Search results for "Soul"

Phenomenology of the Poetical

2004

These lines from “The Doctrine of the Point of View” by Jose Ortega y Gasset, the fragment devoted to the ever-existing antinomy between life and culture and their interpretations from the rationalistic and relativistic view points, are the perfect opening for the present paper as they capture the sense and the mood of the philosophical endeavor taken upon by Anna-Teresa Tymienicka in Poetica nova and Book 3 of Logos and Life: The Passions of the Soul and the Elements into Onto-Poiesis of Culture. In short it could be summarized as the inquiry into phenomenology of the poetical with a special emphasis on literature as the prima facie human creative activity to be approached by the means of …

La idea de epigénesis en la obra de W. Harvey: Una lectura organicista

2021

espanolEste trabajo plantea desde una perspectiva historico-filosofica una reflexion sobre la idea de epigenesis en la obra de W. Harvey Exercitationes de generatione animalium (1651). El objetivo es contribuir a esclarecer la singular concepcion que el medico ingles tiene de esta idea, comunmente vinculada a la tradicion mecanicista. Harvey desarrolla su vision de la embriogenesis como un proceso que no puede ser comprendido desde las categorias del arte humano, como se desprende de las criticas a su maestro Fabricius. Tampoco es exacto decir que su posicion sea animista. Una inmersion en esta ultima cuestion nos mostrara su concepcion organica del alma, en continuacion con la tradicion ar…

Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski, an English Writer with a Polish Soul: Joseph Conrad’s Polish Heritage

2018

The article presents a portrait of Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski, an English writer with a Polish soul. Conrad—the last Polish Romantic—did not only manage to introduce Polish dreams and longings into English (and Western) literature, but also transformed the Polish experience into a universal one. Writing about exotic, faraway places, he disseminated myths concerning Polish national identity, chivalric tradition and the Polish Eastern Borderland atmosphere and ethos. Conrad, a very demanding writer, never presents ready-made answers, nor does he offer simple solutions to the problems of his protagonists. Moreover, everybody can understand Conrad in their own personal way, for he is perceived …

Self, Agent, Soul: Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī’s Critical Reception of Avicennian Psychology

2016

This paper investigates Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī’s critical reception and development of an Avicennian argument that hinges on the intuitive evidence provided by our awareness of ourselves. According to the argument, each of us is indubitably aware of enduring as a single subject and agent behind the constantly varying stream of experience and action. On the basis of this intuitive certainty Avicenna concludes that the human soul is similarly one. By introducing problematic acts related to the Peripatetic concept of soul, such as digestion and growth, Abū al-Barakāt suggests that if we want to save the argumentative power of the relevant phenomena, we must revise the Avicennian concept of…

Choice and Practical Reasoning in Ancient Philosophy

2013

Ancient thinkers acknowledged that we are the sort of creatures that want things to be a certain way and can make efforts for them to become that way. In that sense, the ancients had a notion of volition. But it is not clear how they conceived of volition. The problem is partly historical. Some late ancient, notably Christian thinkers came to regard volition in a different way than earlier thinkers had done, seeing reason as a less powerful ability than Socrates did, and instead placing their hopes on the will, which they regarded as a separate and sovereign part of the soul. About these historical developments there is much debate and little agreement. The problem is also partly conceptual…

Negative Platonism and Maximal Existence in the Thought of Jan Patocka

2010

According to Jan Patocka’s “negative Platonism,” ordinary, or “positive” Platonism makes a fundamental mistake in formulating Plato’s true “discovery,” i.e., the Idea, as a non-objective determination of objectivity, in terms of an ideal object that sensible objects are supposed to imitate. Does this mean that Plato himself misunderstood the epimeleia tēs psychēs and human self-knowledge (exetasis)? Analogously, Patocka states that “classical phenomenology fell victim to its own discoveries and their imprecise formulation.” Is this due to the transcendental subjectivism of Husserlian thought or, rather, to the fact that Husserl could theorize only the modes of givenness of an object? These …

Soul and Body According to “De Fide Orthodoxa” of St. John Damascene

2017

The Christian and particularly the Orthodox understanding of belief sometimes might be seen as a matter of the soul and not a matter of the body. Based on such an understanding the binomial “creditions – neuronal processes” would not have any significance for an Orthodox anthropology. But such an understanding can be marked as reductionist regarding the broader conceptions that we can find in the positions of the Fathers. In this contribution, some aspects of the comprehensive anthropological understanding of humans and their relation to God will be presented as it is conceived in the famous synthesis of patristic thought, De Fide Orthodoxa, written by St. John Damascene (~ 650–before 755).

Of Oaks, Erratic Boulders, and Milkmaids

2004

In the study and care for rural landscapes and their inhabitants a perpetual dilemma is knowing the different discourses those landscapes embody for a culture group, or “discourse community,” as Siri Aasbo (1999: 148) calls it (after Eco 1977). It is a well-known truism that a gap exists in the understanding and evaluation of landscapes between insiders and outsiders, natives and visitors, actors and observers, inhabitants and experts. Since this is known territory, I shall not revisit it, except to restate the obvious — expert opinion, even when well-intended, rarely agrees with the local inhabitants in what is good for them. As Sverker Sorlin expresses it, landscape is a “contested terrai…

Science and logic

2009

Common Sense and phantasia in Antiquity

2013

Questions concerning the scope, content, and richness of perceptual cognition were widely debated in the ancient philosophical schools. More specific problems related to this theme arose from recognition of the obvious fact that the senses alone are insufficient for explaining the variety of human and animal cognition. Whether or not all such cognition should be ascribed to reason was a matter of debate. Most importantly, opinions diverged with respect to the following questions. Do we have perceptual reflexive cognition, that is, do we perceive that we perceive, or is reflexivity an essentially rational capacity? How can the unity of perceptual cognition be explained in light of the fact t…