Existential Features Research Articles

Qualitative Approaches to the Phenomenology of VFR Travel: The use of Literary and Cultural Texts as Resources

AbstractA paradox about visiting friends and relatives (VFR) travel is that, although a marginalized category by tourism planners and academics until recently, it has always been, as a domain of behaviour, more central to human experience than leisure tourism. Relationships between relatives and friends have, at all places and times, been forged and sustained by reciprocal visits, a reality borne out by reflection, and one that has been documented widely in cultural texts. This paper explores what these texts tell us about the subjective meaning and significance of VFR travel that is not necessarily disclosed by the quantitative, problem‐centred approaches used in managerial research. The first part examines a sample of, mainly, literary texts from the past and present and identifies some of the diverse scenes and scenarios within them. The paper then moves from the texts to offer a theoretical framework for understanding the phenomenology of VFR travel, derived from the sociological insights of Georg Simmel into social gatherings and informal associations. This qualitative framework, it is proposed, augments the quantitative methodologies that currently dominate VFR research, as a way of exploring the existential features of VFR behaviour. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Study of Indian exports and imports; sectoral trend analysis for 19 years between 1996-1997 to 2014-2015

Trade is an existential feature of human society. In the era of nation states, the quantum of international trade provides a good indication about the economic progress of a country. Emerging economies thus have very dynamic and expanding contours of international trade. In this research, the authors have collected sectoral trade data of India between the years 1996-1997 to 2014-2015. The authors have carried out trend analysis of the past 19 years data to comprehend the footprints of Indian economy on the world and vice-versa. The authors found the key contributing factors that affected the export and import in different sectors of the Indian economy.

Shepherd of Being

Analysis of the existential features of Dasein and man as ‘shepherd of Being’ in Being and Time. Heidegger’s account of the existential features of Dasein, of the notions of care (sorge), nothingness, authenticity and problem of language (logos) heralds the role of men as ‘Shepherd of Being.’

LOGICAL-MATHEMATICAL ANALYTICS THE EXISTENTIAL NATURE OF DECISION-MAKING

This article is devoted to an extensive and rather modern scientific area – Decision-making theory. The author uses logical-mathematical bases of Decision-making theory to make an explication of the existential features of the choice, which is based on four main martingales: trend, time, men and phobia. The last four constituents “have power” above human-being and impress the situation of decision-making. The impression on such situation allow to minimize a risk, to predict results and to create a strategy with positive result.

Expecting Godot not to Come!

Beckett, as a typical modern author, adopts a position between subjectivity and objectivity, and in the gap between these two, by focusing on the latter on one hand, represents an image of Lukacs's realistic view and on the other hand, by scrutinizing more precisely, offers a profile of the existentialist view. Beckett's presence itself in this gap inevitably entails a critical representation of both realms. His characters, in confrontation with modern subjectivization, seek refuge to the fragmented reified objectivity leading to desubjectivization, which is in line with Beckett's characters' anxiety and angst of thinking about their existential how-ness. Meanwhile, their denying the past is synonymous with negating Dasein's temporality features, and this ends in the dissolution of their most primary existential feature, projection. The concomitance of these features eventuates in the appearance of characters such as Vladimir and Estragon who evade thinking like a modern subject, that is, a kind of thinking which revolves around a transcendental signified.

Being depleted and being shaken: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of the experiential features of a first episode of depression.

This article presents a detailed idiographic analysis of patients' experience of first-episode depression. This is a qualitative interview study using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Semi-structured interviews were carried out with a purposive sample of seven patients presenting to a mental health service in London, UK with symptoms of first-episode major depression. There were four males and three females; mean age was 44years. Interviews were audio-recorded and subjected to IPA. Participants described a significant loss event prior to onset of depression. The depression involved a major diminishing of the life-world with relational, corporeal, and temporal depletion. This depletion was accompanied in each case by occasional extreme emotions, frenzied thoughts, confused sense of self. Depression can represent a major existential threat to the sufferer. We discuss how our findings can illuminate the extant literature. The study suggests the value of exploring these existential features in early therapy. Offers a detailed phenomenological analysis of core experiential features of first episode depression: being alone, being empty, life is over. Also reveals an unstable dynamic of major psychological depletion interrupted by emotional and cognitive agitation involving confusion, lack of confidence, and/or trust. Provides rationale and material for intensive exploration of these features in therapy.

High-school students' ideas about the concept of "living-thing" and distinctive features of liveliness

Children must have a correct mental schema about the concept of for meaningful learning of many biological concepts, facts and phenomenon which have been in our lives since the first years of existence. In this study, it was attempted to determine high-school students’ mental schema about the concept of “livingthing”. For this purpose, some open-ended questions were asked to a total of 154 students between the ages of 14-15 who were studying at an Anatolian High School in Erzurum city center, and the obtained data were analyzed. In the data collection process, the students were asked to write the names of the first ten species that came to their mind first. Later, the students were asked to write what they think about living-thing and what is the meaning of “liveliness” according to them. The data obtained from written explanations of the students were analyzed and presented in tables and graphs. It is noteworthy that, the students mainly wrote the names of animal species to their lists and mammals were the dominant class among them. On the other hand, when students’ written explanations about the meaning of the concept of living-thing were analyzed, it was seen that their ideas were grouped under four major themes (physiological, mental, biological and existential features).

The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami Catastrophe, its Survivors, Job and the Universal Features of Suffering: A Theoretical Study

The purpose of this theoretical article is to discuss the existential and universal feature of suffering--as illustrated by Job's suffering in the Book of Job in the Bible and by the survivors of the 2004 Asian tsunami catastrophe--and to highlight its significance for health care. Further, the study is aiming at contributing to health professionals' understanding of patients' suffering. The sources are narratives, comprising Job's book, TV interviews 1 year after the tsunami catastrophe and the survivors' autobiographies. The methodological approach is a philosophical analysis. The existential, universal, ontological and epistemological aspects of suffering are carefully scrutinized to unveil the universal and existential versus culture-specific features of suffering. Based on the results, the authors' recommendations are (1) a holistic concept of the patient and health care has to seriously consider suffering in all its complexity because when a person is in pain, it is not his/her body but the whole person as a unity of body, psyche and spirit that suffers and (2) suffering should be seen as the most central concept of health care, which should provide treatment for physical pain and all dimensions of suffering: physical, social, mental and spiritual aspects.

Features of existential thought in the novel (Ayoub) by the novelist Hisham Tawfiq Al-Rikabi

There is no doubt that the reader of the novel stands on convictions that constitute a ground from which he proceeds in his readings of the fictional text. In addition to his cultural and cognitive armament, there must be sufficient knowledge of the thought in which the novel proceeds through heroes, characters, events and convictions. Perhaps the first of these convictions lies in the intellectual threads that move the protagonist or In another way, the events that embody the references from which the novelist proceeds, whether they are religious, ideological, or philosophical. From here, the researcher begins to search for the existential features of Ayoub’s novel by the novelist Hisham Tawfiq al-Rikabi, in which he alludes to this thought through the words and actions of the hero, as well as some of the events of the novel, leading to Manipulating the time course.

Constructing Inauthentic Everyday Temporality in Čechov: Reproductive Discourses in Three Sisters

This article focuses on the temporal aspects of the inauthentic everyday in Anton Čechov's play Three Sisters (Tri sestry, 1901). Analysis of how the everyday is constructed allows the explication of the ways in which the play comments on the cultural experiences of late-nineteenth-century Russian modernity at the microhistorical level. The article provides a detailed analysis of the diverse everyday markers in the play, the most important of which from the vantage point of temporality are the reproductive elements that are brought to the fore in the literary-cultural and visual discourse, most notably, in the quotedness of the characters' speech and in the theme of photographing. It is argued that despite the strong element of inauthenticity in the play, Čechov's work nevertheless develops the possibility of transformation: the inauthentic everyday is not represented as an existential feature but as a socio-historical condition.

Weak subjectivity, trans-subjectivity and the power of event

This article begins with Gedankenexperiment proposed in The Adventure of Difference by Gianni Vattimo: Following his suggestion to read Heidegger’s fundamental ontology in terms of Nietzsche’s TheBirth of the Tragedy, we attempt to reinterpret the distinction of the authentic and inauthentic existence in the light of the difference between the Dionysian and Apollonian element, which brings us also to a new view on the existential finitude, individuality and co-existence with others. In the background of these existential features we discover the notion of event that breaks the ecstatic unity of temporality and marks the hermeneutical continuity of existence by the radical discontinuity. The image of existence exposed to the power of event is further elaborated with the help of Henri Maldiney who has introduced into the frame of the fundamental ontology the concepts of trans-possibility and trans-passibility that express the existential openness to the event. Such a reformulation of the fundamental ontology, however, brings us into the sphere of heteronomous thought that, instead of preserving its essential autonomy, unity and integrity, becomes other in its relation to the otherness that is encountered in the event.

Le monde de Nizon

Considering its ability to depict the world, to make it visible (mimesis), Paul Nizon’s works belong to European literary tradition. The reality appears through the narrow prism of an individual consciousness deprived of any historical or existential feature. Porosity could be seen as the ultimate dimension of such a consciousness, as the starting point of aesthetics of perception. Not only in Paul Nizon’s novels, but also in his Journal lies the kernel of such writing.

Social Constructionism and Sexual Desire

Various scholars argue that sexual desire is socially constructed. There is, however, little agreement surrounding the nature of social constructionism. Vance contrasts social constructionism here with a cultural influence model and distinguishes between degrees of social constructionism. There are, however, problems with this classification. These problems can similarly be found with Foucault whose arguments fail to support his claim that sexual desire is a social construction. Difficulties also appear in Simon and Gagnon's scripting theory of sexual desire, a theory that is commonly applauded as establishing a social constructionist account. This is because scripting theory depends entirely on theatrical metaphors. But there is much inconsistency involved in applying such metaphors to everyday life. This does not, however, imply a biological essentialist view of sexual desire must be true. For there is the further alternative that sexual desire has its origin in existential features of human awareness. Sexual desire arises simply because we are aware of both our own gender and the genders of others, and that gender phenomenologically presents itself to us as something in need of completion. This awareness is something that is fundamental to the human condition and thus has little to do with social construction.

Historiographie chrétienne et romanesque: Le De mortibus persecutorum de Lactance (250–325 ap. J.C.)

AbstractThe DMP written by Lactantius and published after the 'Edict of Milan' (313), is an unclassifiable book. It was regarded as the first Christian historiography in latin but recent study has defended that the first was really the H.E. by Eusebius which was translated in latin at the end of the IVth century. We have analysed the romantic character of Lactantius' narration through emotional, existential features and its narrative movement. We have compared the prologues of the two books and managed to show that the DMP is surely a Christian history, authentic in many aspects, but discredited in favour of the « canonic » historiography by Eusebius which, even if it contains features of fiction too, is closer to the historic presuppositions of today's readers.

Existential Issues in Group Psychotherapy

Existential issues in group psychotherapy derive from existential thought both as a philosophy and as a value system. Its origins derive from the weakening of traditional values and the growing alienation of man from himself. The unique features of existentialism can be applied to all forms of therapy. These features are universal to humankind. They are finiteness, aloneness, guilt, responsibility, and freedom. In including existential concerns as part of group psychotherapy, therapist and patients move more closely to bilateral relationships and subjective interactions.

An Existential Reading of Charles Wright's The Messenger

Twenty-five years before Farrar, Straus & Company published Charles Wright's The Messenger in 1963, Librairie Gallimard of France published Jean-Paul Sartre's novel, Nausea in 1938, and, two years before publication of Wright's The Messenger, Knopf published Walker Percy's The Moviegoer in 1961. In 2001, Sartre's and Percy's novels, unlike Wright's The Messenger, are represented as seminal works of existential On back cover of New Direction paperback edition of Nausea, publisher writes: La Nausee ... is [Sartre's] finest and most significant. is unquestionably a key novel on Twentieth Century and a landmark in Existential fiction. In Introduction to Nausea, Hayden Carruth gives a summary of principal themes of existentialism and provides an existential reading of novel. Sartre's novel is defined as an extension of existential philosophy, as a metaphysical tract, as a dramatic enactment of an existential definition of human condition. Likewise, Percy's The Moviegoer is also represented and received as a work of existential The epigraph at beginning of novel is a quote from noted Christian existentialist Soren Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death: the specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being in despair. In his acceptance speech for National Book Award for The Moviegoer, collected in Signposts In A Strange Land, Percy speculates: It is perhaps not too farfetched to compare it [The Moviegoer] in one respect with science of pathology.... that pathology in this case has to do with of and of at very time when words like `dignity of individual' and `self-realization' are being heard more frequently than (246). Phrases such as loss of individuality and loss of identity are two key features of existentialism as defined by Martin Heidegger. Discussing The Moviergoer in his review of Percy's The Thanatos Syndrome, Sven Birkerts asserts: His novel, The Moviegoer, was a Kierkegaardian meditation on attainment of authentic selfhood. Its thrust was philosophical, not psychological (190). Like Sartre's Nausea, Percy's The Moviegoer is also represented as an extension of an existential philosophy, as a dramatic enactment of Kierkegaard's Christian existentialism. Wright's The Messenger is also an existential novel, yet it was not received and has never been represented or defined as an existential novel. The history of critical reaction to and reception of The Messenger is complicated and varied. But, it is accurate to say that text has been represented, interpreted, and defined by publisher and mainstream American and African American reviewers and critics alike, not as an existential metaphysical tract, or as a dramatic enactment of an existential definition of human condition in twentieth century, but primarily as a vehicle of sociological, political, racial, and cultural commentary or protest. This reduction of The Messenger to racial and social commentary situates it, and existential African American experience it textualizes, within a white/black binary of signification that defines white as normative and superior and represents African American as inferior, as Same, as devalued Other, or as victim of racial oppression. Within this white/black binary, which constructs social reality in United States, skin color or African ancestry is made to represent a set of denigrated experiences, and these experiences are applied to everyone who ever had an African ancestor. When The Messenger fails to reproduce white/black binary, it is ignored and repressed. is assumed to have no aesthetic value. But, The Messenger's otherness, its existentialism, which is ignored and/or repressed by publisher and its critics and reviewers, is what is most challenging and subversive to white/black binary. …

From Anomaly to Unification: Tracy Sonneborn and the Species Problem in Protozoa, 1954-1957

This article examines the critique of the biological species concept advanced by protozoan geneticist Tracy Sonneborn at the 1955 AAAS symposium on “the species problem,” published subsequently in 1957. Although Sonneborn was a strong proponent of a population genetical conception of species, he became critical of the biological species concept for its failure to incorporate asexual and obligatory inbreeding organisms. It is argued that Sonneborn's intimate knowledge of the ciliate protozoan Paramecium aurelia species complex brought him into conflict with a growing pressure in the biological sciences to emphasize universal principles of life. Faced with the need to defend the value of P. aurelia as an investigative tool, Sonneborn argued that the sharp break in nature between sexual and asexual organisms posited by proponents of the biological species concept was not an existential feature of the living world, but rather the misleading consequence of an operational definition of species based only upon sexual organisms. Drawing upon his knowledge of the immense variability of P. aurelia, he proposed instead a continuum of breeding systems from obligatory outbreeding to asexual organisms, and a more broadly unifying definition of species that incorporated asexual as well as sexual organisms. Paradoxically, the push for unification that then characterized the evolutionary synthesis served to debar critical consideration of Sonneborn's more unificatory alternative, and his underlying contention that biological anomaly could serve as an important source of conceptual unification.

Discussion: On Narrative and Narratives

basis of the changes it is now undergoing. Then, with an improved awareness of the tradition, the critical eye must return to the present, the better to perceive its biases and limitations. This regressive-progressive procedure should be, and frequently is, accompanied by comparative glances outside of the tradition: What can one learn from the narrative (if such be their nature) traits of The Tale of Genji or Journey to the West? There are no discussions in the present issue of the question of whether narrative in the strictest sense, involving the elucidation and control of existential projects through reenactment and transcendence, is a mode of thought and communication that belongs in exclusivity to Western culture. The clarification of the existential and communicative features of non-Western narrative remains still a scattered enterprise very much in need of a broadly acceptable framework. In the West, narrative reenactment and transcendence developed very early into a primordial form of reflection. Through the emergence of narrative purposes and rules, the rhetorical limits of existen