Meaning Of Human Existence Research Articles

EDUCATION AND CULTURE (CONCERNING THE PROBLEM IN SEARCH THE PRINCIPLE OF EDUCATION ADEQUACY)

This article develops a theme raised in the study «Education in Search of the Adequacy principle» by Yu. V. Larin, whereas the topical principle of modern education is the principle of cultural adequacy. The aim of the study is the analysis of value-semantic content of the principle of cultural adequacy of education. Methods of the study are formed by appeal to cultural approach connecting methods of ideal typing and value-semantic reconstruction. Results. In general, there are three types of culture based on the explication of the three modality human relations to the world: «the world is a condition», «the world is a tool», «the world is a purpose»; and, accordingly, three types of pedagogical culture: traditional, utilitarian, creative. Traditional pedagogical culture focuses on education homo traditional – traditional man, the individual, the obedient executor of the culture value semantic, regulatory policies and regulations, subordinating its activity transmitted from generation to generation tradition. The semantic space of traditional pedagogical culture principle of cultural adequacy education is defined as the principle of consistency with established tradition. Pedagogical culture of utilitarian type directs a homo utilitarian – utilitarian man, individuality, interpreting the culture value semantic, legal and regulatory requirements and on the basis of situational use, fully to the publication of his life publicly or individually beneficial activities. The utilitarian type principle of cultural adequacy of education is defined as the principle of consistency with the social and/or individual use in the semantic space of pedagogical culture. Pedagogical culture of creative types is aimed at nurturing homo creator – creative person whose existence is self-organization in the space between tradition and innovation, absolute and relative, universal and particular meanings of human existence, between social and individual, collectivist and individualism aspects. Teaching of creatively thinking personality is associated with updating of creative modality attitude toward the world as creative activity, with the development of the needs for self-actualization. The cultural adequacy principle within the framework of pedagogic culture of creative type education means congruity with creativity. The implementation of this principle is related to the cultivation not only of originality, extraordinary, nontrivial thinking, but the formation of creational, aimed at an increment in life to the world. Scientific novelty of the research concludes in originality, as well as research methodology and its results; the author’s typology of pedagogical culture is designed. Practical significance. The proposed typology of pedagogical culture can serve as a tool for the analysis of modern education; identify its specificity and ways of upgrading.

Childhood and the Child as a Subject of Philosophical and Cultural Reflection

The article discusses the theming of childhood and child figures in the works of philosophers in different historical periods; analysis of the historical volatility of ways to describe his childhood on the basis of reflective experience of the meaning of human existence, having started in the real or symbolic act of birth, shows the importance of building up the meaning of the figure of a child for subjectivation. The possibility of an authentic understanding of childhood is associated with the need to self-determination, that is, looking at the definition of a child or talking about him as someone who had some expectations, a temporary experience, that is enclosed in a space of some eventful horizon which directs the power of vision. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s6p211

The Romantic and Symbolist Sublime: A Review Essay

The Romantic and Symbolist Sublime: A Review Essay Phillip M. Richards (bio) One rarely thinks of the Romantic and Symbolist convention of the sublime in relation to the formal structures of African American verse. The expansive imagery of infinitude associated with the genre of the sublime is a crucial element throughout American as well as in African American poetry following the first two decades of the twentieth century. If aesthetic appreciation is grounded in the creation of interest by contrasting distinctive elements amidst regularly arranged or conceived patterns, then the sublime becomes an important formal device in black poetry. Such interest emerges inevitably as all-inclusive gestures of transcendence emerge from ordered intellectual and formal patterns. The articulation of this aesthetic phenomenon thus understandably provides a means of assessing the most recent group of contemporary black, female poets. Their achievement in this regard is a mark of their technical development contrasted to that of their immediate predecessors as well as to the central figures in the tradition of African American literature as a whole. Such an assessment has become necessary, largely because of the contemporary absence of a critical perspective that weighs the literary powers of the plethora of black women poets now multiplying from the available opportunities for publication offered by small presses every year. Just as importantly, we are failing to perform the act of critical evaluation by which we winnow out from a growing mass of writing what we wish to transmit from generation to generation in our classrooms, scholarship, literary journalism, and anthologies—which traditionally have figured in the selective assessment of African American literary tradition from generation to generation. These literary historical and evaluative discussions demand a formalist consideration of how the romantic and symbolist sublime has been deployed by the most recent crop of African American women poets to whom I refer above. In examining their use of the dominant conventions of Romanticism and Symbolism we see their connection not only with African American poetic discourse but also Anglo-European literary traditions—a continuity with distant roots in the highly metaphorical languages of early American culture, but also grounded in the literary transcendentalist writers: Emerson, Whitman, and Emily Dickinson—a group which in turn looks back to Romanticism as it developed in English and German poetry. From the second decade of the twentieth century, important black poets such as Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown assimilated black folk tradition into a literary language, which might carry the weight of essentially philosophical themes despite the fact that they often denied their engagement in the abstract reflection that these formulations demanded. At the heart of this philosophical tradition was their representation of the black folk’s angst [End Page 186] before an existential situation characterized by either infinite joy or infinite hope. This reflection upon the meaning of human existence in a rigorously secular culture rejecting the existence of a divine supernatural entity underlies a central project of Romanticism, Post-Romanticism, and Modernism. The search for transcendent meaning in these philosophical cultures has led many thinkers to rearticulate religious discourse in secularized social, psychological, and intellectual terms. These attempts to create ultimate meanings absent the sacred appear vividly in what Thomas Carlyle called “natural supernaturalism” and more recently in Lionel Trilling’s concept of the “secularization of the spirit.” Clearly, some of the most significant black writers have had a particular purchase upon this problem of African American life in modernity. The psychological and social traumas of the formation of the Northern ghetto and the Jim Crow South characteristically faced black writers with the task of shaping the language of black folk into a response to modernity’s crisis of a radically secular absurd and meaningless existence. And these writers did so through the conventions of the sublime in which they portrayed black folk confronting these abysses of meaning with the assertion of an infinitely expansive joy. Or these writers depicted the psychological condition of the folk facing the abyss in another form: the depiction of the feelings generated by a contracted spiritual emptiness. These feelings of despair might also emerge from a confrontation with another infinitude: a total loss often embodied in separation from significant others...

The question of happiness in African philosophy

This article articulates some of the problems inherent in the attempt to determine the meaning of happiness in African philosophy and proposes a solution. I begin by outlining the conceptual arguments in contemporary African philosophy. Thereafter, I discuss the difficulties with defining happiness, especially in its psycho-moral implications. Finally, I provide an African philosophical response to the difficulties identified in the first two sections by relating the notion of happiness to an African theory of meaningful life as it is inscribed in a particular form of action. I argue that, while happiness and meaningful life are not equivalent, there is an African conception of happiness that is grounded in an African psycho-social and cultural worldview, which in turn involves a particular conception of the meaning of human existence. This work is exploratory in nature: many of the claims, especially as they relate to African philosophy, are based on analytical deduction from the available literature on African philosophy and intuitive deductions from the African worldview.

Cultural sustainability through architectural preservation: A case study of Frank Lloyd Wright's Florida Southern College

This paper explores the approach to cultural sustainability through architectural preservation. It analyses Frank Lloyd Wright's design of the Florida Southern College campus in Lakeland, Florida in the United States as a case study. This campus contains the largest unified collection of Wright's architecture. Between the 1930s and the 1950s, he designed the master plan as well as 10 individual buildings for this project. These buildings compose the core of the campus, which is located on a hillside facing a lake to the south. The campus serves as a critical exemplar for demonstrating the cohesive interaction between humanity, buildings, and landscapes that is lacking in typical modernism. In addition, this campus demonstrates influences from various Eastern thoughts on Frank Lloyd Wright's design. The preservation of this campus is not only related to the cultural and historical identity of this college, but also acts as a lived site for visitors to reflect on the fundamental meaning of human existence. ...

Žmogiškosios būties prasmės problema Jeano-Paulo Sarte’o filosofijoje

Straipsnyje kritiškai aptariamas Jeano-Paulo Sartre’o filosofinis Būties ir niekio projektas, ypač jame pateikta filosofinė žmogaus egzistencijos prasmės interpretacija. Teigiama, kad būties prasmės problema Sartre’o mintyje yra tiesiogiai susijusi su jo metafizinio pagrindo neigimu. Tam, kad būtų paaiškinta ši Sartre’o neigimo filosofinė koncepcija, siekiama aptarti jo būties ir regimybės dualizmo atmetimą. Prancūzų filosofo regimybės, niekio ir kito sąmonės neigimo ontologinė artikuliacija turi būti suprantama socialiniame politiniame pokario Europos kultūriniame kontekste. Straipsnyje trumpai aptariama ir Sartre’o skirtis tarp autentiškos ir neautentiškos egzistencijos. Išvadose teigiama, kad Sartre’o akcentuojamos nežinojimo ir radikalaus pasirinkimo sampratos nėra nei filosofiškai, nei egzistenciškai įtekančios.

EPA-1155 – Care and being-in-the-world: heidegger's philosophy and his implications for psychiatry

Introduction Philosophy is one of the disciplines that can more adequately provide a contribution to the definition of the focus and limits of psychiatry in the definition of human being. Substantial, comprehensive contributions to this field come from Martin Heidegger, one of the most prominent and seminal philosophers of the 20 th century. Objectives/Aims During the 50's the Italian psychiatrist Franco Basaglia comes up with the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and he gains the concept of human being as’Being-in-the- world’, central point in every relationship with the others.’Being-in-the-world’ is not a merely spatial relation with ourselves and the others, but is the fundamental meaning of human existence and of the Care. The Care is not only a medical concept but also an ontological and ethical one: overcrossing the concept of empathy, Heidegger argues that all objectifying representations of a capsule-like psyche, subject, person, ego or consciousness in psychology and psychopathology must be abandoned in favor of a new understanding of human being, starting from its ontological characters:’Being-in-the-world’,’Being-with-the-others’ and’Being-toward-death’. Methods The comparison of Heidegger's philosophy and psychiatry on the ground of Care, as it emerges from 2 books, Being and Time and Zollikoner Seminars. Results The necessity of a philosophical approach to the issue of Care starting from a philosophical understanding of human being. Conclusions The theoretical aspects of Heidegger's philosophy are important instruments for the psychiatric work and for a new concept of Care.

Accounting, ethics and human existence: Lightly unbearable, heavily kitsch

Abstract This paper offers a critical examination of the interrelationship between accounting, ethics, and the question of the meaning of human existence. Starting with a critique of the approach, data and method in Everett & Tremblay (2014) , I broadly consider how different approaches to ethics and morality within capitalist markets play out. Drawing on the work of Milan Kundera, and briefly considering perspectives on the WorldCom fraud, I consider how the themes of lightness, weight, and kitsch are emblematic of many approaches to ethics within accounting.

Ciało Me, Wklęte W Korowód Istnienia…” O Poszukiwaniu „Słów Do Pieśni Bez Słów” Mieczysława Karłowicza / “My Body, Charmed And Blended Into The Pageant Of Life…” On Seeking Words For Mieczysław Karłowicz’S Eternal Song Without Words

The present article looks at the music of Mieczysław Karłowicz from the perspective of Bolesław Leśmian’s philosophical poetry. The aim of the discussion, however, is not to seek parallel themes or musical transpositions but to capture certain traits of ideological attitude, which is founded on the question about the meaning of human existence. Leśmian’s poetry is characterized by profound meditation on the mystery of existence, by the search for truth about man, and by familiarization with death through discovering its diverse manifestations in art, nature, and in life. His poems show a strong presence of mystical experience, the so-called “oceanic feeling” or “pantheistic experience of unity”, which was one of the leading motifs of Young Poland poetry. It was readily utilized by Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, Jan Kasprowicz, or Antoni Lange. In the symphonic music of Mieczysław Karłowicz we can recognize a similar type of sensitivity and emotional mood that perfectly harmonizes with the spiritual and artistic atmosphere of the period. His works reflect the tendency, characteristic of modernism, to cross boundaries and penetrate the mystery of being. Listening to this “song without words” is at the same time an encouragement to enter the world of values and human experiences, which is usually omitted by scholars in musicological analyses.

Existential Phenomenology and the Practice of Caring

Purpose: This study was done to provide fundamental ontological understanding of caring and inquiring into the possibility of a caring practice in nursing based on existential phenomenology. Methods: According to Heidegger's existential phenomenology, caring has been interpreted as a fundamental ontological basis for caring practice in nursing. Further, based on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, the meaning of the lived experience of illness and the way of caring practice have been described from the aspect of the existential involvement in the embodied life world. Results: Heidegger's phenomenology provided ontological thinking about caring, which is understood in a basic way as the possibility of human existence and dwelling in oneself in the confrontation of the illness experience. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology offered a meaning of human existence according to bodily intention and situated freedom in the life world. This perspective of embodiment enables nurses to understand bodily experiences of patients and recovery of their bodily capacity in responding to the situation in caring practice. Conclusion: Existential phenomenology gives insight into fundamental reflection for caring attitude and practice in nursing. Existential phenomenological nursing research can provide descriptions and meaning of the lived experience of illness and a way of coping with the crisis of human existence in caring practice.

HUMANS IN THE CENTER?

HUMANS IN THE CENTER?

Human existence (cún zài): What is it? What's in it for us as existential psychotherapists?

This article is based on a keynote address for the First International Conference on East-West Existential Psychology held in Nanjing, China in April of 2010. The article combines aspects of the originally prepared paper with aspects of the actual presentation, which was largely an extemporaneous exposition of the Chinese characters for existence, cun zai (). The article begins with an overview of the meaning and development of the discipline of existential psychology and psychotherapy as an approach to psychology that is committed to investigating and understanding the human as human. It then proceeds to a hermeneutic analysis of cun zai, explicating ontological insights regarding the nature and meaning of human existence: Namely, the that or facticity of human existence, the whence or the origin of human existence, and the how or the structure of human existence as being-in-the-world. Although the article is grounded in a phenomenological, ontological discourse, corresponding ontical discourse focuses o...

The philosophical and religious ideas of D. Hume and their influence on the formation of the ideological field of philosophy of religion of I. Kant

The focus of philosophical research attention on the theoretical and, where appropriate, specifically applied problems of religion is a phenomenon immanent and unpersuasive. Its relevance is explained by the fact that the reflexiveness of philosophical thinking always determines the search for the answer to the basic worldview questions and aims at grasping the standards of wisdom. The history of human civilization is confirmed by the fact that one of the major worldview issues that bothers man is the question of life and death, the meaning of human existence and the purpose of the world and, most often, in finding an answer to it, humanity turned to a religion that is vividly illustrated by the existence of the great the number of different doctrines and beliefs. It is no secret that a large number of people see in religion and the basis of wisdom, the ideological and axiological potential of its nurturing. Of course, this does not mean that within the human culture there is no attempt to find wisdom outside of religion and even against it. But in any case, it cannot be denied that the search for wisdom on the basis of religious outlook is historically natural, and even dominates spiritual culture in certain eras.

The Maytrees

The Maytrees traces the lives of Toby and Lou Maytree, two “unremarkable” people living in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in the wake of the Second World War (4). In this poem-like novel, Annie Dillard both gently critiques the hurried acquisitiveness of American capitalism, and gracefully frames a series of difficult questions about the meaning of human existence. The Maytrees gauge their lives not according to social opinion—Lou finds dignity “overrated”—but according to the tides and the seasons, accumulating nothing and stretching a dollar for food (20). As they ask elusive questions about life, love, and death, literary consciousness of the natural world provides a reminder of material transience and offers the basis for spiritual and psychological renewal. Dillard tells us that the Maytrees' “city friends envied their peace”—that the Maytrees “loved the Cape and never for a minute mistook it for real” (123). The novel is set, importantly, in a vacation spot. But it is most concerned with the people who live in Provincetown, and who live according to the tides rather than consulting the clock. The country-city dichotomy in The Maytrees might seem to approach conventional pastoral nostalgia. Certainly abandonment of the city cannot be a real solution to American psychological ills. But what perhaps saves the novel from this criticism is Dillard's refusal to construct what Raymond Williams referred to as a literary “Golden Age.” Instead of bemoaning the loss of a fictive American Eden, Dillard urges a re-evaluation of hedonic life.

To Be(come) Young, Gay, and Black: Lorraine Hansberry’s Existentialist Routes to Anticolonialism

This essay argues that Lorraine Hansberry’s black, queer anti-imperialist and anticolonial dramatic vision was shaped by her engagement with post-World War II European and American existentialisms and their politics of race and sexuality. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Hansberry debated Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Norman Mailer, and Jean Genet over the meanings of human existence, responsibility, and freedom. While these writers and thinkers presented diverse worldviews, Hansberry understood them to be linked by a bankrupt nihilism and solipsism that precluded historical materialist analyses of social change. She saw in their work a denial of social change that relied upon and re-articulated heteropatriarchal, racist ideologies. Of these existentialists, Jean Genet was especially important to Hansberry because of his play, The Blacks , which became a vital part of African-American theater and cultural politics. Hansberry criticized not only Genet’s cynicism about anticolonial struggle, but the sexual and racial ideologies through which this cynicism was expressed. In framing her own anticolonial play, Les Blancs , as a response to The Blacks , Hansberry drew upon the Beauvoirean existentialist feminism that had informed her early feminist plays featuring lesbian protagonists. Like this earlier feminist work, Les Blancs represents homosexuality as a site of interracial, international reciprocity in order to counter Genet’s exoticized, eroticized “Blacks,” and to represent black national liberation. Recovering Hansberry’s engagement with existentialism, I argue, illuminates the ways in which feminist as well as queer critique were for her integral to a nationalist internationalism linking the struggles of First World minorities with Third World anticolonial nationalist movements. Consequently, while Hansberry’s work exemplifies some of the transnational and cross-cultural dimensions of black thought, it also contests the anti- or post-nationalist perspectives of contemporary studies of diasporic and transnational blackness.

Den brede vitalisme - køns- og kropsdyrkelse i den vitalistiske kunst i Danmark i begyndelsen af det 20. århundrede eksemplificeret ved fire værker

Artiklen undersøger om den vitalistiske kunst er domineret af en mandighedsdyrkelse og om forholdet mellem kunstnernes liv og deres værk har haft betydning for den vitalistiske interesse. Dette gøres med udgangspunkt i fire kunstneriske værker.Sarah Huss Jønsson: The cultivation of gender and body within the vitalistic art in Denmark in the beginning of the 20th century.Vitalism was a cultural current that emphasized the cultivation of the sensuous human body in close contact with nature. It found expression in philosophy, art and the broad body cultures in the period 1890-1945. The cultivation of the vitality was influenced by the development of the modern society around 1900, which changed materially, mentally, economically, socially as well as in physical culture. In exchange for Christianity, which slowly lost its authority, the vitalists found the meaning of human existence in the cultivation of the active body and outdoor life, while the cultivation of nature – due to the influence of modern science – was put in connection with the human health. After 1945 the ideas of vitalism faded away, probably because of Nazi-Germany`s use of a distinct cultivation of the human body and instinct. Within the last decade it has been viewed by the historian Hans Bonde that there exists a significant cultivation of manliness in the vitalism of art, as it is seen in the vitalism of sports and gymnastics. Furthermore it is also claimed by the scholar Lise Præstgaard that the representation of genders in the vitalism of art is affected by the biological view on gender that was dominating at that time. Therefore the genders are claimed to be pictured in dichotomy: man is mainly seen as the rational and active gender, woman is mainly seen as the soft and sensuous one. The purpose of this article is to examine whether these above theses can be seen in such a distinct way in regard to the vitalism of art? Or should it be viewed in a more nuanced way? Finally the article sets out to examine whether there is a possible connection between the lives of the artists and their description of the genders in their vitalistic works. The leading cultivators of vitality in Denmark were a group of painters called »the Hellenists« (1894-1903). Inspired by the old Greeks they gathered each summer to explore the mix between outdoor painting and gymnastics – all naked. After 1900 vitalism was expressed in a wider sense by the painters J. F. Willumsen and Oluf Hartmann and by the sculptors Kai Nielsen and Rudolph Tegner in their respective works such as »En bjergbestigerske« (»The mounteneeress «) (1904), »Jakobs kamp med englen« (»Jakobs fight with the angel«) (1908), »Vandmoderen« (»The water-mother«) (1919-1920) and »Mod lyset« (»Towards the light«) (1909). Beside the effect of the cultivation of the body and nature in modern society, the artists also very much seem to be influenced by their private lives in their description of the genders in their vitalistic works. When it comes to Willumsen, Tegner and Kai Nielsen they all fell in love in the period when they started to express themselves in a vitalistic way. In Willumsen´s »En bjergbestigerske « this was expressed through an emphasis on the beauty and independence of the woman and the greatness of nature. In Tegner´s creation of »Mod lyset« his vision of the healing forces of the sunlight seems to affect him. Here the vitalism is seen in the lofty placement of man, women and child and their naked voluminous, muscular bodies and expressive movements upwards, which put them in touch with the life-giving sunlight. Kai Nielsen´s love for the woman and the children was inspired by his own family and influenced the vitalistic expression in »Vandmoderen«. Here the naked, sensuous and fertile woman is in close contact with a lot of lively naked children, which is underscored by its connection with the life-giving water and the children´s activity. Hartmann represents the cultivation of the »homoerotic« element in painting. For Hartmann it is seen in »Jakobs kamp med englen«, which expresses the passion, instinct and intensity of vital and powerful men´s bodily fight. This inspiration Hartmann might have got from his painting teacher, Kristian Zahrtmann, who was homosexual and a cultivator of manliness. It is seen that the woman – and not only the man - can be seen as the active gender, and also that the cultivation of women and children as well as youth and manliness is a defining factor in vitalism. Therefore this article does not entirely reject the above theses on the cultivation of the genders in the vitalistic art. It rather wants to speak for a modification of the theses.

Islamic popular music and the discourses of social revolution

ABSTRACT Critics of Islamic popular music have tended to explore open modes of rebellion in black communities of America. However, the actual popular music does not always mine open political themes. There are new discourses produced in Islamic popular music. These discourses focus more on the capacity of black Muslim communities to improve their immediate communities. The themes explored in this popular musical genre emphasise social themes such as the meanings of human existence and place the notion of what is political in a different light. The aim of this paper is therefore to explore the contradictory role that Islamic music plays in producing new social publics. The paper analyses the lyrics of three black popular musicians; namely Luppe Fiasco, Nas and Mos Def. The paper further argues that Islamic popular music is shifting away from overtly political themes in its rendition, not because these are no longer useful; but rather that dwelling on social themes enables the artists to discuss the social identities produced in Islamic music with minimum pressure to sing to conform to the single dictates of political ideologies. It is suggested in this paper that popular music is at most subversive when it insists on creating its own narratives in spaces that do not easily lend themselves to political manipulation, infiltration and supervision.

Suffering and Transcendence

This essay explores the experience of suffering in order to see to what extent it can be understood within the context of the human condition without diverting the reality of suffering or denying the meaning of human existence and divine reality. Particular attention is given to describing and interpreting what I call the transcendent dimensions of suffering with the intent of showing that in the experience of suffereing persons come up against the limits of what can be accounted for in ordinary terms and point towards transcendent reality. In religious faith the transcendent dimensions of suffering may be understood to come together with other transcendent dimensions of experience in a more distinctive or focused encounter with transcendent reality. The conception of God that is suggested by the transcendent dimensions of suffering, however, differs from the model of God in western theism as an absolutely transcendent, all powerful, immutable and impassible being.

Love, Open Awareness, and Authenticity: A Conversation with William Blake and D. W. Winnicott

In being loved, we become more open. In being open, we become more authentic. In being authentic, we become more loving and creative. Love, open awareness, and authentic existence are intimately interrelated. They co-arise interdependently and together comprise a coherent structure of well-being, allowing one to be most fully human and most fully and uniquely oneself. Psychology and literature are complementary approaches to understanding the meaning of human existence in our shared life-world. In this spirit, a hermeneutical conversation with William Blake and D. W. Winnicott is presented. Blake’s work and life are read in light of Winnicott’s theory of development and psychotherapy, and Winnicott’s theory is read in light of Blake, thereby illuminating the significant interpermeation of love, openness, and authenticity.

Dominant perceptions on the age

Contemporary developed society, despite the fact that it is constantly and intensively ageing, is characterized by deeply rooted numerous negative stereotypes on old people and old age as a life period. The study of dominant perceptions on the age of Belgrade population takes not only the universal character of negative connotation of old age into consideration, but also the concrete unfavorable social context. The delicate problematic of stereotypes on old age and old people has been analyzed mostly indirectly, through questions on the beginning of old age, advantages and difficulties which we experience during ageing, the first subjective conscious encounter with one?s own ageing, the concept of ideal old age, changes in the persons traits and directly through questions on dominant negative perceptions which prevail on old people in our surrounding. Ageing in the Belgrade milieu is most commonly identified with illness and with the decline of physical potentials, and at the same time a number of other negative qualifications of old age as well. Research results indicate to a pronounced ambivalent standpoint towards ageing, to different observation of one?s own to old age of other people, to different consideration of old age among the sexes and to obvious aversion towards old people. This is expected, taking into consideration that living and ageing are developing nowadays under aggressive influence of contemporary mass culture which affirms youth, beauty, physical strength, health as dominant values, namely everything that is contrary to ageing and old age. On the other hand, our society is today confronted with, as well as in the near past, exceptional political, economic and cultural difficulties which cause specific problems with various age groups, as well as the lowering of the level of mutual endurance and tolerance. The atmosphere of straining the old people and emergence of new antagonisms causes the intensification of misunderstandings and distancing among generations as well and creates a favorable climate for maintaining different prejudices, even those towards ageing. While prejudices are by themselves a universal social-psychological category, prejudices on old age differ from the rest by one special and very significant characteristic - some primal fears are subconsciously hidden and some basic questions on the meaning of human existence are held back, so negative connotation of old age is precisely collective running away from these problems.