Existential Turn Research Articles

Онтологічні підґрунтя моральної культури. Частина II

Background. Forgetting the problems of being, erasing the idea of being from the worldview of contemporary humans, and focusing on individualistic and hedonistic practices lead to the narrowing of the personality's fullness, dehumanization of its moral and spiritual dimension, and alienation from one's own essence. The ontological turn of thinking, turn to its essential foundations, will allow finding a reliable foundation for a moral culture shaken by skepticism and nihilism, and making an existential turn in search of a person's lost essence. The article is aimed to study the ontological foundations of moral culture. The task of the article's first part is to investigate the ontological framework of moral culture – its fundamental axes; the task of the article's second part is to analyze the moral concepts of freedom, conscience, dignity, and equality through the prism of the ontological framework. Methods. The article uses a historical-philosophical and comparative method, as well as methods of genealogy and hermeneutic methods of interpretation. The general research paradigm is the transcendental anti-positivist tradition of philosophizing. Results. It is argued that the parameters of reality and its internal structure are determined by the ontological framework, namely the axes of sacred and profane, single and multiple, phenomenal and essential (proper). The fundamental connection between the ethical and the ontological, in which human existence is always a moral existence, is emphasized. Moral culture, our ideas about good and evil depend on our understanding of existence. Moral concepts are ontological – point to an objective valuable reality, "material a priori". It is noted that ontological dignity includes formal and material (content) aspects, assuming the existence of ontological equality of all people, ontological freedom and ontological conscience. Conclusions. The vision of existence as a sacred gift enables the ontological dignity of a person, that is, his non-alienated transcendental self-being. The vision of the sacred gift of being in the unity of diversity, in turn, implies the vision of the ontological equality of all people, who, being different, are simultaneously equal as they are all gifted with being. The ontological equality of people requires a certain "common denominator" of humanity, which may vary depending on the chosen paradigm. A meaningful expression of ontological dignity is ontological freedom, which consists of a person's ability to say a transcendental "yes" or "no" to the world, and to choose between being-centric and egocentric modes of existence. Awareness of the two poles of existence – the essential and the phenomenal – gives rise to an ontological conscience: an individual's anxiety about the authenticity of one's own existence and guilt for not being oneself.

Truth and Affect

I connect the idea of an existential turn in philosophical science, presented by Ilya Kasavin and Vladimir Porus in their recent article, with the problem of rationality and culture crisis, as well as the opposition of profession and vocation in Max Weber’s famous speech on politics. I offer an analysis of the structure of vocation to politics and to science as affects of a special kind. To do this, I draw on Jacques Lacan’s analysis of hysteria. My conclusions are that the structure of a target affect coincides to that of hysteria. This means that scientist tries to show that the truth exists, seeks to force other people to recognize this fact and submit to science as an only acceptable form of worldview. Until this can be done, the scientist gives his relationship to the community the character of service to the highest entity. At the same time, he waits for the inversion of this service, i.e. a transition to power through acknowledgement. It should be noted that scientific research is never limited by the science itself, no matter how dangerous it may be. The existential choice in science is a choice between the pursuit of truth in natural sciences and exact sciences and maintaining the sustainability of culture in social and humanitarian knowledge. The latter, contrary to Weber, is always intertwined with politics. The first is not political, but affective. This allows me to see the definition of the vocation to the science that Kasavin gives in a new way. At the center of the “cognitive-existential mood” in the search for truth, affect dominates, the engine of which is hysteria, and in its basic attitudes truth and the scientist are opposed to the plausible and the profane.

Bossa Nova as Existential Turn

The article approaches Bossa Nova as an experience of resignification at the existentialand religious level, focusing primarily on the song Chega de saudade (No more blues),by Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes. Opinions and testimonies are listed, in orderto attest to the centrality of this song for Bossa Nova and Brazilian Popular Music.Chega de saudade catalyzes aspirations, like a horizon of happiness. The constitutionand main features of the Bossanovista movement are discussed, as well as the albumChega de saudade, by João Gilberto. The musical elements of the song (harmony,rhythm, melody, timbre, interpretation, lyrics, etc.) are treated in their dimension ofmeaning, as an aesthetic-religious experience. Finally, the national and internationalrepercussion of the Bossanovista movement is approached.

Imagining the Jubilee: Modern Jewish Utopias from the Inception of Zionism to the Existential Turn

The commandment to observe the Jubilee year, which appears in the final chapters of Leviticus, is a multifaceted riddle. The Talmud claims that observance of the Jubilee ceased with the expulsion of the Israelite tribes 2,700 years ago, implying a complete lack of oral traditions on the subject. However, despite its absence from Jewish practice and actual memory, the Jubilee played a central role in Jewish utopian thought on ownership, property, and the relationship with the Land of Israel. The rise of modern Zionism witnessed a flowering of utopian thinking inspired by the Jubilee. Herzl, Jabotinsky, and other Zionist thinkers offered modern interpretations of the Jubilee, intended to serve as the foundation of the model society they aimed to create. In recent decades, discussion of the Jubilee has become a battleground between liberal and conservative thinkers, who have attempted to frame the commandment as a mechanism of social and economic reform or as a means to strengthen private ownership respectively. This article addresses modern interpretations of the Jubilee from the early Zionist writers to the present, exploring the various ways in which Jubilee utopias have been employed as a source of inspiration for a newly constructed social and economic ethos. Following this analysis, I offer a new, existential interpretation of the Jubilee for the 21st century. I suggest a reading of the act of return to ancestral land every fifty years in the context of the global and virtual era, specifically drawing on the process described by Zygmunt Bauman (1998) as the great war of independence for space.

Conceptualization of Modern Man's Moral Quest in the Work of Karin Alvtegen

The aim of the work is to conceptualize the moral quest of modern man in the novels «Shame» and «The Butterfly Effect» by the Swedish writer K. Alvtegen. The methodological basis of the study is general scientific methods of analysis: historicism, systematization, comparison and generalization of the problem under study. A significant role in the analysis of the specificity of the creative process, the disclosure of the moral quests of modern man in the artistic work is played by an interdisciplinary approach, which allowed to attract scientific developments from the branches of cultural studies, philosophy, ethics and psychology. Scientific novelty: for the first time in Russian cultural studies the work of K. Alvtegen was analyzed in the context of the disclosure of the problem of moral quests of man in modern literature. Conclusions: K. Alvtegen's novels «Shame» and «Butterfly Effect» have been analyzed. It is shown that the author creates images of his characters, first of all, in the psychoanalytical perspective, relying on the ideas of different philosophical schools, while trying to fix the attention of readers on the moral aspect of human existence, in particular on the manifestation of shame, guilt and fear. It is noted that the work of K. Alvtegen is a significant phenomenon in the logic of the development of the modern literary process. Key words: shame, guilt, fear, «will to meaning», psychological trauma, «existential turn».

The existential turn in philosophy of education: In defence of liberal autonomy

Abstract In recent years, there has been a marked shift in concern among some philosophers of education from political transformation to personal transformation. In the past, critics of liberalism, both egalitarian and communitarian, promoted political, social, economic and educational reform—but always subscribed to the freedom of the individual, the sovereign subject, to seek fulfilment. Now, influenced by an existential turn in the work of Heidegger, Sartre and Levinas, which originates in Hegel's dialectic of freedom, and postmodernist notions of transgressive self-creation, proponents of personally transformative education call for a decentring of the egoistic self so that we might recreate ourselves as ethical beings whose unconditional obligations are to ‘the other’ in a shared world. However, this vision of idealised existential subjects stripped of contingent worldly attachments and selfish egocentric impulses, enjoying idealised ethical relations and what I term ‘existential freedom’, is radically undetermined. It could only be achieved if individual wills were merged into a collective will or consciousness, and personal autonomy was eliminated. Meanwhile, crucial educational and political questions concerning how the practical affairs of autonomous individuals—real people—should be managed in a liberal democracy, and how young people should be educated for responsible citizenship, are neglected (at least among those influenced by the existentialist turn), as the formative and socialising functions of education are undermined. I conclude that the existential turn towards personally transformative education leads us nowhere.

Мемориальный музей: экзистенциальная оптика пространства

The modern museum is not only in the sphere of mass interests, but also serves as a reflection and expression of certain mass trends. While maintaining the status of a classical cultural institution, it was to a large extent precisely the museum that has become an arena of public discord on determining the strategies of cultural reproduction. This issue gains a pronouncedly contentious character due to the rapid development of information formats of traditional leisure now including interactive technologies, arbitrary historical reconstructions, elements of theatricalization. In “Escape from Amnesia” (A. Huyssen) the ‘society of total spectacle’ demands searching for new means, which often contribute to loss and substitution of values. The visitor’s interest towards the history of the quotidian greatly influences the dynamics of changing the creative potential of a museum, predominantly a memorial museum. Long-term practices of modeling the historical space reveal the internal form of the concept of ‘ex-position’. This is the natural cause of an internal conflict, when being ‘arranged in a straight line’ replaces the principles of accurate and documentally verified positioning of memorial objects. ‘Museumness’ should not supplant ‘the quotidian’, ‘the existential’; however, the functional principle of arranging the objects, their ‘pattern’ is often replaced by the composite approach, in which ‘decorative’ or ‘design’ solutions become dominant. This trend actively competes with the key theoretical foundations of museum source studies, and the traditional museum is increasingly transforming into a kind of parallel model of culture. The memorial object, as a fact of intellectual history, is significant within the material culture and spiritual heritage. At the same time, the alleged meanings and false semiotization often substitute the biographical realities, when ‘fit for exposition’ is everything that the mass museum visitor connects in his mind with his arbitrary understanding of the past. These are key aspects of the subject of modern museum criticism. This article discloses our understanding of the memorial exposition as a self-organizing system with a certain aesthetic code. Methodologically significant is the existential turn towards ‘evidence paradigm’ – giving up the impersonal demonstration of old things. This is a turn towards the model ‘things-speak’ (self-awareness, self-disclosure of things) – towards the structure that communicates ideas and life meanings. It is where the memorial object, understood as ‘message’, ‘material communication’, can disclose the fullness of its historical authenticity.

Narrative arcs and shaping influences in long-term medication adherence

Long-term adherence to medications is not well understood and poses a significant challenge for many chronically ill persons. Past research provides insights on adherence in short durations such as a day or several weeks, even though chronically ill patients are required to take medications for periods as long as a lifetime. To fill this important knowledge gap, we study the temporal unfolding of prolonged medication-taking experiences among thirty adults, mostly African American, with chronic hypertension in the U.S. Specifically, we take an extended, experience-centered, narrative approach to examine retrospective patient accounts of adherence efforts over spans of one year to more than four decades. Applying Gergen and Gergen's concept of narrative forms (1983), we find four distinct narrative arcs, or patterned sequences of medication consumption, that we term Out of the Gate, Existential Turn, Fits and Starts, and Slow Climb, along with individual and social elements that shape and shift practices in the context of time.

Character: Three Inquiries in Literary StudiesCharacter as Form

Character: Three Inquiries in Literary StudiesCharacter as Form

The “Existential Turn” in Education as an Answer to Crises Facing an Individual

The author characterizes a crisis as a complex and multidimensional phenomenon. She points out the ambivalence of crises, as they can lead to a final catastrophe or create good conditions for transgression. She argues that the absence of crises might be worrying and even pathological, as it may demonstrate the avoidance of challenges and no commitment to one’s development. She refers to Theodor Adorno’s idea of partial education and indicates some of its symptoms. Against that background, some fields of educational activity are discussed. In the author’s opinion, they are essential for restoring the balance disturbed by a crisis as well as for using a crisis for the benefit of one’s development.

A. A. Ukhtomsky’s philosophy as existential hermeneutics

The article deals with the “existential turn” of the twentieth century in hermeneutics, which consisted in understanding the personality as a text created by man’s inner freedom. By means of this method and with the help of the ideas of critical philosophy it seems possible to reconstruct the personal semantic “worlds”. The con­cept of Dasein proposed by M. Heidegger was considered to be a universal “cipher” for such a text. The existential effort of hermeneutics con­sists in grasping what is always “dissolved” in the interpretation of a text, which reflects the specific features of another subject – the author. The concepts of “man’s double” and the “Honored interlocutor” introduced by A. A. Ukhtom­sky made it possible to discover an anthropological problem, which consists in the fact that our perception of the world and every other “I” is determined by the two opposing dominants: 1) the dominant on one’s own “I” which turns other people perceived by man into his doubles; 2) the dominant on the Other’s face enabling man to see his true essence. In the article, the basic ontological, epistemological and ethical aspects of Ukhtomsky’s theory are analysed, the biographical context of the formation of this theory is examined. It is claimed that the type of cognition represented in Ukhtomsky’s teaching is kind of cognition resulting from the act of man’s transformation. The author argues that it is this transformation that enables man to get rid of his “doubles” and to see things correctly. It is concluded that Ukhtomsky is a founder of the Russian “existential hermeneutics” which is alternative to Heidegger’s one and should be studied and developed.

Decision and the Existential Turn by Primož Repar

<i>Decision and the Existential Turn</i> by Primož Repar

Daniel Bensaïd between Marx and Benjamin

Daniel Bensaïd (1946–2010) was a leading figure of May ’68, a Marxist thinker and an influential French public intellectual. His theoretical and political trajectory is divided into two distinct periods separated by the historical turn of 1989: the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of theussr. This also coincided with an existential turn due to his contractingaids, which brought him close to death. After this turn, he played the role of a ‘border-crosser’ between generations, intellectual currents and geopolitical areas within the radical left. In the 1990s, he began a critical rereading of Marx and tried to transcend Trotskyism, confronting its legacy with other currents of critical thought, notably the Frankfurt School. Since this pivotal moment, his writings reveal a permanent and intense dialogue with the work of Walter Benjamin, which he reinterpreted in a contemporary, political perspective, rethinking the political dilemmas of the twenty-first century through a Messianic vision of history. This article emphasises the affinities between two historical constellations – 1939 and 1989 – which, in spite of their obvious differences, were equally shaped by a feeling of defeat, and allowed a fruitful ‘encounter’ between French and German philosophers.

A Response to the Dialogical Hermeneutics of Critical Complexity Thinking in Kunneman’s Reframing of “The Political Importance of Voluntary Work”

Responding to Kunneman’s argument that the notion of ‘ethical complexity’ introduces an existential and ethical turn in the field of complexity thinking, it is argued that Kunneman’s concept of ‘diapoiesis’ corresponds to a critical interpretation of ‘complexity thinking’. By applying critical complexity thinking to the notion of voluntary work, Kunneman explores the possibility of rearticulating the notion of voluntary work outside the boundaries of the static economic paradigm of consumption and production of labor. He redefines voluntary work in terms of the many tensions that emerge as a result of belonging to a number of spheres simultaneously. Reconfigured by what can be called a ‘dialogical hermeneutics of complexity thinking’ Kunneman exposes the moral narrative that underpins the ethical imperative that is inextricably linked to ‘civic meaningfulness’.

Philosophy of Doctrinal Classification: Kōyama Iwao and Mou Zongsan

Doctrinal classification or the panjiao 判教 system of Chinese Buddhism has been rediscovered and renewed in modern East Asian philosophy since both the Kyoto School and New Confucianism clarified the philosophical meaning of this intellectual tradition. The theoretical relation between these two modern reconsiderations, however, has not yet been studied. I analyze the theory of panjiao in Kōyama Iwao 高山岩男 (1905–1993) and Mou Zongsan 牟宗三 (1909–1995) so as to identify and extract, despite their apparent irrelevance, the same type of philosophical argument concerning the ontological character of yuanjiao 圓教. My analysis shows that Mou’s distinction between the “two-door mind” paradigm and Buddhistic ontology in his interpretation of Tiantai 天台 Buddhism corresponds to Kōyama’s distinction between an idealistic system and the existential turn in his generalized panjiao system.

Sartre as Silent Partner: Reading Bhabha's Existential Turn

Sartre as Silent Partner:Reading Bhabha's Existential Turn Alan Ramón Ward (bio) Homi Bhabha's essay "Remembering Fanon" (1986)1 uniquely stages a political problem within an intellectual tradition: a dispute between Lacanian and Sartrean models of subjectivity as applied to Frantz Fanon's descriptions of "the black man." Though I agree with the essay's many critics that Bhabha ostensibly misrepresents Fanon's descriptions,2 and moreover that his emphasis on psychoanalytic and discursive dynamics cannot provide a convincing reading of Fanon, I also believe that Bhabha's text has the potential to do much more. In particular, it has the potential to uncover the effect of "shame" as a fundamental dynamic of acculturation, representing a broad theoretical approach to subjectivity that posits a basic mechanism in contradistinction to Jacques Lacan's complex processes of identification. As phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas explains, shame delivers to us our own selves exposed inescapably as objects, "the nakedness of an existence incapable of hiding itself" (64). In the moment of encounter with another person, shame exposes "the representation we form of ourselves as diminished beings with which we are pained to identify" (63). Giorgio Agamben adds that this moment in the face of the Other is the subject's self construction as well as his or her reduction: "This double movement, which is both subjectification and desubjectification, is shame" (106). Among the proponents of this deceptively simple mechanism, Jean-Paul Sartre delivers its richest defense in his philosophy of the subject. Like Levinas and Agamben, he situates shame as a moment of encounter with the Other, within which the subject is exposed to his or her jarring objectivity. My aim is to open Bhabha's text to reveal a separate, unacknowledged dimension of Fanon's black man that pushes past Bhabha's Lacanian allegiances in favor of Sartrean shame and the existentialist [End Page 87] aspects of this figure. In essence, this paper seeks to use Bhabha's work on Fanon to illustrate the propitious suitability of a recently neglected Sartrean, philosophical approach to understanding the experience of Fanon's black man in a white western society. I will focus here on the extended version of Bhabha's "Remembering Fanon," which is included in his The Location of Culture (1994) under the title "Interrogating Identity: Frantz Fanon and the Postcolonial Prerogative." Bhabha suggests in this version that Fanon's black man undergoes a process of Lacanian identification wherein, as Lacan puts it, the very "constitution of the subject [occurs] in the field of [otherness]" (1981, 208; see Bhabha 2004, 64). The subject's own self-image and identity come to conform to a certain perspective, represented by an abstract "Other" (see Chiesa, 35): "The human being has always to learn from scratch from the Other what he has to do" (Lacan 1981, 204). This occurs in conversation with Lacan's symbolic mandate, the set of symbols and logic of interaction by which the specific coordinates for a perception of reality are supplied. For Lacan, "human action [is almost entirely] founded on the existence of the world of the symbol," which represents the dominant logic of signification by which individuals interact with one another and their environments (1991, 230). As Colette Soler explains, "the symbolic laws . . . envelop and determine . . . the subject" (52). Bhabha ably explains that the process of self-identification is interrupted by the black man's exposure to certain kinds of racialized knowledge. The explicit determinations carried by meaning and language through discourse, argues Bhabha, interrupt the process of identification and do not allow it to come to completion (2004, 83). He uses Fanon to substantiate his claim: the subject is surrounded by meanings, "discover[ing] blackness," as Fanon puts it, as "tom toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetishism, racial defects, slave ships" (112). What results is a persistent and permanent ambivalence in the black man's identifications whereby the black man's subjectivity is put in question. At the same time, however, Bhabha posits that Lacan's process must be violently halted for the black man upon meeting the person of the Other, principally through the overdetermination of his color, in order to match Fanon's descriptions (Bhabha 2004, 75...

Significance of close relationships after the tsunami disaster in connection with existential health – a qualitative interpretive study

In an existential health perspective, the potential for recovery and development through natural life circumstances provides a factor to be taken into account. Earlier research on disaster-stricken people indicates that people create their own ways of recovering and that natural caring encounters (with family or friends) imply important health factors. The aim of the study is to acquire an in-depth understanding of the significance of natural close relationships for survivors of the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia in connection with the development of existential health and understanding of life in a long-term perspective. The sample consists of 19 persons afflicted by the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia, both Swedish tourists and relatives at home. Data were collected from interviews recurring five times during 2006. What is evidently seen is how the ontological aspects are expressed in data in relation to the existential and relational aspects. In concrete terms, this is understood when survivors say that their lives are completely changed (an ontological turn in their understanding of life). A change also occurs in the way they relate to others (a concrete existential turn), for example, in their families. When the findings on communion as an utterance of interdependence were read comprehensively, it was seen that human encounters in the aftermath of a disaster are not only about relationships but inherently affect people's entire understanding of life both ontologically and existentially. Relationships with others and communion become a way of understanding or defining life. To conclude, in line with the aim of the study, the data suggest that relationships and communion with other people helped the survivors of the tsunami to discover a new understanding of life. It is also clear that natural encounters have had great importance for progress in existential health.

The Existential Turn: Reappraising Being and Time’s Overcoming of Metaphysics

The task of this paper is to propose an answer to these related questions. It amounts to an attempt to work through conceptually step by step Heidegger’s so called “overcoming of metaphysics”. It is true of course that the locution, “the overcoming of metaphysics”, does not appear in Being and Time. The discourse of the overcoming of metaphysics is held by Heidegger’s commentators to belong to a period post-dating the early work, after the socalled Kehre. I shall stubbornly evade this knotty issue of Heidegger interpretation here. For my purposes it suffices merely if our understanding of Being and Time, its content, intent and consequence, can be deepened or expanded if it is read in the light of the task of overcoming metaphysics - or at least in the light of that task as it is to be conceived in the context I shall present here. What is to be understood by the phrase “the overcoming of metaphysics”? doi: 10.3860/krit.v4i1.1837 Kritike Vol.4(1) 2010 pp.94-107

What’s wrong with globalization?: Contra ‘flow speak’ - towards an existential turn in the theory of globalization

The article attempts a reformulation of globalization theory. We identify ‘flow speak’ and the flattened ontology of the social that goes with it as a major limitation in contemporary globalization theory. Contrary to the prevailing overemphasis on mobility and deterritorialization, we suggest an existential turn that orients future globalization thinking more towards issues of belonging, choice and commitment, and the rhythmicity of social relations. To highlight the processual character of this shift of perspective, we shall draw on the paradigmatic figure of the ‘homecomer’. S/he, in our understanding, embodies the ambivalence between the lure of global options and the need for commitment to lasting bonds. Thus, we do not argue for a post-mortem on globalization theory, but maintain that a deeper understanding of globalization as a ‘way of being in the world’ would require a phenomenologically inclined repositioning of the concept.

Response to Symposiasts

This is a response to the contributions to the symposium on David Walsh's trilogy on modernity: After Ideology (1990), The Growth of the Liberal Soul (1997), and The Modern Philosophical Revolution (2008). After expressing appreciation for the careful reading the work has received, it enters into a reflection on the underlying unity of the studies. This is intended to address the common concerns that center on the issue of how the modern world is to be understood. It emphasizes the impossibility of separating the attempt to understand modernity from the need to take responsibility for it. This is the perspective that has illuminated the totalitarian catharsis, the durability of liberal political regimes, and the existential turn within modern philosophy. In the latter part of the essay, a response is offered to specific objections and characterizations that individual symposiasts raise.