Pervasive Topics Research Articles

On the “How” and the “Why”: Nietzsche on Happiness and the Meaningful Life

Abstract Nietzsche is commonly interpreted as strongly rejecting and even despising any possible conception (or pursuit) of happiness. And yet, one of the most pervasive topics in Nietzsche’s work is the problem of human suffering, the pursuit of meaning (or purpose) in life, and the possibility of a joyful or affirmative disposition toward existence. In this article, I argue that Nietzsche’s criticism of common conceptions of happiness should be seen as a redefinition, rather than a rejection, of the notion of human happiness, with important implications for contemporary discussions on the topic. I start by addressing three of the main contemporary theories of happiness from a Nietzschean perspective, underlining both the points of convergence and the points of divergence between Nietzsche and each of these accounts. I then gather the conclusions of the previous section, add Nietzsche’s positive claims on happiness and the meaningful life, and sketch what might be called a Nietzschean theory of happiness. Finally, I situate Nietzsche’s position in the contemporary debate on the topic and outline what I take to be his most important contributions to current discussions on happiness, meaning, and well-being in human life.

Colour, Pattern, Space and Time in Art Perception: Two Case Studies

Summary Colour and space are pervasive topics in both perception and art. This article investigates the role of colour and pattern in relation to space and time in the art works by two artists: Frank Stella, a well-known Post-War American abstract painter, and Pieter Vermeersch, an emerging Belgian abstract painter, representing a contemporary trend to break the barriers between artistic disciplines. While Stella adheres to the Modernist logic of non-illusionistic, non-spatial, non-referential art as object, perceived instantaneously, Vermeersch explores ways to enhance the viewers’ spatial and temporal experiences through complex art installations with multiple objects and architectural elements interacting with each other and with the spaces in which they are embedded. We discuss these major themes in some representative art works, and in the way they are perceived and appreciated by contemporary viewers, investigated in four empirical studies: two laboratory experiments using well-controlled stimuli derived from at works, and two museum studies employing a variety of methods, including mobile eye-tracking and questionnaires.

Patients’ perspectives on everyday life after hip fracture: A longitudinal interview study

BackgroundThe duration of the recovery process after hip fracture varies considerably, and patients' perspectives on everyday life may change over time. Our aim was to explore the impact of a hip fracture on elderly patients’ everyday life from their perspective and at different time points. MethodsThis was a longitudinal interview study. Twelve hip fracture patients of 65 years or older admitted to an orthogeriatric ward in Denmark were interviewed once, six patients were interviewed twice, and four patients were interviewed on all four occasions (in-hospital and at two to six weeks, five to six months, and twelve months after the fracture). The interviews were analysed using abductive reasoning. ResultsThe findings are presented per time point. During admission, patients expressed concern for their future, and pain and the fear of falling were espcially pervasive topics. After discharge the fracture itself had little prominence in the patients’ perspectives as activities of everyday life were used as measures of the recovery progress. ConclusionsThe patients' narratives at different time points revealed striking similarities across individuals. Despite pain and worry for the future during admission, the patients’ perspectives switched towards their ability to handle practical issues in everyday life and enjoy social activities, and their view on quality of life increased when their dependency on help decreased.

Topics in National Anthems

National anthems are occasionally quoted, mostly based on anecdotal evidence or arguments, to be correlated with societal features. The present study aims to identify the pervasive topics in national anthems, and then to establish whether connections may be established between these topics and some basic societal features. Upon examination of ~200 anthems, such recurring themes were identified: ancestry/past, beauty, build/work, country name, courage, democracy, enemy, ethnicity, family, man, woman, fight, flag/colours, forever/never, future, geographical references, glory, independence/freedom, joy/happiness, home/mother/father-land, law/governance, leader, love, loyalty, peace, poverty/wealth, pride, religion, revolution, sacred, sacrifice, salvation, sorrow, treason, tyrant/chains, unity, win/victory. The number of topics, as well as their bias (e.g., towards identity, or towards fight, or towards general well-being), vary widely between anthems; groups of anthems may be identified based on these tendencies. Moreover, the number of topics, their bias, and/or the date of adoption can be proven to correlate to some extent to more general societal features such as date of adoption, age of country, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, Gini coefficient, size of armed forces, inequality, inequality-adjusted human development index, and a number of parameters from the World Values Survey (WVS) database (related to religion, gender equality, attitude towards other nationalities/races, attitude towards work, attachment to democratic values etc). This set of data and the herein identified correlations may offer grounds for further, more detailed exploration of a variety of correlations between societal features and official narratives, starting with the national anthems as prime example.

A postmodern account on cultural pluralism and harmony. Comparing the constitutional experiences of Bolivia and Nepal Comparing the Constitutional Experiences of Bolivia and Nepal

Cultural pluralism and the legal acknowledgment of diversity are currently pervasive topics within comparative constitutional law debates. From the post-Westphalian conception of the nation-state, contemporary and avant-garde forms of constitutionalism in Latin America and South Asia had to struggle with the colonialism’s legacy of monoculturalism, claiming for a proper space for their autochthonous traditions within the legal systems. To this extent, the constitutional experiences of Bolivia and Nepal represent suitable examples to “re-think” the role of culture through a less legalistic approach. From these assumptions, the article aims to verify whether the concept of harmony within the constitutional frameworks of pluralistic societies could be considered as one of the main features of their legal systems (or even the funding myth of the state) within intercultural/multicultural approaches to diversity.

Introducing Iterative Methods to Undergraduate Chemistry Students—A Spreadsheet-Based Approach

A bachelor’s degree program in chemistry typically starts with basic concepts in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Those principles are very important because they pave the ground for future advanced studies and, therefore, one needs to present them in a clear but rigorous way. One example is provided by the mathematical notion of an iterative process which acquires a significant relevance in chemistry. The popular Newton–Raphson algorithm has been selected to exemplify how iterative methods work as it is highly effective and suitable for undergraduate students. Additionally, this work presents a straightforward and interactive pedagogical tool, created with the widespread Microsoft Office Excel, which can be applied in a classroom to solve nonlinear equations numerically. Four pervasive topics in undergraduate programs are given to illustrate the importance of iterative processes, namely the calculation of pH of a weak acid solution, the molar volume of a real gas, the molecular geometry delivered by VSEPR theory, and the conformational analysis of 1,2-dichloroethane molecule.

Making the user useful? How translation processes managerialize voice in public organizations

AbstractOne of the most pervasive topics in public management discussions in recent decades is the notion of user orientation. More than ever, external stakeholders expect public organizations to “get closer” to users and to treat citizens as knowledgeable consumers of public services with a view and a voice. Existing literature highlights how, through a wide range of calculative practices, information gathered from and about public service users is assembled into descriptions of organizational activity that are useful for managers in addressing issues of surveillance and internal control as well as legitimation. In our multiple case study of hospitals and prisons in Germany, we introduce a two‐step model of translation for explaining how user voice is transformed into management objects, which are then further translated into organizationally “useful” information. In doing so, we make three contributions to further our understanding of how user views are formatted to organizational activity and put to use by managers in the public sector. First, we developed a model of translation that highlights how user voices and the prospect of user orientation are enacted across diverse organizational contexts. Second, we found that different types of organizations deploy distinct methods of accounting, which nevertheless make user feedback useful in similar ways: to develop information that helps construct an image of performance, gain financial leverage, and enact compliance. Third, we found that in addition to quantitative forms of accounting, narrative accounting techniques played important roles in making users “useful” in public organizations.

The lightning-filled night

Imagination is one of the most important and pervasive topics in Piana’s philosophical work and the development of an original phenomenological approach to imagination is one of his most substantial achievement. Aim of this paper is to explain two of the main aspects of his phenomenology of imagination: the a-contextual nature of its objects and the historical and material foundations of imagination itself. A short concluding remark is devoted to cast a glance to a coherent and natural development of Piana’s philosophy of imagination.

The Politics of Economic Distress in the Aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, 1689–1702

Abstract The economic problems of the 1690s spurred an extraordinary surge in politicised debates and complaints about commercial, financial and other material affairs. This article begins by examining the magnitude of the shift that occurred in economic fortunes between the reigns of James II (1685–8) and William III (1689–1702), highlighting the main sources of concern: wartime disruption to trade, rising taxes, the currency crisis associated with the recoinage of 1696, and the high food prices of 1693–9. More significantly, it then assesses the nature and extent of the public response. Trade, finance and fiscal impositions became increasingly pervasive topics of public conversation and printed debate, as evidenced both by anecdotal reports and an approximate but telling analysis of published titles. Moreover, national political divisions—between Williamites and Jacobites, Whigs and Tories, Court and Country, anti-French and anti-Dutch—were central to this economic discourse. Perceptions of the monarch and parliamentary leaders were directly linked to how people interpreted the hardships of this decade. This manifested itself in innumerable short tracts, broadside ballads, seditious conversations, riotous protests and many other modes of public communication. Finally, through comparisons with earlier and later periods such as the 1540s, 1590s, 1640s and the early eighteenth century, this article demonstrates that the tumult of the 1690s had a long-term impact and has been unjustly neglected in the historiography of economic crisis and political conflict.

Philosophy of art: aesthetic theory and practice

This book addresses issues in the philosophy of art through the lenses of the three broad areas of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and axiology. It surveys many important and pervasive topics connected to a philosophical understanding of art.

Clinical PET-CT in Radiology: Integrated Imaging in Oncology

P. Shreve and D.W. Townsend, eds. New York, NY: Springer, 2011, 437 pages, $189 Hybrid imaging and diagnosis by multimodality imaging are broad and pervasive topics in the medical imaging field. The practice of integrating the interpretation of complementary imaging modalities for clinical

When the Romance is Over: Follower Perspectives of Aversive Leadership

While leadership is indisputably one of the most pervasive topics in our society, the vast majority of existing research has focused on leadership as a positive force. Taking a follower‐centric approach to the study of leadership, we integrate research on the Romance of Leadership and the dark side of leadership by examining followers’ perceptions of aversive leadership in the context of public high schools. Although Meindl, Ehrlich, and Dukerich (1985) demonstrated that the Romance of Leadership also includes the overattribution of negative outcomes to leaders, subsequent research has failed to explore the implications of this potentially darker side of romanticising leaders. Specifically, we examine perceptions of principals’ aversive leadership and traditional affective, behavioral, and performance outcomes of followers in a sample of 342 dyads. Followers assessed their principals’ leadership behaviors and self‐rated their levels of job satisfaction, self‐efficacy, and resistance, while principals assessed their followers’ citizenship behaviors, complaining behaviors, and job performance. Results show that perceptions of aversive leadership are positively related to follower resistance and negatively related to followers’ job satisfaction. In addition, a usefulness analysis revealed that follower‐rated variables were significantly related to perceptions of aversive leadership above and beyond leader‐rated variables, suggesting that the relationship between negative outcomes and aversive leadership may be more constructed than real. In sum, the tendency to romanticise leadership may also lead to a proclivity to readily misattribute or overattribute blame to leadership as a convenient scapegoat for negative outcomes.Alors que le leadership est incontestablement l’un des thèmes les plus envahissants de notre société, la grande majorité des recherches existantes a porté sur le leadership en tant que force positive. En adoptant une approche centrée sur le suiveur dans l’étude du leadership, nous rapprochons les recherches sur la Romance du Leadership de la face sombre du leadership en examinant la perception qu’ont les collaborateurs du leadership insupportable dans le contexte des lycées publics. Quoique Meindl, Ehrlich, et Dukerich (1985) aient montré que la Romance du Leadership inclut aussi la surattribution de résultats négatifs aux leaders, les recherches ultérieures ont méconnu les implications de cet aspect potentiellement plus sombre des leaders idylliques. Nous analysons en particulier sur un échantillon de 342 dyades la perception du leadership répulsif du proviseur et les résultats habituels des collaborateurs en rapport avec l’affectivité, le comportement et les performances. Les collaborateurs ont noté les comportements de leadership de leur proviseur et auto‐évalué leur niveau de satisfaction au travail, d’efficience et de résistance, alors que les proviseurs appréciaient les conduites de citoyenneté et de revendication, ainsi que la performance professionnelle. Les résultats montrent que la perception du leadership répulsif est positivement reliée à la résistance du suiveur et négativementà sa satisfaction professionnelle. En outre, une analyse des plus fructueuses a révélé que les variables évaluées par les collaborateurs étaient significativement en relation avec la perception du leadership répulsif, bien plus qu’avec les variables évaluées par les leaders, ce qui indique que la relation entre les résultats médiocres et le leadership négatif serait plus construite que réelle. Au total, le penchant à l’idéalisation du leadership peut aussi bien conduire à une propension à trop facilement condamner à tort et à travers le leadership qu’à la désignation d’un bouc émissaire tout trouvé pour expliquer de mauvais résultats.