The Principle of the Bon (本) of Kumdo (劍道) －The Non-duality-gate(不二門) of No-mind (無心) and Ordinary-life-mind (平常心)－

The article analyses ordinary life of the Armed Forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the period between the beginning of the rule by the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania Stanisław August Poniatowski, and until the reforms by the Four-Year Sejm (1788–1792). In the period of interest it was a small (up to 4,000 soldiers), independent army, made up from national contractors, mostly cavalry detachments, the main unit being a flag of 30–100 soldiers, and the so-called foreign contractors (cavalry, infantry and artillery), the main unit being a company of 60–100 soldiers. In 1775–1777, division by contractors’ ethnicity was replaced with the territorial divisions. The main changes took place in the national cavalry, where two equally sized brigades of hussars and petyhorcy were created, whereas majority of foreign contractors were reorganized into infantry. Peace-time armed forces was an important factor for the Lithuanian public, the ruling elite and the local communities. Army was not a tool for use in large international politics, it was more of a current order preserving instrument. Army supply system was based on the independent economic unit, governed by the unit commander. Attempts by the Lithuanian Military Commission to impose greater control gave insignificant results, although the reforms of 1775–1775 were able to strengthen control of the treasury and procedures, making relationships more visible and transparent, and the actual composition of the armed forces was very close to the theoretical provisions. The economic weakness of the nation after the First Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and lack of correlation between recovery of the treasury and army financing put bridles on the army, preventing it from development and change. In spite of all 1764–1788 reforms, the Lithuanian armed forces remained a stagnating institution, where routine and established traditions dominated over novelty and change. Keywords: Armed Forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, ordinary army life, rule of Stanisław Poniatowski, Military Commission, Military Department of the Permanent Council.

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Celebrating the Sacred in Ordinary Life

10.3726/b10993 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Tom Absher

Keyword(s):

Ordinary Life

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Descartes’ Use of Doubt

10.1093/oso/9780198713234.003.0007 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

David Owens

Keyword(s):

Ordinary Life

Chapter 5 argues that Descartes’ scepticism depends on his demand for certainty. The current chapter elaborates the justification for that demand to be found in the Fourth Meditation, making it clear why (as Descartes insists) the sceptical inquiry must take the form of a meditation. It also explains Descartes’ insistence (in the Discourse) that his demand for certainty does not apply to the affairs of ordinary life. For the purpose of leading our lives whilst engaged in Descartes’ sceptical inquiry we are invited to rely on a state distinct from belief, namely conjecture. And to prosecute the sceptical inquiry itself we must make use of another device: supposition.

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On Presumption

10.1093/oso/9780198802433.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Edna Ullmann-Margalit

Keyword(s):

Status Quo ◽

The Other ◽

Specific Change ◽

Ordinary Life ◽

The Status ◽

Difficult Situations

Some of the most difficult decisions in law and ordinary life are simplified by the use of some kind of presumption. Accused criminals are presumed to be innocent, and most of the time, legislative acts are presumed to be constitutional. And when people do not know what to do, they often adopt a presumption of some kind—for example, sticking with the status quo, or perhaps in favor of making a specific change. In countless domains, presumptions help people to extricate themselves from difficult situations. They can serve as a way of breaking an initial symmetrical situation by using a supposition not fully justified, yet not quite rash either—favoring one action over the other.

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The Making of British Bourgeois Tragedy

10.1093/oso/9780198846574.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Alex Eric Hernandez

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Way Of Life ◽

Common People ◽

Ordinary Life ◽

Emotional Processes ◽

Critical Account ◽

And Performance ◽

Cultural Conversation

This book assembles a body of print and performance concerned with the misfortunes of the middling sort, arguing that these works negotiated tragedy’s vexed relationship to ordinary life. This “bourgeois and domestic tragedy” imagined a particularly modern sort of affliction, an “ordinary suffering” divested of the sorts of meanings, rhetorics, and affective resonances once deployed to understand it. Whereas neoclassical aesthetics aligned tragedy with the heroic and the admirable, bourgeois tragedy treated the pain of common people with dignity and seriousness, meditating upon a suffering that was homely, familiar, realistic, and entangled in the nascent values of capitalism, yet no less haunted by God. Hence, where many have seen aesthetic stagnation, misfiring emotion, and the absence of an idealized tragicness in the genre, this book tracks instead a sustained engagement in the emotional processes and representational techniques through which the middle rank feels its way into modernity. Describing this shift as an episode in the histories of both tragedy and emotion, it revises the standard critical account of eighteenth-century tragedy and reads the genre’s emergence in the period as a vigorous cultural conversation over whose life—and whose way of life—is grievable, as well as how that mourning might be performed.

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Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon

10.1093/owc/9780199535545.001.0001 ◽

2008 ◽

Author(s):

Jane Austen ◽

Claudia L. Johnson

Keyword(s):

Ordinary Life ◽

Northanger Abbey ◽

Gothic Novels

‘… in suspecting General Tilney of either murdering or shutting up his wife, she had scarcely sinned against his character, or magnified his cruelty.’ Northanger Abbey is about the misadventures of Catherine Morland, young, ingenuous, and mettlesome, and an indefatigable reader of gothic novels. Their romantic excess and dark overstatement feed her imagination, as tyrannical fathers and diabolical villains work their evil on forlorn heroines in isolated settings. What could be more remote from the uneventful securities of life in the midland counties of England? Yet as Austen brilliantly contrasts fiction with reality, ordinary life takes a more sinister turn, and edginess and circumspection are reaffirmed alongside comedy and literary burlesque. Also including Austen's other short fictions, Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon, this valuable new edition examines the ambitious and innovative works with which she inaugurated as well as closed her career.

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Playful mobilities in the Global South: A study of Pokémon Go play in Rio de Janeiro and Nairobi

New Media & Society ◽

10.1177/14614448211016400 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 146144482110164

Author(s):

Adriana de Souza e Silva ◽

Ragan Glover-Rijkse ◽

Anne Njathi ◽

Daniela de Cunto Bueno

Keyword(s):

South America ◽

Rio De Janeiro ◽

Global South ◽

Urban Spaces ◽

Urban Mobility ◽

Ordinary Life ◽

Perceptions Of Risk ◽

The Social ◽

The World ◽

Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go is the most popular location-based game worldwide. As a location-based game, Pokémon Go’s gameplay is connected to networked urban mobility. However, urban mobility differs significantly around the world. Large metropoles in South America and Africa, for example, experience ingrained social, cultural, and economic inequalities. With this in mind, we interviewed Pokémon Go players in two Global South cities, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Nairobi (Kenya), to understand how players navigate urban spaces not only based on gameplay but with broader concerns for safety. Our findings reveal that players negotiate their urban mobilities based on perceptions of risk and safety, choosing how to move around and avoiding areas known for violence and theft. These findings are relevant for understanding the social and political aspects of networked urban spaces as well as for investigating games as venues through which we can understand ordinary life, racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequalities.

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