Over the past 25 years, no religious institution in America has done more to explore the link between the environment and spirituality than the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Now, for the first time, a selection of the finest of the Cathedral's ecological sermons appears in a single volume.

The issue of human sexuality has many negative implications in African society. These arose in a number of contexts – legal, religious, cultural and societal – and were significantly divisive. This article examines these responses in terms of critical solidarity, critical engagement and critical distance, and attempts to find a way of considering them in the perspective of achieving justice and solidarity. The focus is on one mainline denomination, the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa (UPCSA). Contribution: This article has (...) implications that link subjects within the theological encyclopaedia of History of Christianity, Church Polity, Systematic Theology and Practical Theology, and other disciplines including Social Sciences such as Political Science. (shrink)

"An important contribution to contemporary jurisprudential debate and to legal thought more generally, Just Interpretations is far ahead of currently available work."--Peter Goodrich, author of Oedipus Lex "I was struck repeatedly by the clarity of expression throughout the book. Rosenfeld's description and criticism of the recent work of leading thinkers distinguishes his work within the legal theory genre. Furthermore, his own theory is quite original and provocative."--Aviam Soifer, author of Law and the Company We Keep.

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)

This is the first comprehensive overview of the influence of Platonism on the English literary tradition, showing how English writers, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Yeats, Pound and Iris Murdoch, used Platonic themes and images within their own imaginative work.

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)

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)

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)

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 Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl's last great work, is important both for its content and for the influence it has had on other philosophers. In this book, which remained unfinished at his death, Husserl attempts to forge a union between phenomenology and existentialism. Husserl provides not only a history of philosophy but a philosophy of history. As he says in Part I, "The genuine spiritual struggles of European humanity as such take the form of struggles (...) between the philosophies, that is, between the skeptical philosophies--or nonphilosophies, which retain the word but not the task--and the actual and still vital philosophies. But the vitality of the latter consists in the fact that they are struggling for their true and genuine meaning and thus for the meaning of a genuine humanity.". (shrink)

As forms of employment and migration changed, the financial crisis which began in 2007 affected the human rights of individuals, particularly those in developing countries. How the media reported on these consequences is essential in understanding how and why public and political perceptions of the importance of human rights may have changed since the crisis began. Using quantitative and qualitative analysis of major newspapers in the UK and the USA, this paper seeks to understand the ways in which (...) the media presented the relationship between the negative changes in the economy and human rights. The analysis of the findings uses framing theory to understand how the text in news articles communicates the relevance of human rights to readers before concluding with some further avenues for research. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss the nature, causes and effects of the crisis of civilization which we can observe for over forty years. This crisis affects social order, with its economic, institutional and demographic dimensions, as well as the culture and the social structure. Here, I am particularly dealing with the question of human person and their relations with others, as well as the humanities. I show globalization, the growth of cancerous mass culture and secularization as a (...) background of the crisis of civilization. In this context, I try to show the importance of Chiara Lubich and her work. (shrink)

This is a critique of Nietzsche's theory of culture that proposes an alternative paradigm allowing a defense of the humanities against such Nietzschians as Leo Strauss and Derrida.

Decision makers addressing the ecological crisis face the challenge of considering complex ecosystems in their socioeconomic decisions. Complementary to ecological sciences, other scientific frameworks, grouped under the umbrella term environmental sciences, offer decision makers the opportunity to pursue sustainable paths. Because the environmental sciences are drawn from different branches of science, environmental ethics must go beyond the legacy of ecology and the life sciences to describe the contribution of scientific knowledge to addressing the ecological crisis. In this regard, (...) I analyze and compare three environmental sciences based on their seminal articles: Conservation Biology, Sustainability Science, and Sustainability Economics. My analysis shows that conservation biology and sustainability economics share strong similarities despite their different disciplinary backgrounds (life _versus_ social sciences). Both seek to contrast a biocentric and an anthropocentric perspective. The goal of sustainability is therefore understood as a balance that must be found between these two perspectives. If the issue of balancing human and non-human interests is still relevant to sustainable science, it is more likely to take place in an ecocentric perspective based on alternative ontological and normative prescriptions. Based on this analysis, I distinguish between ‘proscriptive value-based’ scientific work that cannot be used for policy advice but is flexible to different value systems, and ‘prescriptive value-based’ scientific work that can be used for policy advice but is fixed within a given value system. Conflicting recommendations from environmental scientists therefore result from the coexistence of multiple ‘prescriptive value-based’ scientific approaches based on different conceptions of the relationship between humans and nature. (shrink)

The paper “Crisis of the consumer society: searching for a new ideology” studies the ideology of the consumer society and its main tendencies such as values substitution, human self-isolation and loneliness and the dehumanization of the world. Based on the analysis of contemporary mass art and advertisements the author traces the growing gap between the real life of people and the dominating consumerist model of society. The author evaluates different radical movements (nationalist, racial, religious) as people’s attempt to discover (...) their identity, to find genuine feelings and experiences in the consumerist society. This results in the increase of xenophobia and intolerance in the intertwined and fragile modern world. The paper also states the possible solution to this problem – ajoint effort of the philosophers of the world to create a new, nonconsumerism ideology that would be able to overcome the existing detachment among people. (shrink)

Translated by Ciaran Cronin. In the midst of the current crisis that is threatening to derail the historical project of European unification, Jürgen Habermas has been one of the most perceptive critics of the ineffectual and evasive responses to the global financial crisis, especially by the German political class. This extended essay on the constitution for Europe represents Habermas’s constructive engagement with the European project at a time when the crisis of the eurozone is threatening the very (...) existence of the European Union. There is a growing realization that the European treaty needs to be revised in order to deal with the structural defects of monetary union, but a clear perspective for the future is missing. Drawing on his analysis of European unification as a process in which international treaties have progressively taken on features of a democratic constitution, Habermas explains why the current proposals to transform the system of European governance into one of executive federalism is a mistake. His central argument is that the European project must realize its democratic potential by evolving from an international into a cosmopolitan community. The opening essay on the role played by the concept of human dignity in the genealogy of human rights in the modern era throws further important light on the philosophical foundations of Habermas’s theory of how democratic political institutions can be extended beyond the level of nation-states. Now that the question of Europe and its future is once again at the centre of public debate, this important intervention by one of the greatest thinkers of our time will be of interest to a wide readership. (shrink)

Translated by Ciaran Cronin. In the midst of the current crisis that is threatening to derail the historical project of European unification, Jürgen Habermas has been one of the most perceptive critics of the ineffectual and evasive responses to the global financial crisis, especially by the German political class. This extended essay on the constitution for Europe represents Habermas’s constructive engagement with the European project at a time when the crisis of the eurozone is threatening the very (...) existence of the European Union. There is a growing realization that the European treaty needs to be revised in order to deal with the structural defects of monetary union, but a clear perspective for the future is missing. Drawing on his analysis of European unification as a process in which international treaties have progressively taken on features of a democratic constitution, Habermas explains why the current proposals to transform the system of European governance into one of executive federalism is a mistake. His central argument is that the European project must realize its democratic potential by evolving from an international into a cosmopolitan community. The opening essay on the role played by the concept of human dignity in the genealogy of human rights in the modern era throws further important light on the philosophical foundations of Habermas’s theory of how democratic political institutions can be extended beyond the level of nation-states. Now that the question of Europe and its future is once again at the centre of public debate, this important intervention by one of the greatest thinkers of our time will be of interest to a wide readership. (shrink)

Social life across the African continent is largely threatened by intolerance, injustice, lack of equal opportunity, inequity in resource distribution, lack of compassion, unfair treatment and disrespect for others’ rights, as well as compromising intrusion of ethnicity, corruption, terrorism and religion into affairs of the state. So, Africans largely struggle with the political problem of building and sustaining societies and institutions that can be civil and compliant to the rule of law. There exists an African problem of political justice and (...) social justice. Disorder and parochialism in a sociopolitical system are mainly instigated by inefficiency and over-politicization of major developmental institutions. We recommend some human values of Ubuntu such as mutual respect, cooperation for the common good and the pursuit of reconciliation as pillars for stable and viable political and social order across most parts of Africa. (shrink)

This article argues the main following points. (1) Communism was fatefully dependent upon the action or inaction of its top leaders because of the vulnerability of the hyper-centralized power and hyper-centralized defense of the ruling class and the ruling party. No one was really able to seriously predict the historical contingencies such as Gorbachev and Yeltsin that played a decisive role. The most that social scientists and analysts could safely claim was that communism had become unsuccessful and problematical to such (...) an extent that force alone could maintain it. However, given the overall history of communism, who could have anticipated that such force would not be used. (2) The United States is toiling now in an overwhelmingly difficult and dangerous transition, not only from a ‘superpower’ to ‘merely’ a big power, but from a totalistic and laissez-faire capitalism to a limited and state-regulated capitalism. It is the most efficacious way of production and primary distribution. However, unless capitalism, national and global, becomes regulated and combined with some kind of socialism (solidarism) that is yet to be established, global crises will keep recurring. The best chance for enlightened socialist (solidaristic) humanism lies in secondary distribution based on equality and justice as its fundamental principles. (3) The very term ‘superpower’ suggests a kind of superhuman, almost divine power. The United States does not have such power because (among other things) apocalyptic weapons are at the disposal of some considerably weaker states (in every other respect). (4) The possibility of the self-destruction of humankind has become the over-determination of all other over-determinations in history. It follows that auto-apocalypse must be separated from the categorical and epochal dichotomy between modernity/ modernism and postmodernity/postmodernism and given an absolute priority, both theoretical and practical. This break should be characterized as post-postmodernity and reflection upon it as post-postmodernism. We are in vital need of a total anti-apocalyptic turnaround in overall thought, sensitivity, activity and organization. Unfortunately, it can now safely be predicted that more and more states and societies, even those founded on (internal) freedoms and desirous to maintain them, will become transformed into states and societies focused on the struggle for survival in the face of auto-apocalyptic threats. I believe that confronted more and more with such threats liberalism will actually, and later probably also explicitly, yield the place of the fundamental operative (unlike declarative) view of the world, ideology, imagology, and principle of social organization — to humankind existentialism. We have entered an existentialist ‘end of history’ instead of the proclaimed liberalistic ‘end of history’. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It used to be said that shame culture waned in early modernity, but there is a growing body of historiography on the vital role that recognition and the opinion of others continued to play. Honour mattered; for some it was the mark and the maker of your true self. While philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville, Hume, Smith, and Rousseau disagreed in their evaluations of the phenomenon, they were united in thinking that the great engine of recognition whirred like furious (...) clockwork through human society. When one listens to voices from the margins of power, however, to formerly enslaved black women and men, and white women, one hears a different story – that the machine is broken. I argue that, albeit from incomparable positions, they articulate a theory of misrecognition in the face of systematic power. Sensitive to the entanglements of epistemology and naturalised inequality, they offer a politics of vision that deconstructs the punitive lenses of gender and race which render people invisible and misunderstood, and in so doing they try to write themselves into view. They offer an account of the mysterious intractability of hegemonic ways of seeing that poses a challenge to both the putatively laissez-faire economy of recognition of their enlightened contemporaries, and to the emancipatory teleology of modern recognition theorists. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 23 The essay examines the recent discussion about a “crisis of testimony” in historiography. Central to this discussion is the question of how it is possible for human testimony to convey information about the limit experiences of 20th century history. Given that the credibility of testimony is assessed by appealing to our previous understanding of what is credible, testimony to limit experiences risks being dismissed as unbelievable or implausible. This issue has recently been addressed in (...) the work of Paul Ricoeur, Hayden White and Gert-Jan van der Heiden among others. In the first part of this essay, I show that the current idea of a crisis of testimony is a consequence of focusing too exclusively on the content of extraordinary testimony. I argue that such a focus has affinities with David Hume’s reductionist understanding of testimonial knowledge; even though the authors discussed cannot properly be labelled reductionists themselves. In the second part of the essay, I open up the issue of extraordinary testimony from a perspective that places the relationship between the speaker and the addressee at the heart of testimonial knowledge. My aim is to show that if we attend to the way in which testimonial knowledge involves dependence on the authority of another person, then the current idea of a crisis of testimony will dissolve itself. In conclusion, I argue that there is an important ethical dimension to the question of understanding extraordinary testimony. (shrink)

Some of the human needs are more important than others in order to be inevitable. One of these needs which cannot be avoided is the need for belonging to any authority. Whatever the name, religion, nation, homeland, flag etc. all these concepts are the reflections of the sense of belonging that comes with human existence. This article will discuss how Kuwaiti novelist Saud Alsanousi reflects the crisis of a child who is born from a secret relationship with a Filipino (...) woman's son who came to Kuwait as a housekeeper in Kuwait. When he returned to Kuwait, where he carried his passport and felt himself unfamiliar in the Philippines because of his physical structure and the Arabs, he was again excluded by his relatives because of his Filipino mother. The novel tries to draw attention to the socio-economic problems of workers coming from South East Asia to the Gulf countries, especially from the character of Jose, who has a nauseous mood due to the uncertainty between Philippine-Kuwait and Christian-Muslim affiliations. The introduction of foreign workers who constitute more than half of the population in the Gulf countries will be reviewed. Afterwards, a short summary of the novel will be given and the main theme of the lack of disability will be analyzed. Summary: In 1973, Syria and Egypt started a air strike against Israel in order to recover their lost territory in the previous wars and their reputation in the international area. Some Western countries -especially the United States- have shown all kinds of military aid to Israel in the face of this attack. Thanks to these aids the Syrian and Egyptian armies have not achieved their intended goals. This attitude of Western countries to Israel has attracted the reaction of other Gulf countries -especially the Saudi administration- which has a large amount of oil reserves. Gulf countries -which have not gotten a strong military option- tried to use the oil in their hands for the first time as a political trump card. These oil-exporting countries have reduced oil production in response. As a result, the economies of Western countries which were industrialized and dependent on oil have been negatively affected by this decision. In contrast, Gulf States have gained a sudden and massive fortune due to oil prices rising three or four times. The Gulf States, which have led this wealth to development in many areas like education, health, urbanism, etc. The need for qualified staff in these fields was supplied by other Arab countries such as Egypt, Syria, and Sudan. However, as the years passed oil prices decreased and so oil revenues decreased. This reduction led the Gulf States -which have only oil-based economies- to look for cheaper labor. While the foreign employment provided from the Arab countries previously later this need has begun to supply from far East Asian countries which are economically very weak. Vast number of employees emigrated to the Gulf countries to work in the labor service sector with very low wages especially from the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Malaysia. This segment -which has employed with very low wages- has been subjected to injustice and discrimination. The injustices faced by the Far East Asian foreign labor force deprived of social rights have been the subject of many painful stories over time. The modern novel -which aims to reflect the life and the human being with all its details- has reflected the stories of the victims of that employers. Saq al-Bamboo (Bamboo Bar) is one of these novels which has published by Kuwaiti writer Saud Alsanousi in 2012. Within a short time after the publication of the work the novel was interested in the Arab world and in 2013 he was awarded the International Arabic Novelist Prize. The novel is consisting of five chapters and each chapter is divided into three sections 1,2,3... The author conveys the crisis of unetnicity from Jose’s chracter who was born from a Filipino mother and a Kuwaiti father. A translator named Ibrahim Selâm -which is a translation of the souvenirs and diaries belonging to Jose from the Philippine language to Arabic is intended to increase the realism of the work. Josephine -who came to Kuwait to work from the Philippines- was settled in 1985 in one of the country's most reputable families. The old woman who owns the house has a son named Rasheed. Rasheed was interested in Josephine who worked as a servant in their house and he married her with a secret marriage. Because the marriage of a Kuwaiti man and a foreign woman who was working as a housekeeper in Kuwait is accepted as a great shame that will cast a shadow on the dignity and honor of the family the marriage which was concealed by the couple inside and outside of the house, which could only come together with privacy has appeared after months. Rasheed -who was expelled from the house with Josephine- has temporarily found another house. Rasheed and his wife, who thought that his mother's attitude would change as their children were born have disappointed. Rasheed after realizing that his mother would never be satisfied, finally lost his ability to resist this crisis and sent his wife back to. With this development the problem of-identity crisis of Jose’s chracter is dealt with in a multi-faceted way. Jose, who left his age with his mother from Kuwait, had suffered from familial negativities that had passed through Kuwait years later in his twenties, and “familial negativities through his return to Kuwait and depressions caused by the sense of belonging. In an interesting coincidence when he met Gassân, one of the closest friends of Jose’s father in the Philippines, he returned to his dream Paradise ’Kuwait”. The journey from Jesus who has known as “Arabo to “Jesus” started with great hope because he was born from a Kuwaiti father in his own near the Philippines and likened to Arabs alike. But perhaps more of the crisis in the Philippines is waiting for him in Kuwait. Because his father was killed during the years when the Iraqi army occupied Kuwait. Although his father's mother welcomed Jose at first, exclusionary attitude towards foreigners in Kuwait caused her to take a negative attitude towards here grandson. The work is a continuation of the tradition of novels of criticism of the Arab society that has been going on for almost a century. The fact that novel was able to make deep psychological analyzes with his comprehensible language and simple style without being ambiguous and to keep the tension alive by leaving the problems at the end of the episodes and thus to provide immersion in this way reinforced the fictional soundness of the work. The novel also presents fictional material within the Arab society for the researchers in the field of religion psychology and sociology of religion, in order to show how a non-Muslim feels amoung the Muslim society. (shrink)

The crisis of our times is science in a world without wisdom. The immense intellectual success of modern science and technology have given some of us unprecedented powers to act, which has led to all the great benefits of the modern world, and to the grave global crises we now face. Before modern science, we lacked the power to do too much damage to ourselves or the planet; now we have science, wisdom has become, not a private luxury but (...) a public necessity. Unless we learn to become a bit wiser, sooner or later we will destroy ourselves. But how can we learn to become wiser? We can learn from the last place many would look - namely science! We can learn from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards a wiser world. This is in fact an old idea. It goes back to the 18th century French Enlightenment. But, in developing the idea, the philosophes of the Enlightenment made three gross blunders. They failed to capture correctly the nature of the progress-achieving methods of science; they failed to generalize these methods properly; and, most disastrously of all, they applied their misconstrued scientific method, not to the social world directly, not to the task of making social progress towards an enlightened world, but instead to the task of improving knowledge of social phenomena, to the task of developing social science. This botched version of the profound Enlightenment idea was developed throughout the 19th century, and built into universities in the early 20th century with the creation of disciplines of social science. As a result, academic inquiry today is a botched version of what we need. Instead of giving priority to problems of living, and devoting itself to helping humanity acquire a bit more wisdom, academia today devotes itself to the pursuit of knowledge. That is the key disaster of our times. Our institutions of learning seek knowledge, but fail disastrously to devote themselves to helping humanity acquire a bit more wisdom. If the world is to acquire global wisdom, it needs institutions of learning rationally devoted to the task. As a matter of supreme urgency, we need to bring about a revolution in academia so that the basic task becomes, not just to acquire knowledge, but to seek and promote social wisdom. (shrink)

In The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl expands his philosophical horizon to include the question about the genuine meaning of human existence. Understanding the crisis of the European sciences as a symptom of the crisis of European philosophy and as an expression of the life-crisis of European humanity, and interpreting European science, philosophy, and humanity as representative of their global-historical counterparts, Husserl argues that the life-crisis of European humanity is reflective of (...) the critical condition of global-historical humanity. The crisis of “European” life emerges as a crisis of human existence, and Husserl’s phenomenology unfolds as a search for an answer to the question not only about the sense of the life-world but also about the meaning of human life. Thus phenomenology, as care for humanity, shares with existentialism, as a humanism in the broadest sense, the conviction that human beings live in a world not in which life makes sense, but in which they must make sense of life. Accordingly, the genuine essence of human existence is not passively “given” but actively “taken,” since it involves an entelechy that constitutes itself in an evolutionary achievement, and it is the evidentiary result of an existential struggle for meaning against annihilating forms of meaninglessness, namely, irrationalism, positivism, and skepticism. This paper examines Husserl’s hermeneutical-historical approach to the question about the meaning of human existence and suggests an understanding of phenomenology as a form of humanism, and perhaps even as a unique kind of “existentialism,” that is, an ethical philosophy that takes absolute moral responsibility for the presuppositionless application of reason to life.En La crisis e las ciencias europeas y la fenomenología trascendental, Husserl expande su horizonte filosófico a fin de incluir en él la pregunta por el auténtico sentido de la existencia humana. Al entender la crisis de las ciencias europeas como un síntoma de la crisis de la filosofía europea y como una expresión de la crisis vital de la humanidad europea, y al interpretar la ciencia, la filosofía y la humanidad europeas como representativas de sus contrapartes históricas y globales, Husserl argumenta que la crisis vital de la humanidad europea refleja la condición crítica en que se encuentra la humanidad en perspectiva histórica global. La crisis de la vida “europea” emerge como una crisis de la existencia humana, y la fenomenología de Husserl se despliega como la búsqueda de una respuesta a la cuestión no sólo del sentido del mundo de la vida, sino también del significado de la vida humana. La fe-nomenología, como cuidado de la humanidad, comparte con el existencialismo, entendido como un humanismo en el sentido más amplio, la convicción de que los seres humanos viven en un mundo en el cual no es que la vida tenga sentido sino que ellos deben dar sentido a la vida. En consonancia, la auténtica esencia de la existencia humana no está pasivamente “dada” sino que es activamente “tomada”, ya que ella envuelve una entelequia que se constituye en una realización evolutiva, y que es el resultado evidenciador de un combate existencial por el significado contra las formas de sinsentido que son aniquiladoras, a saber: irracionalismo, positivismo y escepticismo. Este ensayo examina la aproximación histórico-hermenéutica de Husserl a la cuestión del significado de la existencia humana, y sugiere una comprensión de la fenomenología como una forma de humanismo, y quizá incluso como un tipo único de existencialismo; esto es, como una filosofía ética que asume una responsabilidad moral absoluta en la aplicación sin presupuestos de la razón a la vida. (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)

In "The Crisis of Meaning and the Life-World, " Lubica Ucnik examines the existential conflict that formed the focus of Edmund Husserl s final work, which she argues is very much with us today: how to reconcile scientific rationality with the meaning of human existence. To investigate this conundrum, she places Husserl in dialogue with three of his most important successors: Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Jan Patocka. For Husserl, 1930s Europe was characterized by a growing irrationalism that threatened (...) to undermine its legacy of rational inquiry. Technological advancement in the sciences, Husserl argued, had led science to forget its own foundations in the primary life-world: the world of lived experience. Renewing Husserl s concerns in today s context, Ucnik first provides an original and compelling reading of his oeuvre through the lens of the formalization of the sciences, then traces the unfolding of this problem through the work of Heidegger, Arendt, and Patocka. Although many scholars have written on Arendt, none until now has connected her philosophical thought with that of Czech phenomenologist Jan Patocka. Ucnik provides invaluable access to the work of the latter, who remains understudied in the English language. She shows that together, these four thinkers offer new challenges to the way we approach key issues confronting us today, providing us with ways to reconsider truth, freedom, and human responsibility in the face of the postmodern critique of metanarratives and a growing philosophical interest in new forms of materialism.". (shrink)

The contemporary crisis in AmericanEducation that has resulted in Bush sponsoredfederal legislation for accountability andstandardized testing is the setting for anessay introducing the work of Frenchphilosopher, Julia Kristeva. The comparison isbetween an ``educated subject'' that might wellcome to be constituted in schooling at presentand a ``subject-in-process.'' In a strikinglydifferent vision of human potential, the latterindividual, with open-ended, non-perfectdevelopment, entails the possibility ofpersonal, societal and educational change.Kristeva's theory, based greatly in areinterpretation of Freud, and incorporatingthe semiotic, abjection and love, and (...) revolt iscentral. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Crisis of Meaning in Sartor Resartus—Thomas Carlyle's Pioneering Work in Articulating and Addressing the Existential ConfrontationFrank Martelawhat i call an "existential confrontation" is the encounter with the possibility that human life is absurd: created for no purpose and devoid of any lasting value or meaning. It is "the hour of terror at the world's vast meaningless grinding" that William James (Will to Believe 173) examines, described by Todd (...) May (xi) as "the confrontation of our need for meaning with the unwillingness of the Universe to yield it to us." This confrontation with the existential void and the potential absurdity of human existence is often not just an intellectual dilemma, but felt as a deep personal crisis accompanied by melancholia, angst, nausea, or even suicidal thoughts. Young William James confessed in a letter to a friend that "all last winter" he "was on the continual verge of suicide" (quoted in Gunnarsson), writing later that "too much questioning" leads "to the edge of the slope" wherein lies "nightmare or suicidal view of life" (James, "Is Life Worth Living?" 6). Similarly, Leo Tolstoy (54) reports how his inability to identify a lasting meaning of life drove him to a "state of lunacy" where "the best I could do was to hang myself."Despite a few earlier allusions—most famously the Book of Ecclesiastes proclaiming that "all is vanity and a striving after wind," and Shakespeare's Macbeth lamenting that life is "a tale told by an idiot … signifying nothing"—the existential confrontation is predominantly a modern phenomenon (Martela, A Wonderful Life). The modern history of descriptions of existential confrontations start at the turn of the nineteenth century, and includes Søren Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death, Leo Tolstoy's A Confession, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Camus's Outsider, Sartre's Nausea, and T. S.Eliot's The Waste Land.There are many responses that the confrontation with the existential void has generated. Sartre embraced the lack of values imposed from outside and [End Page 80] emphasized human freedom. Human beings are "cast into this world … condemned to be free" without any "luminous realm of values" providing "justification or excuse," as Sartre famously summarized in "Existentialism Is a Humanism" (29). Other responses range from Søren Kierkegaard's leap of faith and William James's will to believe to Albert Camus's happiness from absurdity.While some of the responses end up finding a new way of connecting with God and faith, and others are explicitly atheistic, embracing the "death of God," a common thread in most responses is an acknowledgment of the situatedness of human experience and an emphasis placed on human subjectivity and the opportunity to live one's life more authentically. While existentialism, broadly conceived, is often seen as the central philosophical tradition dealing with the existential void, the confrontation was very much alive in the United States as well, visible in both literature and philosophy. As already alluded, William James had an existential confrontation in his youth, writing about the topic in "Is Life Worth Living" and other essays in Will to Believe. There has also been much back-and-forth between Europe and the United States around these themes, with the influences crossing the Atlantic on many occasions. For example, William James cites Thomas Carlyle in Will to Believe, while Sartre cites William James in Nausea, when discussing themes related to the existential confrontation. Similarly, Emerson inspired Nietzsche who inspired Josiah Royce. Typically, the histories tracing the early encounters with the existential confrontation acknowledge Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, and Fyodor Dostoevsky as key nineteenth-century predecessors to Existentialism, as all faced directly the question of the meaning of life and the dreadful possibility that life might not have any meaning or value to it.However, there is a key author usually not mentioned in these histories, despite the fact that he played a pivotal role in introducing existentialist themes to the English-speaking audience, coining the phrase "meaning of life" in the English language. Thus, in writing the prehistory of Existentialism, we need to examine Thomas Carlyle and his Sartor Resartus, which has been described by literary historians as "one of... (shrink)