Meaning Of Human Life Research Articles

Vztah rentability, likvidity a hrubého domácího produktu v podmínkách České republiky

Pouze firmám, které jsou schopny dokonale ovládat nejen obchodní stránku podnikatelské činnosti (odbyt výrobků a služeb je bezesporu smyslem existence každé firmy), ale také stránku finanční, která představuje velmi významnou součást strategického rozhodování, jsou schopny obstát v relativně silné konkurenci současného ekonomického prostředí. Nejdůležitějšími parametry z hlediska fungování podniku jsou tak rentabilita a likvidita, neboť jejich hodnotami jsou měřeny dva základní cíle existence každého podniku, tedy zajištění platební schopnosti a tvorba pozitivních efektů z podnikatelské činnosti. Důraz je v kontextu s těmito ukazateli kladen rovněž na aspekty vývoje ekonomického cyklu a indikátory důvěry. Komparace byla provedena na úrovni oborů podnikání. Cílem příspěvku je vyhodnotit z praktického hlediska teoretické podklady vyplývající ze skutečnosti, že nízká úroveň rentability bude z hlediska ekonomických ukazatelů znamenat, že bude zároveň držena vysoká likvidita a naopak.

Art and Society in Light of Adorno’s Non-Identity Philosophy

This article begins with a discussion of T.W. Adorno’s exploration of the culture industry, which he sees as characterized by deception and manipulation. The article then goes on to focus on the phenomenon of “false culture,” which has been brought about by commodity fetishism’s expansion to the cultural field in terms of both artistic creation (production) and appraciation (consumption). The article’s task then turns to interpreting Adorno’s critical reflections on art on the basis of his non-identity philosophy and the intrinsic dual dimensions (both destroying and reconciling) of “negative dialectics.” This allows one to make the claim that there is an inner relationship between Adorno’s theory of art and his social thought, and that these two aspects of discussion, particularly seen in relation provide a foundation for meaningful human life.

Microfinance: A comparative Study Of Bangladesh and India

is being practiced as a tool to attack poverty the world over. The term Microfinance can be defined as provision of thrift, credit and other financial services and products of very small amounts to the poor in rural, semi- urban or urban areas, enabling them to raise their income levels and improve living standards. The aim of the paper is to understand whether the institutions are serving their purpose of existence or are these rather becoming profit-making centers. This paper conducts a comparative study between India and Bangladesh, in terms of loan lent by institutes to the customers, clientele, financial sustainability of MFI's Institutions, in order to understand how MFI's in India are performing as against those MFI's in Bangladesh as it is considered to be the originator of Microfinance. The paper discovers that no doubt Indian MFI's are more profitable and operating more efficient than those in Bangladesh. I. Evolution of Micro finance as an industry evolved in all the third world countries almost at the same time span. The world over, it was getting widely recognized that improving income levels of low-income community is essential to improve their well-being - besides the state sponsored welfare programmers. During the 1970s and 1980s, the microenterprise movement led to the emergence of Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that provided small loans the poor. In 1990s, across the world, a number of these institutions transformed themselves into formal financial institutions in order to access and on-lend funds, thus enhancing their outreach. One of the significant events that helped it gain prominence in the 1970s was through the efforts of Mohammad Yunus, a microfinance pioneer and founder of the Grameena Bank of Bangladesh. In 2006, Prof. Yunus was awarded Nobel Peace prize for his efforts to create economic and social development from below. In India, many formal financial institutional structures were experimented with - Regional Rural Banks (RRBs), District Central Credit Cooperative Banks (DCCBs), Local Area Banks (LABs), Self-Help Group (SHG) Bank linkage program. All these received mixed success and paralelly, the civil society organizations started feeling the need to offer financial services to the poor. Credit was getting increasingly recognized as an essential tool to break the vicious cycle of poverty. Gradually, Institutions emerged in 1990s and 2000s. MFIs today differ in size and reach; some serve a few thousand clients in their immediate geographical area, while others serve hundreds of thousands, even millions, in a large geographical region, through numerous branches.

Troubled memories and fractured identities: reflections on moral development

Exploring how personal inheritances of the Holocaust—the Shoah—shaped particular familial silences, I show how they created a need for philosophy and social theories that helped grasp the truth of what remained unspoken. As my parents’ generation insisted on having exclusive ownership of the past, while tacitly contracting that children create futures that can redeem their survival, I was concerned with learning how to live a meaningful human life. I was drawn to feminisms and sexual politics that focused upon the quality of everyday experience in ways that both Marx and Kant—quite differently—remained tied to traditions of Enlightenment rationalism. While it has taken time to face these traumatic histories and their legacies, they have also shaped my sense of the significance of moral learning and theories of moral development that engage with the evils that were perpetrated, while also ensuring, as much as we can, that they are not repeated.

Banks, regional development disparity and growth: evidence from Turkey

In this paper, we analyse the impact of credits provided by banks on provincial growth in Turkey, where state-owned banks have an implicit role of reducing disparity by allocating loans in underdeveloped regions that are ignored by private banks. We find a paradoxical effect of state-owned banks on regional development: their credits contribute significantly to the growth of more developed provinces, whereas they fail to encourage the well-being of less developed provinces. On the other hand, credits provided by private banks, in general, positively impact the per capita real gross domestic product (GDP) in both developed and less developed provinces. Contrary to their purpose of existence, our results suggest that state-owned banks did not reduce economic disparity among Turkish provinces. In the trade-off between growth and income disparity, our results suggest that state-owned banks should improve their lending behaviour, especially in the less-developed regions, in order to broaden their development role to the whole economy. Copyright The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Financing the United Nations: An Apparatus for Control of Major Powers

After World War II, a new organization was created to carry out policies that the League of Nations failed to serve. The United Nations was established to answer the problems brought by the World War II. It does not only seek to help countries to stand up after the war, it also helps to prevent future confrontations. By taking the lead towards peace, the United Nations adopted several peacekeeping operations. It also helps a country cope up by providing loans and/or financial assistance to build their economy.One of the purpose and main principle of the United Nations is to cooperate in solving international economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems and in promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedom. (Childers 1999) The United Nations needed funds to carry out and achieve its goal. Financing a big organization like the United Nations is a big and highly political issue. Even though UN is not being biased, some states which are in direct contact with UN can influence the decision and policy making of the organization.The funding system of UN is very problematic. One of the probable reasons for this is the lack of stable source of fund which will secure the finance system of the UN. Another reason is that some countries do not take responsibility to provide fund as their counterpart to the UN budget. The negligence of the member states to pay as their contributions contributed to the instability and shortage of budget of the UN.With the financial crisis in the system, there are several critics and recommendations that require for the reform of the UN system. Some proposed that to save the UN a global tax on the international financial transactions should be carried out. This requires every citizen in the world to share the burden of financing the UN. However, this is not the best option to take because the payments that the UN member states should pay are levied to the citizens of each country. This does not consider the fairness and equality in social and economic sense as one of the purpose of existence and the very nature of the UN itself.

Rick Warren, purpose driven en die 40 dae doelgerigte lewe veldtog

Rick Warren, purpose driven and the 40 days of purpose campaign
 More than 532 churches/congregations in South-Africa have already purchased “The purpose driven campaign kit” and completed the 40 days campaign or are planning to do so. The name Rick Warren is synonymous with “Purpose driven” and the popularity of his work as well as his influence in this country, justifie a study of this nature. This study wants to determine the effect of Rick Warren’s 40 days of purpose in the circuit of Klerksdorp of the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika. Warren provides five purposes for a believer in the church in his book, A purpose driven life, which according to him is the church’s purpose of existence. The hypothesis of this study is that the 40 days of purpose is an excellent project for congregations to discover their purpose of existence, while it also strengthens the process of building the local congregation. Eight congregations participated in the research project.

THE VARIETIES OF NON-RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

I want to consider the suggestion that certain essential components of human experience are by their nature distinctively religious, and thus that the atheist is either debarred from participating fully in such experiences, or fails to understand their real nature. I am going to look at five kinds of experience: • the experience of the moral ‘ought’; • the experience of beauty; • the experience of meaning conferred by stories; • the experience of otherness and transcendence; • the experience of vulnerability and fragility. These seem to me to be integral features of any meaningful human life. They are aspects of what it is to be human. Some theists would simply agree with that statement. Others, however, would say that though essentially human they are also essentially religious, and that the secular humanist's participation in such experiences is in some way defective. That is the claim which I want to consider and contest.

Biblical Subtexts and Religious Themes in Works of Anton Chekhov by Mark Stanley s> Swift Anton Chekhov (review)

312 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 landscape. Chekhov: Scenes from a Lifeis an oblique, tangential or alternative biography, a discursivecommentarywhich serves to complement and enrich a more traditionalchronologicalaccount. Bartlett's scholarly, yet readable, monograph is only slightly marred by a number of errors and misprints, such as Ykaterinburg(pp. xi, i68, 395), Stretenka(pp. xi, 62, 393),moved to back (P. 25),playright's(p. 9I), confessed that felt (p. 120), being for prepared for (p. I42), Sibera (p. 173), told go to (p. i87), meeet (p. I99), when was creating (p. I99), the the (p. 285), Chekhov be stuck (p. 285), the The(p. 291), who also were also (p. 306), Federov (for Fedorov, pp. 355, 359, 378), kravedcheskii (pp. 356, 376), Nevadnee (p. 356), parakhode(pp.363, 377),tsenu(p. 375),tridsati (p. 376),o Chekhov(p. 379),and Stanislavksy's(p. 385). Mikhail Petrovich Gromov wrongly appears as Pavel Gromov (pp. 6i, 358, 388) and M. P. Gromova (pp. 355, 359, 378), and A. I. Kuzicheva (pp. 365, 379) should be A. P. Kuzicheva. Ol'ga Knipper played Arkadina,not Nina, in Chaika (p. 229). The wordsmalinovyi zvon(the'raspberry' sound, p. 294) are a set phrase for soft, pleasant chimes. Some chapter headings appear perhaps unnecessarilyarch -'Dr Chekhov's Casebook', 'The Gentleman with the Little Dog', 'The Actressand the Bishop'. Passingreferencesto Chekhov's 'misogyny'(p. 84) and to 'his naturalmisanthropictendencies '(p. 258)requirefurthersubstantiation,as does the claim that 'Chekhovsuspectedwith somejustificationthat his wife was not pregnant by him' (pp.303, 372).There are too many conjecturalsuppositionsof the type 'he must have known deep down' (p. 329), 'He would have been disgruntled' (p. 333), 'he would have enjoyed' (p. 334), 'He would have probably found' (p. 338), 'he would surely have despaired' (p. 339). 'Chekhov might indeed have laughed had he known' (pp. 338-39). Bristol GORDON MCVAY Swift, Mark Stanley. BiblicalSubtexts and Religious7Themes in Worksof Anton Chekhov. Middlebury Studies in Russian Language and Literature.Peter Lang, New York and Oxford, 2004. xi + I96 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. C45.00. BETWEEN the extremes of 'God exists' and 'there is no God', Chekhov occupied what he called the 'enormous field' of the 'middle ground' (p. 3) from where he observed a broad spectrum of humanity. Chekhov was a declared atheist, whose scientific and medical training predisposed him to objectivity and an aversionto extremism.At the same time, his Christianupbringinggave him a sympatheticunderstandingof the importance of religious experience, and a respectfor the ethical teachingsof the Bible. MarkStanley Swift'sthesis is that the Bible informs the themes and subtexts of a number of Chekhov's classic storieswhich address 'the quintessentialreligiousquest [...] the quest for meaning' (p. 5I). Following his discussion of the themes in a dramatic monologue Chekhov composed for Solomon, Swift devotes a chaptereach to three famous stories in which he elucidates their thematic correspondences REVIEWS 313 with the universalthemes of Ecclesiastesand Hebrew wisdom literature.Swift findsthat Chekhov sharedthe radicalscepticismof the authorof Ecclesiastes, his questioning of conventional belief, his realistic awareness of the world's tribulationsand injustices,and his conviction that we cannot know the ultimate truth.These ideas find thematicreflectionin Happiness where, depending on the mood of the viewer, the contemplation of the beauty, immensity and indifferenceof nature can be either oppressive,leading to pessimisticreflections on mortality,the transitorynature of life and the purpose of existence, or consolatory, inducing hope and rapture. In TheSteppe, Chekhov's use of biblicalname-sakes,imagery,teachingson the value of learningand the perils of loneliness, among others, underline the story's thematic affinities with Ecclesiastes.The darkerside of Ecclesiastesemerges in 7he Seizure where the hero's longing for an ideal is frustratedby the evil he encountersin reality. Swift's method is to introduce a passage from Chekhov and then cite a biblical phrase that expresses an analogous thought which he takes to be the subtext or theme for Chekhov's text. This results in some persuasive interpretations.However, when Swiftturnsto the New Testament, mythology and demonology, his thematic parallelsand subtextsare pushed beyond what they can bear. Thus, discussing the ferryman's admonitions to the young Tatar in In Exile, he lists on one page (p. I24) eight 'allusions'to the New Testament, including Satan's temptation...

Meaning in life and psychological well-being: an empirical study using the Chinese version of the Purpose in Life questionnaire.

The Chinese version of the Purpose in Life questionnaire (C-PIL) was administered to 2,150 Chinese secondary school students, along with other instruments assessing psychiatric symptoms and positive mental health. Total C-PIL and its two subscales, Quality of Existence (QEXIST) and Purpose of Existence (PEXIST), correlated significantly with all measures of psychological well-being. Relative to PEXIST scores, QEXIST scores were found to be more predictive of psychological well-being. Subjects with different existential status (defined by high vs. low levels of QEXIST and PEXIST) were associated with different degrees of psychological well-being. The concept of meaning in life, as indexed by the C-PIL, and the hypothesis that life meaning is related to psychological well-being require further elaboration and refinement.

Behavioral modelling: Implications for philosophy

The modelling approach is proposed as a novel way to make progress in the discipline of Philosophy. In this arena, the special advantages of modelling, i.e., the use of unique mathematical and algorithmic specifications of technical terms, could be of crucial importance. The paper initially presents an overview of a number of important philosophical issues as a means of providing background on their significance and an explanation of the difficulties arising from present philosophical methodology. It then introduces the modelling concept as a way of developing a more consistent and defensible approach. The modelling is developed at two levels. One is a general conceptual approach based on a specified mechanistic hypothesis supported by arguments from evolution. The second is a very specific operating model of psychological behavior called “Catspaw” which has strong philosophical implications. The topics discussed and on which the models shed considerable light, include free will, ethics, and the purpose of existence. These ramify into other relevant topics such as ethical activism, responsibility for good and bad behavior, a rationale for sentencing in the criminal justice system, and our obligation to act in accord with our purpose. The validity of the models' assumptions and conclusions, though not proved in an absolute sense, is strongly supported by the way they explain and interrelate a large number of long-debated philosophical issues in a fashion consistent with evolution and the physical sciences.

A cure for aging?

Arthur Caplan has argued that the presumptive naturalness, universality, and inevitability of aging are no obstacles to conceptualizing aging as a disease since those traits are themselves merely contingent. Moreover, aging lends itself to discussion in terms of diagnostic symptomatology and etiology. Is aging therefore a disease? I argue that aging need not be shown to be unnatural or a disease in order to make it the subject of biomedical interest. I suggest that rather than ask "Is aging a disease?", the better point of philosophical departure would be to ask "Is aging objectionable such that its prevention and cure ought to be sought?". In this way, the moral issues at stake emerge more clearly. Chief among these issues are the potential results of curing aging and the implications for the prospect of meaningful human life without the de facto limitations that aging (and perhaps death) put upon it. A convincing argument that aging should be cured, therefore, would need to show that human significance warrants and possibly seeks such a cure and that the social costs of curing aging are morally acceptable.

Value Judgments and World Views in Sexuality Education

This essay argues the need for making distinctions between facts values as subject matter (values as facts) value judgements and world views when addressing the goals and methods of sexuality education. Facts are defined as empirically verifiable but yesterdays facts after new observations can become todays myths. The study of a plurality of behaviors historical contexts and social standards in sexuality education makes values a portion of the factual base which the educator must consider and incorporate. Value judgments are personal and subjective and underlie the selection and treatment of facts in a curriculum. The question is how to incorporate value judgment fairly. Value judgments often reflect world views--coherent bodies of belief which contain fundamental conceptions of self society and the purpose of existence. Since a world view is assumed to constitute reality it is generally not questioned or articulated. The Shornack and Shornack/Scales debate on sex education exemplifies a conflict stemming less from factual sources than from fundamentally divergent world views. Examining such a debate reveals how each side has an opportunity to see its own unreflected assumptions about reality by noting the different metaphysical basis behind the others argument. As with educati on in general sexuality education should aim to develop skills of critical inquiry to understand the hidden assumptions behind values and motivations and to consider how authority in matters of sex is established and changes. Value judgments are an inevitable part of sex education but a fair presentation of a plurality of viewpoints can help students begin to think critically about their own assumptions and to make efforts to forge their own point of view. This should be the primary goal shared by all sexuality educators regardless of their own specific value judgments or world views.

Operating on the Fetus

The advent of fetal surgery is analyzed in terms of its implications for the moral status of the fetus, its bearing on the abortion debate, and its effect on the nature of the physician patient relationship. Three types of therapeutic contracts are posited: the "gynecological," in which the pregnant woman is considered the primary patient; the "pediatric," in which the focus is on the fetus; and the "obstetrical," in which the woman and fetus have a shared interest in treatment. It is concluded that the possibility of fetal therapy does not preclude the "gynecological" and "obstetrical" contracts as moral options.This essay argues the need for making distinctions between facts, values as subject matter (values as facts), value judgements, and world views when addressing the goals and methods of sexuality education. Facts are defined as empirically verifiable, but yesterday's facts, after new observations, can become today's myths. The study of a plurality of behaviors, historical contexts, and social standards in sexuality education makes values a portion of the factual base which the educator must consider and incorporate. Value judgments are personal and subjective, and underlie the selection and treatment of facts in a curriculum. The question is how to incorporate value judgment fairly. Value judgments often reflect world views--coherent bodies of belief which contain fundamental conceptions of self, society, and the purpose of existence. Since a world view is assumed to constitute reality, it is generally not questioned or articulated. The Shornack and Shornack/Scales debate on sex education exemplifies a conflict stemming less from factual sources than from fundamentally divergent world views. Examining such a debate reveals how each side has an opportunity to see its own unreflected assumptions about reality by noting the different metaphysical basis behind the other's argument. As with educati on in general, sexuality education should aim to develop skills of critical inquiry, to understand the hidden assumptions behind values and motivations, and to consider how authority in matters of sex is established and changes. Value judgments are an inevitable part of sex education, but a fair presentation of a plurality of viewpoints can help students begin to think critically about their own assumptions and to make efforts to forge their own point of view. This should be the primary goal shared by all sexuality educators, regardless of their own specific value judgments or world views.

Film forums: On being human

AbstractThe meaning and purpose of existence are investigated through film discussion groups conducted at off‐campus locations.