BackgroundIt is becoming increasingly apparent that the COVID-19 pandemic not only poses risks to physical health, but that it also might lead to a global mental health crisis, making the exploration of protective factors for mental well-being highly relevant. The present study seeks to investigate religious/spiritual well-being as a potential protective factor with regard to psychiatric symptom burden and addictive behavior.Materials and MethodsThe data was collected by conducting an online survey in the interim period between two national lockdowns with (...) young adults in Austria. The primary study variables were assessed through the Brief Symptom Inventory 18, the Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test and the Multidimensional Inventory for Religious/Spiritual Well-Being short version, with its sub-dimensions Hope, Forgiveness, General Religiosity, and Connectedness.ResultsWe observed HO and FO as substantial negative predictors of psychiatric symptom burden. With regard to addictive behavior, HO in particular but also GR seem to have a protective function. Furthermore, we found positive connections between CO, psychiatric symptom burden, and addictive behavior.ConclusionIn line with our assumptions, HO, FO and to a minor extent GR were confirmed as negative predictors regarding psychiatric symptom burden or addictive behavior in young adults, coping with the psychological threat of COVID-19 pandemic. These dimensions might be further considered as potential resources in clinical treatment. However, the positive prediction of mental illness parameters by increased feelings of CO could also be interpreted as an expression of exhaustion and alienation from the real world. (shrink)

What justifies the negative perception of the Humanities? What justifies budget cuts and curricula changes in schools and universities that prejudice the Humanities? In this article I argue that what is meant to justify the crisis narrative as well as curricula and budget cuts is the following argument: education has national value if and only if it positively contributes to the economy. The Humanities do not and cannot positively contribute to the economy. Therefore, the Humanities (...) fail to contribute anything of national value. Therefore, governments are justified in cutting the Humanities from curricula and reapportioning funding away from the Humanities. In addition to defending this argument as the argument against the Humanities, I argue that the first premise is false. I argue that there are non-profit-seeking national goods that the Humanities are ideally placed to meet and promote. Therefore, the argument against the Humanities fails. (shrink)

A renowned scholar investigates the "human crisis" that Albert Camus confronted in his world and in ours, producing a brilliant study of Camus's life and influence for those readers who, in Camus's words, "cannot live without dialogue and friendship. As France--and all of the world--was emerging from the depths of World War II, Camus summed up what he saw as 'the human crisis'. 'We gasp for air among people who believe they are absolutely right, whether it be in (...) their machines or their ideas. And for all who cannot live without dialogue and the friendship of other human beings, this silence is the end of the world.' In the years after he wrote these words, until his death fourteen years later, Camus labored to address this crisis, arguing for dialogue, understanding, clarity, and truth. When he sailed to New York, in March 1946--for his first and only visit to the United States--he found an ebullient nation celebrating victory. Camus warned against the common postwar complacency that took false comfort in the fact that Hitler was dead and the Third Reich had fallen. Yes, the serpentine beast was dead, but "we know perfectly well," he argued, "that the venom is not gone, that each of us carries it in our own hearts." All around him in the postwar world, Camus saw disheartening evidence of a global community revealing a heightened indifference to a number of societal ills. It is the same indifference to human suffering that we see all around, and within ourselves, today. (shrink)

Finishing this essay exactly one year after the official arrival of the SARS-COV-2 virus in Belgium and the Netherlands—where the cartographers of this essay are currently located—it is safe to say that the COVID-19 pandemic has immensely impacted our day-to-day lives. The pandemic has not only forced us to question various taken-for-granted existential certainties and luxuries provided by a capitalist system out to destroy the earth but has also re-spotlighted post-Enlightenment critiques of the human subject. If these pandemic times are (...) indeed more-than-human, then the clock is ticking for the discipline of philosophical anthropology to face these post-anthropological facts and receive what feminist science studies scholar Donna J. Haraway has aptly called a thorough dose of “epistemological electroshock therapy” (1988, p. 578). Taking Haraway’s foregoing call and the idea of thinking-with the (end of the) Anthropocene seriously, we construct a critical cartography of Emmanuel Levinas’ take on philosophical anthropology in dialogue with other major philosophical anthropologists and feminist new materialists while arguing for a post-anthropology for the Chthulucene. (shrink)

The problem we face today is that there is a huge gap between our ethical judgments about the ecological crisis on the one hand and our ethical behavior according to these judgments on the other. In this article, we ask to what extent a phenomenology of the ecological crisis enables us to bridge this gap and display more ethical or pro-environmental behavior. To answer this question, our point of departure is the affordance theory of the American psychologist and (...) founding father of ecological psychology, James Gibson. There are two reasons for taking this approach. First of all, an ontological reading of Gibson’s affordance theory provides a concept of nature which is non-dualistic, non-anthropocentric and eco-centric, but is not seen as an ‘intrinsic value’ or product of ‘human valuation’. Secondly, the affordance ontology provides us with a concept of nature which in itself calls for certain action and behavior. If we indeed face a gap between ethical judgment and ethical behavior with regard to the current ecological crisis, an affordance of nature could bridge this gap. Based on our ontological reading of Gibson’s affordance theory, we open a radically new perspective on the current ecological crisis and the responsibility of mankind with regard to this crisis. (shrink)

The article analyzes cultural crisis as a decline in human existential creativity. A review of the problematic nature of the conception of creativity shows that this concept is not strictly defined. Non-classical philosophers were among the first to theoretically ground the importance of creativity for an individual, their quality of life, the well-being of society, and the development of culture. From this philosophical perspective, it is shown that a human being has, as a natural creative faculty, an innate ability (...) to create. This existential human creativity can be defined as the self-development of one's personality, the creation of one's life and environment. The causes and consequences of a decline in creativity are analyzed in the context of Spengler's conception of cultural crisis. The conclusion is reached that creative activity and creativity can be taken to be the most profound goal of a personality and its most perfect form of existence. From this existential creativity stems an authenticity of life, a creation of spiritual values, and an improvement and development of cultural forms. The disjunction of culture and civilization reveals that the establishment of an era of civilization and mass culture marks the decline of authentic culture as regards vibrant existential creative activity. (shrink)

Two great problems of learning confront humanity: learning about the nature of the universe and our place in it, and learning how to become civilized. The first problem was solved, in essence, in the 17th century, with the creation of modern science. But the second problem has not yet been solved. Solving the first problem without also solving the second puts us in a situation of great danger. All our current global problems have arisen as a result. What we need (...) to do, in response to this unprecedented crisis, is learn from our solution to the first problem how to solve the second. This was the basic idea of the 18th century Enlightenment. Unfortunately, in carrying out this programme, the Enlightenment made three blunders, and it is this defective version of the Enlightenment programme that we have institutionalized in 20th century academic inquiry. In order to solve the second great problem of learning we need to correct the three blunders of the traditional Enlightenment. This involves changing the nature of social inquiry, so that social science becomes social methodology or social philosophy, concerned to help us build into social life the progress-achieving methods of aim-oriented rationality, arrived at by generalizing the progress-achieving methods of science. It also involves, more generally, bringing about a revolution in the nature of academic inquiry as a whole, so that it takes up its proper task of helping humanity learn how to become wiser by increasingly cooperatively rational means. The scientific task of improving knowledge and understanding of nature becomes a part of the broader task of improving global wisdom. (shrink)

This paper argues that human ecology, based on process philosophy and challenging scientific materialism, is required to effectively confront the global ecological crisis now facing us.

Centralization and over-professionalization can lead to the disappearance of a critical environment capable of linking the human sciences to the "real world." The authors of this volume suggest that the humanities need to operate in a concrete cultural environment able to influence procedures on a hic et nunc basis, and that they should not entirely depend on normative criteria whose function is often to hide ignorance behind a pretentious veil of value-neutral objectivity. In sociology, the growth of scientism has (...) fragmented ethical categories and distorted discourse between our inner and outer selves, while philosophy is suffering from an empty professionalism current in many philosophy departments in industrialized and developing countries where boring, ahistorical, and nonpolitical exercises are justified through appeals to false excellence. In all branches of the humanities, absurd evaluation processes foster similar tendencies as they create a sterile atmosphere and prevent interdisciplinarity and creativity. Technicization of theory plays into the hands of technocrats. The authors offer a broad range of approaches and interpretations, reaching from philosophy of education to the re-evaluation of business models for universities. (shrink)

Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Contemporary and Historical Human Challenges brings together a range of original contributions that seek to critically interrogate the concept of 'crisis', a seemingly omnipresent and defining metonym of our times. Both international and interdisciplinary in perspective, the leading doctoral scholars and early-career researchers represented in this volume unsettle hegemonic notions of crisis (and possible remedies) by exploring both a very wide range of extant crises (in and of politics, economics, (...) communities, technologies, urban policy, literary representation, media studies, language learning, nationalisms and national identity, and the legitimation of the state), as well as the roots of our contemporary understandings of crisis and the politics of 'crisis representation'. The book is broadly divided into two sections, 'Politics and Society' and 'Arts, Media and Humanities'. Originating in the University of Salford Arts, Media and Social Sciences Postgraduate Research Conference of 2010, Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety provides both an accessible and wide-ranging general introduction to various applications of the concept of crisis, as well providing a more specialist resource for students exploring crisis in one of the many disciplinary fields represented in this collection. Crisis, Rupture and Anxiety will be of particular interest to students with interdisciplinary interests that encompass cultural studies, literary theory, media studies, politics, sociology and urban studies. (shrink)

The problem we face today is that there is a huge gap between our ethical judgments about the ecological crisis on the one hand and our ethical behavior according to these judgments on the other. In this article, we ask to what extent a phenomenology of the ecological crisis enables us to bridge this gap and display more ethical or pro-environmental behavior. To answer this question, our point of departure is the affordance theory of the American psychologist and (...) founding father of ecological psychology, James Gibson. There are two reasons for taking this approach. First of all, an ontological reading of Gibson’s affordance theory provides a concept of nature which is non-dualistic, non-anthropocentric and eco-centric, but is not seen as an ‘intrinsic value’ or product of ‘human valuation’. Secondly, the affordance ontology provides us with a concept of nature which in itself calls for certain action and behavior. If we indeed face a gap between ethical judgment and ethical behavior with regard to the current ecological crisis, an affordance of nature could bridge this gap. Based on our ontological reading of Gibson’s affordance theory, we open a radically new perspective on the current ecological crisis and the responsibility of mankind with regard to this crisis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:HUMAN NATURE AND POLITICS: A MIMETIC READING OF CRISIS AND CONFLICT IN THE WORK OF NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI 1 Harald Wydra Universität Regensberg Perhaps more than any other political philosopher2, Machiavelli's writings have given rise to extremely controversial and emotionally charged interpretations.3 Ifone were to pinpoint the guiding lines ofdispute in Machiavelli scholarship, one could argue that his "foes" are convinced of his amorality and the tyrannical bias, while (...) his "friends" stress the liberal and republican basis ofhis teaching. This debate between good and the evil in Machiavelli's teaching has accompanied the conflict on the tyrannical and the republican character of his work ever since.4 While the essence of his prescriptions continues to be contested, most interpreters concur on Machiavelli 's realism or political pragmatism defined in The Prince 25 as effectual 1 I am grateful to Anthony J. Parel, Arpad Szakolczai, and AdolfTrägler for comments on an earlier draft of this essay. 2Perhaps with the exception of Marx who shares with Machiavelli the heritage of an inflationary and contentious scholarship. Despite this resemblance, there are fundamental differences when it comes to declare oneself a follower of Machiavelli or follower of Marx. See Aron (256-259). 3In his extensive overview, Berlin estimates the totality of the bibliography at more than 3,000 titles. Needless to say that is has considerably increased since then. The recent wave of new translations into English (Mansfield and Tarcov, or Codevilla) and several new approaches provide for the richness of debate. This debate sometimes acquires a heated intensity, such as in the exchange on Strauss's Machiavelli between Mansfield and Pocock in Political Theory, 3:4 (1975), 372-405. 4See for a recent update the introduction to a new translation ofthe Discourses in Mansfield and Tarcov. Harald Wydra37 truth (verità ejfetuale). In this stress on factual reality as opposed to imagination many have seen the sources of Machiavelli's advocacy of technicity, rationality and reason of state. Such a viewpoint is supported by Machiavelli's pure and emotionless style ofwriting. Machiavelli's effectual truth is essentially about the mastery over conflict and contingency in politics. Yet, there are hardly systematic studies on the status and role ofpolitical conflict and its consequences for political order in Machiavelli's work.5 Most classical studies include analysis of conflict (Pocock; Lefort; Sasso), but they do so by sticking to the natural textual division ofhis major works. This article sets out to elaborate some guidelines ofa Machiavellian theory ofconflict by linking it to René Girard's theory of mimetic conflict. It aims to achieve two things: first, to analyze the nature of political conflict in Machiavelli's work. Second, to reexamine some widespread assumption on the autonomy of politics. The Affinity of Machiavelli and Girard: Crisis and Conflict Methodologically, a reading ofMachiavelli through Girard has a status different from that of orthodox comparisons oftwo thinkers.6 This can be illustrated by considering Raymond Aron's comparison between Machiavelli and Marx. On the one hand, Machiavelli's political philosophy is marked by a stress on cyclical repetition and permanent instability. His realism maintains that the more things change the more they remain the same. On the other hand, Marx's economic philosophy of history envisages long-term progress and as such reflects upon change by its confidence in Providence. Yet, essentially both works are concerned with the contingent modalities of collective conflict over time. While for Machiavelli the struggle for power unfolds between political groups such as nobles and the people, Marx suggests the social and economic roots ofconflicts in social formations. Against this background, a reading of Machiavelli through Girard diverges from conventional comparisons. Machiavelli's work emanates from his experience as a practitioner ofpolitics who aims to be the counsellor of Princes. A trained historian and literary critic, Girard analyzes fundamental 5To my knowledge, by far the most balanced and detailed treatment is given by Sasso. For a thematic treatment of civil discord, see also Bock. 60ne can mention Raymond Aron's two fine essays "La comparaison de Machiavel et Pareto" (Aron 86-109) and "Machiavel et Marx" published in Italian in the first edition of Machiavelli's Principe (1975) and again in... (shrink)

This paper focuses on the current international refugee crisis and the ways in which it is leading to sharp symbolic and physical violence through the process of “othering.” Based on Hannah Arendt’s discussion of statelessness and the question of the right to have rights, and Giorgio Agamben’s discussion of Homo Sacer, as well as drawing on other key authors such as Judith Butler, we argue that conditions of extreme human vulnerability and dangers of totalitarianism are being radically worsened by (...) the ethnicized and racialized denial of the other, that is, of human rights. Rather than advocating an abstract cosmopolitanism, however, without strong purchase in contemporary social life, the paper concludes by noting the need to place oneself in a position of discomfort, in order to confront the tension between particularistic attachments and universalist aspirations, between the multiplicity of laws and the ideal of a rational order common to all polities, between belief in the unity of humankind and the healthy antagonisms and tensions generated by human diversity. (shrink)

Western societies today are coming unmoored in the face of an earth-shaking ethical and cultural paradigm shift. At its core is the question of what it means to be human and how we are meant to live. The old answers are no longer accepted; a dizzying array of options are offered in their stead. Underpinning this smorgasbord of lifestyles is a thicket of unquestioned assumptions, such as the separation of gender from biological sex, which not so long ago would have (...) been universally rejected as radical notions. In the spring of 2019, a group of Orthodox Christian scholars drawn from a wide variety of academic disciplines met together to offer responses to the moral crisis our generation faces, elaborating upon its various forms and facilitating a fuller understanding of some of its theological and philosophical foundations. In doing so they offer support to all those who question the claims that are so forcefully insisted upon today--a clarity that will aid them in standing up and resisting trends that have already shown to be the cause of great suffering and unhappiness. (shrink)

Despite offering some protection for refugees, realpolitik in international affairs ensures that the paradigm of human security remains aspirational rather than practical. This paper begins by providing a brief snapshot of the current global refugee crisis, encompassing multiple local crises in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. It next details the international community’s response to these crises, highlighting the punitive policies used by the Australian government and the European Union to impede the asylum process. Lastly, the paper (...) will assess whether the framework of human security can support the right to asylum, a right that is enshrined in international law. Following a brief introduction to the concept of human security, the paper will explore its strengths and limitations, examining whether it offers a complementary source of protection to the right to asylum in the face of eroding refugee rights. I argue that human security is a useful but imperfect framework for protecting refugee rights. (shrink)

Environmental problems compel examination of three contrasting patterns of moral reasoning concerning the human relationship to nature: the currently implemented Progress Ethic, and the proposed alternatives of a Stewardship Ethic and Connection Ethic. But none of these deliver all they promise, whether in theory or practice or both, because all dubiously presume that moral reason is commensurate with nature, and that the value of natural entities is an intrinsic property. Matthew R. Foster argues that resolution of this crisis requires (...) reaching beyond the limit of reason, and acknowledging value to be not a noun, but a verb about the incomparable relation of two entities. (shrink)

This dissertation studies modern European philosophy's reflection the historical appearance of the human sciences, under the spell of either positivist ideology or historicism, while also making their scientific character a philosophical issue. The work thus hopes to situate the human sciences in an historical context out of which they become unintelligible: the philosophical reflection that, throughout late modernity, has registered their progressive appearance as disciplines of an uncertain and often questioned degree of scientificity. In this way, it challenges a standard (...) practice of 20th c. philosophy of science---to start with the tradition inherited from logical positivism, as though the genre began ex-nihilo around the time, or with, Popper's Logik der Forschung. ;The historical itinerary reconstructed begins with the antinomy nature/freedom in modern philosophy, particularly as it appears in the Kantian corpus. This is followed by an analysis of the dissolution of system philosophy against the background of the movements that constitute the historical matrix of the human sciences: positivism and historicism. Then the work considers the "return to Kant" in Dilthey and the neo-Kantians, which is a conscious attempt to reenact philosophical theories that may serve as scientific meta-language. Finally, the dissertation traces the reception of this Fragestellung in the phenomenologies of Husserl and Heidegger, particularly in the latter's turn from a destruction of metaphysics to a critique of science and technology. ;At the same time, the historical appearance of the sciences of man is considered together with the crisis of philosophy as epistemology or general theory of knowledge. This is done without disregard to the irreversible character of the epochal differend between science and philosophy, evidenced by the crisis of epistemology as scientific meta-language and the rise of an autonomous self-reflection of sciences that constitutes their own "philosophy of science." Thus the work's conclusion attempts to find the epistemological site of a reflection on man that may go beyond the empirical in the discursive space that opens up between natural science and the retreat of philosophy as theory of knowledge. (shrink)

In this article, I would like to highlight Ricoeur’s manner of rethinking the humanities, by focusing on a particular case, namely his hermeneutical reading of the question of trace. Taking into consideration two different contexts: historiography and the cognitive sciences, I will show that the very notion of trace is the limit-notion that induces a hermeneutical crisis at the core of the historiography as well as at the centre of the cognitive science.

A symposium on the subject "The Crisis of Bourgeois Democracy and Violation of Human Rights in the Capitalist World" took place in Moscow in December 1976. The symposium was conducted by the Institute of State and Law and the Learned Council of the USSR Academy of Sciences on Problems of Ideological Currents Abroad.

Humanities advocates focus on demonstrating the humanities’ value to encourage participation. This advocacy is largely done through institutional means, and rarely taken directly to the public. This article argues that by reframing the theory of Direct Action, humanities advocates can effectively engage the public. The article begins by exploring three different understandings of the humanities: that they develop good citizenship, that they develop understanding, and that they develop critical thought. The article then discusses what Direct Action (...) is and how it works. The article concludes by describing how to reframe Direct Action to suit the needs of the humanities, including potential actions that will achieve those ends. Humanities Direct Action must be seen as a debate and will focus on increasing critical thinking. (shrink)

As the first book to analyze the work of Fanon as an existential-phenomenological of human sciences and liberation philosopher, Gordon deploys Fanon's work to illuminate how the "bad faith" of European science and civilization have philosophically stymied the project of liberation. Fanon's body of work serves as a critique of European science and society, and shows the ways in which the project of "truth" is compromised by Eurocentric artificially narrowed scope of humanity--a circumstance to which he refers as the (...) class='Hi'>crisis of European Man. In his examination of the roots of this crisis, Gordon explores the problems of historical salvation and the dynamics of oppression, the motivation behind contemporary European obstruction of the advancement of a racially just world, the forms of anonymity that pervade racist theorizing and contribute to "seen invisibility," and the reasons behind the impossibility of a nonviolent transition from colonialism and neocolonialism to post colonialism. (shrink)

The codification of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and the accession to those treaties by a large majority of states, does not at first glance seem to have any significant effect upon states' behavior in situations of crisis. Any understanding of the prospects for such law in these situations requires an appraisal of both the motivations of states in concluding these treaties and the pressures on them to ignore them. This paper analyzes those motivations and temptations (...) through the framework of precommitment theory, a component of rational choice theory, originally articulated by Jon Elster and Thomas Schelling. The metaphor of Ulysses offers a useful way to address three different dimensions of the purposes that states join treaties: beliefs, i.e., the state's attitude toward the norms in the treaty; predictions, the state's concerns about its own future behavior; and interactions, i.e., the extent to which the state is trying to influence or bind other states. And it permits linking those motivations to the propensity of states to comply at a later time. The paper offers a four-part typology for why states commit to such treaties, contrasting it with notions from contemporary international relations theories. It then explores the contrasting approaches of compliance theories and international law doctrine to the temptation of states to violate treaties and elaborates the contributions of the precommitment framework. Building upon that framework, it proposes a set of strategies that those concerned with compliance might explore for making international law more relevant when governments seem most inclined to discount it. (shrink)

Can we learn to create a better world? Yes, if we first create traditions and institutions of learning rationally devoted to that end. At present universities all over the world are dominated by the idea that the basic aim of academic inquiry is to acquire knowledge. Such a conception of inquiry, judged from the standpoint of helping us learn wisdom and civilization, is grotesquely and damagingly irrational. We need to change our approach to academic enterprise if we are to create (...) a kind of inquiry rationally devoted to helping us become more civilized. (shrink)

John Henry Newman begins his Idea of a University by claiming that the university “is a place of teaching universal knowledge.”1 But instead of referring to “universal” and all inclusive as Newman suggests, the word university was originally derived from the medieval Latin sense of universitas, meaning “a society, company, corporation, or community regarded collectively.”2 Newman's effacement of the corporate origins of the university in favor of universality reflects a transformation of the university in the course of the 19th century (...) from a corporate body with particularist interests to one with a claim to an autonomous universality transcending all particular…. (shrink)

The coronavirus pandemic and climate crisis have highlighted the power of governments in relation to people and the societies in which they live. This article looks at two sociological approaches that together capture the core features of the relationship between sovereignty, society and individual safety. Sociologists of human rights point to the importance of sovereignty for the enforcement of human rights and draw on the work of Arendt, who argues all rights are lost to those who find themselves outside (...) the protection of the state. Wickham’s Hobbesian sociology adds an important social dimension to these ideas. He adopts Hobbes’ argument that sovereignty secures both society and the protection of people. The article recovers additional ideas in Hobbes’ theory of rights that further link these two approaches. For Hobbes, governments hold a responsibility to protect their citizens’ right to survive. The article discusses the relevance of these ideas to the coronavirus pandemic and climate crisis. It argues sociology is well-placed to explore ways in which the continued exercise of sovereign power in relation to society and human survival is shaping humanity’s response to these global crises. (shrink)