Kent L. Brintnall
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823265190
- eISBN:
- 9780823266890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823265190.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This essay places Georges Bataille in conversation with the queer theorists Leo Bersani and Tim Dean. It takes barebacking as a site of exploration to think about the relation between subjectivity, ...
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This essay places Georges Bataille in conversation with the queer theorists Leo Bersani and Tim Dean. It takes barebacking as a site of exploration to think about the relation between subjectivity, eroticism, death, and the sacred. It argues that Bataille’s understanding of the sacred represents a more generative approach to the problem of instrumentalizing violence than do the more cautionary approaches of Bersani and Dean.Less
This essay places Georges Bataille in conversation with the queer theorists Leo Bersani and Tim Dean. It takes barebacking as a site of exploration to think about the relation between subjectivity, eroticism, death, and the sacred. It argues that Bataille’s understanding of the sacred represents a more generative approach to the problem of instrumentalizing violence than do the more cautionary approaches of Bersani and Dean.
Jonathan Haidt, J. Patrick Seder, and Selin Kesebir
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226676005
- eISBN:
- 9780226676029
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226676029.003.0006
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Behavioural Economics
This chapter considers three hypotheses about relatedness and well-being including the hive hypothesis, which says people need to lose themselves occasionally by becoming part of an emergent social ...
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This chapter considers three hypotheses about relatedness and well-being including the hive hypothesis, which says people need to lose themselves occasionally by becoming part of an emergent social organism in order to reach the highest levels of human flourishing. It discusses the recent evolutionary thinking about multilevel selection, which offers a distal reason why the hive hypothesis might be true. The psychological phenomena such as the joy of synchronized movement and the ecstatic joy of self-loss, which might be proximal mechanisms underlying the extraordinary pleasures people get from hive-type activities. It is suggested that if the hive hypothesis turns out to be true, it has implications for public policy. Finally, the chapter suggests that the hive hypothesis points to new ways to increase social capital and encourages a new focus on happy groups as being more than collections of happy individuals.Less
This chapter considers three hypotheses about relatedness and well-being including the hive hypothesis, which says people need to lose themselves occasionally by becoming part of an emergent social organism in order to reach the highest levels of human flourishing. It discusses the recent evolutionary thinking about multilevel selection, which offers a distal reason why the hive hypothesis might be true. The psychological phenomena such as the joy of synchronized movement and the ecstatic joy of self-loss, which might be proximal mechanisms underlying the extraordinary pleasures people get from hive-type activities. It is suggested that if the hive hypothesis turns out to be true, it has implications for public policy. Finally, the chapter suggests that the hive hypothesis points to new ways to increase social capital and encourages a new focus on happy groups as being more than collections of happy individuals.
Christina Van Dyke
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- February 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190226411
- eISBN:
- 9780190226442
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190226411.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy
Self-knowledge is a persistent—and paradoxical—theme in medieval mysticism; union with God is often taken to involve a loss of self as distinct from the divine. Yet an examination of Christian ...
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Self-knowledge is a persistent—and paradoxical—theme in medieval mysticism; union with God is often taken to involve a loss of self as distinct from the divine. Yet an examination of Christian contemplatives in the Latin West between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries who work not just within the apophatic tradition (which emphasizes the need to move past self-knowledge to self-abnegation) but also within the affective tradition (which portrays union with the divine as involving self-fulfillment) demonstrates that self-knowledge in medieval mysticism was not seen merely as something to be overcome or transcended. Instead, self-knowledge is viewed (particularly in the works of medieval women contemplatives) as an important means of overcoming alienation from embodied human existence.Less
Self-knowledge is a persistent—and paradoxical—theme in medieval mysticism; union with God is often taken to involve a loss of self as distinct from the divine. Yet an examination of Christian contemplatives in the Latin West between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries who work not just within the apophatic tradition (which emphasizes the need to move past self-knowledge to self-abnegation) but also within the affective tradition (which portrays union with the divine as involving self-fulfillment) demonstrates that self-knowledge in medieval mysticism was not seen merely as something to be overcome or transcended. Instead, self-knowledge is viewed (particularly in the works of medieval women contemplatives) as an important means of overcoming alienation from embodied human existence.
