal of this course is to help medical students with acquiring cultural competence through theoretical bases and empirical examples that may help them later in their work when they meet patients with different cultural backgrounds. In the present study, we introduce the course of Medical Anthropology as it happens at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Szeged: the so-called Szeged model – its aims, syllabus, strengths, opportunities and possible difficulties. During the development of the subject, we greatly focused on its links to other subjects of behavioral and medical sciences and on its practice-oriented nature. Thus, the course partly contains of lectures and seminars which display cultural variability in relation to biological reality through practical examples. As a result, the topics of medical anthropology prepare the students to use the knowledge as well as skills and attitudes in clinical practice. Orv Hetil. 2019; 160(39): 1527–1532.

scholarly journals Role of Statues in the Artistic Commemoration of African Political Leaders: Analysis of 20 Selected National Statues in African Countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-77
Author(s):  
Kamau Wango
Keyword(s):  
Public Art ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Visual Impact ◽  
Insight Into

Artistic commemoration of leaders and other iconic personalities has been in existence for centuries. Statues in particular have been used as a fitting avenue for the commemoration of political leaders and other luminaries in many fields. The premise upon which statues are made is that the subjects featured initiated and attained, in their lifetimes, concrete achievements that significantly impacted upon the lives of their fellow human beings. Other criteria for commemoration include proven integrity, dedication and selflessness in the service of the country and citizens. Statues as an integral part of public art have often generated substantial controversy on various fronts in many countries. Some of these gravitate around issues such as disputed likeness, queries about the fundamental achievements cited of the subject, at times open protests on the actions, character and integrity of the subject as well as the location of the statues. Other areas of contention include the implication of the presence of statues upon the political psyche of the country and their long-time impact on history, the youth and posterity. This paper examines the extent to which African countries have embraced this mode of artistic rendition to commemorate African political leaders in a way that is commensurate to their achievements. It is outside the scope of this paper to delve into the intricate web of back-and-forth arguments about the ‘concreteness’ of the legacies of the featured leaders who are mainly founding political figures of the respective countries. The paper, however, analyses the artistic essence of the selected statues in terms of their visual impact and whether they are indeed useful in articulating the legacies of the subjects and further, whether they ultimately bear ‘enduring visual value’ that spurs conversation and insight into these legacies. Statues must, at the very least, spur debate and conversation into the legacy of the featured subject. It becomes a form of constant interrogation as history itself takes its course; controversy is not necessarily a negative occurrence since it forms part of this discourse. The concept of immortalization, which is what initiators of statues often hope for is much harder to achieve and difficult to define. The paper examines 20 statues of African political leaders in different African Countries.

Postscript - The COVID-19 Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Professor John Swarbrooke
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Actual Number ◽  
Main Text ◽  
Death Toll ◽  
The World ◽  
Spanish Flu ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
As If

I completed the main text of this book a few days before Coronavirus, as it was called at the beginning, started to become a major story in the news in Europe. Now, just over three months later, as the book is about go for printing it seems as if the COVID-19 pandemic, as it is now called, is about the only story in the world’s media. In the circumstances, it seems important that I say something about the virus and its potential impact on the subject of this book. As I write these words, in early Ma y 2020, the pandemic has killed at least 264,000 people worldwide and some 3.8 million people are confirmed to have been infected, although the actual number is likely to be significantly higher as many people who have had the virus may not have had it confirmed through testing. To put this in context, the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people, while the highly publicised outbreak of SARS in 2003 killed fewer than 1,000 people. The 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in Africa resulted in the deaths of an estimated 11,300 people. So COVID-19 is far and away the largest pandemic, in terms of deaths, to hit the world in just over a century. Of course, we do not yet know the final death toll from it, for as I write it is still continuing. Furthermore, unlike SARS and Ebola this virus is a true pandemic, affecting virtually every part of the planet where human beings live.

Leadership and Regimes

2020 ◽  
pp. 148-200
Author(s):  
Laurie M. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Scientific Reason ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Political Deliberation ◽  
Civil Violence

This chapter looks at the similarities and differences between Thucydides and Hobbes on the subject of regimes. Hobbes was convinced that Thucydides had proved the absurdity of democracy and the desirability of absolute monarchy. However, Hobbes misread Thucydides on this point. For Hobbes, monarchy was the only regime in which the selfish interests of the ruler and ruled rationally coincide. Revealingly, in order to deal with the leadership of Pericles, Hobbes had to characterize him superficially as a monarch, ignoring how Pericles won and maintained his power. But it is just the type of statesmanship exemplified by Pericles that Hobbes cannot accept because of his rigid assumptions about human nature. Thucydides' focus on the importance of studying the thought, character, and actions of statesmen is an important difference between the Thucydidean and the Hobbesian realist models. Hobbes's horror at civil violence led him to lose faith in ordinary human reason and thus in political deliberation. It is because he lost faith in the latter that scientific reason emerged as a powerful alternative. But if human beings are so unreasonable that one can no longer take seriously what they say, how can one expect them to be reasonable enough to accept Hobbes's prescriptions? The Hobbesian solution is that an absolute government must enforce the plan. The chapter then argues that this solution to political problems is even more dangerous than the Thucydidean solution, which relies on political rhetoric and judgment.

Humans, Jews, and the Other Others

Other Others ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Sergey Dolgopolski
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
Dynamic Key

The “Introduction” formulates the question of the political, and in particular of the emergence and erasure of the political from the horizon of currently predominant political thought in political theology and political ontology. The “Introduction” further attunes the readers to the dynamic key of “effacement” as both emergence and erasure, thereby defining the main register in which the book is proceeding -- as distinct from the keys of chronological periodisation, linear history, paradigm shifts, or other stabilizing approaches. The “Introduction” further draws a distinction between politics and the political, and advances the question of the political in relation to the Talmud as both a text and a discipline of thinking able to shed a new, contrasting, light on the paradox driven modern political notions of a singularizing and even singling out notion of a “Jew,” and a universalizing notion of the “human being.” The “Introduction” concludes by gesturing towards a much closer connection between the question of the political in the Talmud, the notions of the Jews and of the human beings in modernity, and the question of earth and territory as a part of political equation these concepts spell out.

Peace in Economic Equilibrium

2019 ◽  
pp. 427-439
Author(s):  
Anubhuti Dwivedi
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Economic Equilibrium ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Individual Welfare ◽  
The Subject

Peace is a spiritual phenomenon, but it evolves through various disciplines – psychology, economics, biology, and so on. This is because human beings are complex in nature, and various facets of human existence are correlated with these disciplines. Peace is an integration of all aspects of humanism in a state of equilibrium. This chapter discusses peace as imbibed in ideas of microeconomic equilibrium. Economics is so often disapproved by spiritual thinkers as being a science of self-centeredness even after decades of progress in the subject matter after Alfred Marshall's “Principles of Economics.” This seems justified as today an ordinary man is still concerned with individual welfare first. Therefore, peace needs to be seen from this micro-perspective first so that the society may move to higher objectives later once the individuals are in equilibrium and have attained peace in this narrow but indispensable sense.

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