Zoon Politikon Research Articles

Linguistic Journey: Deciphering English with the Magic of Data and Emotions

In the digital age, learning English as a Second Language (ESL) has undergone an unprecedented transformation, driven both by technological evolution and by the understanding of the importance of emotions in the educational process. This article explores the intersection of technology, emotions, and learning English, highlighting the figure of the Homo Technologicus, a species immersed and shaped by technology, but still essentially human. Through a philosophical and pedagogical analysis, this paper argues that, even though technology offers innovative tools and methods, it is crucial to balance it with sound pedagogical approaches that consider students’ emotions and motivations. Personalization of learning English as a second language, driven by algorithms and data, is a powerful tool, but it must be used in a way that fosters human connection and the holistic development of the individual.

Aristotle’s concept of zoon politikon: on political benefits of being not too perfect

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The article discusses the concept of zoon politikon in order to provide arguments justifying the attractiveness of Aristotle’s practical philosophy.
 THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: There are three quasi-definitions of man in Aristotle’s works, each of which emphasises a different aspect of humanity. According to the philosopher, we are speaking animals, political animals (zoa politika) and the only animals endowed with reason. I argue that it is the condition of zoon politikon that comes to the fore as the most human of human properties. The article uses a historical-philosophical method supported by textual analysis.
 THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: In the first part of the text, Aristotle’s term zoon politikon is analysed as a concept intended to show the superiority of humanity over animality. In the second part, it is presented as a limitation that distinguishes humans from gods. By analysing how these two perspectives overlap, it is then possible to discuss some political consequences of the tension between them.
 RESEARCH RESULTS: The analysis leads to the conclusion that, according to Aristotle, a good human is not someone who “exercises rationality to a high degree”, but above all someone who is political to a high degree. It also suggests that Aristotle’s concept can be used to distinguish between two kinds of politics, which should not be reduced to each other: “artificial” politics (which can be equated with power), and natural human politics (which is based on free individual action in the area of praxis).
 CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The notion of zoon politikon reflects the relational character of the individual human self, and thus offers a perspective that allows both methodological and political individualism to be challenged. It can also be a source of inspiration for those scholars, who argue that politics cannot be reduced to power.

Costituzione, ieri e oggi

Constitutions represent an answer to a problem that derives from the nature of human beings and from their co-living together in a common social and political space. The root of the “constitutional problem” can be summed up with the following double question: how to create a stable and safe human/political community for zoon politikon, inside of a given territory, under a political organization flexible enough to adapt to internal and external changes which can threaten stability and security of collective coexistence? And how to do it between order and freedom, between power and law, between consent and dissent, between majority and minority? The present essay examines conceptual, empirical and historical profiles concerning the constitutional matter which has engaged the Ancients as well as the Moderns and Contemporaries. The essay emphasizes, on one side, the transformations of constitutions, on the other side, the intrinsic nature of constitutions in terms of “sociopolitical contract” and the normative telos that characterizes them. In contemporary societies, the Occidental ones in primis, the constitutional telos stay wrapped up, more than in the past, in an intimate (and conflictual) interweaving between formal (or encoded) constitution and “material” constitution “practiced” in social, cultural and political life. One might say that men do their constitutions, but not at will: systemic dynamics and structures (social and cultural, economics and technological, juridical and political) matter.

ДЕРЖАВА І ВІЙНА: ІСТОРИКО-ФІЛОСОФСЬКА РЕФЛЕКСІЯ ВІДНОСИН

Defining a person as “Zoon politikon”, Aristotle actually indicated the factor of existence and survival of humanity: a person must be and function in a social group – that is the state, and, accordingly, it must look for relatively acceptable options for his interaction within various situations. However, despite such an unwritten law, humanity unleashes and engages in wars continuously. Based on this fact, the determination of war and the initiation of active participation in it by certain groups of people, as well as the legitimacy of their actions, is reproduced in public opinion and social practice throughout the history of mankind and is a useful basis for considering views on the relationship between the state and war. The purpose of the article is to present a concise analysis of the opinions of the wise men of the past on the essence of the relationship between the state and war. From the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, we can trace the idea that war, as the most characteristic manifestation of “fight” in its dialectical sense, is the driving force of the development of history and the state, a means of knowledge, a law of existence. The majority of liberals express the opinion that war creates and conditions law, especially positive law, which is the result of the activity of the state and power, therefore, through war, states are also created, and therefore, no nation has developed without war (M. Revon). It is noted that war, on the one hand, is welcome and necessary for the state, on the other, it kills the state and brings disaster, no matter what “scientific tools” are used to conduct it. It is concluded that war as one of the politics means is a function of the state and a conflict of interests, primarily due to the essence of state power itself in all its manifestations. War is support for the existence and content of the state. Key words: war, state, classical concept of war, malignant war, power of the state.

Vita COVIDa as a Biopolitical Modality of Life in a Pandemic

The pandemic of the COVID-19 coronavirus infection has formed a special biopolitical modality of life, that of vita COVIDa. Biopolitics, the tools of which the authorities turned to in a pandemic, re-assembled the social space, thus changing the flow of social time. In this accelerated mode, the path from isolation through quarantine to vaccination has been completed. Historically-proven tools to combat the pandemic have been consistently combined. What was new was the appeal to the arsenal of modern digital technologies which made it possible to create a unique flexible barrier environment and control the process of the immunization of the population. Vita COVIDa was a form of further restriction of active life (vita activa). During the pandemic, consumption increased as an aspect of the work managed by animal laborans; there is a lack of creative activity carried out by homo faber; and there is a collapse of public space, leading to a pseudo-political virtual polemic in which a person gets bogged down as a zoon politikon. In conditions when the contemplative life (vita contemplativa) is captured by the effect of stickiness in the interpassivity mode, vita COVIDa slides to routine work and hyper-consumption, increasingly assigning the priority role of animal laborans to a person. The special spaces of the stationary (“Red Zone” or “camp of life”) and mobile (QR code) camps, formed in the mode of an undeclared state of emergency, produce a “naked life” (vita nuda). The increasing tension creates prerequisites for the invasion of the friend/enemy political-identifier proper into social relations, situationally assigning the status of homo sacer to persons whose modus operandi is perceived as risky. Foucault understood racism is actualized in the biopolitical space of the pandemic. The contradictory trends of the pandemic should be considered within the framework of the Esposito immunization paradigm, in which the pandemic with its threats of social collapse should be considered as something that requires an immune response in the form of a coordinated response of the authorities and the population to the threats of social collapse. The intense confrontations between humanity and disease and between the authorities and the population in the field of imposed restrictions and responsible adoption of the proposed measures lead to the need to develop co-vida vita (co-life) as a way of living and overcoming vita COVIDa during the return to the “old” new normality.

Somatic Transformations in the Context of Antropotechnogynesis at the Modern Stage

Purpose. The main purpose of the article is the analysis of the phenomenon and manifestations of the somatic transformations in the context of anthropo-technological evolution at the beginning of the XXI century. Theoretical basis. The author determines the understanding of the concept "somatic transformations" in the frames of anthropotechnogynesis is possible only on the base of integrative approach and combination of post-non-classical scientific paradigm methodology, theory of the technological development, ideas of trans-humanism, informative society concepts, and net technologies influence on the identity of the human being with robots in the sphere of bioethics and nanoethics, the ethics of new technologies and legal documents which are regulating the processes of technotransformation of the human being. Originality. The author has proved on the example of analysis of the somatic transformations own psychosomatics as he solves some important global in the context of anthropotechnogynesis that a person with help of technological enlargement of and branch problems, so he is trapped of alienation in the very crucial stage, loses the identity and crashes the corporeality in his self. Conclusions. As evidenced by the given analysis, at the modern stage the anthropotechnogynesis is followed by the large-scale quantitative and qualitative somatic transformations based on NBIC-convergence, as a result, a new anthropological subspecies – Homo technologicus appears. All these transformations are a regular stage of evolution, which confirms the thesis of the essential and functional connection of technology with the human body, which are in a relationship of "mutual provocation". In the base of the paradigmatic ontological and anthropological shift which has been on the modern stage, lies the idea of continuity of anthropotechnological co-evolution of the human body and its environment which projects itself in psychosomatic human structure, making a transformation program for better adaptation in technonanobeing. The convergence of human life and techno-existence is a platform for somatic transformations. They are divided into two main groups: intra-structural, substantial, related to techno-modification of the human body directly through biotechnology and genetic engineering, cyborgization, xenotransplantation, Hi-Hume connection with Hi-Tech and others, and external-contextual, when under the influence of pancommunication and hybridization the environment is increasingly mentalized and somatized, and modern technologies are gradually transformed into the social body of man.

Study on Genealogy of Human Soul and Animal Voice in Modern Western Intellectual History

본 연구는 ‘동물의 죽음과 목소리’에 대해 서구 지성사가 가졌던 매혹, 문제의식들과 그 한계들, 그리고 윤리적 아포리아를 해결하기 위한 노력들을 계보학적으로 정리하고 논하려 한다. 이를 위해 이 문제를 상세하게 다룬 아감벤의 초기 저서인 『언어와 죽음』(Language and Death)을 해제하면서 이 책에서 주로 언급하는 헤겔(Georg Hegel)과 하이데거(Martin Heidegger)의 철학을 비판적으로 점검하려 한다. 그리고 동물과 목소리와 인간의 생명과 죽음을 다룬 이들 철학자의 관념론을 해체한 자끄 데리다(Jacque Derrida)와 가야트리아 스피박(Gayatri Spivak)의 접근법들을 비교 분석하고 비판적으로 해석하려 한다. 마지막으로 아감벤의 최근 저서이자 이 모든 논쟁들의 근원에 대한 새로운 접근법을 보인 『열린 공간』(The Open)을 해제하려 한다. 존재의 부정성에 대한 근대 서구 사상의 매혹과 그 안에 숨겨진 윤리적 문제를 계보학적으로 다루는 이 연구는 앞으로 있을 연구들의 토대를 세우는 기초연구로서 앞으로 있을 연구들의 초석이 될 것이라 기대한다.This essay purports to investigate the genealogy of inclusive exclusion between human soul and animal voice through Western intellectual history. In the Western intellectual tradition, humanity has been distinguished from animality, which genealogically begun with Aristotle who called human political animal (zoon politikon). The essay starts the genealogical deconstruction by critically perusing Giorgio Agamben’s Language and Death in which Agamben disinters the hidden core of Western intellectual secret: the voice of a dying animal. Agamben unfolds and deconstructs how both Hegel and Heidegger, despite their efforts to reveal ontological superiority of human language as full speech and Dasein, get immersed in the inquiries of ethos of voice and animality in the place of language and humanity. Pronouns such as ‘Da’ of Dasein and ‘This’ in Hegelian philosophy inevitably indicate the negativity of humanity. The essay in turn expounds how dialectics of voice and language as well as animality and humanity unveils the hidden supplementary relations in Heidegger’s division of environment for animals and world for Dasein by deconstructing Heidegger’s Fundamental Concept of Metaphysics. After following Derrida’s deconstruction of Heidegger’s division of animal and Dasein as well as his falling prey to German spirit and Spivak’s further deconstruction of Derrida’s deconstruction from Indian perspective, the essay moves to Agamben’s another book, The Open, where he collocates above-mentioned deconstructions on Western intellectual tradition. In The Open, Agmaben proposes the standstill of dialectics to render all anthropological machines inoperative utilizing Walter Benjamin’s theological-political ideas.

Technologization of human of the postmodern age as a challenge to the natural reality of the earth

Object of research: technology as a component of human social life in the context of the postmodern era.
 Investigated problem: determination of the features of the influence of technological processes on a person of the postmodern era, as a result of which the natural is replaced by an artificial one and the images of both man and the Earth change.
 Main scientific results: the study of the contradictions of the process of technologization in the postmodern era made it possible to determine the transformation processes taking place in the life of a person and society. This defines social reality, represented by various markers, among which technology is gaining in importance. The latter act as a composite, which provides new opportunities for determining the relationship between the elements of the "world - man - culture" system. It is not only about the emergence of new human figures, among which the technological man (Homo Technologicus) occupies a prominent place, but also the emergence of a new image of the Earth, where the natural is replaced by the technological.
 The scope of practical use of the research results: the research results can be used in teaching normative courses "Philosophical Anthropology", "Ethics", "Sociology" for students and undergraduates, graduate students of humanitarian and natural faculties.
 Innovative technological product: the plurality of existing technologies (economic, medical, educational, humanitarian, etc.) destroys the new European concept of culture and man, which were provided within the framework of the monoparadigm. The anthropological dimension of technology testifies that the latter are beginning to act as a condition for human expansion. This situation has a significant impact on the existentials of human existence.
 The scope of using the innovative technological product: the intensive technologization of the last decades not only provokes environmental risks and changes the state of the Earth, the natural reality of the Earth is replaced by an artificial one, which allows to conclude that the Earth is formed by a technological one.

Knowledge Management for Sustainable Development in the Era of Continuously Accelerating Technological Revolutions: A Framework and Models

This conceptual, interdisciplinary paper will start by introducing the commencement of a new era in which human society faces continuously accelerating technological revolutions, named the Post Accelerating Data and Knowledge Online Society, or ‘Padkos’ (“food for the journey; prog; provisions for journey”—in Afrikaans) for short. In this context, a conceptual model of sustainable development with a focus on knowledge management and sharing will be proposed. The construct of knowledge management will be unpacked into a new three-layer model with a focus on the knowledge-human and data-machine spheres. Then, each sphere will be discussed with concentration on the learning and decision- making processes, the digital supporting systems and the human actors’ aspects. Moreover, the recombination of new knowledge development and contemporary knowledge management into one amalgamated construct will be proposed. The holistic conceptual model of knowledge management for sustainable development is comprised by time, cybersecurity and two alternative humanistic paradigms (Homo Technologicus and Homo Sustainabiliticus). Two additional particular models are discussed in depth. First, a recently proposed model of quantum organizational decision-making is elaborated. Next, a boundary management and learning process is deliberated. The paper ends with a number of propositions and several implications for the future based on the deliberations in the paper and the models discussed and with conclusions.

Die Bedeutung der Ethik bei der Nutzung Künstlicher emotionaler Intelligenz in der Psychiatrie – ein ethischer Diskurs

The ethical discourse addresses the following aspects: What do we need ethics for? Man's disposition to morality, natural ethics. Morality as a social norm. Morality to maintain an inhuman, superhuman power structure. Morality as an artifact of the brain, as a hindrance to new developments. Unity of ethics and aesthetics. "Zoon politikon", "Robinson Crusoe". Does Artificial Intelligence (AI) need new ethics? Characteristics of an AI, developed for loneliness, as a servant or with Christian software, group ability, own emotions, awareness and own ethics, as a supplement. Should AI be expected to have human emotions? Emotional intelligence, language as a mediator of emotions and empathy, the ability to mentalize, artificial (general) emotional intelligence, "Terminator", "L'Eve future".

Homo Iuridicus versus Zoon Politikon — dogmatyka prawnicza a wytwarzanie podmiotu (politycznego)

W refleksji nad politycznością prawa i prawoznawstwa wydaje się dominować pogląd, że polityczność poprzedza (chronologicznie lub strukturalnie) prawo. W konsekwencji to anta-gonizmy sfery polityki współkształtują prawo i jego zjawiska (praktykę prawniczą i prawoznaw-stwo). Teza o prymarności polityczności może być jednak poddana weryfikacji w drodze analizy zainicjowanej przez przewrotne pytanie o jurydyczne warunki, bez których nie jest możliwa po-lityczność par excellence. Refleksja nad ikoną Zoon Politikon odsłania warunek polityczności w postaci podmiotowości uczestników sfery politycznej, z kolei sięgnięcie po psychoanalityczną teorię J. Lacana pozwala uchwycić psychodynamikę upodmiotowienia „zwierzęcia mówiącego” (Zoon Logon Echon). Wprowadzenie zakazu (Symbolicznego zakodowanego w prawie) okazu-je się warunkiem sine qua non ludzkiej podmiotowości. Wedle Pierre’a Legendre’a we współ-czesnym społeczeństwie to dogmatyka prawnicza reprodukuje podmiototwórczy Zakaz, a zatem „montuje” człowieka: Homo Iuridius, i „ustanawia jego życie”. Tym sposobem prawo i dogmaty-ka prawnicza ukazują się jako warunki powstania podmiotu (politycznego), a tym samym samej polityczności.

The Law and Question. The Phenomenon of Question as a Possible Point of Departure for the Phenomenologico-Genetic Theory of Law

In his original phenomenology of law Adolf Reinach distinguishes among experiences the so-called “social acts”. These include acts directed towards other persons that require that the latter acknowledge the communicated contents and assume certain attitudes. Among these acts Reinach mentions there are promises, orders, requests and questions. He argues the promise is the special act that creates the a priori grounds of law. It is to be noted that Reinach’s phenomenology of law is of static character (in the Husserlian sense of the word) and therefore it shares all its advantages and disadvantages. In my paper I would like to draw attention to another social act, which can also be attributed to certain law-making activities, especially from the perspective of the genetic phenomenology. It is questioning. At the same time when Reinach was working on his theory of law, his Munich friend, Johannes Daubert (1877–1947), also a student of Theodor Lipps and a friend of Edmund Husserl, who together with Reinach made an “invasion of the Munichs at Göttingen”, worked on the first phenomenology of the question. Although he did not refer his research to the phenomenon of law, we can ask whether, like Reinach’s deliberations about promises and obligation, it cannot be done. That this is possible to some extent, for example, is evinced by the Hannah Arendt and Klaus Held’s phenomenology of the political world. He points out that the public world as such arises from the primordial openness of man, understood as “zoon politikon”. This openness might be interpreted as the question which is not so much a single act as it is an attitude. The purpose of the paper is to outline how, while starting with the phenomenological reflection over various types of utterances, one can specify their certain forms and the acts constituting them as well as the attitudes which allow for a priori grounding the phenomenon of law from the perspective of static and genetic phenomenology.

루소에 있어 일반의지 기반의 입헌민주국가로서 공화국 건국과 통치 프로젝트 -국가 건립과 통치 패러다임의 현대적 특이점으로서, ‘폴리스적 동물 zoon politikon’로부터, ‘평등하고 자유로운 인간 l’homme egal et libre’으로 발전한 ‘주권자 시민’으로의 인적 전형을 중심으로-

루소에 있어 일반의지 기반의 입헌민주국가로서 공화국 건국과 통치 프로젝트 -국가 건립과 통치 패러다임의 현대적 특이점으로서, ‘폴리스적 동물 zoon politikon’로부터, ‘평등하고 자유로운 인간 l’homme egal et libre’으로 발전한 ‘주권자 시민’으로의 인적 전형을 중심으로-

Logos (bio)politikon:

El objetivo de este artículo es construir una analogía teórica estructural entre animalidad-factualidad y humanidad-ficcionalidad. Para ello se defenderá una doble hipótesis. Por un lado, que la predeterminación biológica que domina la existencia de los animales se identifica con la predeterminación significante que domina los discursos factuales. Y por otro, que la potencialidad virtualmente infinita que caracteriza la existencia humana se identifica con la potencia significante, también virtualmente infinita, de la expresión literaria ficcional. De este modo, y tomando como referencia tanto la definición aristotélica del ser humano como zoon politikon como la concepción foucaultiana del sujeto biopolítico, caracterizaremos la ficción literaria como logos (bio)politikon, esto es, como aquel discurso en cuyas normas de sentido singulares está puesta en entredicho su condición misma de discurso significante.

Women in Indian and Pakistani Politics: Reservation Policy and Quotas versus Human Development

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Homo technologicus and the Recovery of a Universal Ethic: Maximus the Confessor and Romano Guardini

On September 1st2017, Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew issued a Joint Message for the World Day of Prayer for Creation. The gesture reveals the church’s efforts “to breathe with two lungs” on the urgent matter of climate change and ecological sustainability. But, the church leaders have also insisted on a philosophical and religious reflection on technology if humanity is to take responsibility for the environment. In particular, they have sought to correct the wrong interpretation of the biblical imperative to “have dominion over” (Gen 1:26) the creatures of the Earth and to “subdue it” (Gen 1:28) that for centuries has condoned ecological abuse, in particular in the name of technological progress.In this paper, I propose a theological reflection on Homo technologicusthrough the writings of the seventh century monk Maximus the Confessor and the twentieth century Catholic priest Romano Guardini. Maximus offers a systematic account of human techneas reflecting the mark of sin, while being God’s gift to assist us in stewarding creation. Guardini offers a challenging argument for the moral nature of technology in our times. In an age where technology extends human power, even as it seemingly takes on a life of its own, Maximus’ and Guardini’s insights on the “technological human” offer a renewed Christian anthropology that, in the tradition of natural law reasoning, can ground a global ethic for a “sustainable and integral development.” (Joint Message, 2017)

Aristotle’s notion of common good

Aristotle is one of the greatest political philosophers of Greek history. In his book, Politics , we read about Aristotle’s political treatise. His notion of the common good is depicted in his effort to portray what the ideal state should be. They could be inferred from his organization or arrangement and functions of the component parts of the state. Here, Aristotle made it explicit that man is made to live in the society and not in solitude. It is pertinent that man lives in a society, hence the name zoon politikon , that is, political animal or political being. It is from the natural origin that the state is later formed; that is from the family, the village, then many villages and finally the state. But the state is ordered to be self-sufficient. The current political challengings in the world can be addressed reasonably with the philosophical ideology of Aristotle. This paper intends to reveal this Aristotlean ideologies as a possible remedy to the current political problems in the world.

Experiências temporais da vita activa e os desafios da transmissão intergeracional

Em seu prefácio à edição francesa de A Condição Humana, Paul Ricoeur sugere a importância da temporalidade como categoria interpretativa das atividades humanas tal como Arendt as descreve. O presente artigo procura, a partir da exploração dessa chave interpretativa, vincular as experiências temporais da vita activa à responsabilidade política dos educadores em face dos recém-chegados e da durabilidade do mundo. Nele sugerimos que, para Arendt, seria precisamente na tensão e na complementariedade entre as dimensões temporais da experiência do animal laborans, do homo faber e do zoon politikon que se equilibraria a frágil possibilidade de que a política venha a se constituir como uma resposta digna à pluralidade como condição da vida comum e, assim, contrapor-se às tentações totalitárias.

Zoon politikon: The evolutionary origins of human socio-political systems

We deploy the most up-to-date evidence available in various behavioral fields in support of the following hypothesis: The emergence of bipedalism and cooperative breeding in the hominin line, together with environmental developments that made a diet of meat from large animals adaptive, as well as cultural innovations in the form of fire, cooking, and lethal weapons, created a niche for hominins in which there was a significant advantage to individuals with the ability to communicate and persuade in a moral context. These forces added a unique political dimension to human social life which, through gene-culture coevolution, became Homo ludens—Man, the game player—with the power to conserve and transform the social order. Homo sapiens became, in the words of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, a zoon politikon.

Scatter I: The Politics of Politics in Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida

Scatter I: The Politics of Politics in Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida