Categories Of Existence Research Articles

Algunas disquisiciones filosóficas en torno al problema de la existencia del infinito en matemáticas

En este artículo se presentan algunos aspectos sobre el problema de existencia en matemáticas, tomando como referencia el infinito actual. En primer lugar se describe las concepciones de los antiguos sobre el infinito y los argumentos aristotélicos para negar la existencia del infinito actual. En seguida se describe la incorporación del infinito actual a las matemáticas establecido por Georg Cantor entre 1880 y 1896. A continuación se aborda el problema de la existencia en matemáticas planteado por los matemáticos franceses Borel, Baire y Lebesgue. A partir del problema de la existencia efectiva en cada uno de los niveles de Baire, se describen las cuatro categorías existenciales, planteadas por el matemático ruso Nicolás Lusin; luego se analiza la posición de Lusin en términos de la teoría de la “tematización”, introducida por Jean Cavaillès y Jean-Louis Gardies. Al final se argumenta la necesidad de establecer una filosofía de las matemáticas desde el interior mismo de las matemáticas.

СУБ'ЄКТИВНІ СМИСЛИ ПЕРЕЖИВАННЯ САМОТНОСТІ ЛЮДЕЙ, ЩО ЖИВУТЬ ІЗ ВІЛ

The paper analyzes the experience of people’s, infected by HIV, loneliness as an existential category and as a part of all their spectrum of feelings and experiences. The central existential problem for people with HIV-positive status is social and interpersonal isolation, which brings to loneliness. There are no publications that highlight the loneliness of people, who lives with HIV, through the prism of an existential approach. The article also considers the problem of stigmatization, self-stigmatization and isolation of HIV-infected individuals. The situation is aggravated by the fact that terminally ill people not only experience negative emotions, but also realize their own guilt for infecting their illness, feel shame because of the negative social status of the "sinful" disease. People with HIV are a special subculture in our society; they often consider themselves as outcasts. Thanks to this research, the subjective meanings that have people with HIV put into the concept of loneliness are revealed. The author did her own semantic differential, which was helped in finding differences in the experience and understanding of loneliness by hypochondriacal people who are afraid of infecting HIV, as well as persons with a positive HIV status. The results of two groups were statistically handled by using factor analysis. As a result the components of the loneliness category for the control (hypochondriac) and experimental (people infected by HIV) groups were picked out. Eventually, hypochondriacal people actualize loneliness through the following factors: "anxiety-depression", "hopelessness" and "vulnerability". In turn, people with HIV-positive status, see loneliness through: "despair", "disgust" (directed both at oneself and at the outside world), and "rejection". The results can be explained by the fact that persons with HIV infection have already felt the consequences of social isolation and loneliness, therefore they describe themselves as outcasts, despair and disgust both to themselves and to others. While people who only afraid of contracting HIV predict this can lead to anxiety, hopelessness and vulnerability. However, the selected components are rather situational than a priori, so the picture may change somewhat upon repeated investigation.

Reclaiming Melancholy by Emotion Tracking? Datafication of Emotions in Health Care and at the Workplace

Abstract Since the time between the world wars, the language of emotions has been dominated by the discourse of therapy, starting a style of emotional expression and practice. Somewhat paradoxically, at the same time as a new professional group emerged with authority to pronounce on all matters emotional as part of the unfolding of modern emotional capitalism, the categories of psychic suffering have witnessed a veritable emptying out of emotions. Currently, the emphasis is placed, rather, on various kinds of lack of behaviour. For instance, “melancholy” as an existential category for strong and energy-intense reactions to all kinds of loss, has been squeezed into the clinical category of “depression,” literally meaning “pressing down.” Negative emotional states have, however, recently appeared in many self-tracking activities, including in the “datafication” of emotions in the form of the Finnish application Emotion Tracker. In this article, I ask whether this introduction of self-tracking into the context of health care and the workplace has written any differences into the current practices of emotional capitalism. My findings suggest that by placing itself in the opaque middle ground between professional psychology and ordinary life, Emotion Tracker creates a new space where the rich tapestry of melancholy is again allowed to figure.

Elements of Iconicity in the Texts of Antanas A. Jonynas

The author of this article presents, and examines the expression of, iconicity in the poetry of Antanas A. Jonynas. Drawing on the American semiotician Charles S. Peirce’s sign theory and hermeneutic analysis she reveals how, in Jonynas’s poetry, reality is contextualized through language – its characteristics, expression, and meaning. Unusually for Lithuanian literary studies, the article dicsusses iconicity in terms of cognitive poetics.The article relates poetic expression with both iconicity in language and the function of metaphor within the literary text. These reflect the complex phenomenon of literary visualization and convey the fundamental human ability to think in terms of analogy.As is characteristic for modern poets, Jonynas stresses the importance of language: it is a means, a separate motive, and a problematized aesthetic effect – it is the power to both create a world and to decipher human experience through language. The image of reality within the text is based on the logic of spectacle (the analysis reveals the latter’s metatextual status), and for this reason the drama of the poem can appear to be both real and theatrical. But Jonynas’s texts are characterized by the ability to simultaneously talk about and describe states, and to convince and engage the perceiver: the texts combine sensations and draw on the transmission function (speaking and listening). The author of the article offers a detailed analysis of the nature of the poet’s language and the motif of memory in his writing. Images and the entire texts’s metaphoric level reveal the discontinuity between conscious speaking and nondiscursive experience in Jonynas’s poetry. The poetic text combines elements of reality; existential categories merely create the misleading impression that the status of emotion in the text is equivalent to the represented object or landscape.

The wisdom of conversations: Existential Hermeneutic Phenomenology (EHP) for project managers

This paper introduces Existential Hermeneutic Phenomenology (EHP) as an approach to reflecting on and studying the lived experience of project management practice. We argue that an EHP way of being is an effective approach for any practitioner confronted by significant existential disruptions to their practice. We develop our proposition of ‘the wisdom of conversations’ as an EHP enabled way for project managers' practical coping with otherwise potentially inhibiting existential disruptions.We understand EHP as a holistic philosophical practice which: 1. allows making the ‘lived experience’ of project management practice explicit for reflection, and 2. is available and useful to practitioners in the field. Heidegger provides the theoretical base through a language of existential categories, which are dimensions of being-in-the-world. Gendlin offers a practical method for accessing the states of being that Heidegger describes. Rorty offers promise, the ability to disclose new possibilities or ways of being-in-the-world through irony and practices of re-description.

Dyskretny urok wstydu

This article seeks to analyze the category of shame, leaving aside some specific areas of human activity attendant upon shame. It seems that the problem of shame is most often found in the area of human sexuality, a fact that impoverishes the category of shame. I treat moral shame as an existential category, which means that it is directly connected with the internal discernment of the person that is ashamed. Understood in such a manner, it is impossible to persuade a person to be ashamed; even the social and cultural contexts that identify concrete types of misbehavior as shameful turn out to be insufficient. We are ashamed when we ourselves believe that a particular situation should not have taken place. Meanwhile, when we tell someone “you should be ashamed,” it will bring about no effect if the person we are reprimanding does not think in the same way. Shame indeed is an emotion we would like to avoid, if possible, nevertheless it plays an extremely important role in our moral lives.

Use of complementary and alternative medicine by lung cancer patients in Korea: A qualitative study

IntroductionAn increasing number of cancer patients, including those with lung cancer, use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in addition to their cancer treatment. As qualitative studies documenting the quality of life (QoL) of lung cancer patients using CAM is limited, this study focused on exploring perceived changes in QoL of lung cancer patients following their experiences of CAM treatment. MethodsIn 2013, in-depth semi-structured tape recorded interviews were conducted with 15 Korean lung cancer patients who had reported a CAM treatment experiences in a Korean medical hospital specializing in cancer. The transcriptions were analyzed using NVivo10, and patients’ experience of cancer was investigated using van Manen’s four fundamental existential categories which relate to lifeworld experiences. ResultsPatients exhibited the greatest change in two of the categories; ‘lived body’ and ‘lived relations’. Three final themes were identified, ‘loss of self’, ‘being the same as before’, and ‘revitalization’. Cancer diagnosis accelerated the loss of ‘self’ but also gave patients a chance to concentrate on and regain ‘self’. Participants demonstrated that ‘being the same as before’ was the most important factor for quality of life and also for treatment decisions. CAM treatment was deemed acceptable when the patients felt revitalized and they were able to live as before and when they were respected. ConclusionAs CAM gave a chance for patients to concentrate on ‘self’ and regain the will to continue with treatment, CAM potentially improves lung cancer patients’ QoL. Effective application of CAM during cancer treatment should be investigated.

Faith as One of the Universal Existential Categories

The article attempts to study the idea of FAITH in the context of philosophy, its interpretation in the work of art in perspective of time. The changes in interpretation are associated to social shifts, a paradigm change, when the take being begins to prevail over the spiritual; and the increased significance of science. So the need for God as a mean to explain the Universe becomes more and more negligible as the materialist concept of world takes hold.

Irony as the Birth of Kierkegaard’s “Single Individual” and the Beginning of Politics

This paper examines the idea presented in Søren Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony (1841) and Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) that irony, far more than a rhetorical device, is an existential category that gives birth to the subjectively existing single individual. As such, irony is no diversion from or necessary undercutting of one’s ethical growth but is a required step in fostering it. Although Kierkegaard preferred to focus on the individual, irony nevertheless plays an essential role in issues of social justice and politics, since the self must be distinguished from its social environment if there is to be any hope for one’s being useful in changing it for the better, and irony is the means by which the distinguishing of the self occurs. For example, since Kierkegaard believes that politics is at best only provisional and approximate, irony has an important role in chastening overweening political forces, which are often accompanied by human rights abuses. Irony secures room for individuals who have an inner infinity that can never be utterly conformed to the strictures of finite politics. Thus, as Kierkegaard presents it, irony’s birth of the single individual is shown to be politically significant.

Irony as the Birth of Kierkegaard's “Single Individual” and the Beginning of Politics

Abstract: This paper examines the idea presented in Søren Kierkegaard's The Concept of Irony (1841) and Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) that irony, far more than a rhetorical device, is an existential category that gives birth to the subjectively existing single individual. As such, irony is no diversion from or necessary undercutting of one's ethical growth but is a required step in fostering it. Although Kierkegaard preferred to focus on the individual, irony nevertheless plays an essential role in issues of social justice and politics, since the self must be distinguished from its social environment if there is to be any hope for one's being useful in changing it for the better, and irony is the means by which the distinguishing of the self occurs. For example, since Kierkegaard believes that politics is at best only provisional and approximate, irony has an important role in chastening overweening political forces, which are often accompanied by human rights abuses. Irony secures room for individuals who have an inner infinity that can never be utterly conformed to the strictures of finite politics. Thus, as Kierkegaard presents it, irony's birth of the single individual is shown to be politically significant.

Ингерентно-метафорическое соотношение бытийных категорий CONFLICT и FIRE в англоязычной лингвокультуре

Ингерентно-метафорическое соотношение бытийных категорий CONFLICT и FIRE в англоязычной лингвокультуре

Resistance and rescue in Beauvoir's The Blood of Others and The Mandarins: A semiotic contribution to the thinking of the ‘being-for-other’ existential category

In The Blood of Others and The Mandarins , Simone de Beauvoir encodes the experience of a resister in World War II. The objectivization of her particular vision is developed by the use of an idiosyncratic language through quotations and the coining of semiotic equivalents. She first defines her paradigms in The Blood of Others , where the theme of resistance against the Nazis is explicitly dramatized. In The Mandarins , she puts her semiotics to the test through phenomenological descriptions. Rich food along with the military authority to make the rules indicated by formal clothes point to abuse. Homologies are made with the abusive military authority and its substitutes, and the oppressed individual identified as the ‘other.’ Scenarios where the characters switch identities in resistance and rescue point to an underlying philosophy of the human being as a ‘being-for-other.’ Examples of transformations and substitutions are the characters Ruth, Yvonne, and Hélène in The Blood of Others , and Diego and ‘the first’ Lewis in The Mandarins . The compassion of Hélène for Ruth at her arrest by the Gestapo is a heroic response whereas in The Mandarins , Lewis's unexpected transformation from a husband into an enemy is the echo of the abandonments of World War II.

Vulnerability

Vulnerability

A Biographical and Critical Study of Russian Writer Eduard Limonov by Andrei Rogachevskii (review)

582 Reviews and neologisms, so the theatre should be seen as built on aesthetic borrowing and ex? change (Bertolone). The authors recognizing this dynamic as the fundamental feature of Yiddish theatre?Barbara Henry, Paola Bertolone, Seth L. Woliz, and Miroslawa Bulat?speak of the influences of Slavic folklore and Italian opera, among others, on the development of Yiddish theatrical tradition, attesting therefore to its richness and complexity. In their articles, Yiddish theatre is portrayed as collaborative, dynamic, and in fact international. Speaking of the repertoire of Yiddish theatre, the book does an impressive job of 'unearthing' forgotten names and works, and returning them to the canon. Indeed, it challenges the reader's idea ofthe Yiddish theatre canon. Had itincluded the practices of Yiddish troupes in the countries not mentioned in the collection, such as Canada, France, or Africa, the book could have broadened the horizons of the canon even further. Finally, I would like to emphasize the happy timing of this work. It is not only a politically opportune moment to investigate the history of Yiddish theatre as the Russian archives have finallybeen opened (p. 75), but also the time to create a compre? hensive study of Jewish theatre, comparable to what has been done in publications on the history and traditions of Jewish film. It is a pleasure to acknowledge that Yiddish Theatre: New Approaches constitutes a very effectivestep in this direction. University of Ottawa Yana Meerzon A Biographical and Critical Study of Russian Writer Eduard Limonov. By Andrei Rogachevskii. (Studies in Slavic Languages and Literature, 20) Lewiston, Queenston, and Lampeter: Mellen. 2003. xvi + 265pp. ?74.95. ISBN 0-77346847 -1. With his rich, informative, and detailed monograph on Eduard Limonov (b. 1943) Andrei Rogachevskii focuses on one of the most controversial Russian writers of our times, and tries in his study to solve the entangled problem of the relationship between art, life, and literary archetypes. The book provides an impressive quantity of archive materials (especially the correspondence with the Russian emigres Vladimir Maksimov and Nikolai Bokov) and a thorough and brilliant survey of all of Limonov's texts?narrative, publicistic, poetic?in order to establish facts which may help to establish who Limonov really is. This proves a challenging task because of Limonov's 'true lies', as Rogachevskii ironically defines the writer's favourite prac? tice of giving opposite indications and contradictory information about himself. The firstchapter of the book, based on a biographical-psychological approach, is entirely devoted to these investigations. Notwithstanding the variety of sources consulted and the author's accuracy in analysing them, one must acknowledge that Limonov's reluctance to reveal his true self and his delight in wearing masks are overwhelming. Thus, even assuming that Limonov the writer and Limonov the character are not the same person, Rogachevskii moves with both caution and courage, and succeeds in establishing some facts and linking them to some of Limonov's inventions, though without establishing a univocal approach to the writer's biography. This, however, was not Rogachevskii's aim, as he very clearly states in the conclusion ofthe book. Undoubtedly, Limonov views himself as a 'hero ofmodern times' and Rogachevskii successfully describes the writer's general concept of a hero, reminding the reader that heroism as an existential category has nothing to do with ethics (as Limonov's life and works very well prove). In connection with this concept of the heroic life,Ro? gachevskii focuses on two possible literaryparallels: firstly, an 'unconscious' parallel to the atamanP. N. Krasnov, author ofthe anti-utopiannovelZtf chertopolokhom[Beyond MLR, 100.2, 2005 583 the thistle] (Chapter 2), and secondly a very conscious parallel to V. V Maiakovskii (Chapter 3). As faras Krasnov is concerned, Rogachevskii warily defines this parallel as 'dangerous' because of its highly hypothetical, almost exclusively psychological, nature. Much more convincing is the parallel with Maiakovskii; the peculiar similarity is often referred to in critical literature, but scarcely studied in detail. Maiakovskii's megalomania, narcissism, and latent split personality find an interesting correspon? dence in Limonov, as Rogachevskii demonstrates in his detailed analysis ofthe texts of the two writers. They share not only topics, poetic devices, and literary idiosyncrasies, but also the centrality of love, which...

Singular Existence and Critical Theory

Two questions were addressed to my existential biography of Habermas: Is my use of existential categories to discuss his theory compatible with his recovery of the publicity of facts and norms? Can I concede a secular reading of anamnestic solidarity to Habermas and retain this conception to sustain a Benjaminian-Kierkegaardian openness of history? The best answer would be to reprint Habermas's astonishing autobiography from Kyoto (his thank you speech on the occasion of the Koyto Award on 11 November 2004). The second best is first to situate it and then take up the two questions in light of his self-presentation.

P. Tillicho ontologija ir I. Kanto transcendentalinė filosofija

Vienas žymiausių XX a. religijos filosofų Paulis Tillichas savo sisteminėje teologijoje kritikuoja Kanto nustatytą transcendentalinį horizontą (pažinimo ribas). Kita vertus, konstruodamas tikrovės sampratą, jis pasinaudoja Kanto kategorine analize bei metafizikos kritika. Taigi Tillicho požiūris į Kanto epistemologiją yra polemiškas ir reikalauja gilesnės analizės. Kaip ir Kantas, Tillichas kelia klausimą, ką reiškia egzistuoti ir kaip ši egzistencija susijusi su Dievu. Nors Kanto transcendentalinė dialektika pagrindžia negalimybę įrodyti Dievą intelektinėmis operacijomis, protas gali mąstyti ultimatyvią tikrovę. Abiejų filosofų pagrindinė problema tampa proto taikymas anapus jo teorinės kompetencijos.

Existential Social Theory After the Poststructuralist and Communication Turns

Thomas Flynn's work on Sartre and Foucault, the first of a two-volume project, offers a unique opportunity for examining an existential theory of history. It occasions rethinking existential-social categories from the vantage point of the poststructuralist turn. And it contributes to developing existential variants of critical theory. The following questions guide me in each of the three above areas. First, how is human history intelligible, given not only our finite sense of ourselves but also claims that we have reached the end of history? Second, with the poststructuralist eclipse of dialectics, can we render existential categories in social terms and vice versa? Third, critics decry grand theorizing even in fallibilist reason, e.g., of Habermas, while others are worried by the normative deficits of poststructuralist nominalism, e.g., of Foucault. Can existential variants of critical social theory, anticipated before Sartre by Marcuse, split the difference?

Existence and the communicatively competent self

Most readers of Habermas would not classify him as an existential thinker. The view of Habermas as a philosopher in German Idealist and Critical traditions from Kant to Hegel and Marx to the Frankfurt School prevails among Continental as much as among analytic philosophers. And the mainstream Anglo-American reception of his work and politics is shaped by the approaches of formal analysis rather than those of existential and social phenomenology or even current American pragmatism. One may argue that both these readings eclipse richer existential dimensions of a thinker who challenges the notorious methodological and political splits among analytic, Continental and pragmatist orientations. I argue that Habermas’ critical relation to Heidegger’s a historical history of Being and his misguided political career cannot explain a competing narrative of his own affirmative appropriation of existential-ethical dimensions of thought and activism. Second, if one sets in the foreground this competing narrative, there emerges a weak thesis, whether or not a plausible complementarity between the communications critical social theory and concrete existential categories can be established. Third, one may inquire further into a stronger thesis whether or not this link must be developed in order to render Habermas’ own theory of a communicatively competent self sufficiently concrete and critical.

Kierkegaard as socio-political thinker and activist

The collection by thirteen contributors, Foundations of Kierkegaard's Vision of Community, belongs to the recent groundbreaking series of books on Kierkegaard which provide a corrective to the neglected socio-political dimension of his authorship. Many authors in the present volume, as well as in additional texts to be discussed in this essay, either challenge or outright reject Kierkegaard's presumed irrationalism, asocial individualism, and anti-political acosmism, Besides this long overdue revision of what I call the received view of Kierkegaard, other authors go beyond critique. They either propose new ways of reading Kierkegaard from the angle of his contribution to a critical social theory or they directly employ his existential categories to inform their socio-political theory and practice. In my discussion of these often overlapping trends I will focus on each, critiques of the received view and socio-political appropriations of Kierkegaard, in turn (vii-xi). 1. The Category of the individual in socio-political theory and practice

Kierkegaard: the indirect communication

This book is a study of the much-debated problem of Soren Kierkegaard's communication. It approaches the problem, however, in a quite new way by applying some of the insights of recent literary theory. Kierkegaard himself coined the term for his writings, but there has never been any scholarly agreement as to what the term actually means. If, however, a modern reader starts from the assumption that Kierkegaard was way ahead of his time in being in calm and confident possession of most of the textual tools and devices commonly associated today with the name of Jacques Derrida, then the aesthetic texts of Kierkegaard lose much of their traditional obscurity. His difficult books of the 1840s no longer appear as textbooks concerned to instruct and to enlighten but rather as maddening devices intended to make things harder for his readers and to refuse them any final position in which they could rest. Instead of treating Kierkegaard's works of the 1840s, then, as perfectly serious presentations of authorial meaning, Roger Poole's book shows how Kierkegaard refuses to offer a personal view on any one of his great themes: love, duty, faith and the anguish before choice. One of the techniques for refusing explicit meaning is the use of undeclared parody. Kierkegaard parodies Hegel, for instance, by emptying Hegel's idealist terminology of meaning and substituting, in a brilliant game of Lego, a suite of oxymoronic self-cancellations. He oscillates between Socratic and Romantic irony, pinning the reader in a constant inability to decide which is which. He parodies the Hegelian psychological textbook by neglecting to mention which particular textbook he has in mind, while continuing to rag its discursive form with finicky accuracy. He scatters those erotic fantasies that fellow Copenhageners would have read as autobiographical with clues whose only purpose is to mislead. Events, however, overtook the urbane master of textuality. Attacked by Corsair in 1846 in a series of malevolent caricatures, he was unable to shrug this off, and the nature of the indirect communication changed. In his struggle against the mass media of his time, the press and public opinion, he was forced to develop the existential category of the lived sign. This study is both a contribution to literary theory, in the sense that it seeks to apply it, and a suggestion for renewal within phenomenological philosophy. A deconstructive approach to the written works is followed by a phenomenological description of the development of the lived sign. The book is an attempt to investigate a theme concerning individual rights and embodiment that descends from Kant through Edmund Husserl to Maurice Merleau-Ponty and was broken off by his death. Merleau-Ponty never wrote an ethics. Kierkegaard: The Indirect Communication is a sketch toward suggesting how that ethics might have looked.