Yuan Dynasty was an era with austere political reality and thinking reality. As a result of despisement to ruling of different races, a large majority of scholars in Yuan Dynasty chose seclusion without other choice, but the “internal beauty” they pursued was amazingly unanimous, which was, without doubt, owing to the spirit of the mountains and forests. When they tried to find enjoyment in painting, they put their willpower in it, which was a spontaneous awareness of cultural spirit and was, (...) moreover, a peak experience of Chinese traditional culture. Achievement of Yuan Dynasty painting was impressive, and extended the aesthetic space of human beings. Thus, it enriched and development and manifestation connotation of landscape painting to a great extent, and would be engraved forever in the spiritual and cultural history of human beings. (shrink)

Purpose. The aim of this article is to analyse the essential features of religious faith as an existential-personalistic model of the formation of a person, his worldview orientations and activities. This requires a consistent solution of the following tasks: a) to focus on different approaches to understanding the phenomenon of "religious faith" ; b) to reveal the spiritual potential of religious faith, its capabilities in boundary situations. Theoretical basis. The author thinks that the interpretation of religious faith as confidence (...) in the invisible is unsatisfactory, one-sided and superficial. Religious faith is the existential, due to which a person overcomes the contradictions between finiteness and infinity. It is the construct of the human spirit, which makes its way into the transcendental realm. In this context, religious faith is a kind of criterion for the "growth" of the "human" in human, the criterion of his spirituality and humanity. Religious faith, being an integral part of human existence, gives it irrational dimensions, makes the possibility of impossible. The existential potential of religious faith serves as the "fulcrum" of a person, thanks to which he self-actualizes, self-fulfills and forms a certain worldview model. Originality. The author has proved that religious faith, which is the projective model of a person, turns out to be one of the possible ways to solve its existential problems, as it concerns not only the nature of the essential characteristics, the properties of the Divine itself but also the ultimate foundations of person in all the uniqueness and specificity of his being. Conclusions. Religious faith, acting as a factor in human activity, builds his value-worldview model of the world. Faith deals with the "ultimate" problems of human existence since it is of exceptional importance in solving life-meaning issues of human existence. The existential experience of the believer acquires the status of an event that opens up a field of new possibilities, a new spiritual experience. The accumulative effect of such experience forms the spiritual and value priorities of human existence, sets certain coordinates of his vital activity, due to which he self-determines, being in dialogue with the Absolute. Religious faith, unfolding as a permanent process of "search and finding" opens the "code" of transcendence, a new level of relations of the Human and Divine. (shrink)

The article is aimed at a philosophical study of the foundations/causes of war. Its background is a definition of the Russian-Ukrainian full-scale warfare as an irreconcilable existential conflict of the "Russian world" between the "Russian world" and the national world of Ukraine. Methodological specific of the article is reliance on the everydayness of a boundary situation of war to define the cultural world, as well as cultural identity as concepts that get existential meaning. Philosophy potential is used to clarify (...) the key question for today's war discourse about why the parties to the conflict are determined to take military actions, but not to resolve the conflict through peace negotiations. The answer is sought by comparing two ontologies of the world that there are in Habermas' communicative theory of action and Heidegger's fundamental ontology. Each of them provides an alternative concept of understanding and, accordingly, different foundations for its truth theory. This also provides a perspective, firstly, to distinguish two alternative positions of participants in the discourse of war – "internal" one as "being in a culture at war" and another of an "external" observer. Secondly, this distinction helps to explain why war as a conflict of cultural worlds could be considered from different philosophical points of view, namely from the position of the philosophy of communicative action, as well as in the context of existential analysis of being. Examination of the explanatory potential of both approaches is carried out on the basis of a comparison of different concepts of the world, fundamental to each of philosophers. It is done by clarifications of basics of two ontologies of understanding and, accordingly, of their theories of truth. The article indicates that the theory of truth in communicative philosophy is based on the regulative idea of the unity of the objective world. Instead, with reference to examples from Charles Taylor and Jean-Luc Nancy, the author claims that the fundamental ontology can be reinterpreted in terms of the plurality of being-in-common of people in sovereign cultural worlds. Accordingly, the interaction of representatives of different cultural identities under certain political conditions, i.e., official propaganda can turn into a radical disagreement of different existential understandings of the meaning of being, into a war of cultural worlds that cannot be overcome by just negotiations at the level of competent communication. The article ends with an open question about searching for ways to unify the mentioned ontological approaches. (shrink)

Manifestations of school shooting or ‘columbine’, constituted by armed mass attacks and murders in educational institutions perpetrated by adolescents, have proliferated in recent years. They are marked by their unpredictability, spontaneity and cruelty. This phenomenon has been subject to scholarly examination from various perspectives, enabling the elucidation of its multifarious traits and characteristics as a means of diagnosis and prevention. This study surveys established academic approaches to the study of school shootings (psychological, legal, sociological, semiotic, existential) and delineates their specificity (...) and scope. Drawing on analysis of incidents of school shootings in Russia from 2014-2022, key signs and tendencies in the occurrence of mass attacks on educational institutions are delineated. Adopting existential approaches in philosophy and psychology, notably the works of A. Camus, E. Fromm, M. Boss, V. Frankl and L. Berkowitz, the semantic stages and constituents of school shootings as existential crimes and subsequent suicides are elucidated. The present study aims to identify and characterise the roots and essence of school shootings ('columbine') as an existential crime type, in order to comprehend the semantic motivational origins of school shootings and analyse the ‘boundary situation’ engendering individual destructive rebellion against the world. The nexus between unresolved existential needs and quandaries of the individual and the factors triggering self-destructive personality mechanisms is expounded, whereby the individual enacts an ‘escape’ from reality against the backdrop of media-disseminated aggressiveness and legitimation of violence as a means of overcoming problems and self-presentation. The existential analysis and modelling of school shooters’ actions offered here has enabled conclusions to be drawn regarding potential countermeasures to such crimes. (shrink)

This study focuses on how Israeli Arab citizens perceive their media representations on Israeli television and why they consume television broadcasts even though they are marked mostly by negative representations. A new concept – “Communication Boundary Situation” – a development of Jaspers’ “Boundary Situation” theory, is the theoretical framework for the article. The empirical data was collected by conducting semi-structured in-depth interviews. The findings point to different attitudes among the interviewees towards their representation in various television genres, in (...) particular, in advertising as compared to satire and drama. The suggested theoretical framework and its empirical implementation might be useful in examining how various minorities perceive their media representations in other countries. (shrink)

The study of world politics in theoretical and empirical terms has recently witnessed an upsurge of interest in the question of complexity, drawing upon complexity theory; particularly, renewed interest in emergent properties and the aleatory nature of the political. This article seeks to demonstrate, primarily via an exploration of the work of Gilles Deleuze and Manuel DeLanda, the possibilities for a type of thinking about the ‘international’ that utilises the notion of social complexity as its primary mode of enframing the (...) major dimensions to world politics. As such it argues for a theoretical reconceptualisation of the system of states, markets and societies as individual and overlapping scale-entities, each possessing causal agency, with overlapping and enmeshed boundaries, situated in their historical and concrete manifestations. The reified concepts of polity, economy and society are re-cast in the language of assemblage theory as ordering, exchanging and cohering, thus highlighting process in world politics and providing a theoretical base better equipped to cope with complex social processes and practices. And this I conclude clears the way to re-situate international space theoretically as a complex adaptive system. (shrink)

In a non-German-speaking environment is Jaspers sometimes mistakenly called as an existentialist. But Jaspers saw himself as a philosopher of existence, and he sharply criticized existentialism. This error arose because of confusion in the translations of the names Existenzphilosophie and Existentialismus from German into other languages. The difference between these terms was actively discussed immediately after Sartre’s lecture on humanism, in which Sartre, as he thought, announced a new direction in philosophy — existentialism (Existentialisme), to which he also included Jaspers (...) as a religious member of this direction. The purpose of paper is to investigate and analyze Jaspers’ criticism of existentialism and his rejection of it. Because long before Sart re’s lecture, Jaspers wrote about the false philosophical method of the investigation of human being as opposed to the true way — the elucidation of existence (Existenzerhellung), and also noted that he created a new word to denote this false method — existentialism (Existentialismus). While Jaspers understood the elucidation of existence as self-reflection and self-experience, which deepen in the experiences of boundary situations (Grenzsituationen), he considers existentialism as the knowledge of human being as a certain object among other objects. Already later — after Sartre’s lecture — Jaspers began to criticize existentialism as a direction that arose under the influence of the philosophy of existence and as its decline. Jaspers connected existentialism mainly with Sartre and outlined the main grounds of his criticism: existentialism is based on bare abstraction and Sartre’s main slogan — existence (of personality) precedes essence — is an evidence of this; existentialism uses a certain poetic vagueness of some statements, and is an attempt to overcome nihilism through nihilism itself; this philosophy denies the existence of any transcendent basis of human and world. For these reasons, Jaspers rejected existentialism, which is fundamentally different from the philosophy of existence. (shrink)

Ideas such as “I am born a labor, poor, a hereditary syphilitic/unhandy” are ones that people tend to resort to as excuses when they feel as if the odds of life are stacked against them and characterized it either “fate” or punishment. In every life situation, an individual finds a choice. In the contemporary world, human life faces boundary situations (COVID) and messy lived experiences such as paralysis, which have different consequences for different people. However, life seems more difficult (...) for the less fortunate to escape their predicament and enjoy a better life. The presence of difficult human conditions in the world brings some serious questions concerning our fate, facticity, situation, and freedom into a sharp focus. In this connection, the paper attempts to rethink Sartre’s idea of absolute freedom in the context of situations that Sartre characterizes as facticity. Since Sartre affirms that humanity encounters certain restrictions on the road of freedom he also claims that freedom alone may change the situation of an individual. The study, however, tries to explore how an individual enjoys freedom despite certain restrictions and limitations and explain how both of these points of view are valid. The work, however, interprets Sartre’s idea of absolute freedom in terms of existential counseling to transcend facticity and break the barriers that prevent people from living a free, authentic, and worthwhile life. (shrink)

The belief in demons is widespread in Islamic societies. Demons are frequently cited in the Koran and the Words of the Prophet. The author traces their history using Arabic and Persian sources. Demons occur with special frequency in boundary situations whether spatial, temporal, or moral. The examined sources yield important insights into the present-day belief in demons.".

Philosophical anthropologies that emphasise the role of the emotions can be used to expand existing notions of moral agency and learning in situations of great moral complexity. In this article we tell the story of one patient facing the tough decision of whether to be tested for Huntington’s disease or not. We then interpret her story from two different but compatible philosophical entry points: Aristotle’s conception of Greek tragedy and Karl Jaspers’ notion of Grenzsituationen (boundary situations). We continue by indicating (...) some ways in which these two positions may be used for reflecting upon different perspectives involved in clinical decision-making, those of patients, clinicians and bioethicists. We conclude that the ideas we introduce can be used as hermeneutic tools for situating learning and dialogue within a broader cultural field in which literature and art may also play important roles. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers was one of the greatest European philosophers and humanists of the twentieth century. He demonstrated a broad range of philosophical thinking that makes his work relevant for the twenty-first century. Coming to philosophy from medicine and psychiatry, Jaspers's views encompass a vast and creative range of empirical, philosophical, social, historical, and poltical ideas. Hannah Arendt described Jaspers as one of the greatest interpreters of Kant in the German tradition. In the 1950s, Jaspers spoke of his "philosophy of reason" (...) and his debt to Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Weber, and others. His philosophy, however, has often been misunderstood by Anglophone readers and interpreters, both with respect to his so-called existentialism, as well as to the originality, creativity, depth, and scope of this thinking and method. The contributors to this fascinating volume offer fresh expositions and interpretations of Jaspers's philosophy. All are prominent experts in Jaspers research from three continents. Six major parts reveal the significant contribution of Jaspers's thought to the philosophy of psychiatry and science, philosophy of history, metaphysics, philosophy of education, philosophy of humanity, philosophy of politics, philosophy of religion, and intercultural philosophy. Key concepts of Jaspers's philosophy are highlighted and interpreted from a fresh and timely perspective: "boundary situations," existential communication, existential truth, transcendence, philosophical faith, the axial age in world history, new politics and the role of a moral and political conversion, the idea of the university, and Jaspers's fascination with and interpretation of Asian thought. The accessible essays will help readers overcome the intimidation often felt when faced with the work of a major German philosopher. The editors introduce and summarize Jaspers's published works, while offering an overview of his basic themes and concerns. New readers and researchers alike will find this collection instrumental in understanding recent developments in the interpretation of Jaspers. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers was one of the greatest European philosophers and humanists of the twentieth century. He demonstrated a broad range of philosophical thinking that makes his work relevant for the twenty-first century. Coming to philosophy from medicine and psychiatry, Jaspers's views encompass a vast and creative range of empirical, philosophical, social, historical, and poltical ideas. Hannah Arendt described Jaspers as one of the greatest interpreters of Kant in the German tradition. In the 1950s, Jaspers spoke of his "philosophy of reason" (...) and his debt to Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Weber, and others. His philosophy, however, has often been misunderstood by Anglophone readers and interpreters, both with respect to his so-called existentialism, as well as to the originality, creativity, depth, and scope of this thinking and method. The contributors to this fascinating volume offer fresh expositions and interpretations of Jaspers's philosophy. All are prominent experts in Jaspers research from three continents (Europe, North America, and Asia). Six major parts reveal the significant contribution of Jaspers's thought to the philosophy of psychiatry and science, philosophy of history, metaphysics, philosophy of education, philosophy of humanity, philosophy of politics, philosophy of religion, and intercultural philosophy. Key concepts of Jaspers's philosophy are highlighted and interpreted from a fresh and timely perspective: "boundary situations," existential communication, existential truth, transcendence, philosophical faith, the axial age in world history, new politics and the role of a moral and political conversion, the idea of the university, and Jaspers's fascination with and interpretation of Asian thought. The accessible essays will help readers overcome the intimidation often felt when faced with the work of a major German philosopher. The editors introduce and summarize Jaspers's published works, while offering an overview of his basic themes and concerns. New readers and researchers alike will find this collection instrumental in understanding recent developments in the interpretation of Jaspers. (shrink)

Karl Jaspers was one of the greatest European philosophers and humanists of the twentieth century. He demonstrated a broad range of philosophical thinking that makes his work relevant for the twenty-first century. Coming to philosophy from medicine and psychiatry, Jaspers's views encompass a vast and creative range of empirical, philosophical, social, historical, and poltical ideas. Hannah Arendt described Jaspers as one of the greatest interpreters of Kant in the German tradition. In the 1950s, Jaspers spoke of his "philosophy of reason" (...) and his debt to Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Weber, and others. His philosophy, however, has often been misunderstood by Anglophone readers and interpreters, both with respect to his so-called existentialism, as well as to the originality, creativity, depth, and scope of this thinking and method. The contributors to this fascinating volume offer fresh expositions and interpretations of Jaspers's philosophy. All are prominent experts in Jaspers research from three continents. Six major parts reveal the significant contribution of Jaspers's thought to the philosophy of psychiatry and science, philosophy of history, metaphysics, philosophy of education, philosophy of humanity, philosophy of politics, philosophy of religion, and intercultural philosophy. Key concepts of Jaspers's philosophy are highlighted and interpreted from a fresh and timely perspective: "boundary situations," existential communication, existential truth, transcendence, philosophical faith, the axial age in world history, new politics and the role of a moral and political conversion, the idea of the university, and Jaspers's fascination with and interpretation of Asian thought. The accessible essays will help readers overcome the intimidation often felt when faced with the work of a major German philosopher. The editors introduce and summarize Jaspers's published works, while offering an overview of his basic themes and concerns. New readers and researchers alike will find this collection instrumental in understanding recent developments in the interpretation of Jaspers. (shrink)

Departing from the view that genres are regulative as well as constitutive of social action, this article explores the interconnectedness of genres and Discourses that transit generic boundaries. Situating the study in a local energy transition project in Denmark and exploring what happens in a series of citizen meetings without a narrowly defined agenda, I argue that the meetings may be seen as a nexus of genres constituted by a tissue of interwoven Discourses with a lifespan that extends beyond the (...) specific communicative moment. I understand a nexus of genres as a point where genres in a wider sense meet and interact. Relating the Discourses initiated by the participating citizens to the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual metafunctions in systemic functional linguistics, I analyse topics made salient by actors participating in the citizen meetings. By following these topics intertextually across generic boundaries, I identify Discourses that are mutually entangled and genres that are taken up in the process. These include anticipatory Discourse, Discourse of legitimation, Discourse of motivation, Discourse about technology and Discourse about energy saving initiatives or in other words Discourses that exceed the boundaries of the specific genre in which they are realized. (shrink)

The article is dedicated to the identification and analysis of existential dimensions of science, i.e., the dependence of consciousness, activity and communication of scientists on special forms of scientific culture – life-meaning universals (existentials). The article outlines the contours of the problem field of existential challenges rooted in the real life of modern science, in the crisis of the Enlightenment idea of scientific progress, in the mismatch of the norms and ideals of scientists with everyday ideas and needs. The origins (...) of the theoretical formulation of the existential problems of science are found in the dilemma of profession and vocation (M. Weber). This is a controversy that problematizes the relationship between the scientist’s desire for objective knowledge, on the one hand, and the human dimension of scientific activity and communication, on the other. The article singles out the particular types of existing, or boundary situations in science, in which the experiences of scientists are ordered and problematized in relation to archetypal values – freedom, objectivity, creativity, rationality, truth, success, as well as in relation to such ontological categories as space and time, which reveal their value-ladeness. The subjective dimension of science, in which a personality manifests herself as overcoming internal conflicts, a free and thinking being, qualifies as the subject of an emerging research trend – the existential philosophy of science. (shrink)

The article constitutes the second part of a larger paper concerning the philosophical heritage of Mr. Cogito, the lyrical subject of Zbigniew Herbert’s poems. The self-consciousness of the title character is formed, quite like in P. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of existence, in relation to the sphere of history and culture, as well as to the other. Mr. Cogito, when confronted with the war and annihilation, cannot simply use the Cartesian deductive method of reasoning in order to intelligibly prove the existence of (...) God and an immortal soul. Therefore, he refers in his philosophical thinking not merely to rationalism, but also to symbol, which more profoundly than ratio describes the nature of his existence. When challenged by boundary situations, he unsuccessfully attempts to find consolation in the Upanishads, Stoicism, or the wisdom of Chasidism. His attitude towards the modern philosophy of nature as well as to the relative motion theory is that of a sceptic; he juxtaposes them with Aristotle’s Logic. The propensity of contemporary Western civilization to follow magic or gnosis is perceived by him as a sign of self-delusion, or even self-destruction. (shrink)

This study is intended as a part of a larger work containing two more monographs, one on interpersonal relations and transcendence in Romano Guardini, the other on Rudolf Bultmann and his critique of metaphysical transcendence. The thought of Buber is traced here to its historical sources in the Jewish tradition but also in Jacobi and Kierkegaard. These two authors are in fact the only ones who attempt to preserve the finitude of the human subject vis-à-vis transcendence at the very beginning (...) and at the end of subjective idealism. Husserl's establishment of a dialectic between ownness and otherness at the heart of the universal flux of consciousness is the next step in Buber's demarcation of his own ontological posture. In Husserl, the encounter with the other within the sphere of otherness is perhaps contingent, i.e., tied to the mysterious passage from the formal dispositions of transcendental consciousness to the material regions and objects that concretely actualize those formal dispositions. In Buber, as in Landgrege's [[sic]] Phänomenologie und Metaphysik, an "intersubjective reduction" must precede the reflective separation of the spheres of ownness and otherness. Indeed without judgment, there is no full reflection in Husserl, but judgment must be understood as dialogical expression before it can be seen as meaningful world orientation. Buber understood well that the source of dialogical expression is silence, yet instead of using silence as the ground of the existential communication that elucidates the boundary situations of man, he gave a beckoning interpretation of silence that must be seen as a precedent of the openness of the horizon of consciousness in Heidegger's Gelassenheit. Though Babolin does not give any indication here of the direction of the forthcoming monographs, the fact that they are about Guardini and Bultmann may indicate that he is moving away from mysticism in the remainder of this work.--A. M. (shrink)

У статті виявлені передумови, причини, механізми функціонування сміху та наслідки його активізації як впливового чинника формування національно-культурної та соціальної ідентичності українського козацтва; доведено, що закарбовані в козацькій ідентичності схильність до веселої вдачі, блискавичного гумору, життєствердного сміху набули статусу визначальних рис українського національного характеру та особливо актуалізуються в кризових, перехідних станах соціокультурного розвитку.

This second of the three volumes of Philosophy is entitled "Existential Elucidation". Existential man is characterized by two features, historicity and freedom. Like Heidegger, Jaspers stresses that existential decisions receive their content and raw material from the historical situation. But unlike Heidegger his account of historicity also involves a theory of "communication." Part III of this book consists in the famous description of "boundary situations." A boundary situation is the encounter of man with his own limits and finitude. (...) The most important boundary situation is—like Heidegger—death, but once again—unlike Heidegger— Jaspers lays emphasis upon the death of the beloved as well as on one’s own death. In the limit situation man is summoned to embrace his life and to give it an "absolute" worth, despite its inevitable empirical dissolution. In so doing man transcends mere empirical reality and achieves "absolute consciousness." Then alone can man acquire an authentic attitude towards the universal—the law and the state—and then alone can he enter into true community. The follow up volume of Philosophy—"Metaphysics"—will discuss what the boundary situation reveals: being in itself or "transcendence." Ashton’s translation is admirable throughout. There is no index.—J. D. C. (shrink)

This second of the three volumes of Philosophy is entitled "Existential Elucidation". Existential man is characterized by two features, historicity and freedom. Like Heidegger, Jaspers stresses that existential decisions receive their content and raw material from the historical situation. But unlike Heidegger his account of historicity also involves a theory of "communication." Part III of this book consists in the famous description of "boundary situations." A boundary situation is the encounter of man with his own limits and finitude. (...) The most important boundary situation is—like Heidegger—death, but once again—unlike Heidegger— Jaspers lays emphasis upon the death of the beloved as well as on one’s own death. In the limit situation man is summoned to embrace his life and to give it an "absolute" worth, despite its inevitable empirical dissolution. In so doing man transcends mere empirical reality and achieves "absolute consciousness." Then alone can man acquire an authentic attitude towards the universal—the law and the state—and then alone can he enter into true community. The follow up volume of Philosophy—"Metaphysics"—will discuss what the boundary situation reveals: being in itself or "transcendence." Ashton’s translation is admirable throughout. There is no index.—J. D. C. (shrink)

Volume three of Jaspers' Philosophy, which first appeared in German in 1932, contains his treatise on metaphysics with almost exclusive reference to the category of transcendence. In Jaspers' thought freedom aims at unconditional validity, and the realization of unconditionality can occur only in relation to transcendence. The appearance of transcendence is a phenomenon of historicity. Jaspers elaborates the meaning of transcendence in terms of formal transcending, existential relations to transcendence and in the reading of ciphers of transcendence. Formal transcending is (...) to aim at being itself. Jaspers thematizes upon those principles which attempt to discover being itself: a development from the thinkable to the unthinkable, the dialectics of transcending in thought, transcending beyond subject and object, three spheres of transcending along categorial lines. Jaspers devotes a substantial inquiry into the notion of transcendence relative to the categories of objectivity, reality and freedom. He recognizes that transcendence cannot be forced upon one's Existenz. Rather "transcendence manifests itself in my own attitude toward it. I grasp its being in the inner action that makes me myself; its hand is offered to me as I take it." The recognition of transcendence arises in existential boundary situations which Jaspers identifies by a kind of phenomenology of defiance and surrender, rise and fall, diurnal law and nocturnal passion, the wealth of diversity and the one. The final portion of the book deals with the reading of ciphers. A cipher is the language of transcendence, although it is not a communication that can be readily understood or even heard in consciousness at large. "It is only in the absolute consciousness of Existenz that a direct language of transcendence is truly, substantially present." Jaspers admits that ciphers of transcendence are ambiguous for the precise reason that the symbol is inseparable from that which it symbolizes. Consequently, even though ciphers bring transcendence to mind, because of the inseparable union between the symbol and the symbolized, there is no interpreting of ciphers. Jaspers develops the thesis that Existenz is the place of reading ciphers. Alluding toward the end of his metaphysics to the arguments for the existence of God, Jaspers affirms that the arguments over the course of history have floundered because transcendence is not as such. "No empirical determination and no cogent inference can assure us that there is transcendence at all. Transcendent being is encountered in transcending, but it is neither observed nor conceived."--J. R. (shrink)