Existential Matters Research Articles

The meaning of growing old: A lifeworld hermeneutic study on existential matters during the third age of life

This study investigates existential matters in the third age of life, which encompasses the years after retirement and ends when extensive support needs emerge in the fourth age. As the theoretical ...

Patients' experiences 1-6 months after atrial fibrillation ablation: An holistic perspective.

To describe patients' experiences from a holistic perspective 1-6months after atrial fibrillation (AF) ablation. Catheter ablation (CA) is an invasive treatment for AF. While CA has Class 1A indication, the latest guidelines for AF management state there is an urgent need to better understand complications in clinical practice to improve the quality of AF ablation procedures. A qualitative analytic approach based on a deductive and descriptive design was used. Interviews of 19 patients, carried out from September 2016 to February 2017, were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Five themes were identified; one in each life dimension due to the deductive design based on a holistic model: (a) having unexpected complications with a slower recovery; (b) discovering one's own self-management strategies when lacking information and insufficient follow-up; (c) managing resentment through different coping strategies while emotional reactions depended on feeling better or worse; (d) failing to receive full understanding and support from close ones, with social consequences when the biophysical level did not return to normal; (e) gradually adopting new life perspectives with a hope for a better future, despite having unmet expectations and uncertainty, leading to discovering existential matters. Patients' post CA experiences could be understood in terms of a holistic model. Their feelings of uncertainty caused by a lack of medical follow-up led to emotional reactions, the magnitude of which depended on feeling-well or worse. Patients' need more information about possible complications, suggesting follow-up and patient education needs improvement.

Paris Agreement, Precautionary Principle and Human Rights: Zero Emissions in Two Decades?

The Paris Agreement of December 2015 is subject to much criticism of being inadequate. This however neglects its very ambitious objective, which limits legally-binding global warming to 1.5 to 1.8 degrees in comparison to pre-industrial levels. This article shows, based on the overlap of unanswered questions for prognoses in natural science and the legal precautionary principle, that this objective indicates a legal imperative towards zero emissions globally within a short timeframe. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that policies need to be focused on achieving the 1.5-degree temperature limit. From a legal standpoint with regard to existential matters, only those policies are justified that are fit to contribute to reaching the temperature limit with high certainty, without overshoot, without leaving the 1.5 limit aside and without geoengineering measures, in contrast to the tendencies of the IPCC. This creates a big challenge even for the alleged forerunners of climate policies, Germany and the EU; because, according to the objective, the EU and Germany have to raise the level of ambition in their climate policies rapidly and drastically.

Return to Our Times: Juozas Aputis’s Relevance “Then” and “Now”

The author of this article uses narratological and semiotic analysis to conduct a new reading of Juozas Aputis’s classic stories, while at the same time engaging in a dialogue with interpreters who have used different methodologies. Having established that Aputis writes about fundamental existential matters, the author of the article discusses how his texts communicate experiences that cannot be contained by empirical reality – the unconscious reservoirs within human beings that occasionally distort our behavior and feelings. According to the narrated events, the narrator is not only an observer of action but also an engaged participant in it and one who always remains empathic toward oppressed characters and the world at large. This kind of empathy is further developed in the works of twentieth century Lithuanian prose classic Jonas Biliūnas. The author of the article argues that readers’ understanding of Aputis’s prose oscillates between the model of prose that promotes traditional rural values and more universal dimensions of expression.

Extreme States and Extreme Conditions: On Homelessness and the Ontico-ontological Difference

This article briefly examines the intersections between extreme psychological states and extreme structural conditions of the world. Drawing on the work of Martin Heidegger and Louis Sass, I argue that heightened focus on ontological–existential matters during extreme states often comprises (rather than eschews) a meaningful and humanistic response to extreme worldly conditions. At the center of this article are the stories of two persons who offered generosity and hospitality toward the everyday community of other humans while experiencing both extreme psychological states and extreme structural conditions.

In the future, toward death: Finance capitalism and security in Don DeLillo's ‘Cosmopolis’

AbstractThis article develops a reading of Don DeLillo's novel Cosmopolis that differentiates between two thematic and poetological axes running through the text. On the one hand, Cosmopolis explores the future-fixation of the risk regime of finance capitalism; on the other, it stages scenes of insecurity that physically threaten the protagonist and his world. Insecurity, the article argues, is a condition that throughout the text increasingly gains in appeal because it promises to offer an alternative to a world of managed risk. The concern with security emphasizes finitude and mortality, thus enabling a turn to existential matters that the virtual abstractions of finance have seemingly made inaccessible. While proposing an opposition between a logic of risk based on virtuality and a logic of (in)security based on authenticity, DeLillo's novel also suggests that it is impossible to break out of the logic of risk management pervading late modernity. The appeal of (in)security articulated in Cosmopolis rather lies in the promise to existentially revitalize life within the confines of financialized capitalism.

Consciousness as a framework condition of cognition and methodologization

Actual problem of modern philosophical and psychological discourse is the desire to know the ontological nature of consciousness and thus understand its phenomenal pleroma (which means completeness, multiplicity) representation in everyday life of the human being, that becomes one of the most important tasks as a theoretical psychology, and in fact applied, primarily experimental. It is convincingly proved in the article that the mentioned problem can be solved only on the new philosophical-methodological grounds that think actively allow to achieve significantly different level-foreshortening of professional methodologization and simultaneously open still unexplored horizons of essential cognition as non-natural (the substantial, subjective, self-sufficient) reality. In the author’s experience of theorizing it means the creation of highly complex methodological optics which involves at least four lens modules into a single multi-function construction which makes it possible on the principles of complementarity to combine intellectual means of universal (vita-cultural methodology), general (research program of professional methodologization), special (cyclically-step approach) and single (methodology of paradigmal researches in psychology). In addition, starting to “declassify” the essential layers of consciousness, we must reckon with the five-segment organization of the world of modern psychology when a psychologist-researcher in one person every minute claiming the actual course of the flow of its life consciousness, appears as a theorist, and methodologist, and enlightener, and experienced practitioner, and the designer of its Self, self-individuality. Actualization of marked cycles or rhythms of vision, that is the discretion of the meaning in aforementioned positioning of psychologist, gives reason to conclude about the essence of existential matter of individual consciousness, namely about its ideal semantic horizon, which is formed as a local organization from the depths of the potential objectivity. That’s intentional acts of personal existence, thanks to the strenuous action of the thought-experiences, correlate situational eventfulness of awareness and meaning-certainty of the human life. At the same, modes of personal awareness, operating ideally filled material of intentionally localized objectivity in isolation from the objects of the material world, are causing partial or total identifying earlier worked out by him sense-schemes, meanings, values. Innovative forms of methodologization (seminars, sessions, orgactive games and other step-imitation organization) allow purposefully designing intensive group thought communication and thus actualize the unknown spaces of consciousness as the existential-being givens. We are talking primarily about a holistic architectonic of concepts which in the author’s reflection on the level of categorical concepts (“method”, “thinking”, “methodologization”, “methodological thinking”, “methodological activity”, “think activity”, “methodology”) is organized as a binary thought scheme in which to consciousness and self-consciousness there is a space of fifth – the transcendental – element; as a result, these categorical concepts represent the highest (transcendental, in fact spiritual) forms of the existential human presence in the world. Moreover, to the consciousness as “the most obvious non-obviousness” inherent paradox, problem-dialogical rhythm of situational continuous existence that is determined by that internal stress which outlined limit sense-forms of spectra of vector reasoning and natural diversity of signification and evaluation. That’s why consciousness is a framework condition as psychological knowledge, requiring perfect supernatural reflexivity and any other (philosophical, scientific, applied) methodologization which is impossible without specially created intellectual tools and instruments. The universal fact from the life of consciousness that has acquired the status of the law is the inevitability of name or naming from which the genetically primary forms of the manifestation of the conscious ability of a person to be - concepts, constructs, categories are begun, and from which appears existentially open, bifurcation duality of the intentional existence of this ability on the verge of modes of noumenal and phenomenal, external and internal, material and ideal. On this basis, the beyond-subjectivity and superculturalism of the sphere of consciousness is appeared, that self-eliminates through the ability of transcendence, fills the beyond-objective gap or corridor of the being as the state of an actually spontaneous, albeit missed, experience of conscious effort. It is argumented that in this sense consciousness is non-objective and beyond-objective nothing and simultaneously experienced and historically everything, and therefore the intentional, substantially tense, maximally hidden side of human existence, which essentially is not static, but dynamics, is not a structure, but a multifunctional, not dependence, but freedom, not a given, but an existential. In view of this, the exceptional relevance and heuristics of the development, along with the known achievements in the domain of meta theory, meta-methodology of consciousness, are noted.

Embarrassment in the posthumous fiction of Janet Frame

It is generally assumed that Janet Frame suspended the publication of some of her work in her lifetime because it was felt to be deeply personal, or potentially embarrassing for people who might recognize themselves in the portraits provided. These rationalizations fail to persuade, first because all of Frame’s published oeuvre anyway consists of a fictionalization of private existential matter, and the posthumous corpus hardly differs in this respect; and also because both Towards Another Summer and In the Memorial Room feature a Kafkaesque concern with metamorphosis which serves to enhance the unrealistic tenor of the narratives, so that the novels again seem on a par with previously published self-conscious material. What is more distinctive about the new/old novels is less their allegedly embarrassing nature than their unusual degree of frontal engagement with the experience of embarrassment itself – their pondering of the pros and cons of shyness. This theme is addressed in aesthetic terms mostly. Frame’s artistic characters blush and squirm and writhe in ways which confirm the role played by embarrassment as an inadvertent recognition of, and an unwilling subscription to, an oppressive societal norm. Yet it can be shown that Frame, true to her customary dialectical mode of conceptualization, simultaneously uses embarrassment as a decentring strategy allowing the novels to work towards an exposure of so-called social normality. This exposure is achieved through a systematic policy of borrowing from, and testily reproducing, those very limited and limiting expressive codes which were found mortifying in the first place.

Patient-Centered Outcomes of Hospital Based Chaplain Visits: Structured Time Diaries (S756)

1.Describe a novel Diary method for documenting the role hospital chaplains play on the care team.2.Identify the most common and describe the breadth of activities chaplains perform with patients with advanced illness. Chaplains are key members of interdisciplinary hospital and palliative care teams, yet little data exists regarding their roles. Describe hospital-based chaplains' activities and experiences during patient and family encounters through an innovative diary-keeping technique. Chaplains at an urban academic medical center used iPads to complete web-based diaries immediately following 3-5 advanced illness patient encounters each day from January to June 2013. Diary data includes content of patient and family encounters and outcomes achieved. The diary is theoretically grounded in chaplaincy education tools and was designed, piloted, and revised with extensive chaplain input. We calculated descriptive statistics. We collected 844 diaries from nine hospital chaplains, one of whom is a member of the palliative care team. The patient or family accepted the chaplain's visit 94.8% of the time. Median visit length was 15 minutes (interquartile range (IQR) 10-30 minutes). Chaplains described 61.0% of visits as “extensive care responses” and 39.0% as “surface conversations.” The most common conversation topics with patients were physical symptoms (41.8%), spiritual/religious matters (37.1%), emotional matters (despair, anxiety) (30.2%), and existential matters (meaning, purpose) (29.8%). The most common chaplain activities were active listening (89.4%), spiritual assessments (32.1%), prayer (22.3%), and touch (22.0%). 42.7% of visits were with patients whose religious background was “very similar” to the chaplain, but in 31.9% of visits the chaplains did not know enough about the patient's religious background to answer. Chaplains reported patients and families becoming more relaxed during the visit 50.1% and 60.4% of the time, respectively. Chaplains spend time with patients and families discussing a range of topics beyond spiritual matters. Active listening was more common than prayer or ritual.

Protesty głodowe jako taktyka walki bez przemocy

The article discusses the phenomenon of hunger strikes which are considered to be an example of strategies and tactics of nonviolent struggle. The resistance is based on a conscious refusal to eat food which causes the political matter against which the protest is directed to become an existential matter. Everyday actions, such as eating, take on a different meaning. The same happens with the meaning of the act of political contestation. On the one hand what can be seen is the embodiment of politics and on the other the politicization of the body. The article also showcases a number of historical and contemporary examples of hunger strikes and tries to find the answer whether hunger strikes are an effective method of political resistance.

Legitimidad «activa» y legitimidad «pasiva» de los Tribunales Constitucionales en el espacio constitucional europeo = Passive and active legitimacy Constitutional Courts

La legitimidad de los Tribunales Constitucionales adquiere renovada importancia en un momento en el que la demanda de justicia constitucional se proyecta sobre decisiones que afectan a la comunidad política, a veces de modo casi existencial. A partir de aquí podría encontrar justificación la distinción entre una vertiente pasiva y una vertiente activa de la legitimidad de dichos Tribunales. La relación dialéctica entre ambas formas de legitimidad, particularmente en la referida situación de protagonismo judicial, lleva a postular la idea de «repatriación» de una justicia constitucional tentada en ocasiones a hablar más «desde arriba» que «desde el propio interior» de la comunidad política.Like the ancient god Janus, legitimacy, a classical topic in political science, take a doublefaced appearance, when applied to contemporary Constitutional Courts. These judicial bodies are supposed to be «legitimate» both in a passive and in an active direction, that is, both as recipients and as providers of legitimacy, both qualities being interrelated. The crux of the judicial branch of government is that, on the basis of a growing demand for them to decide on highly sensible, if not existential matters, they may be incited to speak «from above» the institutional fabric in which they are embedded. With that in mind, a call is made for «repatriation» of constitutional adjudication.

FRAGMENT ROMANESQUE D’UNE HISTOIRE DE LA CRITIQUE : le Swann de Paul de Man

Typical structuralist and deconstructionist features, such as technical textualism, are obvious in Paul de Man’s « Reading (Proust) ». Rhetorical categories are favored almost exclusively over existential ones, which he used before nevertheless and which are at stake in Swann’s Way. Through a process of contextualization of the critical text, this paper highlights its underlying existential matters, in relation to Proust’s own description of reading and allegory.

“Astonishment Is Thinking”: Graphic Metaphor and Its Philosophical Consequence in Mahler’s Poèmes and Lemieux’s Stormy Night

“Astonishment Is Thinking”:Graphic Metaphor and Its Philosophical Consequence in Mahler’s Poèmes and Lemieux’s Stormy Night Andrea Schwenke Wyile (bio) “[O]ne of the worst snares of the study [of metaphor is] the assumption that if we cannot see how a metaphor works, it does not work.” (I. A. Richards qtd. in Zwicky 65 RIGHT)1 “Many have learnt the word ‘see’ and never made any such use of it.” (Wittgenstein, Last Writings 4) The force of a graphic metaphor can momentarily wipe one’s mind clean, leaving it blank for a fleeting instant before the import of what one is looking at comes rushing in to fill one’s head with sparks, flashes, or fireworks of ideas. This combination of loss or insensibility and amazement or wonder found in the meaning of the word astonishment may seem like a strange condition to equate with thinking. However, the notion of being stunned mentally as a means of initiating a thought process is a useful one because it draws our attention to the need for pause, evident in the familiar phrase, “it gave me pause for thought.” Michèle Lemieux’s Stormy Night (1999) and Nicolas Mahler’s Poèmes (2007) are deeply philosophical and unusual books that challenge our assumptions about picturebooks due to the astonishing juxtapositions of the verbal and the visual on their page openings. These juxtapositions spur philosophical thinking on existential matters. Metaphor rather than narrative is the driving force in these books. The metaphors are line drawings that present us with surprising images which, like good [End Page 277] poetry, make us see the world and life anew. As Victor Shklovsky argues in “Art as Technique,” “Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war. … And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’” (20). Lemieux’s and Mahler’s books astonish us into thinking by defamiliarizing various aspects regarding the dominant, and thus nearly invisible, metaphor of the journey of life. The books, which are collections of aphorisms in the form of graphic metaphors, also defamiliarize our notion of story. In a point similar to Shklovsky’s regarding the power of poetic speech “to remove the automatism of perception” (27), Ludwig Wittgenstein notes that a common impediment to understanding is “the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see” (qtd. in Zwicky 115 RIGHT). Whereas Shklovsky claims that sometimes we are blind due to automatism, Wittgenstein suggests that sometimes we willfully misread the signs in front of us. Poèmes and Stormy Night surprise us out of our habitual modes of seeing not only through their graphic metaphors, but also through the absence of an overt plot. The books push us toward a new kind of reading, one in which the force of individual graphic metaphors or their combinations result in philosophical reflection and inquiry rather than story. While Mahler’s and Lemieux’s books are stylistically and thematically similar, they are structurally distinct. Stormy Night is presented in the form and shape of a sketchbook and thus shares with Poèmes a similar ethos of page design. The page offers room for the eye to rest and for the mind to contemplate, encouraging a pause for thought at every turn. Page openings are designed to present a dialogue, be it between a word or sentence and an image, or just an image that adds to a previous spread. In both books the use of white space is integral to the force of their graphic metaphors, and the look of the page and its contents is integral to the experience of reading and meaning-making. Poèmes (La Pastèque, 2007) is a series of twenty-one “graphic poem” pairs that rely in some degree on conceptual binary opposition to convey their meaning, such as night and day, air and water, curiosity and stupidity, solitude and company. The collection is framed to suggest the course of a lifetime, beginning with the pairings birth and...

Kino, które nawraca. Katechetyczna funkcja filmu na lekcjach religii

The article deals with the wide use of feature films at religious lessons at school. It briefly indicates the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching, according to which the religious lessons should remain in interdisciplinary dialogue with other subjects. The wide application of feature films should not be confined to showing solely biblical movies. But it also concerns historical movies and those, which pertain to widely existential matters. The footage chosen by a teacher must be suitable to students’ age and maturity. A correct choice helps to familiarize the students with real life situations in different historical or traditional contexts as well as with the structure of movie itself. At the end the authoress indicates the danger of religious lessons becoming too routine. She also considers a movie to be a cultural text, hence an indirect theological source. The discourse finishes with an encouragement to use movies appropriately during the lessons.

Love stories in adolescence: narrative inquiry on love of Christian young adults and non-Christian young adults

본 연구는 내러티브 연구방법을 사용하여 청년들의 사랑이야기를 심층연구를 하였다. 청년들은 사랑을 통하여 무엇을 경험하고, 청년기의 사랑이 청년기의 삶에 주는 의미는 무엇이며, 그 경험과 그 의미가 기독청년과 비기독청년의 사랑에서는 어떻게 다르게 나타나는가를 연구문제로 설정하였다. 연구결과 청년들의 사랑의 경험과 의미는 신앙의 유무에 따라 확연히 다르게 나타났다. 연구의 결과로 도출되어진 공통점과 차이점은 다음과 같다.BR 기독청년과 비기독청년의 사랑이야기에서 도출된 공통점은 첫째, 사랑은 변한다는 것이다. 둘째, 자신이 가지고 있는 세계관대로 사랑이야기를 만들어 나간다는 것이다. 본 연구에 참여한 청년들은 기독교인은 기독교인의 세계관으로, 비기독교인은 비기독교인의 세계관으로 다른 사랑이야기를 가지고 있었다. 셋째, 사랑은 원가족 경험에 의해 영향을 받는다는 것이다. 넷째, 사랑을 통하여 공통적으로 느끼는 감정은 행복이었다. 참여자들은 사랑을 하면서 느끼는 감정을 여러 가지로 표현했는데 공통적으로 나온 감정은 행복이었다.BR 비기독청년과 기독청년의 사랑이야기에서 도출된 차이점은 다음과 같다.BR 첫째, 비기독교인과 기독교인은 사랑의 근원이 다르다는 것이다. 사랑의 시작점이 기독교인과 비기독교인은 다르게 나타났다. 둘째, 비기독교청년과 기독청년의 사랑의 구성에 있어 낭만과 헌신의 우선순위의 다르다는 것이다. 셋째, 비기독교인과 기독교인의 헌신의 의미가 다르다는 것이다. 넷째, 비기독청년과 기독청년의 이야기 프로파일은 미래이야기에 대한 우선순위가 다르다는 것이다.BR 본 연구는 개인적인 사랑이야기의 지평을 하나님과의 관계적 정체성의 이야기로 확장시켜 주는 지평의 융합이라는 재해석과정에 이르는 계기를 제공하고자 하였다. 청년들이 사랑을 통하여 어떤 경험을 하며, 그 경험은 삶에 어떤 의미를 부여 하는지를 연구하는 것은 청년들의 실존 문제를 실재적으로 접근할 수 있어서 상담학적으로도 큰 의미가 있었다.

Moving between rooms – moving between life and death: nurses’ experiences of caring for terminally ill patients in hospitals

This study describes the meanings of generalist registered nurses' experiences of caring for palliative care patients on general wards in hospitals. Earlier research shows that work with patients in palliative care is demanding. More research concerning palliative care is undertaken in oncological care, in hospice and in home-care settings than in general wards. It is therefore important to examine the palliative care in the context of acute-care settings to discover more about this phenomenon, to understand the experiences of nurses in this situation and to develop patient care. Qualitative, descriptive and interpretive study. Eight registered nurses in two different hospitals in Sweden were interviewed. The patients on these wards suffered from surgical and medical conditions, i.e. both curative and palliative care were administered. The interviews were analysed using a phenomenological hermeneutical approach inspired by Ricoeur's philosophy. The registered nurses' experiences are presented as seven themes and a comprehensive, interpreted whole. This latter revealed the significance of contrasts, contradictions and movement between the material and psychological experiences of the room and nursing care in this care context. The registered nurses say that something momentous occurred during the care process and they showed a strong determination and commitment to being part of the ending of the patient's life circle, despite the situation often being one of stress. The findings highlight the need for various forms of support for the nurses to meet their need for new and updated knowledge and support in existential matters. This may promote a better quality of care and confirm the nurses in their caring practice. Moreover, there is a need to introduce the hospice philosophy into acute-care settings in hospitals.

Early abortion as narrated by young Swedish women

The aim of the study was to illuminate meanings of having had an induced abortion among young Swedish women. Narrative interviews were conducted with ten 18-20-year-old women 2-6 weeks after a medical or surgical abortion in the sixth to twelfth week of pregnancy. Data were analysed according to a phenomenological hermeneutic method. The study disclosed a multitude of complex meanings in the young women's lived experiences of induced abortion. Four themes were revealed: having cared for and protected the unimagined pregnancy, taking the life of my child-to-be with pain, being sensitive to the approval of others and imagining the taken away child-to-be. The results are discussed in light of Nussbaum's theory of development ethics. The young women's ability to be responsible for their choices regarding their own welfare and others' well-being in a life cycle perspective was disclosed, despite the pain inherent in the responsibility of taking the life of their own child-to-be. The young women's narratives were replete with ethical reasoning regarding existential matters related to their responsibility of choosing between induced abortion and parenthood and how to live their lives with this experience. Health-care professionals could promote young women's capability to be responsible, as well as the development of trust in their own fertility and constructive relationships with significant others. In the development of the prevention of unintended pregnancies and the sexual education of young people in Sweden existential dimensions of undergoing an abortion should be given attention.

An Investigation of the Relationships Between Spirituality, Health Status and Quality of Life in Adolescents

This study examines the relationships between six spirituality-related attributes and quality of life (QOL) in adolescents, and the extent to which these relationships are mediated by perceived physical and mental health status and five important life domains (family, friends, living environment, school experiences, and perception of self). The data were obtained via a cross-sectional health survey of 8,225 adolescents in British Columbia, Canada. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships. All spiritual attributes are significantly associated with three or more of the life domains, and four of the attributes significantly explain global QOL after controlling for the other variables in the multivariate model. The attributes indicative of adolescents’ feelings about their future and other existential matters were found to be relatively most explanatory with respect to global QOL. The predominant mediators include adolescents’ satisfaction with their family, their perceived self, and their perceived mental health status. Spirituality is important with respect to adolescents’ QOL. The multivariate model provides preliminary insights into the relevance of several attributes of spirituality and the possible mechanisms by which these attributes may contribute to adolescents’ QOL.

Argiilma poeetika ja pidulik elu. The poetics of the everyday and festive life

This article investigates ways of writing about the everyday in contemporary life. It starts by posing the question of why literature thrives especially on violence and extraordinary events. If literature strives to speak to us through our experience of being in the world, and aims to help us understand our common human experience, should it not rather avoid the extraordinary? Without a doubt, a topic needs to captivate its writer no less than its reader--otherwise the writing and the reading would not take place at all. For perfectly understandable reasons, whenever literature proposes to face death, this implies that the given text is something to be taken seriously; it signifies that here one is dealing with existential matters, not just with the myriad small nothingnesses of the everyday. However, the present article analyzes a different way of intensifying the quotidian: turning the everyday into an experience of beauty. A writer can find moments of special importance from within the everyday, relieving the reader from the boredom of „nothing happens” by other means than through an encounter with death and the extraordinary. Through a close reading of several Estonian novels („Indigo” by Peeter Sauter and „Tõde ja õigus” by Anton Hansen Tammsaare), the article suggests that, instead of underlining the burdensome boredom of the everyday, literature has the potential, through the power of its imagery, to aestheticize the everyday, even against the conscious will of the writer. If the routine of the everyday involves the automatization of life and a loss of the intense feeling of being in the world, Heidegger reminds us that the work of art opens up being in the world as a whole – and art does so precisely by relying on the everyday, not on moments of extraordinary significance. Thus, art would imply the disappearance of the everyday as a locus of boredom, unfullfilment, obligation and repetition, and the replacement of the everyday with pidulik elu, a life at once festive and solemn. For Heidegger, the everyday is a based on a structure of Care. Indeed, Care is the existential meaning of the everyday and the basis of human existence. Insofar as literature might aim towards revealing the structure of Care, this effort would involve the creation of festive life precisely out of the ordinariness of the everyday. Thus, in addition to the way literature might depart from the everyday by means of the violent and the extraordinary, literature might also recover the solemn festivity of the everyday as a way of making a piece of fiction readable, thus creating loci of desire and interest in the text.

Prospects for Feminism in the Islamic Republic of Iran

There is a stark contrast between the level of Iranian women’s social and political engagement and what the conservative regime prescribes. The gap between the reality of women’s participation in public life and their restricted legal status has emboldened women’s groups to campaign for legal reforms. But the Iranian regime has adopted an uncompromising position in relation to such demands. This is seen as an existential matter for the state. As a result, the Islamic regime has adopted a highly intolerant and repressive approach to women’s groups. This is most evident in relation to secular-oriented feminists, such as the Nobel Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi, driving a wedge between the latter and the more religiously-oriented feminists.