Robert C. Solomon
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195181579
- eISBN:
- 9780199786602
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195181573.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Sartre’s first novel, Nausea, is quite clearly a working out of the phenomenological insights he was developing at the time in such works as “Transcendence of the Ego” and “The Emotions”. This ...
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Sartre’s first novel, Nausea, is quite clearly a working out of the phenomenological insights he was developing at the time in such works as “Transcendence of the Ego” and “The Emotions”. This chapter explores the basic tenets of Sartre’s phenomenology, focusing in particular on his rejection of certain themes in his mentor, Edmund Husserl. It also spends considerable time looking at the perversity of Sartre’s central character, Roquentin, who quite clearly resembles Sartre himself at that time in his situation and his provincial circumstances.Less
Sartre’s first novel, Nausea, is quite clearly a working out of the phenomenological insights he was developing at the time in such works as “Transcendence of the Ego” and “The Emotions”. This chapter explores the basic tenets of Sartre’s phenomenology, focusing in particular on his rejection of certain themes in his mentor, Edmund Husserl. It also spends considerable time looking at the perversity of Sartre’s central character, Roquentin, who quite clearly resembles Sartre himself at that time in his situation and his provincial circumstances.
William A. Richards and G. William Barnard
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231174060
- eISBN:
- 9780231540919
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231174060.003.0006
- Subject:
- Psychology, Psychopharmacology
This chapter is written to highlight the category called Transcendence of Time and Space included in the definition of mystical consciousness.
This chapter is written to highlight the category called Transcendence of Time and Space included in the definition of mystical consciousness.
Elliot R. Wolfson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823255702
- eISBN:
- 9780823260911
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823255702.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
The book explores the codependency of monotheism and idolatry by examining the thought of several prominent twentieth-century Jewish philosophers—Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and ...
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The book explores the codependency of monotheism and idolatry by examining the thought of several prominent twentieth-century Jewish philosophers—Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas. While all of these thinkers were keenly aware of the pitfalls of scriptural theism, in differing degrees, they each succumbed to the temptation to personify transcendence, even as they tried either to circumvent or to restrain it by apophatically purging kataphatic descriptions of the deity. Jacques Derrida and Edith Wyschogrod, by contrast, carried the project of denegation one step further, embarking on a path that culminated in the aporetic suspension of belief and the consequent removal of all images from God, a move that seriously compromises the viability of devotional piety. The inquiry into apophasis, transcendence, and immanence challenges recent attempts to harness the apophatic tradition to construct a viable postmodern negative theology. Not only are these philosophies of transcendence guilty of a turn to theology that defies the phenomenological presupposition of an immanent phenomenality, but they fall short on their own terms, inasmuch as they persist in employing metaphorical language that personalizes transcendence and thereby runs the risk of undermining the irreducible alterity and invisibility attributed to the transcendent other. Apophatic theologies, accordingly, must be supplanted by a more far-reaching apophasis, such that the much-celebrated metaphor of the gift would give way to the more neutral notion of an unconditional givenness that allows the apparent to appear as given without presuming a causal agency that would turn that given into a gift.Less
The book explores the codependency of monotheism and idolatry by examining the thought of several prominent twentieth-century Jewish philosophers—Hermann Cohen, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Emmanuel Levinas. While all of these thinkers were keenly aware of the pitfalls of scriptural theism, in differing degrees, they each succumbed to the temptation to personify transcendence, even as they tried either to circumvent or to restrain it by apophatically purging kataphatic descriptions of the deity. Jacques Derrida and Edith Wyschogrod, by contrast, carried the project of denegation one step further, embarking on a path that culminated in the aporetic suspension of belief and the consequent removal of all images from God, a move that seriously compromises the viability of devotional piety. The inquiry into apophasis, transcendence, and immanence challenges recent attempts to harness the apophatic tradition to construct a viable postmodern negative theology. Not only are these philosophies of transcendence guilty of a turn to theology that defies the phenomenological presupposition of an immanent phenomenality, but they fall short on their own terms, inasmuch as they persist in employing metaphorical language that personalizes transcendence and thereby runs the risk of undermining the irreducible alterity and invisibility attributed to the transcendent other. Apophatic theologies, accordingly, must be supplanted by a more far-reaching apophasis, such that the much-celebrated metaphor of the gift would give way to the more neutral notion of an unconditional givenness that allows the apparent to appear as given without presuming a causal agency that would turn that given into a gift.
Philip V. Bohlman
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520234949
- eISBN:
- 9780520966444
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520234949.003.0018
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
The translations in Song Loves the Masses close with Herder’s final large-scale essay on music, published in 1800 as a chapter in Kalligone, the culmination of his aesthetic work. With this late ...
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The translations in Song Loves the Masses close with Herder’s final large-scale essay on music, published in 1800 as a chapter in Kalligone, the culmination of his aesthetic work. With this late essay Herder, a polemic against his former teacher, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), reveals the extent to which he has moved into a fully aesthetic domain in his concern for the universal history of humanity. Embodying the subjectivity of song and singing, music acquires the force of transcendence, and it therefore aspires to the Enlightenment ideals of the sublime. In Herder’s “On Music,” human beings are endowed with a degree of understanding that allows them to perceive the traits that make music unlike any other form of expression.Less
The translations in Song Loves the Masses close with Herder’s final large-scale essay on music, published in 1800 as a chapter in Kalligone, the culmination of his aesthetic work. With this late essay Herder, a polemic against his former teacher, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), reveals the extent to which he has moved into a fully aesthetic domain in his concern for the universal history of humanity. Embodying the subjectivity of song and singing, music acquires the force of transcendence, and it therefore aspires to the Enlightenment ideals of the sublime. In Herder’s “On Music,” human beings are endowed with a degree of understanding that allows them to perceive the traits that make music unlike any other form of expression.
Karina Biondi
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469623405
- eISBN:
- 9781469630328
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469623405.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
The First Command of Capital (Primeiro Comando do Capital - PCC) is a São Paulo prison gang, founded in the 1990s, that has expanded into the most powerful criminal network in Brazil. Karina Biondi’s ...
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The First Command of Capital (Primeiro Comando do Capital - PCC) is a São Paulo prison gang, founded in the 1990s, that has expanded into the most powerful criminal network in Brazil. Karina Biondi’s rich ethnography of the PCC is uniquely informed by her insider-outsider status. Prior to his acquittal, Biondi’s husband was incarcerated in a PCC-dominated prison for several years. During the period of Biondi’s intense and intimate visits with her husband and her extensive fieldwork in prisons and on the streets of São Paulo, the PCC effectively controlled more than 90 percent of São Paulo’s 147 prison facilities.
Available for the first time in English, Biondi's riveting portrait of the PCC illuminates how the organization operates inside and outside of prison, creatively elaborating on a decentered, non-hierarchical, and far-reaching command system. This system challenges both the police forces against which the PCC has declared war and the methods and analytic concepts traditionally employed by social scientists concerned with organized crime, incarceration, and policing. Biondi posits that the PCC embodies a “politics of transcendence,” a group identity that is braided together with, but also autonomous from, its decentralized parts. Biondi also situates the PCC in relation to redemocratization and rampant socioeconomic inequality in Brazil, as well as to counter-state movements, crime, and punishment in the Americas.Less
The First Command of Capital (Primeiro Comando do Capital - PCC) is a São Paulo prison gang, founded in the 1990s, that has expanded into the most powerful criminal network in Brazil. Karina Biondi’s rich ethnography of the PCC is uniquely informed by her insider-outsider status. Prior to his acquittal, Biondi’s husband was incarcerated in a PCC-dominated prison for several years. During the period of Biondi’s intense and intimate visits with her husband and her extensive fieldwork in prisons and on the streets of São Paulo, the PCC effectively controlled more than 90 percent of São Paulo’s 147 prison facilities.
Available for the first time in English, Biondi's riveting portrait of the PCC illuminates how the organization operates inside and outside of prison, creatively elaborating on a decentered, non-hierarchical, and far-reaching command system. This system challenges both the police forces against which the PCC has declared war and the methods and analytic concepts traditionally employed by social scientists concerned with organized crime, incarceration, and policing. Biondi posits that the PCC embodies a “politics of transcendence,” a group identity that is braided together with, but also autonomous from, its decentralized parts. Biondi also situates the PCC in relation to redemocratization and rampant socioeconomic inequality in Brazil, as well as to counter-state movements, crime, and punishment in the Americas.
Daniel K L Chua
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199769322
- eISBN:
- 9780190657253
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199769322.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Philosophy of Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
Beethoven’s music is often associated with freedom. Chua explores the nature of this relationship through an investigation of the philosophical context of Beethoven’s reception and hermeneutic ...
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Beethoven’s music is often associated with freedom. Chua explores the nature of this relationship through an investigation of the philosophical context of Beethoven’s reception and hermeneutic readings of key works. Freedom is arguably the core value of modernity since late eighteenth-century; Beethoven’s music engages with its aspirations and dilemmas, providing a sonic ‘lens’ that enables us to focus on the aesthetic, philosophical, and theological ramifications of its claims of progress and autonomy and the formation of the self and its values. Taking his bearings from Adorno’s fragmentary reflections on Beethoven, Chua charts a journey from the heroic freedom associated with the Eroica Symphony to a freedom of vulnerability that opens itself to ‘otherness’. Chua’s analysis of the music demonstrates how various forms of freedom are embodied in the way time and space are manipulated in Beethoven’s works, providing an experience of a concept that Kant had famously declared inaccessible to sense. Beethoven’s music, then, does not simply mirror freedom; it is a philosophical and poetic engagement with the idea that is as relevant today as it was in the aftermath of the French Revolution.Less
Beethoven’s music is often associated with freedom. Chua explores the nature of this relationship through an investigation of the philosophical context of Beethoven’s reception and hermeneutic readings of key works. Freedom is arguably the core value of modernity since late eighteenth-century; Beethoven’s music engages with its aspirations and dilemmas, providing a sonic ‘lens’ that enables us to focus on the aesthetic, philosophical, and theological ramifications of its claims of progress and autonomy and the formation of the self and its values. Taking his bearings from Adorno’s fragmentary reflections on Beethoven, Chua charts a journey from the heroic freedom associated with the Eroica Symphony to a freedom of vulnerability that opens itself to ‘otherness’. Chua’s analysis of the music demonstrates how various forms of freedom are embodied in the way time and space are manipulated in Beethoven’s works, providing an experience of a concept that Kant had famously declared inaccessible to sense. Beethoven’s music, then, does not simply mirror freedom; it is a philosophical and poetic engagement with the idea that is as relevant today as it was in the aftermath of the French Revolution.
Sudipta Kaviraj
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231170802
- eISBN:
- 9780231541015
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231170802.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This essay relates Taylor’s thesis to arguments in Indian history over the relationship of religious diversity to conflict and strategies of accommodation in premodern and modern times.
This essay relates Taylor’s thesis to arguments in Indian history over the relationship of religious diversity to conflict and strategies of accommodation in premodern and modern times.
Bruce V. Foltz
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823254644
- eISBN:
- 9780823261024
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823254644.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Modern materialism has failed nature, let it down or betrayed it, through rejecting a “noetic” or contemplative vision of it. Yet since Parmenides and Plato, nous (the highest faculty of knowing ...
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Modern materialism has failed nature, let it down or betrayed it, through rejecting a “noetic” or contemplative vision of it. Yet since Parmenides and Plato, nous (the highest faculty of knowing apprehension, which German Idealism called “intellectual intuition”) was directed away from the earth toward what transcended (meta) nature (physis). Proceeding through the Latin Middle Ages into Modern Metaphysics, it is argued that since materialism has ignored the noetic, and the noetic has neglected nature, the West (including Heidegger) has never philosophically articulated a noetics of nature. Nevertheless, Byzantine and Russian thought, art, and spirituality have emphasized the eruption of the transcendent within the immanent, the invisible into the invisible, God into creation, while Western poets and nature writers have also addressed this theme. This “marriage of heaven and earth,” apprehended noetically, served as the initial impetus for environmental thought, and remains the best prospect for its further development.Less
Modern materialism has failed nature, let it down or betrayed it, through rejecting a “noetic” or contemplative vision of it. Yet since Parmenides and Plato, nous (the highest faculty of knowing apprehension, which German Idealism called “intellectual intuition”) was directed away from the earth toward what transcended (meta) nature (physis). Proceeding through the Latin Middle Ages into Modern Metaphysics, it is argued that since materialism has ignored the noetic, and the noetic has neglected nature, the West (including Heidegger) has never philosophically articulated a noetics of nature. Nevertheless, Byzantine and Russian thought, art, and spirituality have emphasized the eruption of the transcendent within the immanent, the invisible into the invisible, God into creation, while Western poets and nature writers have also addressed this theme. This “marriage of heaven and earth,” apprehended noetically, served as the initial impetus for environmental thought, and remains the best prospect for its further development.
Dale B. Martin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300222838
- eISBN:
- 9780300227918
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300222838.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
Even if ancient biblical writers did not have the philosophical training to have anticipated later Christian doctrines such as the transcendence or immanence of God, divine simplicity, even the ...
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Even if ancient biblical writers did not have the philosophical training to have anticipated later Christian doctrines such as the transcendence or immanence of God, divine simplicity, even the doctrine of the trinity, postmodern Christians should not be constrained by those historical limits from reading the New Testament to arrive at robust, though sometimes complex, theologies of the nature of God and of what it means to say, in the 21st century, “I believe in God.”Less
Even if ancient biblical writers did not have the philosophical training to have anticipated later Christian doctrines such as the transcendence or immanence of God, divine simplicity, even the doctrine of the trinity, postmodern Christians should not be constrained by those historical limits from reading the New Testament to arrive at robust, though sometimes complex, theologies of the nature of God and of what it means to say, in the 21st century, “I believe in God.”
Fred Dallmayr
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813141916
- eISBN:
- 9780813142364
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813141916.003.0010
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Chapter nine proposes a reformulation of the meaning of “secularism” and its relation to religious faith. Taking its departure from Jü;rgen Habermas’s term “post-secularity,” the chapter explores two ...
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Chapter nine proposes a reformulation of the meaning of “secularism” and its relation to religious faith. Taking its departure from Jü;rgen Habermas’s term “post-secularity,” the chapter explores two main directions in which the expression has been interpreted: one direction where religious faith in secularized and another direction where faith triumphs over secularism. Dallmayr examines a new version of the immanence-transcendence conundrum, which he claims accentuates the significance of language to these thoughts. The chapter insists on the primacy of ordinary language and on the need of all texts or discourses to undergo interpretation and reflective interrogation. Dallmayr references Hans-Georg Gadamer’s axiom of the “universality of hermeneutics” in distinguishing religion and secularism.Less
Chapter nine proposes a reformulation of the meaning of “secularism” and its relation to religious faith. Taking its departure from Jü;rgen Habermas’s term “post-secularity,” the chapter explores two main directions in which the expression has been interpreted: one direction where religious faith in secularized and another direction where faith triumphs over secularism. Dallmayr examines a new version of the immanence-transcendence conundrum, which he claims accentuates the significance of language to these thoughts. The chapter insists on the primacy of ordinary language and on the need of all texts or discourses to undergo interpretation and reflective interrogation. Dallmayr references Hans-Georg Gadamer’s axiom of the “universality of hermeneutics” in distinguishing religion and secularism.
Maureen Sabine
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823251650
- eISBN:
- 9780823253043
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823251650.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
Chapter 4 begins by proposing that the longstanding disagreement between the film critics who hated The Sound of Music and the large general audience who loved it stems from the film's volatile blend ...
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Chapter 4 begins by proposing that the longstanding disagreement between the film critics who hated The Sound of Music and the large general audience who loved it stems from the film's volatile blend of the beautiful, the sublime, the kitsch, the playful, and the sacred. While the nuns in The Sound of Music have been lambasted as silly, saccharine stereotypes, the chapter provides an alternative reading by focusing on the relationship between Julie Andrews's novice Maria and Peggy Wood's Mother Abbess, their solidarity in time of trial, and their spirit of transcendence through fortitude, exertion, and self-giving in the great women's song “Climb Every Mountain.” The chapter concludes with Change of Habit and suggests how the upbeat message that Maria expressed in the songs of The Sound of Music is no longer articulated by the film nun protagonists, but rather by Elvis Presley's male lead who conducts a chaste but melodious romance with Mary Tyler Moore's activist Sister Michelle.Less
Chapter 4 begins by proposing that the longstanding disagreement between the film critics who hated The Sound of Music and the large general audience who loved it stems from the film's volatile blend of the beautiful, the sublime, the kitsch, the playful, and the sacred. While the nuns in The Sound of Music have been lambasted as silly, saccharine stereotypes, the chapter provides an alternative reading by focusing on the relationship between Julie Andrews's novice Maria and Peggy Wood's Mother Abbess, their solidarity in time of trial, and their spirit of transcendence through fortitude, exertion, and self-giving in the great women's song “Climb Every Mountain.” The chapter concludes with Change of Habit and suggests how the upbeat message that Maria expressed in the songs of The Sound of Music is no longer articulated by the film nun protagonists, but rather by Elvis Presley's male lead who conducts a chaste but melodious romance with Mary Tyler Moore's activist Sister Michelle.
Amy Allen
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780231171953
- eISBN:
- 9780231542999
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231171953.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This paper embarks from the argument that both Derrida and Habermas made similar kinds of “performative contradiction” objections to Foucault's argument in History of Madness. This can be connected ...
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This paper embarks from the argument that both Derrida and Habermas made similar kinds of “performative contradiction” objections to Foucault's argument in History of Madness. This can be connected with a larger claim: both Derrida and Habermas can be considered thinkers of transcendence. Within the notion of transcendence offered by Habermas are elements which can be compared with Derrida's notions of the trace, l’avenir and messianicity without messianism. By contrast with both, Foucault is a thinker of immanence—of the historical a priori or what Deleuze would call the immanent transcendental. This paper argues that both Derrida and Habermas misunderstand the nature of Foucault's project in History of Madness. Both construe it as what Habermas would call a rejection of Enlightenment reason or what Derrida calls a revolution against reason—and perhaps this could be connected to their own philosophical assumptions about transcendence. Neither succeeds in fully factoring the degree to which Foucault’s project is contingent and historical. Foucault is best understood as undertaking a history of a form of rationality, and this is to be differentiated from a critique of Reason as such.Less
This paper embarks from the argument that both Derrida and Habermas made similar kinds of “performative contradiction” objections to Foucault's argument in History of Madness. This can be connected with a larger claim: both Derrida and Habermas can be considered thinkers of transcendence. Within the notion of transcendence offered by Habermas are elements which can be compared with Derrida's notions of the trace, l’avenir and messianicity without messianism. By contrast with both, Foucault is a thinker of immanence—of the historical a priori or what Deleuze would call the immanent transcendental. This paper argues that both Derrida and Habermas misunderstand the nature of Foucault's project in History of Madness. Both construe it as what Habermas would call a rejection of Enlightenment reason or what Derrida calls a revolution against reason—and perhaps this could be connected to their own philosophical assumptions about transcendence. Neither succeeds in fully factoring the degree to which Foucault’s project is contingent and historical. Foucault is best understood as undertaking a history of a form of rationality, and this is to be differentiated from a critique of Reason as such.
Thaddeus Metz
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199599318
- eISBN:
- 9780191747632
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599318.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology, Moral Philosophy
It is only in the last 50 years that life’s meaning has become a distinct field in Western philosophy, and merely in the last 25 or so that debate with real substance and complexity has appeared. ...
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It is only in the last 50 years that life’s meaning has become a distinct field in Western philosophy, and merely in the last 25 or so that debate with real substance and complexity has appeared. Using systematic, critical discussion of recent Anglo-American philosophical literature as a springboard, Thaddeus Metz’s Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study defends several original claims about what would make a person’s life meaningful. Metz’s overarching goal in the book, an instance of ‘analytic existentialism’, is to rigorously answer the question, ‘What (if anything) do all the conditions that make a life meaningful have in common?’. An answer to such a question is a philosophical theory of meaning in life, and Metz aims not only to demonstrate that contemporary theories of life’s meaning are implausible, but also to develop a new one that avoids their problems. Primarily evaluating theories in light of the extent to which they capture the meaningfulness of the classic triad of the good, the true and the beautiful, Metz critically explores influential principles about fulfilling God’s purpose, obtaining reward in an afterlife for having been virtuous, being attracted to what merits attraction, leaving the world a better place, connecting to organic unity, and transcending oneself by connecting to what is extensive. He argues that no extant principle satisfactorily accounts for the three-fold significance of morality, enquiry, and creativity, and that most promising is a fresh theory according to which meaning in life is a matter of intelligence contoured toward fundamental conditions of human existence.Less
It is only in the last 50 years that life’s meaning has become a distinct field in Western philosophy, and merely in the last 25 or so that debate with real substance and complexity has appeared. Using systematic, critical discussion of recent Anglo-American philosophical literature as a springboard, Thaddeus Metz’s Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study defends several original claims about what would make a person’s life meaningful. Metz’s overarching goal in the book, an instance of ‘analytic existentialism’, is to rigorously answer the question, ‘What (if anything) do all the conditions that make a life meaningful have in common?’. An answer to such a question is a philosophical theory of meaning in life, and Metz aims not only to demonstrate that contemporary theories of life’s meaning are implausible, but also to develop a new one that avoids their problems. Primarily evaluating theories in light of the extent to which they capture the meaningfulness of the classic triad of the good, the true and the beautiful, Metz critically explores influential principles about fulfilling God’s purpose, obtaining reward in an afterlife for having been virtuous, being attracted to what merits attraction, leaving the world a better place, connecting to organic unity, and transcending oneself by connecting to what is extensive. He argues that no extant principle satisfactorily accounts for the three-fold significance of morality, enquiry, and creativity, and that most promising is a fresh theory according to which meaning in life is a matter of intelligence contoured toward fundamental conditions of human existence.
Daniel Dahlstrom
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029681
- eISBN:
- 9780262330008
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029681.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This essay reconstructs the main theme of Being and Time’s Division III as the end of fundamental ontology. The ‘end’ here signifies both what Heidegger initially intended as its culmination and what ...
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This essay reconstructs the main theme of Being and Time’s Division III as the end of fundamental ontology. The ‘end’ here signifies both what Heidegger initially intended as its culmination and what he quickly came to see as the reason for terminating it. The reason, it is argued, is the failure of the pretension of tying the senses of being in general to a notion of temporality derived from the timely character of being-in-the-world. The essay concludes with suggestions of how the contents of the fated Division III anticipate dimensions of his later thinking.Less
This essay reconstructs the main theme of Being and Time’s Division III as the end of fundamental ontology. The ‘end’ here signifies both what Heidegger initially intended as its culmination and what he quickly came to see as the reason for terminating it. The reason, it is argued, is the failure of the pretension of tying the senses of being in general to a notion of temporality derived from the timely character of being-in-the-world. The essay concludes with suggestions of how the contents of the fated Division III anticipate dimensions of his later thinking.
Tim Lomas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262037488
- eISBN:
- 9780262344630
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262037488.003.0004
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
This chapter outlines the third of the three meta-categories that together constitute the theory of wellbeing presented in the book. Its focus is personal development, which constitutes the main way ...
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This chapter outlines the third of the three meta-categories that together constitute the theory of wellbeing presented in the book. Its focus is personal development, which constitutes the main way in which wellbeing is cultivated. This meta-category comprises two subsidiary categories: character (e.g., flourishing and fulfilling one’s potential); and spirituality (e.g., reaching higher states and stages of development through spiritual practice). These categories in turn are woven together from multiple themes, identified through the analysis of untranslatable words. Character was found to involve five interrelated themes: virtue; considerateness; wisdom; self-determination; and skill. The inclusion of spirituality reflects the notion, found in many cultures, that to truly reach the peaks of development, it necessary to experience or cultivate some mode of spirituality. The analysis suggested this involves three key elements: the sacred (as variously conceived); contemplative practices (as a means of engaging with it); and self-transcendence (as a result of such practices). Together, these categories and themes show the ways in which wellbeing can be cultivated through processes of personal development.Less
This chapter outlines the third of the three meta-categories that together constitute the theory of wellbeing presented in the book. Its focus is personal development, which constitutes the main way in which wellbeing is cultivated. This meta-category comprises two subsidiary categories: character (e.g., flourishing and fulfilling one’s potential); and spirituality (e.g., reaching higher states and stages of development through spiritual practice). These categories in turn are woven together from multiple themes, identified through the analysis of untranslatable words. Character was found to involve five interrelated themes: virtue; considerateness; wisdom; self-determination; and skill. The inclusion of spirituality reflects the notion, found in many cultures, that to truly reach the peaks of development, it necessary to experience or cultivate some mode of spirituality. The analysis suggested this involves three key elements: the sacred (as variously conceived); contemplative practices (as a means of engaging with it); and self-transcendence (as a result of such practices). Together, these categories and themes show the ways in which wellbeing can be cultivated through processes of personal development.
Matthew Mutter
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300221732
- eISBN:
- 9780300227963
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300221732.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
That Stevens’s poetry repeatedly returns to the death of God as a condition of existential vertigo is a scholarly commonplace, but this chapter argues that for Stevens, language itself harbors a ...
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That Stevens’s poetry repeatedly returns to the death of God as a condition of existential vertigo is a scholarly commonplace, but this chapter argues that for Stevens, language itself harbors a dangerous bias toward transcendence. Stevens is mistrustful of the way metaphor slides into metaphysics, the way an analogical worldview becomes a theological one, and the ways in which signs and symbols tend to refer solid, immanent things to supersensible narratives or “meanings.” In the face of this danger, he develops a poetics of tautology meant to divest language of such bias. Yet later in his career, this chapter contends, he returns to analogy as a mode of transcendence-in-immanence, and establishes a concept of “description without place” in which imagined goods, which have no immanent existence, correspond to details of a particular scene. Stevens is, in other words, working out a version of Nietzsche’s famous claim that we are not rid of God until we are rid of grammar while simultaneously harnessing the religious possibilities of language.Less
That Stevens’s poetry repeatedly returns to the death of God as a condition of existential vertigo is a scholarly commonplace, but this chapter argues that for Stevens, language itself harbors a dangerous bias toward transcendence. Stevens is mistrustful of the way metaphor slides into metaphysics, the way an analogical worldview becomes a theological one, and the ways in which signs and symbols tend to refer solid, immanent things to supersensible narratives or “meanings.” In the face of this danger, he develops a poetics of tautology meant to divest language of such bias. Yet later in his career, this chapter contends, he returns to analogy as a mode of transcendence-in-immanence, and establishes a concept of “description without place” in which imagined goods, which have no immanent existence, correspond to details of a particular scene. Stevens is, in other words, working out a version of Nietzsche’s famous claim that we are not rid of God until we are rid of grammar while simultaneously harnessing the religious possibilities of language.
Matthew Mutter
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300221732
- eISBN:
- 9780300227963
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300221732.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
There has been a small movement among recent critics and philosophers to rehabilitate the reputation of beauty, which suffered under the modernist fascination with ugliness, Romantic and postmodern ...
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There has been a small movement among recent critics and philosophers to rehabilitate the reputation of beauty, which suffered under the modernist fascination with ugliness, Romantic and postmodern prejudice in favor of the sublime, and political criticism of beauty as elitist, inefficacious, and complicit with injustice. This chapter seeks to reframe these debates by examining the link between beauty and religious ontologies. Weber, following Nietzsche, insisted that secular modernity had broken sympathetic relations between beauty and goodness, but in Woolf’s novels the beautiful cannot shed its theological aura: its promise of reconciliation, peace, and divine benevolence. Woolf’s famous conception of “the world as a work of art”—which has, nevertheless, no “creator”—remains entangled in the aesthetic theodicies she repudiates. Her novels struggle to conceptualize secular, mundane models of beauty while simultaneously clinging to intimations of a metaphysical and moral order implicit in aesthetic experience. Beauty is, in her writing, the last and most intractable stronghold of mystical feeling.Less
There has been a small movement among recent critics and philosophers to rehabilitate the reputation of beauty, which suffered under the modernist fascination with ugliness, Romantic and postmodern prejudice in favor of the sublime, and political criticism of beauty as elitist, inefficacious, and complicit with injustice. This chapter seeks to reframe these debates by examining the link between beauty and religious ontologies. Weber, following Nietzsche, insisted that secular modernity had broken sympathetic relations between beauty and goodness, but in Woolf’s novels the beautiful cannot shed its theological aura: its promise of reconciliation, peace, and divine benevolence. Woolf’s famous conception of “the world as a work of art”—which has, nevertheless, no “creator”—remains entangled in the aesthetic theodicies she repudiates. Her novels struggle to conceptualize secular, mundane models of beauty while simultaneously clinging to intimations of a metaphysical and moral order implicit in aesthetic experience. Beauty is, in her writing, the last and most intractable stronghold of mystical feeling.
Matthew Mutter
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300221732
- eISBN:
- 9780300227963
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300221732.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter contends that modernists find themselves entangled in a distinctly secular version of the “problem of evil.” As secularists they want to affirm the abundance of the immanent, material ...
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This chapter contends that modernists find themselves entangled in a distinctly secular version of the “problem of evil.” As secularists they want to affirm the abundance of the immanent, material world, but this very world seems to resist the desires and needs specific to human personhood. This leads, in different writers, to a critique of “secular humanism” or to a valorization of the world as a scene of conflict. The chapter suggests, however, that Auden’s Christian understanding of secularity is able to elude this problem of evil by relinquishing the expectation that the material world satisfy the desires proper to embodied persons.Less
This chapter contends that modernists find themselves entangled in a distinctly secular version of the “problem of evil.” As secularists they want to affirm the abundance of the immanent, material world, but this very world seems to resist the desires and needs specific to human personhood. This leads, in different writers, to a critique of “secular humanism” or to a valorization of the world as a scene of conflict. The chapter suggests, however, that Auden’s Christian understanding of secularity is able to elude this problem of evil by relinquishing the expectation that the material world satisfy the desires proper to embodied persons.
Elliot R. Wolfson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823255702
- eISBN:
- 9780823260911
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823255702.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
The Introduction explores the role of imagination especially since the eighteenth century and the impact of Kant's understanding of this faculty as the mental power of the figurative synthesis ...
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The Introduction explores the role of imagination especially since the eighteenth century and the impact of Kant's understanding of this faculty as the mental power of the figurative synthesis between the sensible and the intelligible that is necessary to account for the very possibility of experience. The Romantic celebration of the creative force of human imagination is a direct outcome of the Kantian emphasis on the reproductive capacity of the imagination and the subservient position assigned to reason. Building on this philosophical foundation, corroborated by the role of the imagination culled from kabbalistic sources, the imagination is here portrayed as the vehicle by which we exceed our social and biological environments that rupture the ordinary and open the horizons of scientific, technological, and aesthetic ingenuity to the possibility of the impossible, the nonphenomenalizable that is the epistemic condition of all phenomenality, the unseeing that enframes every act of seeing, the negative ideal of the unreal that positivizes the recurrent patterns and perspectival mutations that constitute the contours of the world we deem to be real. The role of imagination and the theocentric proclivity of Jewish philosophical speculation is investigated through this prism of the inapparent.Less
The Introduction explores the role of imagination especially since the eighteenth century and the impact of Kant's understanding of this faculty as the mental power of the figurative synthesis between the sensible and the intelligible that is necessary to account for the very possibility of experience. The Romantic celebration of the creative force of human imagination is a direct outcome of the Kantian emphasis on the reproductive capacity of the imagination and the subservient position assigned to reason. Building on this philosophical foundation, corroborated by the role of the imagination culled from kabbalistic sources, the imagination is here portrayed as the vehicle by which we exceed our social and biological environments that rupture the ordinary and open the horizons of scientific, technological, and aesthetic ingenuity to the possibility of the impossible, the nonphenomenalizable that is the epistemic condition of all phenomenality, the unseeing that enframes every act of seeing, the negative ideal of the unreal that positivizes the recurrent patterns and perspectival mutations that constitute the contours of the world we deem to be real. The role of imagination and the theocentric proclivity of Jewish philosophical speculation is investigated through this prism of the inapparent.
Elliot R. Wolfson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823255702
- eISBN:
- 9780823260911
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823255702.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter examines the thesis that the salient feature of modern Jewish thought is the dialogical imagination, an act of theopoiesis centered on the figural iconization of the invisible deity in ...
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This chapter examines the thesis that the salient feature of modern Jewish thought is the dialogical imagination, an act of theopoiesis centered on the figural iconization of the invisible deity in anthropomorphic and anthropopathic terms. The emphasis on the dialogical, which proceeds from Hermann Cohen's logical principle of correlation, bears the risk that what should not be subject to imaginary representation invariably will be so represented, even in the guise of the nonrepresentable. Transcendence, which is a property of the uniqueness (Einzigkeit) as opposed to the unity (Einheit) of God, signifies the utter dissimilarity and incommensurability of the divine; inescapably, however, the transcendent becomes immanent to thinking insofar as there is no way to think the unthinkable that does not encroach on its unthinkability. The infinitude of transcendence is unknowable, not because there is some hidden essence that cannot be known, but because transcendence is expressive of the continuous manifestations of finitude by which the unlimited is delimited. The chasm between infinite and finite is narrowed to the extent that the transcendent is immanent, which is necessitated by the fact that God serves as an ethical ideal that imposes a mutual obligation on divine and human through the mediation of the world. Moreover, to generate the personification of transcendence, which is required by Cohen's own notion of divine forgiveness and goodness, the archetype, the originary-image whence all images originate, would have to be conceived itself imagistically. Like Cohen, Rosenzweig and Buber promote a dialogical thinking that is rooted in the principle of correlation that preserves the separate identities of God, human, and world. But they, too, acquiesce inevitably to the anthropocentric personification of transcendence.Less
This chapter examines the thesis that the salient feature of modern Jewish thought is the dialogical imagination, an act of theopoiesis centered on the figural iconization of the invisible deity in anthropomorphic and anthropopathic terms. The emphasis on the dialogical, which proceeds from Hermann Cohen's logical principle of correlation, bears the risk that what should not be subject to imaginary representation invariably will be so represented, even in the guise of the nonrepresentable. Transcendence, which is a property of the uniqueness (Einzigkeit) as opposed to the unity (Einheit) of God, signifies the utter dissimilarity and incommensurability of the divine; inescapably, however, the transcendent becomes immanent to thinking insofar as there is no way to think the unthinkable that does not encroach on its unthinkability. The infinitude of transcendence is unknowable, not because there is some hidden essence that cannot be known, but because transcendence is expressive of the continuous manifestations of finitude by which the unlimited is delimited. The chasm between infinite and finite is narrowed to the extent that the transcendent is immanent, which is necessitated by the fact that God serves as an ethical ideal that imposes a mutual obligation on divine and human through the mediation of the world. Moreover, to generate the personification of transcendence, which is required by Cohen's own notion of divine forgiveness and goodness, the archetype, the originary-image whence all images originate, would have to be conceived itself imagistically. Like Cohen, Rosenzweig and Buber promote a dialogical thinking that is rooted in the principle of correlation that preserves the separate identities of God, human, and world. But they, too, acquiesce inevitably to the anthropocentric personification of transcendence.
