Among the key ideas of the Bengal Renaissance was one of a future India considered from the point of view of India's weal. An creative embodiment of the idea in Rabindranath Tagore’s poem ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear’ is analyzed in the article. Based on hermeneutical approach, the author traces an origin of the idea, its evolution in creative thought of the national-cultural renaissance in Modern India and its content in Tagore’s thought. The application of a principle of (...) historicism helped to trace the emergence of ‘dreamland’ idea in Michael Madhusudan Dutta’s poetry, then its ‘antithesis’ in philosophy by Swami Vivekananda and next transformation into the image of future free India in Rabindranath Tagore’s poem. For the first time ‘Where the Mind is Without Fear’ has been philosophically considered in the broad context of the history of thought and culture in India from Rammohun Roy to Rabindranath Tagore. The poem is an application of social ideal of free society to future perspective of India; its practical embodiment is possible, but it depends from positive activity of Indian people. The poem represents a set of key ideas of the epoch such as renovation of spiritual life, overcoming of the dead rules, rational thinking of all life spheres, human liberation from traditional dependencies, finding of dignity and discovery of new ways of development. Moreover, Tagore maintains universal human problematic of freedom and circumstances of its embodiment in peoples’ life. (shrink)

Divine providence is one of the most intriguing topics of today. Despite the scientific progress, individuals are aware that they cannot lead a life isolated from destiny. It is explained by social scientists from different perspectives. This study focuses on the knowledge of destiny and fatalism tendencies of people who are convicted of different crimes. The research has been conducted on 114 people who are convicted of different crimes at the General Directorate Probation in Bursa. Knowledge of (...) class='Hi'>destiny and fatalism tendencies of convicted people have been investigated with socio-demographic variables and survey method. A direct relationship has been determined between education and economic level of convicted people as well as being happy to come to the world and being hopeful about future. An inverse relationship has been found between age and the knowledge of destiny of those people. A significant difference has been detected between the belief in fatalism and the state of violence in our study. There is destiny but not fatalism in Islam religion. The destiny belief does not eliminate responsibility of humans; rather it offers psychological wellness to people who struggle to survive in the world of difficulties. Our research aims to further demonstrate the relationship between belief in destiny and crime by means of quantitative evaluation and qualitative analysis. (shrink)

The prospect of radical human enhancement challenges us with how we can even think about the choice to enhance or not enhance. Whether as individuals or as citizens of liberal democracies, we already recognize the prospect of a future that is defined by technology, without being able to predict or imagine what it will be like or how we should try to influence it. We can also be sure that radical enhancement of ourselves as individuals, or of a large (...) proportion of our fellow citizens, will alter the very standards and values by which we, as individuals or polities, later evaluate decisions to enhance – this is one version of the more general problem of transformative choice. In response to these challenges, it is plausible that we have no alternative to choosing and acting on our current desires and values, rather than our expected future values or some set of values that is objectively authoritative for us. On the other hand, our current value-outlooks include a degree of openness to our desires and values themselves changing, and for this reason we can often finesse the problem of transformative choice when it arises in everyday situations. On the gripping hand, this does not entirely solve the problem when it comes to something as dramatic and unprecedented as radical enhancement. There is some reason for an incremental, rather than apocalyptic, approach, even if we are sympathetic to a human future shaped by radical enhancement initiatives. (shrink)

Buultjens discusses the future prospects for democracy by asking whether the present "democratic starburst" can be translated into durable systems and working institutions.

Historizing is the way Dasein takes up possibilities and roles to project itself into the future. It is why we experience continuity throughout our lives, and it is the basis for historicality – our sense of a more general continuity of “history.” In Being and Time,Heidegger identifies both inauthentic and authentic modes of historizing that give rise, respectively, to inauthentic and authentic modes of histori-cality. He focuses on historizing at the individual level but gestures at a communal form of (...) historizing. In this paper, I develop the concept of co-historizing in both its authentic and inauthentic modes. I argue that Heidegger’s unarticulated concept of inauthentic co-historizing is what necessitated the planned (but unfinished) second half of Being and Time – the “phenomenological destruction of the history of ontol-ogy.” I consider what it means to take responsibility for our destiny as a people and specifically as a community of philosophers. (shrink)

Many scholars say, even demand, that research on Africa should be intensified and increased. Its destiny is linked to the future of Africans’ self-awareness and their radical de-alienation. However, the current direction of some projects gives cause for concern in that the fundamental question they raise is whether what drives them is science or a certain unstated but active ideology. In other words, has science become a slave to or a pseudonym for an ideology? What are the motives (...) of researchers, and what are the structural constraints framing their discourse? (shrink)

Problems of sustainability and survivability are best met not with moralizing but with policies that take advantage of our increasingly understood evolved human psychology. This knowledge helps us understand why our problems recur, and why we need not expect them to have permanent solutions. What is needed is an evolutionary praxis. It is possible, for example, to create policies that work around our tendencies to hierarchize and to form into ethnocentric and mutually hostile groups. Although in many ways there may (...) be a mismatch between our evolved human nature and contemporary society, the fact that it is we who construct our environments must reduce the extent of mismatch. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Dignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God by John F. KilnerRichard W. ReichertDignity and Destiny: Humanity in the Image of God John F. Kilner GRAND RAPIDS, MI: EERDMANS, 2015. 414 PP. $35.00There is a problem with locating the imago Dei in a set of unique human attributes that other animals do not possess, such as self-awareness or higher cortical function: persons deficient in these (...) attributes might then be viewed as less complete images of God and therefore be treated as less than fully human. [End Page 209] According to John Kilner, this nonbiblical view contributes support for racism, sexism, and other oppressions. In Dignity and Destiny, Kilner's solution is to realize that the image of God is equally and fully present in every human as a divine blueprint, rooted in God's purpose for humans to reflect the image of God as revealed in Christ. Jesus is the image of God; all humans are created in the image of God.The various imperfect manifestations of God's image among the lives of individuals is due to the corruption of sin, not any diminution of the imago Dei. Here Kilner offers the useful metaphor of a coin. The denarius held up by Jesus when he addressed taxes had the image of Caesar cast on it as evidence of ownership and obligation: "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." Yet even though Caesar's image on some coins was so worn or marred as to be nearly invisible, each coin still had the same monetary value as determined by Caesar's stamp. So, too, humans are stamped by God with the image of Christ, and despite the fact that some people barely manifest Christ's image, all humans still share equal value and dignity based on this divine stamp. Sin corrupts every person's ability to reflect God's image to some extent but does not mar the image of God itself. This concept of the imago Dei secures the full dignity and protection of all humans and opposes all forms of discrimination and oppression. Further, the eschatological destiny of humankind is not merely a return to a state of Edenic innocence but a future destiny toward full conformity to the image of Christ.Dignity and Destiny is a carefully referenced work, and Kilner's argument is clear and well-reasoned. He engages thoughtfully with those who hold alternative views of the image of God, especially with those theologians who argue that the imago Dei entails attributes of reason, righteousness, rulership, or relationship. He offers incisive but limited exegetical support for his view that the Bible does not offer an actual definition of the imago Dei but instead presents a "hermeneutical lens" to understand God's plan for humanity. Kilner's thesis certainly implies a teleological ethic of natural law, but his argument is actually aimed more toward Christ-like virtues and an understated kingdom ethic.The main value of Dignity and Destiny is its cogent evangelical argument against all forms of discrimination, marginalization, and human oppression. This work should appeal to all Christians who value human rights. But Kilner's argument may also provide strong support against many forms of euthanasia and abortion that are frequently justified by applying a qualitative scale of human attributes such as cognition and agency. For this reason, some nonevangelicals might find Kilner's thesis threatening and difficult to accept. In either case, Dignity and Destiny is a provocative and valuable contribution to theological anthropology. [End Page 210]Richard W. ReichertSouthern Baptist Theological SeminaryCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This reflection addresses a very important topic for care professions, with a special look at psychotherapy. To clarify the role of subjectivity and the birth and maturation of a professional role,...

Singularizing progressive time bounds pasts, presents, and futures to cause-effect chains overdetermining existence in education and social life more broadly. Indigenous Futures and Learnings Taking Place disrupts the common sense of "futures" in education or "knowledge for the future" by examining the multiplicity of possible destinies in coexistent experiences of living and learning. Taking place is the intention this book has to embody and word multiplicity across the landscapes that sustain life. The book contends that Indigenous perspectives open spaces (...) for new forms of sociality and relationships with knowledge, time, and landscapes. Through Goanna walking and caring for Country; conjuring encounters between forests, humans, and the more-than-human; dreams, dream literacies, and planes of existence; the spirit realm taking place; ancestral luchas; Musquem Land pedagogies; and resoluteness and gratitude for atunhetsla/the spirit within, the chapters in the collection become politicocultural and (hi)storical statements challenging the singular order of the future towards multiple encounters of all that is to come. In doing so, Indigenous Futures and Learnings Taking Place offers various points of departure to (hi)story educational futures more responsive to the multiplicities of lives in what has not yet become. The contributors in this volume are Indigenous women, women of Indigenous backgrounds, Black, Red, and Brown women, and women whose scholarship is committed to Indigenous matters across spaces and times. Their work in the chapters often defies prescriptions of academic conventions, and at times occupies them to enunciate ontologies of the not yet. As people historically fabricated "women," their scholarly production critically intervenes on time to break teleological education that births patriarchal-ized and master-ized forms of living. What emerges are presences that undiscipline education and educationalized social life breaking futures out of time. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Indigenous studies, future studies, post-colonial studies in education, settler colonialism and coloniality, diversity and multiculturalism in education, and international comparative education. (shrink)

Singularizing progressive time bounds pasts, presents, and futures to cause-effect chains overdetermining existence in education and social life more broadly. Indigenous Futures and Learnings Taking Place disrupts the common sense of "futures" in education or "knowledge for the future" by examining the multiplicity of possible destinies in coexistent experiences of living and learning. Taking place is the intention this book has to embody and word multiplicity across the landscapes that sustain life. The book contends that Indigenous perspectives open spaces (...) for new forms of sociality and relationships with knowledge, time, and landscapes. Through Goanna walking and caring for Country; conjuring encounters between forests, humans, and the more-than-human; dreams, dream literacies, and planes of existence; the spirit realm taking place; ancestral luchas; Musquem Land pedagogies; and resoluteness and gratitude for atunhetsla/the spirit within, the chapters in the collection become politicocultural and (hi)storical statements challenging the singular order of the future towards multiple encounters of all that is to come. In doing so, Indigenous Futures and Learnings Taking Place offers various points of departure to (hi)story educational futures more responsive to the multiplicities of lives in what has not yet become. The contributors in this volume are Indigenous women, women of Indigenous backgrounds, Black, Red, and Brown women, and women whose scholarship is committed to Indigenous matters across spaces and times. Their work in the chapters often defies prescriptions of academic conventions, and at times occupies them to enunciate ontologies of the not yet. As people historically fabricated "women," their scholarly production critically intervenes on time to break teleological education that births patriarchal-ized and master-ized forms of living. What emerges are presences that undiscipline education and educationalized social life breaking futures out of time. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Indigenous studies, future studies, post-colonial studies in education, settler colonialism and coloniality, diversity and multiculturalism in education, and international comparative education. (shrink)

In Friendship, Italian philosopher Claudia Baracchi explores the philosophical underpinnings of friendship. Tackling the issue of friendship in the era of Facebook and online social networks requires courage and even a certain impertinence. The friendship relationship involves trust, fidelity, and availability for profound sharing. Sociologists assure us this attitude was never more improbable than in our time of dramatic anthropological reconfiguration. Research on friendship cannot therefore ignore ancient thought: with unparalleled depth, Friendship examines the broader implications of relationship, both emotional (...) and political. Today, the grand socio-political structures of the world are trembling. The hold of valued paradigms that traditionally positioned individuals, determined their destinies, and assigned them their roles and reciprocal responsibilities is becoming uncertain. In these many global shifts, previously unforeseen possibilities for individual and collective becoming are unleashed. Perhaps friendship has to do with worlds that are not: that are not yet, and that should be desired all the more. Focusing on the works of Aristotle, Baracchi explores ancient reflections on friendship, in the belief that they have much to teach us about our relationships in the present day. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Religion of the Future, or Outlines of Spiritual Philosophy 1. A new and glorious science of man, of his origin and destiny, has been developed within the last few decades. A new philosophy has been evolved of human life here and hereafter, based upon demonstrated facts and data accessible to all. Stupendous as the science of objective nature has become, it is as the mere shadow thrown upon the canvas of time and matter by the (...) radiant light of immortal spirit. Modern agnosticism had set up a way-mark on the road of human progression, inscribed: "No thoroughfare!" "Unknowable!" The truths most indispensable for man to know, the destiny of man and the immortality of the soul, were declared absolute mysteries. What ought to have merely been designated as unknown was declared to be unknowable. This way-mark has to be removed. It is now seen that the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge, as formulated by the Kantian school of modem philosophical thought, misled men into too hasty generalizations and unwarrantable conclusions. It needed only the right method to find the way out; it required only the right key to open wondrous realms to the astonished gaze. Again the supremacy of mind is restored; the saying is verified that "there is nothing on earth great but man, and in man there is nothing great but mind." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

This book studies the lowly past beginnings of the human species, its present achievements & glorious evolutionary future.

This essay begins by focusing on four cultural characters that signify different but associated aspects of the changing destiny of the human figure at the end of the twentieth century and beyond. These characters embody the human figure, in the double sense of form and metaphor, at work, at leisure and at war, and as gendered cultural and philosophical ideal. It is our suggestion that they provide excellent images of a general economy of the future present. Their significance (...) as indices of the destiny of the human resides in the way that they disclose the effects of a restricted economy that overflows its boundaries to incorporate, utilise and restrict every element of its generalised expenditure, to use the categories of Georges Bataille: its sumptuary excess, its sacred forms, its abjected waste, its modes of eroticism, its violence. The essay continues by discussing the implications of, and consequences for, human life in the face of the corporate or techno‐bureaucratic drive to incorporate the ‘impossible‐real’. For Paul Virilio, the technological desire to overwrite the temporal and spatial dimensions of ‘the actual’ discloses something of the ‘divine’ in this new technology. In conclusion, then, the essay questions what resistance there might be to the law of the machine‐God who lies, impossibly, as the immanent being of machinic efficiency, operativity and becoming excellence. (shrink)

So many of us believe that we are free to shape our own destiny. But what if free will doesn't exist? What if our lives are largely predetermined, hardwired in our brains - and our choices over what we eat, who we fall in love with, even what we believe are not real choices at all? Neuroscience is challenging everything we think we know about ourselves, revealing how we make decisions and form our own reality, unaware of the role (...) of our unconscious minds. Leading neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow draws vividly from everyday life and other experts in their field to show the extraordinary potential, as well as dangers, which come with being able to predict our likely futures - and looking at how we can alter what's in store for us. (shrink)

In the future, human destiny may depend on our ethics. In particular, biotechnology and expansion in space can transform life, raising profound questions. Guidance may be found in Life-centered ethics, as biotic ethics that value the basic patterns of organic gene/protein life, and as panbiotic ethics that always seek to expand life. These life-centered principles can be based on scientific insights into the unique place of life in nature, and the biological unity of all life. Belonging to life (...) then implies a human purpose: to safeguard and propagate life. Expansion in space will advance this purpose but will also raise basic questions. Should we expand all life or only intelligent life? Should we aim to create populations of trillions? Should we seed other solar systems? How far can we change but still preserve the human species, and life itself? The future of all life may be in our hands, and it can depend on our guiding ethics whether life will fulfil its full potentials. Given such profound powers, life-centered ethics can best secure future generations. Our descendants may then understand nature more deeply, and seek to extend life indefinitely. In that future, our human existence can find a cosmic purpose. (shrink)

Ontology is a part of metaphysics; it concerns what there is. Is it possible to consider being and reality not in a traditional metaphysical way—that is, not as a ground, an origin, a cause, but as a movement, a flux, a dynamogenic principle? I will set out from a seminal aphorism by Nietzsche, occurring in Human, all too Human (§2): “A lack of the historical sense is the hereditary fault of all philosophers. But everything has evolved; there are no eternal (...) facts, as there are likewise no absolute truths. Therefore, historical philosophising is henceforth necessary, and with it the virtue of diffidence”. I will then move on to explore Peirce’s late thought, starting from a passage in a letter to W. James, where the author supports a “futurist” interpretation of reality—as he had in the juvenile writings—and speaks of “the reality of the public world of the indefinite future as against our past opinions of what it was to be.” This can be defined as a process of “mellonization,” that operation of logic by which what “is conceived as having been is conceived as extended indefinitely into what always will be”. Similarly, in the Preface to Human, all too Human Nietzsche writes: “Our destiny rules over us, even when we are not yet aware of it; it is the future that makes laws for our today”. I will try to read some Peirce’s statements in a Nietzschean perspective within the context of the plan to develop a dynamic and historical ontology; and I will try to read the “enigma” of Nietzsche’s Eternal recurrence from a Peircean perspective. (shrink)

The essay ends addressing the fracture lines dividing the European Left as far as the integration process is concerned, also among those who disapprove of the levelling of social democracy with its dominant austerity policies imposed by communitarian institutions. A “duel on the Left” – we one would have written – all the more interesting because Martinelli compares two German intellectuals, both hostile to the lasting compromise of the Große Koalition that governs the country and on which the destiny (...) of the European Union depends. Wolfgang Streeck, director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung in Cologne, and Jürgen Habermas, the grand maestro of critical theory. (shrink)

Since the industrial revolution, humans have tended to reduce science to the ancillary role of engine of technology. But the quest for knowledge started two and a half millennia ago with the aim of setting humans free from ignorance. The first scientists and philosophers saw knowledge as the goal, not as the means. The main goal was to understand matter, life, conscience, intelligence, our origin, and our destiny, not only to solve practical problems. Being sceptical to myths and religions, (...) they gave themselves the goal to reach The Answer via rational and empirical inquiry. Transhumanism is a very specific philosophy of technology, because one of its goals is the creation of a posthuman intelligence. Several scientists share this hope: making of technology the ancilla of science, and not vice versa. (shrink)

he article analyzes The Letters for a Provincial, addressed by Mircea Eliade to a hypothetical provincial in order to prepare access to the capital city. The letters are written so as to dislocate the provincial from a cultural model built on fake values and prejudices. From a mere pretext, the letters are turned into a symbolic act through which the historian of religions assumes, on the one hand, the destiny of a messenger of a new humanism, and, on the (...) other hand, transforms the modern areligious man into a destination point for whom the provincial is the archetype. Thus, in all of Eliade’s works one can trace the same pattern of dislocation of the partial man, disconnected from archetypes and milestones, in order to re-install him on the road towards the Center, through anthropology structured on cosmic reintegration, alchemy or androgyny in the books of the Romanian period, recovery of the eternal recursion in the Western treatises, and also through the theory of the irecognoscibility of the miracle, in his last essays. The end of the article proposes an answer from the present provincial, who for Eliade was still in the future, an answer showing that the messages of the historian of religions are not reaching him, because he has lost the road towards the Center; moreover, he is situated in an ill-fated extraterritoriality, that is made possible through the great integrations at a horizontal level, and his chance would be the return to the story. (shrink)

The social and ecological crises of the twenty-first century represent a failure of the techno-industrial way of living and knowing. It has become apparent that we need both a new mythos and a new science. In this essay, I draw attention to the important epistemological and cosmological implications of enactivism, a still emerging paradigm within the life sciences. Guided by the insights of the enactive paradigm, I offer a new story of human origins and destiny in an attempt to (...) contribute to a more livable future for our species and the rest of the community of life on Earth. (shrink)

African philosophy has used the concept of the future in a wide range of ways, but these ways have not been surveyed. This chapter does that by considering five broad types of questions. The first is to ask about what African philosophy has said about the future. This will take us into a discussion of African theories of time, as well as into thinking about the places where African philosophy has contributed something to the question of Africa’s (...) class='Hi'>future, particularly in early postindependence in various countries. The second question is about the concepts which necessitate some understanding of the future in African philosophy. These include divination, destiny, immortality, and the environment. The third question has to do with philosophy’s part in some proposals for Africa to move into the future. These include a brief look at Afropessimism, Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism, African Renaissance, and Ubuntu, inasmuch as they assume or advocate for a future. The fourth question has to do with proposals that philosophers have made for African philosophy’s own future as a discipline and as an intellectual component to African life. And finally, the fifth question has to do with how we might think of futurity as an integral component of philosophy itself, as part of “becoming-African.” How might the doing of philosophy be seen as facing the future, and how would that change the way it is engaged? (shrink)

Pretende-se, no presente artigo, analisar as raízes ontológicas da noção de técnica, demonstrando como ela faz parte do movimento de abertura - e de liberdade, portanto - da vida humana em direção ao futuro. Para isso, analisar-se-á como a técnica toma em suas mãos o destino do homem e da natureza, sob os riscos e os perigos que acompanham essa tarefa, pois onde habita a liberdade também cresce o perigo. Dada tal condição, é preciso ainda perguntar sobre as consequências éticas (...) da manipulação do mundo provocada pela unificação entre teoria e prática, cuja intervenção, dada a magnitude e a ambiguidade, torna tal poder dependente de um controle ético. Mostrar-se-á, assim, como o tema da técnica está no centro de uma proposta que faz da ontologia um fundamento para a ética.: It is my intended, in this article, analyze the ontological roots of the concept of technique, demonstrating how it is part of the opening movement - and freedom, so - of human life toward the future. For this, it will be analyzed how the technique takes into their hands the destiny of man and nature, on the risks and dangers that accompany this task, because where freedom dwells also increases the danger. With this condition, we must still ask about the ethical consequences of the manipulation of the world caused by the unification of theory and practice, whose intervention, given the magnitude and ambiguity becomes such power dependent on an ethical control. We’ll show, how the theme of the technique is in the center of a proposal that consider the ontological foundation of the ethics.Keywords: Hans Jonas; Technique; Ontology; Ethics. (shrink)

What transformation would happen if we could combine the best of liberal politics with psychology? _Awakening our Faith in the Future_ investigates the avenues for creating a new branch of psychology, a transformative political psychology. In the past, political psychology has focused directly on analysis and knowledge acquisition, rather than on interventions that transform self and culture. A transformative political psychology combines the best of traditional social science with the transformative intent of clinical psychology in order to create a new (...) political culture. Peter T. Dunlap suggests that while liberals focus intently outside of themselves on changing the world, those with psychological interests focus much more internally on changing themselves. In this book, he argues that by combining political liberalism and psychology, and encouraging psychologists to develop cultural learning practices based on ideas of self- knowledge, there is opportunity to transform our political culture. Divided into five parts, this book explores: stories of political destiny questions of development opportunities for political development a speculative theory of cultural evolution practices of a political psychologist. This scholarly text uses personal experiences and the stories of progressive political leaders as pathways for addressing political problems, making it ideal reading for professionals and students in the fields of both politics and psychology as well as for activists interested in the future of liberalism. (shrink)

When I proposed having the future at the center of this issue, which marks the 10th anniversary of Humanist Studies & The Digital Age, I was aware of the complexity of this controversial topic. The possibility of magnifiche sorti e progressive — a “splendid and progressive destiny” — made possible by human technology inspires hope in some and critique in others. The expression comes from one of Leopardi’s last poems, Ginestra o il fiore del deserto (Broom, or the (...) flower of the desert), where he uses it ironically to suggest the powerlessnesss of humanity in the face of natural disasters. The poet argues with all those who praise the human condition and progress acritically. He condemns their hubris and bitterly invites them to visit the arid slopes of Vesuvius, reduced to a desert by the volcano’s eruption. (shrink)

This article investigates the capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) systems to claim the right to self-determination while exploring the prerequisites for individuals or entities to exercise control over their own destinies. The paper delves into the concept of autonomy as a fundamental aspect of self-determination, drawing a distinction between moral and legal autonomy and emphasizing the pivotal role of dignity in establishing legal autonomy. The analysis examines various theories of dignity, with a particular focus on Hannah Arendt’s perspective. Additionally, the (...) article discusses the influence of societal perceptions on AI, illustrating how AI's interactions in social contexts can shape public attitudes and compliance with legal rights. Ultimately, the article emphasizes the necessity of a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between AI, dignity, and the legal framework governing human rights, stressing the significance of recognizing dignity and societal acceptance in determining AI’s right to self-determination. (shrink)

The fiftieth anniversary of the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt arrived only months after the 1994 U.S. elections brought to power conservative Republican congressional majorities determined to reverse key legacies of Roosevelt's New Deal. At this juncture of special poignancy for many of those assembled at the “Little White House” in Warm Springs, Georgia on April 12, 1995, President Bill Clinton offered remarks on “Remembering Franklin D. Roosevelt.” “Like our greatest presidents,” Clinton eulogized, Roosevelt “showed us how to be (...) a nation in time of great stress” and “taught us again and again that our government could be an instrument of democratic destiny.”. (shrink)

The fiftieth anniversary of the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt arrived only months after the 1994 U.S. elections brought to power conservative Republican congressional majorities determined to reverse key legacies of Roosevelt's New Deal. At this juncture of special poignancy for many of those assembled at the “Little White House” in Warm Springs, Georgia on April 12, 1995, President Bill Clinton offered remarks on “Remembering Franklin D. Roosevelt.” “Like our greatest presidents,” Clinton eulogized, Roosevelt “showed us how to be (...) a nation in time of great stress” and “taught us again and again that our government could be an instrument of democratic destiny.”. (shrink)

“Poland 2050” Report is a publication of a distinctive sort. While the idea of producingthis report has a long history, it began to take shape about two years ago. It isbased on the two tenets. The first, raised at numerous conferences held in the past underthe auspices of the “Poland 2000 Plus” Committee, is the conviction that economicgrowth does not transpose automatically into societal (or more broadly “civilizational”)advancement. Indeed, the preliminary analysis has indicated that the two processes are,in fact, divergent. (...) While there have been convergent processes evident in Poland’s andthe EU’s economic domains, no such convergence is significantly evident in the case ofsocietal progress. This gave rise to the vision set forth in this Report, formulated as“minimizing Poland’s developmental gap with respect to the more advanced EU states.”The second tenet upon which this Report is based is even more important. Numerousanalyses carried out by the Committee indicate that quantitative changes cannot bepredicted four decades in advance with great likelihood. And so, we did not base ourReport on existing quantitative trends, but rather on analysis of the pathways that willmake it possible to minimize Poland’s developmental gap with respect to the advancedEU states. The Report also strives to highlight threats that exist in the social and “civilizational”sphere.The Report was based on the materials published in the three volumes of the publicationWizja przyszłości Polski – Studia i Analizy [A Vision of Poland’s Future—Studies and Analyses], vol. 1: Społeczeństwo i państwo [Society and State], vol. 2: Gospodarkai środowisko [Economy and Environment], and vol. 3: Ekspertyzy [ExpertStudies]. (shrink)

“Poland 2050” Report is a publication of a distinctive sort. While the idea of producingthis report has a long history, it began to take shape about two years ago. It isbased on the two tenets. The first, raised at numerous conferences held in the past underthe auspices of the “Poland 2000 Plus” Committee, is the conviction that economicgrowth does not transpose automatically into societal (or more broadly “civilizational”)advancement. Indeed, the preliminary analysis has indicated that the two processes are,in fact, divergent. (...) While there have been convergent processes evident in Poland’s andthe EU’s economic domains, no such convergence is significantly evident in the case ofsocietal progress. This gave rise to the vision set forth in this Report, formulated as“minimizing Poland’s developmental gap with respect to the more advanced EU states.”The second tenet upon which this Report is based is even more important. Numerousanalyses carried out by the Committee indicate that quantitative changes cannot bepredicted four decades in advance with great likelihood. And so, we did not base ourReport on existing quantitative trends, but rather on analysis of the pathways that willmake it possible to minimize Poland’s developmental gap with respect to the advancedEU states. The Report also strives to highlight threats that exist in the social and “civilizational”sphere.The Report was based on the materials published in the three volumes of the publicationWizja przyszłości Polski – Studia i Analizy [A Vision of Poland’s Future—Studies and Analyses], vol. 1: Społeczeństwo i państwo [Society and State], vol. 2: Gospodarkai środowisko [Economy and Environment], and vol. 3: Ekspertyzy [ExpertStudies]. (shrink)

"Margaret L. King has put together a highly representative selection of readings from most of the more significant—but by no means the most obvious—texts by the authors who made up the movement we have come to call the 'Enlightenment.' They range across much of Europe and the Americas, and from the early seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth. In the originality of the choice of texts, in its range and depth, this collection offers both wide coverage and striking (...) insights into the intellectual transformation which has done more than any other to shape the world in which we live today. It is _simply the best introduction to the subject now available_."_ —Anthony Pagden, UCLA, and author of _The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters_ Contents:_ Chronology, Introduction _Chapter One - Casting Out Idols: 1620–1697_ _Idols, or false notions: _Francis Bacon, _The New Instrument_ _I think, therefore I am: _René Descartes, Discourse on Method _God, or Nature: _Baruch Spinoza, _Ethics_ _The system of the world: _Isaac Newton, _Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy_ _He searched for truth throughout his life: _Pierre Bayle, _Historical and Critical Dictionary_ _Chapter Two - _The Learned Maid: 1638–1740 _A face raised toward heaven:_ Anna Maria van Schurman, _Whether the Study of Letters Befits a Christian Woman_ _The worlds I have made:_ Margaret Cavendish, _The Blazing World_ _A finer sort of cattle:_ Bathsua Makin, _An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen_ _I warn you of the world:_ Madame de Maintenon, _Letter: On the Education of the Demoiselles of Saint-Cyr_, and _Instruction: On the World_ _The daybreak of your reason:_ Émilie Du Châtelet, _Fundamentals of Physics_ _Chapter Three - _A State of Perfect Freedom: 1689–1695 _The chief criterion of the True Church:_ John Locke, _Letter on Toleration_ _Freedom from any superior power on earth:_ John Locke, _Second Treatise on Civil Government_ _A white paper, with nothing written on it:_ John Locke, _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_ _Let your rules be as few as possible:_ John Locke, _Some Thoughts Concerning Education_ _From death, Jesus Christ restores all to life:_ John Locke, _The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures_ _Chapter Four - All Things Made New: 1725–1784_ _In the wilderness, they are reborn:_ Giambattista Vico, _The New Science_ _Without these Names, nothing can be known,_ Carl Linnaeus, _System of Nature_ _All the clouds at last are lifted:_ Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, _The Successive Advancement of the Human Mind_ _A genealogical or encyclopedic tree of knowledge:_ Jean le Rond d’Alembert, _Preliminary Discourse_ _Dare to know! :_ Immanuel Kant, _What Is Enlightenment?_ _Chapter Five - Mind, Soul, and God: 1740–1779_ _The narrow limits of human understanding:_ David Hume, _Anof a Book Lately Published_ _The soul is but an empty word:_ Julien Offray de La Mettrie, _Man a Machine_ _All is reduced to sensation:_ Claude Adrien Helvétius, _On the Mind_ _An endless web of fantasies and falsehoods:_ Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d’Holbach, _Common Sense_ _Let each believe that his own ring is real:_ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, _Nathan the Wise_ _Chapter Six - Crush That Infamous Thing: 1733–1764_ _This is the country of sects:_ Voltaire, _Philosophical Letters_ _Disfigured by myth, until enlightenment comes:_ Voltaire, _The Culture and Spirit of Nations_ _The best of all possible worlds:_ Voltaire, _Candide_ _Are we not all children of the same God?:_ Voltaire, _Treatise on Tolerance_ _If a book displeases you, refute it! :_ Voltaire, _Philosophical Dictionary_ _Chapter Seven - Toward the Greater Good: 1748–1776_ _Things must be so ordered that power checks power,_ Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, _The Spirit of the Laws_ _Complete freedom of trade must be ensured:_ François Quesnay, _General Maxims for the Economic Management of an Agricultural Kingdom_ _The nation's war against the citizen: Cesare_ Beccaria, _On Crimes and Punishments_ _There is no peace in the absence of justice:_ Adam Ferguson, _An Essay on the History of Civil Society_ _Led by an invisible hand:_ Adam Smith, _An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_ _Chapter Eight - Encountering Others: 1688–1785_ _Thus died this great man:_ Aphra Behn, _Oroonoko: or The Royal Slave_ _Not one sins the less for not being Christian: _Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, _Embassy Letters_ _Do you not restore to them their liberty?:_ Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, _Philosophical and Political History of European Colonies and Commerce in the Two Indies_ _Some things which are rather interesting:_ Captain James Cook, _Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World_ _The inner genius of my being:_ Johann Gottfried von Herder, _Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humankind_ _Chapter - Nine Citizen of Geneva: 1755–1782_ _The most cunning project ever to enter the human mind: _Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Human Inequality_ _The supreme direction of the General Will:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract _Two lovers from a small town at the foot of the Alps,_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Julie, or the New Heloise_ _Build a fence around your child’s soul:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Emile, or On Education_ _This man will be myself:_ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Confessions_ _Chapter Ten - Vindications of Women: 1685–1792_ _No higher design than to get her a husband:_ Mary Astell, _Reflections on Marriage_ _The days of my bondage begin:_ Anna Stanisławska, _Orphan Girl_ _A dying victim dragged to the altar:_ Denis Diderot, _The Nun_ _Created to be the toy of man:_ Mary Wollstonecraft, _Vindication of the Rights of Woman_ _Man, are you capable of being just?:_ Olympe de Gouges, _Declaration of the Rights of Woman as Citizen_ _Chapter Eleven - American Reverberations: 1771–1792_ _I took upon me to assert my freedom:_ Benjamin Franklin, _Autobiography_ _Freedom has been hunted round the globe:_ Thomas Paine, _Common Sense_ _Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights:_ Thomas Jefferson and Others, _Declaration of Independence_ _A safeguard against faction and insurrection:_ James Madison, _Federalist No. 10_ _An end to government by force and fraud:_ Thomas Paine, _The Rights of Man_ _Chapter Twelve - Enlightenment's End: 1790–1794_ _A partnership of the living, the dead, and those unborn:_ Edmund Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ _The future destiny of the human species:_ Nicolas de Condorcet, _A Sketch of a Historical Portrait of the Progress of the Human Mind_ Texts and Studies, Index. 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ZUSAMMENFASSUNGIn der gegenwärtigen theologischen Debatte über das zukünftige Schicksal des Individuums ist der Gerichtsgedanke mit seinem doppelten Ausgang, der zur Seligkeit oder zur Verdammnis führt, sehr umstritten. Darin zeigt sich, dass die Funktion eschatologischer Aussagen undeutlich ist. Der Beitrag unternimmt den Versuch, im Durchgang durch die protestantische Lehrtradition Funktion und Bedeutung eschatologischer Aussagen für das Verständnis des christlichen Glaubens herauszuarbeiten. Die Bedeutung von Himmel und Hölle liegt nicht in einer Beschreibung einer objektiven Realität, sondern in der Selbstbeschreibung des Glaubens als (...) einem unableitbaren Geschehen des Sich-Verständlich-Werdens des Menschen in der Geschichte.SUMMARYIn contemporary theological debates on the future destiny of the individual, the image of the Last Judgement with its twofold outcome of either leading to eternal bliss or to damnation is highly controversial. This calls for new reflection on the function of eschatological statements. This paper offers an elaboration of the function and meaning of eschatological statements for the understanding of the Christian faith by going through the protestant doctrinal tradition. The meaning of heaven and hell, it is argued, is not to be found in a description of an objective reality but in the self-description of faith as a contingent self-understanding of human being in history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:F. R. Leavis (Modern Cultural Theorists)Stephen OgdenF. R. Leavis (Modern Cultural Theorists), by Anne Samson; x & 196 pp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992, $45.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.If it is an overstatement to say that the waves of change currently disturbing the teaching of English in universities originated from the splash made by F. R. Leavis at Cambridge beginning in 1933, Anne Samson’s account of the theorist’s (...) influence scarcely admits it. Her chapter titles—“Leavis and the Growth of English Studies,” “English as a University Subject,” “Literary ‘Theory’ and Constituting the Canon”—indicate not only the range of issues connected with F. R. Leavis’s name but also his significant involvement in their genesis.Samson’s book portrays Leavis as the efficient cause in the establishment of university English as a critical, or more accurately a diagnostic, enterprise. At an early professional cost (he was denied faculty appointment at Cambridge for five years), Leavis helped cut English curricula free from philology, languages, and classical studies; a responsibility Samson partially excuses by connecting Leavis’s motivating principles back through Matthew Arnold to Dickens and Carlyle and even to one “Reverend H. J. Rose, a leading figure in the founding of King’s College, London... declaring in a sermon delivered in 1826 that literature teaches ‘the wisdom of men better and wiser than ourselves’ and prepares for the ‘examination of those moral and intellectual truths which are not only the worthiest exercise of our reason, but most concern our future destiny’” (p. 12).This moralism Samson sees as the central and redeeming principle in Leavis’s system. Specifically, she identifies the Condition of England debate—over the state of culture and economics in a “‘technologico-Benthamite world’” (p. 63)—as the key to Leavis’s literary criticism, his influential journal Scrutiny, and his wide-ranging reform endeavors. “Literature mattered to Leavis because he believed it to be the means, above all others, of combating the ills of a mechanised, constantly changing world and of restoring the heritage of those dispossessed by the machine” (p. 3).Professionally asserting the primacy of criticism over scholarship, then in his writings making no distinction between the literary and the social, Leavis ultimately refused any separation between literature and life. Samson carefully [End Page 360] traces this development in Leavis’s general theory in order to bring out its easily-overlooked implication for the social position of a literary academic. She quotes this crucial passage from Leavis: “The critic... is as much concerned with the health of the mind as any doctor with the health of the body. To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge of values... For the arts are inevitably and quite apart from any intentions of the artist an appraisal of existence” (pp. 15–16). No longer a mere scholar, or the type of irrelevant empiric Leavis so hated in the person of C. P. Snow, the Leavisite theorist is the grand physician diagnosing all society’s ills. Literary artists and their writings, so far from forming the most important part of literature, become perfectly irrelevant—“quite apart”—with the medicocritic prescribing universally “of existence.”Samson’s treatment of Leavis is analytical, though enjoyably and consistently biographical. For instance, her final, and largest, chapter shows the moralist model of the literary critic (the “judge of values”) in action by detailing the history of Leavis’s complete reversal of estimation between T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. Leavis originally gave Eliot “hero-worship” (p. 162) and dismissed Lawrence as “mechanical” (p. 157). But concurrent with Eliot’s progress to Anglo-Catholicism, Leavis’s moral judgments overturned and, true to type, he increasingly censured Eliot’s writings by diagnosing problems in the man, while he grew to idolize Lawrence; ironically for “rescuing life from... inner mechanisation” (p. 169).Such inconstancy, here expressed in every word, Samson sees as an historical mark of character which places Leavis among the “Great Men of Ideas” (p. 172).Stephen OgdenSimon Fraser UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:F. R. Leavis (Modern Cultural Theorists)Stephen OgdenF. R. Leavis (Modern Cultural Theorists), by Anne Samson; x & 196 pp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992, $45.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.If it is an overstatement to say that the waves of change currently disturbing the teaching of English in universities originated from the splash made by F. R. Leavis at Cambridge beginning in 1933, Anne Samson’s account of the theorist’s (...) influence scarcely admits it. Her chapter titles—“Leavis and the Growth of English Studies,” “English as a University Subject,” “Literary ‘Theory’ and Constituting the Canon”—indicate not only the range of issues connected with F. R. Leavis’s name but also his significant involvement in their genesis.Samson’s book portrays Leavis as the efficient cause in the establishment of university English as a critical, or more accurately a diagnostic, enterprise. At an early professional cost (he was denied faculty appointment at Cambridge for five years), Leavis helped cut English curricula free from philology, languages, and classical studies; a responsibility Samson partially excuses by connecting Leavis’s motivating principles back through Matthew Arnold to Dickens and Carlyle and even to one “Reverend H. J. Rose, a leading figure in the founding of King’s College, London... declaring in a sermon delivered in 1826 that literature teaches ‘the wisdom of men better and wiser than ourselves’ and prepares for the ‘examination of those moral and intellectual truths which are not only the worthiest exercise of our reason, but most concern our future destiny’” (p. 12).This moralism Samson sees as the central and redeeming principle in Leavis’s system. Specifically, she identifies the Condition of England debate—over the state of culture and economics in a “‘technologico-Benthamite world’” (p. 63)—as the key to Leavis’s literary criticism, his influential journal Scrutiny, and his wide-ranging reform endeavors. “Literature mattered to Leavis because he believed it to be the means, above all others, of combating the ills of a mechanised, constantly changing world and of restoring the heritage of those dispossessed by the machine” (p. 3).Professionally asserting the primacy of criticism over scholarship, then in his writings making no distinction between the literary and the social, Leavis ultimately refused any separation between literature and life. Samson carefully [End Page 360] traces this development in Leavis’s general theory in order to bring out its easily-overlooked implication for the social position of a literary academic. She quotes this crucial passage from Leavis: “The critic... is as much concerned with the health of the mind as any doctor with the health of the body. To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge of values... For the arts are inevitably and quite apart from any intentions of the artist an appraisal of existence” (pp. 15–16). No longer a mere scholar, or the type of irrelevant empiric Leavis so hated in the person of C. P. Snow, the Leavisite theorist is the grand physician diagnosing all society’s ills. Literary artists and their writings, so far from forming the most important part of literature, become perfectly irrelevant—“quite apart”—with the medicocritic prescribing universally “of existence.”Samson’s treatment of Leavis is analytical, though enjoyably and consistently biographical. For instance, her final, and largest, chapter shows the moralist model of the literary critic (the “judge of values”) in action by detailing the history of Leavis’s complete reversal of estimation between T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. Leavis originally gave Eliot “hero-worship” (p. 162) and dismissed Lawrence as “mechanical” (p. 157). But concurrent with Eliot’s progress to Anglo-Catholicism, Leavis’s moral judgments overturned and, true to type, he increasingly censured Eliot’s writings by diagnosing problems in the man, while he grew to idolize Lawrence; ironically for “rescuing life from... inner mechanisation” (p. 169).Such inconstancy, here expressed in every word, Samson sees as an historical mark of character which places Leavis among the “Great Men of Ideas” (p. 172).Stephen OgdenSimon Fraser UniversityCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

« The destiny of Art—a revenant». « The object of Art might be to seek to eliminate the necessity of the object ». This book’s theme and method stand halfway between these two assertions—the first by the German romantic poet Novalis, the second by the Californian post-minimalist artists Robert Irwin and James Turrell about a research program on art and technology in the late 1960s. Neither of these statements declares that art is dead. On the contrary, they announce that (...) art is not yet present, that it has not yet happened. According to its destiny or to its project, art is always future, and for this very reason it keeps returning from the past and repeating itself in various shapes and embodying itself in diverse media, perhaps not in the expected places but elsewhere—unrecognizable as art, anachronistic and fashionable. Like a revenant going through a wall, the untimely future of art will come across words, things and artworks, subjectiles and gestures, either in the world of art or in ordinary life. Using the tools of aesthetics, visual studies and mediology, the present book seeks to capture some of these ghosts and hauntings. (shrink)

National Book Award Finalist. How did humanity originate and why does a species like ours exist on this planet? Do we have a special place, even a destiny in the universe? Where are we going, and perhaps, the most difficult question of all, "Why?" In The Meaning of Human Existence, his most philosophical work to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson grapples with these and other existential questions, examining what makes human beings supremely different from all other species. (...) Searching for meaning in what Nietzsche once called "the rainbow colors" around the outer edges of knowledge and imagination, Wilson takes his readers on a journey, in the process bridging science and philosophy to create a twenty-first-century treatise on human existence—from our earliest inception to a provocative look at what the future of mankind portends. Continuing his groundbreaking examination of our "Anthropocene Epoch," which he began with The Social Conquest of Earth, described by the New York Times as "a sweeping account of the human rise to domination of the biosphere," here Wilson posits that we, as a species, now know enough about the universe and ourselves that we can begin to approach questions about our place in the cosmos and the meaning of intelligent life in a systematic, indeed, in a testable way. Once criticized for a purely mechanistic view of human life and an overreliance on genetic predetermination, Wilson presents in The Meaning of Human Existence his most expansive and advanced theories on the sovereignty of human life, recognizing that, even though the human and the spider evolved similarly, the poet's sonnet is wholly different from the spider's web. Whether attempting to explicate "The Riddle of the Human Species," "Free Will," or "Religion"; warning of "The Collapse of Biodiversity"; or even creating a plausible "Portrait of E.T.," Wilson does indeed believe that humanity holds a special position in the known universe. The human epoch that began in biological evolution and passed into pre-, then recorded, history is now more than ever before in our hands. Yet alarmed that we are about to abandon natural selection by redesigning biology and human nature as we wish them, Wilson soberly concludes that advances in science and technology bring us our greatest moral dilemma since God stayed the hand of Abraham. (shrink)

The previous chapters have provided a detailed overview of the variety of ethical challenges posed by the development of ICTs. By way of conclusion, in this epilogue I would like to invite the reader to look into the possible future of Information and Computer Ethics. More specifically, I shall try to forecast how the convergence of two fundamental trends of our times, globalization and the development of the information society, may interact with the ethical problems analysed in this book. (...) The exercise will not be based on some untenable technological determinism. Humanity is, and will remain, firmly in charge of its destiny and hence be responsible for it. Rather, it will mean adopting the farmer's view that, with enough intelligence, toil and a bit of luck, one might be able to tell today what one will probably reap tomorrow. Before trying to ‘look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not’ (Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I, Scene III, 59–62), two clarifications might be in order. First, the future of globalization is a phenomenon too complex even to sketch in this brief epilogue. For a synthetic, well-balanced and informed overview, the reader may wish to consult Held and McGrew (2001) and consider that this chapter is written from what Held et al. (1999)) have defined as a ‘transformationalist perspective’, according to which ‘globalization does not simply denote a shift in the extensity or scale of social relations and activity. (shrink)