Since the Enlightenment, a common assumption in much of Western philosophy has been that religious belief would decline. Yet this has not occurred. Religion's tenacity can be partly explained by considering it as a story. The fact that stories play a central role in human experience may help to explain why religion continues to appeal to so many in a supposedly technologically-advanced, secular age.

In an essay published in the May 2003 issue of Atlantic Monthly, Jonathan Rauch describes a phenomenon he refers to as ‘apatheism’ which he defines as “… a disinclination to care all that much about one’s own religion, and an even stronger disinclination to care about other people’s [religion]…” The phenomenon thatRauch describes seems to refer not to an epistemological state but rather to a normative way of being in the world. It also appears to be linked in some important (...) ways to the rise of secularization. In fact, many cultural observers and philosophers have noted the increasing secularization of society, particularly Western society, and the corresponding decline in religious belief. In this paper I will attempt to place apatheism in the larger context of philosophy of religion. Inaddition, I will outline the connections between apatheism as described by Rauch and the work of Slavoj Zizek as well as the analysis of truth and bullshit offered by the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt. (shrink)

Iz antropoloških stavki Jaspersove filozofije egzistencije: egzistencija – čovjekova mogućnost i čovjek – moguća egzistencija, iščitava se njegov stav prema filozofskoj antropologiji. Naime, po mogućnosti je čovjek otvorena egzistencijalna stvarnost »suprotstavljena « svim pokušajima stvaranja zatvorene slike o njemu. Čovjekova je sloboda njegov do kraja neotkriveni bitak po kojemu on ne može biti predmet istraživanja. S obzirom na to da Jaspers svojom filozofijom egzistencije odbija mogućnost postizanja cjelovitog i zaokruženog znanja o čovjeku i njegovu bitku, kao i mogućnost postuliranja posebnog (...) aspekta o čovjeku i fiksiranje spozanje o njemu, njegova je filozofija svojevrsna kritika filozofske antropologije, odnosno antropološke teorije cjeline.Aus den anthropologischen Grundsätzen der Jaspers Existenzphilosophie: Existenz – die Möglichkeit des Menschen und der Mensch – mögliche Existenz, lässt sich seine Stellung zu der philosophischen Anthropologie ablesen. Nämlich, nach seinen Möglichkeiten ist der Mensch eine offene existentielle Wirklichkeit, die sich allen Versuchen „widersetzt“, ein geschlossenes Bild über ihn zu erstellen. Die Freiheit des Menschen ist sein nie zu Ende entdecktes Sein, nach dem er kein Untersuchungsgegenstand sein kann. Da Jaspers mit seiner Existenzphilosophie jede Möglichkeit ablehnt, ein umfassendes und abgerundetes Wissen über den Menschen und sein Dasein zu erlangen, wie auch die Möglichkeit, einen Sonderaspekt des Menschen zu postulieren und die Menschenkenntnisse zu fixieren, ist seine Philosophie eine eigenartige Kritik der philosophischen Anthropologie, beziehungsweise der antropologischen Ganzheitstheorie. (shrink)

Since the Enlightenment, a common assumption in much of Western philosophy has been that religious belief would decline. Yet this has not occurred. Religion's tenacity can be partly explained by considering it as a story. The fact that stories play a central role in human experience may help to explain why religion continues to appeal to so many in a supposedly technologically-advanced, secular age.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had unprecedented effects on our daily lives. This study aimed to assess the quality of life at two time points during the COVID-19 pandemic with lockdown restrictions according to gender, age, and urbanization level. Qualtrics® recruited representative Austrian population samples in April 2020 and December 2020/January 2021. ANOVAs and the Bonferroni-corrected post-hoc tests were conducted to investigate differences between April and December 2020 and to compare with pre-pandemic data. Although the quality of life changed from pre-pandemic (...) to April 2020, there were no significant changes between April and December. Living location, gender, and age showed an effect on the quality of life. All domains of quality of life have decreased since the onset of the pandemic, and this decline has been maintained over the course of the first year of the pandemic. Creative measures should be implemented to assist people in improving one or more areas of quality of life, within the lockdown restrictions to improve the overall wellbeing of the population. (shrink)