How philosophy is educating humanity will be explained regarding an actual example concerning the new public health paradigm or health promoting research. The central point of reference is the discussion of the decisive substantiation of the work of medical sociologist, Aaron Antonovsky; his approach to salutogenesis is opposed to the usual approach of pathogenesis. Here, emphasis is put on "Sense of Coherence". It will be shown that, in contrast to Antonovsky's original intention, the relation to the natural sciences and scientific (...) medicine is sufficient to substantiate neither his central arguments nor the relation to the continental traditions of philosophy, especially to existential philosophy and to philosophical hermeneutics mentioned in his latest works. Therefore, referring to a prominent sociological representative of modern health science, means-end rationality is no longer able to assert its dominant position in this field, but must be legitimized by value rationality. Antonovsky's concept of SoC also inevitably includes the argument that methodologically oriented explanation of health related problems can never be replaced by sense-oriented understanding. (shrink)

Some lives are more meaningful than others. Some lives are more important than others. What is the relationship between meaning in life and importance? Because both can be described as relating to significance, the two are often conflated. But these are rather different concepts and the meaningful and the important can easily come apart. They do, however, interact in important ways. When importance also meets the conditions for meaningfulness, it amplifies it, and importance on a large scale is a (...) key, and perhaps the only, source of superlative meaningfulness. When contrasted with the quest for meaning, the desire for importance can seem shallow and egocentric. But the desire to make an important contribution reflects a legitimate existential concern. And, in their best form, both the desire for importance, and that for meaningfulness, similarly combine outward-looking and self-regarding aspects. (shrink)

This final reply responds to Honohan’s invitation to articulate the Arendtian tone of the key-note paper. It spells out the philosophical intuition that the political life of citizens, at least potentially, is capable of making visible what makes human life worthwhile and fully meaningful, and the philosophical curiosity to see whether traces of this deep political awareness can be retrieved in dialogues with volunteers. In response to Dekker’s critical doubts, this final reply clarifies the central stakes of Claes’s paper. The (...) core argument was not to show that the biographical model of meaningfulness is the prevailing approach of meaning in/of volunteering, but to assess the potentials and limits of the model’s interpretive power. Moreover, the paper argues for an alternative, existential model of meaningfulness. This approach refers to deep experiences of meaning that emerge from the practice of volunteering and that shift into powerful political experiences of hope, and a lived sense of equality. (shrink)

Abstract I distinguish various ways in which human life may be thought to be meaningful and present an account of what might be called existential meaningfulness. The account is neutral with respect to both theism and naturalism, but each is addressed in several places and the paper's main points are harmonious with certain versions of both. A number of important criteria for existential meaningfulness are examined, and special emphasis is placed on criteria centering on creativity and (...) excellence, on contributing to the well-being of persons, and on human relationships, particularly those pervaded by love. In the light of a conception of intrinsic goodness, the good life is compared with the meaningful life, and the relation between the two notions is explored. I argue that goodness in a life counts towards its meaningfulness and that the goodness of a life is sufficient for an important kind of meaningfulness. I also suggest that the overall notion of rewarding elements in a life-intrinsically good elements that are typically but not necessarily pleasurable-is a significant unifying concept that helps both in understanding existential meaningfulness and in integrating the various kinds of constituents in a life that conduce to its meaningfulness. (shrink)

I distinguish various ways in which human life may be thought to be meaningful and present an account of what might be called existential meaningfulness. The account is neutral with respect to both theism and naturalism, but each is addressed in several places and the paper's main points are harmonious with certain versions of both. A number of important criteria for existential meaningfulness are examined, and special emphasis is placed on criteria centering on creativity and excellence, (...) on contributing to the well-being of persons, and on human relationships, particularly those pervaded by love. In the light of a conception of intrinsic goodness, the good life is compared with the meaningful life, and the relation between the two notions is explored. I argue that goodness in a life counts towards its meaningfulness and that the goodness of a life is sufficient for an important kind of meaningfulness. I also suggest that the overall notion of rewarding elements in a life—intrinsically good elements that are typically but not necessarily pleasurable—is a significant unifying concept that helps both in understanding existential meaningfulness and in integrating the various kinds of constituents in a life that conduce to its meaningfulness. (shrink)

Many of us feel existential terror when contemplating our future nonexistence. I examine several attempts to rationally justify existential terror. The most promising of these appeals to the effects of future nonexistence on the meaningfulness of our lives. I argue that even this justification fails, and therefore existential terror is irrational.

The author clarifies the existential philosophy that is implicit in Kurt Goldstein's philosophy of organism (Goldstein, 1963; 1995). Situated in response to the growing trend that psychological phenomena are reducible to the nervous system, the author argues for the reverse: that the significance of nervous system activity can only be understood by viewing it as background to foreground performances. Like the organization of perception into meaningful figure-- ground Gestalts, the existential modes of embodiment, sociality, temporality, spatiality, and attunement (...) are organized together to accomplish foreground performances. It is only within this context that the activity of the nervous system may be understood as significant or insignificant. Speech is given as an example. The article concludes with a commentary on how the trend of reducing psychological phenomena to neurological phenomena has impaired our understanding of brain disorders and psychological disorders. (shrink)

Personal recovery entails the idea of learning to live a good life in the face of mental illness. It takes place in a continuous dynamic between change and acceptance and involves the existential dimension in the broadest sense. With cognitive self-regulation and empowerment as central elements, however, current models of recovery mostly have an individual focus instead of a relational one. Furthermore, there seems to be an emphasis on the component of change. Little attention is payed to the role (...) and integration of dealing with loss in personal recovery. In this paper, the role of loss in mental illness will be elaborated from an existential perspective. This will be done by relating existential changes to possibly disruptive experiences of loss in wider experience. With the help of several perspectives on dealing with loss it will be argued this can be integrated in processes of recovery. Then, it will be elaborated how reexperiencing a state of being surrounded, or being included, being held is a necessary part of recovery. The result consists of a refinement of the view on personal recovery. The aim of this paper is therefore twofold: (1) to arrive at a better understanding of what existential loss and loss in wider experience in the context of psychopathology entails, and (2) to further develop perspectives on recovery in mental health care. (shrink)

The present work deals with the quality issue in social ontology: the fact that social entities not only can exist or not exist, but can also be more or less achieved and be subject to degrees of existence, and the fact that social entities can be bearers of varieties of ways of existence, that is, there are several ways in which a social entity of a certain type can be realized. In accordance with phenomenological eidetics, I show that modifications of (...) essential connections involve lacks or variations of essential parts of entities, which, respectively, imply degrees of existence and varieties of ways of existence which “enhance” the existence of social entities, and I argue that the modification issue hits the core of the quality of existence issue. Lastly, I focus on the essential connection of tendency as another case in which eidetics provides meaningful insights into the existential quality issue in social ontology. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine, in five parts, the nature and function of evidence in Husserl’s phenomenology of existence. By “evidence” I understand the intentional achievement of self-giving in Husserl’s sense, and by “phenomenology of existence” I understand the branch of his philosophy that addresses the question concerning a meaningful life. In Part One, I propose that Husserl’s philosophy includes a phenomenology of existence. In Part Two, I employ a selection of texts from Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie to sketch the basic (...) outlines of his phenomenology of existence. In Part Three, I demonstrate that Husserl develops a concept of evidence rich enough to encompass the evidence appropriate to his phenomenology of existence. In Part Four, I investigate the way in which Husserl appeals to what one may describe as “existential evidence” to ground his manner of apprehending the world as he sees it. In Part Five, I expand the horizon of the investigation by situating “existential evidence” – the “given” that keeps on giving – in the context of other kinds of evidence more familiar to scholars and students of Husserl’s phenomenology. (shrink)

Existential crises come in different flavors, but they're typically evoked by confrontations with mortality and accompanied by feelings of existential angst. The English philosopher Bernard Williams (1929–2003) argues that immortality would not be a good thing and that an endless life would become so excruciatingly and unbearably boring that all of us would want “out” at some point. This is exactly what happens in The Good Place. The idea that death makes life meaningful seems to be one of (...) the major moral lessons of The Good Place. Naturalists (about meaning) think that individual human lives can still be meaningful even if the human species wasn't created for a purpose. The Good Place seems to weigh in on the side of naturalism. The underlying message of existential crises in The Good Place is that the key to a meaningful life is to be a morally good person. (shrink)

This paper starts from qualitative research on volunteering and citizenship, with a special focus on volunteering within a setting of restorative justice and mediation. In a first stage, the author reconstructs two models of meaningfulness as hermeneutical lenses to better understand how volunteers see their engagement and experiences as a source of meaningfulness. The paper argues that a biographical model of meaningfulness is in need of a complementary approach to meaningfulness, which focuses on transformational experiences with (...) a strong existential depth. In a second stage, the paper dialogues with the experiences and narratives of the volunteers, and shows how their understanding of citizenship informs, and transforms their ideas of meaningfulness. Both the biographical and the existential approach to meaningfulness appear to be deeply influenced by the volunteers’ civic imaginaries. (shrink)

‘Futility’ is a contentious term that has eluded clear definition, with proposed descriptions either too strict or too vague to encompass the many facets of medical care. Requests for futile care are often surrogates for requests of a more existential character, covering the whole range of personal, emotional, cultural and spiritual needs. Physicians and other practitioners can use requests for futile care as a valuable opportunity to connect with their patients at a deeper level than the mere biomedical diagnosis. (...) Current debate around Canada’s changing regulatory and legal framework highlights challenges in appropriately balancing the benefits and burdens created by requests for futile care. (shrink)

This article is dedicated to basing a new current of philosophy – existential axiology. The nature of this theory involves the understanding of values as responsesof a person to key existential challenges: death, solitude, dependence of the nature and the society, etc. Value is the striving of a human to clarify the meaning andsignificance of our existence, it is an act of freedom, expression of subjectivity because it’s based on our personal experience and preference. We regard values as (...) meaningfully-significant purposes of existence, that are a special type of information, reflecting the originality of the subject and expressing the most significantlonging for his own self-perfection. The sense and importance of information take effect in the programming of the psychic phenomenon and processes. Values express the maximum amount of information about the subject and emerge in the world as his highest manifestation. Since the variety in the human world is verygreat, axiological picture of the world will always be plural. (shrink)

As humans, we want to live meaningfully, yet we are often driven by impulse. In Religion and the Meaning of Life, Williams investigates this paradox – one with profound implications. Delving into felt realities pertinent to meaning, such as boredom, trauma, suicide, denial of death, and indifference, Williams describes ways to acquire meaning and potential obstacles to its acquisition. This book is unique in its willingness to transcend a more secular stance and explore how one's belief in God may be (...) relevant to life's meaning. Religion and the Meaning of Life's interdisciplinary approach makes it useful to philosophers, religious studies scholars, psychologists, students, and general readers alike. The insights from this book have profound real-world applications – they can transform how readers search for meaning and, consequently, how readers see and exist in the world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Shopping for Meaningful Lives: The Religious Motive of Consumerism by Bruce P. RittenhouseIlsup AhnShopping for Meaningful Lives: The Religious Motive of Consumerism Bruce P. Rittenhouse eugene, or: cascade, 2013. 211 pp. $33.00Are there any theories of consumerism that characterize people’s lives on a global scale? What motivates them to choose a consumerist lifestyle? If possible, how can we overcome this lifestyle that entails destructive consequences? In this new (...) book, Shopping for Meaningful Lives, Bruce Rittenhouse answers these questions by critically appropriating Paul Tillich’s theological insights. He first diagnoses consumerism as “not only a pattern of behavior that characterizes an individual life, but a way in which an individual organizes his or her particular life to seek to give it meaning” (3). It is thus more insidious than the mere acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts because humans are not meant to be mere consuming animals. [End Page 196]In attempting to deconstruct consumerism, Rittenhouse first points out that it has been poorly understood despite its seeming ubiquity. He launches his own investigation to look for possible theories of consumerism, which he then evaluates according to a consistent set of empirical criteria. In chapter 3 he enumerates five main types that describe Western consumerism: “1, greed, i.e., consumers’ intemperate materialistic hedonism; 2, status signaling, i.e., consumers’ desire to communicate superior social status; 3, manipulation of consumer by the producers of economic goods through marketing and advertising; 4, imaginative hedonism, i.e., consumers’ seeking emotional pleasure through the imaginative identities; 5, parental concern, i.e., parents’ desire to maximize their children’s well-being” (47). According to Rittenhouse, these five theories of the motivations for consumerism provide anecdotal support to demonstrate their practical relevance, but they “fall short of demonstrating their theories’ empirical possibility, let alone their empirical superiority over the rival theories” (95).Rittenhouse’s alternative theory is then developed in chapter 5, after he provides empirical evidence (including economic charts and analyses) for his own critique in chapter 4. His years of experience as a professional economist aptly qualify him to develop his social-scientific argumentation. Rittenhouse’s constructive proposal is hinged upon his critical insight that consumerism’s motivation may best be understood as religious. By religious, he means that it “answers a question posed by the nature of human existence” (132). Consumerism is now newly understood both as existential and as religious matter, and here Rittenhouse critically appropriates Tillich’s ontotheological categories and concepts, such as the three pairs of ontological elements in the self-world structure of being (individuation and participation, dynamics and form, and freedom and destiny). Since consumerism’s motivation is existential and religious, Rittenhouse attempts to resolve the moral and religious failings of consumerism by demonstrating the “correlation between the existential question of meaning and the answer of existential Christian faith” (133).Rittenhouse concludes his book by calling for existential conversion through the means of grace—that is, “the means of conversion to existential Christian faith and of ongoing conversion within ambiguous existential Christian faith” (175). The strength of this book lies in his discovery that consumerism is a spurious form of religious life that only destroys those who are intoxicated by its lifestyle. Given that consumerism has taken root everywhere affected by ever rising globalization, Rittenhouse’s existential investigation and theological remedy are definitely a welcome voice in the field of Christian ethics. His expertise in social-scientific study and empirical analysis is also a rare strength in this important pursuit. This book is well suited for upper-level college students as well as seminarians and theological school students. It is also a wonderful text for adult Bible study groups in churches and religious communities. [End Page 197]Ilsup AhnNorth Park UniversityCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

In the first section of this contribution, three conditions for scientific research into answers to fundamental, existential questions are discussed. However, because these conditions seem to violate concepts such as 'intersubjectivity' and 'truth', the second section deals with the question in which way a scientific approach that satisfies these three conditions can still be called scientific. The 'possibilistic scientific view' that results from this investigation, will in the third section be exemplified by qualitative research. It will be demonstrated that (...) this social scientific approach can meet the three aforementioned conditions. In the last section, one of the features of such a qualitative approach will be emphasized. 'Radical subjectivity' will be presented as a way to fully satisfy the third condition of research into questions of meaning. (shrink)

Despite their growing popularity, little is known about the psychological effects of participating in past-life meditation groups in contemporary western contexts. We conducted a study to re-create some of the conditions observed in the field by facilitating a group of adults interested in exploring past life meditation. Before the session, participants completed a survey about their afterlife beliefs and associated experiences. Participants also completed questionnaires measuring meaningfulness in life and fear of death before and after the session. In the (...) sample (n = 125), just over half of the participants (52%) reported having a past life memory or vision during the session. Higher paranormal beliefs predicted reporting a past life memory or vision. We also found that having prior memories or visions of having lived before, but not the general belief in having a past life, predicted reporting having past life experiences during the session. Consistent with our predictions, participants who reported having a past life memory or vision also reported reduced existential death distress and increased meaningfulness in life following the session, compared to those who did not report these experiences. (shrink)

Meaning, feeling and expression - the experience of inwardness - matter most in human existence. The perspective of biopoetics shows that this experience is shared by all organisms. Being alive means to exist through relations that have existential concern, and to express these dimensions through the body and its gestures. All life takes place within one poetic space which is shared between all beings and which is accessible through subjective sensual experience. We take part in this through our empirical (...) subjectivity, which arises from the experiences and needs of living beings, and which makes them open to access and sharing in a poetic objectivity. Biopoetics breaks free from the causal-mechanic paradigm which made biology unable to account for mind and meaning. Biology becomes a science of expression, connection and subjectivity which can understand all organisms including humans as feeling agents in a shared ecology of meaningful relations, embedded in a symbolical and material metabolism of the biosphere. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rethinking Variations of Musical MeaningfulnessAnneli ArhoAs a curious mind, I am able to focus on new kinds of topics, to research unknown practices; I am able to explore different cultures, interesting customs of making music, or I may trace various ways of musical thinking. It is wonderful to be able to enrich and transform my understanding of the musical world. [End Page 55]As a lived body,1 I have grown (...) up in the Western music tradition.2 This is my culture. This is the tradition I know as a composer, as a player of an instrument, as a teacher, as a researcher. Living in this culture has given me an embodied understanding of music. This understanding provides me with a meaningful background whenever I sense (hear, see, feel with my body's movements, read, fancy, and speak, write, or read about) music. I know this music in myself.As a musician, I have often been puzzled—even annoyed—that the tradition of writing about music favors descriptions and contemplations which I, as a musician, often find misleading and distorted. It has taken me a long time to realize two things: (1) the professional writers within various discourses create their own kinds of musical meaningfulness that are often interesting in themselves, and (2) in order to really share that kind of meaningfulness, I would have had to grow up within the discourse through which that meaningfulness evolved or was constructed.As a researcher, therefore, I have chosen to ground my research in my lived body, in the musicianship constituted through my experiences in making music. I am interested in phenomena of the lived world—as they are lived through and understood when making music.3 I am interested in different practices and divergent ways of regulating and guiding the making of music. I am interested in habitual ways of speaking about music, common ways of manual and mental training and rehearsing, and in different ways of teaching, supervising, and coaching. For me, all these reveal the phenomenon of music in our culture.My Living with Music—A Field of Musical MeaningfulnessAs a composer, I sometimes work with children and young people, and with their instrumental teachers. I have just started a three-year project in a music school, working each year with a new group of players. In 2004, I conducted a pilot project with recorder players. This year it will be the violin players; next year I may work with the piano players. There are many possibilities for the third year: the head of the school will have a hard job choosing a group from among the several enthusiastic candidates.I have enjoyed the open-mindedness of the children and of the volunteer teachers, too. Learning to play with music—learning to handle, vary, and transform, to compose, decompose, and recompose musical fragments, pieces, or sequences—may be as natural as any playing. Intertwining play, variation, and imitation seems to be an essential part of living and learning.But, I have also had to confront entrenched mythical conceptions of what it means to compose music, and curricula based on those conceptions.4 In my mind, composing cannot be regarded as a phenomenon that could simply be included in a curriculum. In practice, composing may refer to a variety of ways [End Page 56] of making music that are not always easy to tell apart from other culturally named phenomena, like playing, singing, improvising, or writing music.5 For me, composing simply refers to certain ways I live with music: several different ways of dealing with music, different kinds of activities, makings and doings, special states of mind, and special ways of using my embodied knowledge of music. Thus, composing refers to an individual and invisible6 background, an embodied perspective, a way of being, which shows me a certain variety of musical phenomena and their qualities, and conceals some others. Composing, like all arts of making and doing, generates its own practical and existential questions, which often are not an issue for those who do not compose. An outsider never really grasps the situation of a practitioner.Culturally bound ways of making music are being redefined... (shrink)

Environmental anxiety is often thought of as a psychopathological condition. Our paper aims to challenge this narrow understanding by offering an existential-phenomenological interpretation of environmental anxiety that posits it as an _existential attunement_ with a transformative potential, capable of opening the anxious individual to a hopeful and meaningful outlook on the future. In the first part of the paper, we provide a conceptual analysis of environmental anxiety, drawing on current interdisciplinary taxonomies of environmental emotions as well as on (...) class='Hi'>existential-phenomenological definitions of anxiety. We then proceed to define the two key existential characteristics of environmental anxiety, firstly (i) its ability to reframe the aesthetic perception of nature, and secondly (ii) its impact on the subjective constitution of meaning. In the second part of the paper, drawing on the work of Kierkegaard and contemporary ecopsychological and ecotheological thinkers, a distinction is made between a naïve and a radical form of environmental hope. It is argued that while the former type of hope leads to inactivity, the latter is capable of motivating individuals to pro-environmental action. (shrink)

I discuss a learning outcome of the Western Carolina University, Department of Philosophy and Religion, which focuses on a student’s development and pursuit of a meaningful, thriving, well-lived life, as a corrective to the poverty of existential reflection in the academy. We achieve this Socratic goal via a targeted series of assignments throughout the student’s education, a required pro-seminar on the topic of human flourishing, and other elective courses. The self-reflective, narrative assignments are designed to help students develop their (...) own tentative position on a flourishing life, consider whether and how they are pursuing that vision, and articulate meaningful ways to integrate potential vocations with a fulfilling existence. Students are introduced to these questions in introductory classes; take a pro-seminar analyzing various positions on ‘the good life’ drawn from numerous philosophical, religious, and literary texts, with a research paper assignment critically evaluating one position of their choice ; and, in their final year, revisit their earlier ‘meaning assignments,’ examining retrospectively their academic career and personal development, and prospectively their postbaccalaureate life and career. I conclude with some suggestions for programs keen to incorporate a similar outcome into their own curriculum. (shrink)

When reusing existing ontologies for publishing a dataset in RDF (or developing a new ontology), preference may be given to those providing extensive subcategorization for important classes (denoted as focus classes). The subcategories may consist not only of named classes but also of compound class expressions. We define the notion of focused categorization power of a given ontology, with respect to a focus class and a concept expression language, as the (estimated) weighted count of the categories that can be built (...) from the ontology’s signature, conform to the language, and are subsumed by the focus class. For the sake of tractable initial experiments we then formulate a restricted concept expression language based on existential restrictions, and heuristically map it to syntactic patterns over ontology axioms (so-called FCE patterns). The characteristics of the chosen concept expression language and associated FCE patterns are investigated using three different empirical sources derived from ontology collections: first, the concept expression pattern frequency in class definitions; second, the occurrence of FCE patterns in the Tbox of ontologies; and last, for class expressions generated from the Tbox of ontologies (through the FCE patterns); their ‘meaningfulness’ was assessed by different groups of users, yielding a ‘quality ordering’ of the concept expression patterns. The complementary analyses are then compared and summarized. To allow for further experimentation, a web-based prototype was also implemented, which covers the whole process of ontology reuse from keyword-based ontology search through the FCP computation to the selection of ontologies and their enrichment with new concepts built from compound expressions. (shrink)

In this article, the author interprets the hero epic, Gilgamesh, within an existential framework, showing one way through which the study of myth becomes relevant to the philosophical quest for a meaningful life. Using Gabriel Marcel's terminology, the author discusses Gilgamesh 's ordeal upon realizing that he is not immortal, unlike the gods, through his search for immortality and the frustrated quest. The author then identifies Gilgamesh 's primary and secondary reflections, leading to his meaningful acceptance of mortality.

In his very interesting paper Harry Kunneman argues for an alternative view on voluntary work which not so much stresses the economic aspect but primarily its existentially meaningful aspect. To underpin this, Kunneman makes use of a broad range of hermeneutical, social-philosophical, complexity theoretical, biological and other ideas. This multipolar structure of the article might also prove to be its very weakness, because the rich train of thought remains highly abstract. This could be overcome by using examples and casuistry to (...) elucidate and specify the many distinctions in the article. (shrink)

The theories of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker arise from an existential and psychological analysis of the death terror/anxiety deep in the unconscious of every human. Becker details how this anxiety governs the ideologies and behaviors of our species—something now confirmed by thousands of experiments performed by psychologists engaged in contemporary terror management theory (TMT). Humans manage their anxiety through what Becker terms “hero systems”—concepts, beliefs, and myths we create to give us a sense of significance and meaning during, and (...) even beyond our mortal lives. Today, many dominant economic, technological, and religious hero systems seek to confirm our significance by denying that we are—like all other species—animals who must exist in a decaying, mortal body. Becker shows how this attempt to deny our “creatureliness” (basic biological nature) causes humans to stand against the natural world we are embedded in, leading to an assault on the planet and nonhuman animals. As a result, Becker believed pacifism was the only hero system capable of keeping humankind from destroying itself and the earth. Pacifism is the precursor to the more encompassing ethical concept of “reverence for life,” advocated by Dr. Albert Schweitzer. By respecting the will-to-live in all sentient beings, reverence for life transcends concern for humans alone and extends moral and physical safeguards to life as such. Confronting the fact that humans are increasingly alienated from their commodified world and their own being, reverence for life stands as a vital solution to many of our modern problems. And following contemporary TMT research, reverencing life can also expand one’s self-esteem, which research shows lowers death anxiety, reduces aggression, and offers authentic meaning to life itself. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy, the will is often regarded as a sheer philosophical fiction. In Will as Commitment and Resolve , Davenport argues not only that the will is the central power of human agency that makes decisions and forms intentions but also that it includes the capacity to generate new motivation different in structure from prepurposive desires. The concept of "projective motivation" is the central innovation in Davenport's existential account of the everyday notion of striving will. Beginning with the (...) contrast between "eastern" and "western" attitudes toward assertive willing, Davenport traces the lineage of the idea of projective motivation from NeoPlatonic and Christian conceptions of divine motivation to Scotus, Kant, Marx, Arendt, and Levinas. Rich with historical detail, this book includes an extended examination of Platonic and Aristotelian eudaimonist theories of human motivation. Drawing on contemporary critiques of egoism, Davenport argues that happiness is primarily a byproduct of activities and pursuits aimed at other agent-transcending goods for their own sake. In particular, the motives involved in virtue and in its practice as understood by Alasdair MacIntyre are projective rather than eudaimonist. This theory is supported by analyses of radical evil, accounts of intrinsic motivation in existential psychology, and contemporary theories of identity-forming commitment in analytic moral psychology. Following Viktor Frankl, Joseph Raz, and others, Davenport argues that Harry Frankfurt's conception of caring requires objective values worth caring about, which serve as rational grounds for projecting new final ends. The argument concludes with a taxonomy of values or goods, devotion to which can make life meaningful for us. (shrink)

Stem cell research and associated or derivative biotechnologies are proceeding at a pace that has left bioethics behind as a discipline that is more or less reactionary to their developments. Further, much of the available ethical deliberation remains determined by the conceptual framework of late modern metaphysics and the correlative ethical theories of utilitarianism and deontology. Lacking, to any meaningful extent, is a sustained engagement with ontological and epistemological critiques, such as with “postmodern” thinking like that of Heidegger’s existential (...) phenomenology. Some basic “Heideggerian” conceptual strategies are reviewed here as a way of remedying this deficiency and adding to ethical deliberation about current stem cell research practices. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to reorient the "problem of fear," into the question of the "mystery of anxiety": in doing so, I focus on Gabriel Marcel's text "Being and Having: An Existential Diary," where he wrestles with the questions of fear and anxiety. Once we give up on the "problem" of fear and orient ourselves along lines of Being (anxiety) rather than Having (fear), we can approach the question meaningfully: from this perspective, we begin to see the importance (...) of both Hope and Fidelity as not "solutions" to the "problem of fear," but rather as ways of Being that transcend the anxiety of a fundamentally finite and mortal creature. This paper is meant only to sketch an outline of the way in which we might transcend anxiety through Fidelity: there is more work required to fully flesh out this movement of transcendence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Recent decades have witnessed a growing interest in the topic of a meaningful life among philosophers, psychologists, and the general public. Yet despite this interest, the thinker who is perhaps most closely associated with meaning and mental health, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, has been largely overlooked by academic researchers. This article offers some redress to this situation by exploring the status of his central idea, the Will to Meaning, by locating it within contemporary philosophical discussions of Meaning in (...) Life, and examining the coherence of the difference elements of Frankl’s published works. A combination of biographical, historical and philosophical analysis, including reference to the thinkers who helped his ideas, such as Kierkegaard and Scheler, provides a constructively critical account of Frankl’s existential theory of meaning. It is suggested that Frankl’s theory, with amendments, provides a useful contribution to contemporary discussions in the field. (shrink)

Therapists and related theorists and practitioners of mental health tend to hold one of two broad views about how to help patients. On the one hand, some maintain that, or at least act as though, the basic point of therapy is to help patients become clear about what they want deep down and to enable them to achieve it by overcoming mental blockages. On the other hand, there are those who contend that the aim of therapy should instead be to (...) psychologically enable patients to live objectively desirable lives, say, ones that involve developing their inherent talents or exhibiting an authentic/strong/integrated self. In this chapter, I argue that neither of these prominent approaches is complete. Contra the former, sometimes what patients want deep down is not something to promote, and, against the latter, it can sometimes be reasonable for patients to want to sacrifice their own objective interests and for therapists to assist them in this regard. I argue that the category of meaningfulness does well at accounting for these counterexamples to the two dominant approaches, while capturing the kernels of truth in them. The proper aim of therapy, I suggest, is to enable patients to live meaningfully. (shrink)

The idea of afro-existentialism connotes how Africans make sense of living and the meaning and meaninglessness attached to human existence. Different phenomena inform the way humans interpret existence, and one of such in the contemporary period, with great influence on Africans, is human involvement with non-human intelligence, in its different eruptions. This paper focuses on the second-wave AI, which is a period of improved simulation of natural intelligence, whose singularity principle hypothesizes individualist motives. The paper asks, to what extent do (...) Afroexistential norms accommodate second-wave AI? Partly in disagreement with the claim that AI is for everyone, we argue that second-wave artificial intelligence weakly adapts to Afro-existential practices, which is largely communal, emphasizing shared experience. We justify this claim by arguing that Western ethical patterns, which inform the features of the second-wave AI such as statistical patterns, smart algorithm, specialized hardware, and big data sets, emerge from individualist notions. This paper argues that second-wave AI trends do not reflect African norms of existence being factored into ordering algorithmic patterns that set up AI systems and programs. We infer that Afro-existential practices unsettles with the individualist principle which underlines second-wave AI and therefore, a conversation around the development and application of communal interpretation of AI is important. (shrink)

Since the ages of the Old Testament, the Homeric myths, the tragedies of Sophocles and the ensuing theological speculations of the Christian millennium, the theme of loneliness has dominated and haunted the Western world. In this wide-ranging book, philosopher Ben Lazare Mijuskovic returns us to our rich philosophical past on the nature of consciousness, lived experience, and the pining for a meaningful existence that contemporary social science has displaced in its tendency toward material reduction. Engaging key metaphysical discussions on causality, (...) space, time, subjectivity, the mind body-problem, personal identity, freedom, religion, and transcendence in ancient, scholastic, modern, and contemporary philosophy, he highlights the phenomenology of loneliness that lies at the very core of being human. In challenging psychoanalytic and neuroscientific paradigms, Mijuskovic argues that isolative existence and self-consciousness is not so much of a problem of unconscious conflict or the need for psychopharmacology as it is the loss of a sense of personal intimacy. The issue of the criteria of "personal identity" in relation to loneliness has long engaged and consumed the interest of theologians, ethicists, philosophers, novelists and psychologists. This book will be of great interests to academics and students of the humanities, and all those with an interest in the philosophy of loneliness.. (shrink)

The task of this article is to clarify the appropriateness and adequacy of peace-making (confessional) rhetoric in the situation of the war of aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, in particular, the meaningful correspondence of the concept of «peace» in its application or reading by the bearers of different worldview paradigms. The «russkii mir» cannot be translated either as «Russian peace» or as «Russian world». This is because the scope and content of these concepts are different. Rus (Kyiv`s Rus) (...) — a thousand-year-old princely state with its center in Kyiv, where the ancestors of modern Ukrainians lived, baptized by Prince Volodymyr in 988. Rus is not Russia. But Muscovy adopted the name Russia to derive its historiography from Rus. «Russkii mir» actually refutes the axiological principles laid down by ancient Rus’s civilization (freedom, dignity, partnership, co-creation, mutual responsibility). «Russkii mir» destroys peace in global or any local images, trying to grab the territory it decided to own. «Russkii mir» encroaches on world domination and therefore tries to impose its rules of the game on the world, which would reshape the world structure according to the wishes of the Russian dictators. For this, «russkii mir» uses any means and institutions as a tool: the army, weapons of mass destruction, atrocities, terror, lies, propaganda, the church and peace-making rhetoric. The goal is not to restore peace, but to establish the world domination of the Russian Empire in any of its variants (Muscovy, Russian Empire, Soviet Union, Russian Federation or Orthodox Civilization). Russian Orthodox Church plays a leading role in this — it uses religious rhetoric to formu- late a worldview model of the «russkii mir», consolidates the Russian population for a war of aggression, and justifies the atrocities of the Russian military with the sacred mission of restoring the Holy Rus’. Russian Orthodox Church justifies the «civilizing mission» of the Russian troops, actually calls to protect «our Common Russian Fatherland» by killing Ukrainians on the territo- ry of Ukraine. False messianism, manichaeism, paternalism, hatred of the civilized world that lives by democratic standards and respects the dignity and freedom of the individual, Russian arrogance, conceit, supremacy and egomania — this is what Russian Orthodoxy promotes with its religious rhetoric. Therefore, if we hear calls for «peace» from the bearer of the «russkii mir»’s worldview, it actually means a demand to come to terms with all their whims, to give up one’s own identity, one’s own world, one’s own life, if they do not fit into the concept of «russkii mir». (shrink)

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 has resulted in an increase in known risk factors for mental health problems. Mexico adopted lockdown and physical distancing as a containment strategy with potential consequences on day to day life, such as social isolation, loss of income and loneliness that can have important consequences in terms of mental health.Objective: We aimed to examine the effect of the initial phases of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychological distress, well-being and perceived physical health among Mexican-base respondents and to (...) examine whether coping strategies would play a potential intermediating role in relation to these variables. Under the Existential Positive Psychology perspective, an emphasis was made on meaning-centered coping.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted between April 30 and June 16th 2020 among 604 Mexicans-base respondents of which 471 were women and 132 men. Data was collected by using online questionnaires. Psychological distress was measured using the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale. The Brief COPE Inventory was used to assess problem-focused and emotion-focused coping strategies. We also used the Meaning-Centered Coping Scale. PERMA-Profiler was used to assess well-being, perceived physical health, and loneliness. Profiler and Descriptive analyses and bivariate linear regression were performed to examine the association of variables.Results: 45.9% of the participants reported moderate to extremely severe psychological distress. Our results demonstrate that problem-focused and emotion-focused coping were positively related to psychological distress, whereas meaning-centered coping was negatively associated with distress. Furthermore, psychological distress played a potential negative role in the perceived physical health, while meaning-centered coping and well-being buffered the negative influence of psychological distress on perceived physical health (completely standardized indirect effect = –0.01, SE: 0.012, 95% CI [−0.065; −0.017].Conclusion: Meaning-centered coping was found to suppress the negative influence of psychological distress on sensation of decreased physical health corroborating the critical role of meaning in life in promoting well-being. Future studies can further examine the value of the critical role of meaning in life in promoting well-being as a protective factor against severe distress during traumatic events. Findings of this study can be used to orient policies and interventions aimed to alleviate suffering in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Learning about the causes and effects of human-induced climate change is an essential aspect of contemporary environmental education (EE). However, it is increasingly recognized that the familiar ‘information dump delivery mode’ (as Timothy Morton calls it), through which new facts about ecological destruction are being constantly communicated, often contributes to anxiety, cognitive exhaustion, and can ultimately lead to hopelessness and paralysis in the face of ecological issues. In this article, I explore several pathways to approach EE, beyond the presentation and (...) transmission of ecological facts. I position my conceptual discussion around my own teaching experiences speaking about climate change with undergraduate students across several Education classes through 2019 to 2021. I situate these reflections within the current discourse on education and teaching in/for the Anthropocene. Throughout this discussion, I locate various ways in which much EE fails to contribute to student’s agency and empowerment by consistently reducing complex ecological phenomena to a set of problems, mainly economic/technological, to be fixed by technocracy. I propose that a contemplative–existential perspective to EE is capable of responding to these reductions, most basically by providing opportunities and practices for students to process their grief and other emotions through recognizing the Anthropocene as an inescapable reality, but also a reality that cannot be determinately imagined or predicted. (shrink)

We agree with the general commitment of Kunneman’s contribution, but formulate some critical reservations about its elaboration. First, we discuss the use of the concept of complexity. On the basis of Morin’s idea of general complexity we argue that a paradigmatic interpretation leads to a more consistent argumentation strategy. We illustrate this referring to Kunneman’s use of the term ‘autopoiesis’ and Habermas’s concepts of ‘system and life world’. We call into question Kunneman’s position that meaningfulness in volunteering falls short (...) politically. To this end, we formulate a different view about the relationship between existential and political meaningfulness from a vision of citizenship as belonging to the core of being human. This also throws a different light on the importance of the civil society. (shrink)

In his very interesting paper Harry Kunneman argues for an alternative view on voluntary work which not so much stresses the economic aspect but primarily its existentially meaningful aspect. To underpin this, Kunneman makes use of a broad range of hermeneutical, social-philosophical, complexity theoretical, biological and other ideas. This multipolar structure of the article might also prove to be its very weakness, because the rich train of thought remains highly abstract. This could be overcome by using examples and casuistry to (...) elucidate and specify the many distinctions in the article. (shrink)

I argue that we have good reason to reject Bernard Suits’ assertion that game-playing is the ideal of human existence, in the absence of a suitably robust account of utopian games. The chief motivating force behind this rejection rests in the fact that Suits begs the question that there exists some possible set of games-by-design in his utopia, such that the playing of its members would sustain an existentially meaningful existence for his utopians, in the event of a hypo-instrumental culture (...) of material superabundance obtaining. But the set of utopian games is unknown and unknowable. Thus any implications of Suits’ vision for the utilization of our leisure time in the present are vitiated by the collapse of his normative ideal: his ‘metaphysics of leisure’ misses its mark. (shrink)

The article explores meditation-based examination of experience as a means for developing a contemplative, nonnaturalized, and existentially meaningful empirical research of consciousness in which the experiencing person is regarded as the primary investigator. As the first phase of a broader project, a group of seven researchers carried out a series of five meditation retreats. We sampled the ongoing experience of the researchers at the same random moments during meditation practice. The acquired data, consisting of more than 500 journal entries, interview (...) transcripts, and participatory analysis records, set the ground for three lines of enquiry: (1) What, if any, kind of meditative practice is suitable for researching experience? How can it be cultivated? (2) Can a group of researchers skilled in meditation systematically investigate selected experiential phenomena? (3) What is the actual lived experience of a group of researchers engaged in a continuous meditation-based examination of experience? In this report, we primarily focus on the third question, offering a concrete ethnographic overview of our research enterprise. We conclude by relating our findings to the discussion of the phenomenological practice of the epoché as an empirical tool for the study of consciousness. (shrink)

Resumen El objetivo principal del artículo es terminar quién es el Dasein desde el aparecer del mundo en la obra de Martin Heidegger Ser y tiempo. Para ello, se plantea la posibilidad de aprehensión del horizonte del sí mismo del Dasein, en contra de los propios análisis heideggerianos sobre el uno, y, también, se muestra de qué manera la mismidad del Dasein se presupone ya en el modo de aparición del mundo-entorno a través del existenciario significatividad. La conclusión del artículo (...) intentará descubrir los posibles rendimientos fenomenológicos de la apertura del horizonte del sí-mismo del Dasein.The main goal of the paper is to determine who is the Dasein itself from the appearance of the world in the Book of Martin Heidegger Being and time. For this, it raises the possibility of understanding the horizon of the self of Dasein itself differently to Heidegger’s analysis about the they and also it shows how the Selfhood of Dasein is presupposed already in the appearance of the world-environment through the existential meaningfulness. The conclusion of this paper will try to discover the phenomenological yields of Dasein’s openness as horizon of its Selfhood. (shrink)

The French philosopher and intellectual historian Pierre Hadot (1922-2010) is known primarily for his conception of philosophy as spiritual exercise, which was an essential reference for the later Foucault. An aspect of his work that has received less attention is a set of methodological reflections on intellectual history and on the relationship between philosophy and history. Hadot was trained initially as a philosopher and was interested in existentialism as well as in the convergence between philosophy and poetry. Yet he chose (...) to become a historian of philosophy and produced extensive philological work on neo-Platonism and ancient philosophy in general. He found a philosophical rationale for this shift in his encounter with Wittgenstein's philosophy in the mid-1950s (Hadot was one of Wittgenstein's earliest French readers and interpreters). For Hadot, ancient philosophy must be understood as a series of language games, and each language game must be situated within the concrete conditions in which it happened. The reference to Wittgenstein therefore supports a strongly contextualist and historicist stance. It also supports its exact opposite: presentist appropriations of ancient texts are entirely legitimate, and they are the only way ancient philosophy can be existentially meaningful to us. Hadot addresses the contradiction by embracing it fully and claiming that his own practice aims at a coincidence of opposites (a concept borrowed from the Heraclitean tradition). For Hadot the fullest and truest way of doing philosophy is to be a philosopher and a historian at the same time. (shrink)

Through analysis of film sequences focusing on DNA in two British Broadcasting Corporation nonfiction science television programs, Wonders of Life and Bang! Goes the Theory, first broadcast in 2013, contrasting “religious” and “secular” representations of science are identified. In the “religious” portrayal, immutable scientific knowledge is revealed to humanity by nature with minimal human intervention. Science provides a creation story, “explanatory omnicompetence,” and makes life existentially meaningful. In the “secular” portrayal, scientific knowledge is changeable; is produced through technical skill in (...) expert communities; and is ambiguous, potentially positive and negative for society. Television representations of science affect audience understandings, and this is particularly the case for nonfiction representations of science, as they are likely to be “taken more seriously” than fictional representations. The consequences of the “religious” representation of science are discussed, and it is argued that a widespread understanding of science as presented in the religious portrayal would negatively impact democracy. (shrink)

Resumen El objetivo principal del artículo es terminar quién es el Dasein desde el aparecer del mundo en la obra de Martin Heidegger Ser y tiempo. Para ello, se plantea la posibilidad de aprehensión del horizonte del sí mismo del Dasein, en contra de los propios análisis heideggerianos sobre el uno, y, también, se muestra de qué manera la mismidad del Dasein se presupone ya en el modo de aparición del mundo-entorno a través del existenciario significatividad. La conclusión del artículo (...) intentará descubrir los posibles rendimientos fenomenológicos de la apertura del horizonte del sí-mismo del Dasein.The main goal of the paper is to determine who is the Dasein itself from the appearance of the world in the Book of Martin Heidegger Being and time. For this, it raises the possibility of understanding the horizon of the self of Dasein itself differently to Heidegger’s analysis about the they and also it shows how the Selfhood of Dasein is presupposed already in the appearance of the world-environment through the existential meaningfulness. The conclusion of this paper will try to discover the phenomenological yields of Dasein’s openness as horizon of its Selfhood. (shrink)

Does it make sense to talk about cyberspace as an alternative social reality? Is cyberspace the new frontier for the realization of the postmodern self? For philosophers Taylor and Saarinen, and the psychologist Turkle, cyberspace is the practical manifestation of a postmodern reality, or rather hyperreality (Baudrillard). In hyperreal cyberspace, they argue, identity becomes plastic, “I can change my self as easily as I change my clothes.” I will argue using Martin Heidegger that our being is being-in-the-world. To be-in-the-world means (...) to be involved in the world; to have an involvement whole that is the always already present significance of what I do. Furthermore, that the making or choosing of self is only existentially meaningful in a horizon of significance, an involvement whole. I will argue that identity is tied to community, and community involves accepting some level of already there thrownness. Every cyber-traveler will eventually have to deal with the fact of being, always already, in-the-world. (shrink)

This essay engages ways in which the manifestation of ‘world’ occurs in poetry specifically through images, and how we can conceive of the imagination in this regard without reducing the imagination to a mimetic faculty of consciousness subordinate to cognition. Continental thought in the last century offers rich resources for this study. The notion of a ‘world’ is related to the poetic image in ways fundamental to the Heidegger’s theory of language, and may be seen in Continental poetics following Heidegger, (...) including Blanchot’s examination of poetry in his account of the space of literature. By means of images, I shall demonstrate, poetic language is exemplary in relation to ‘world’ in two ways. (1) Images, poetically arranged, generate and open up a sense or experience of a world, specific to that poem, for its reader. Poetic images then, exhibit a generative evocation of world. (2) Through images, a poem may evoke the way in which space and time are inhabited as a world of human dwelling in an ontologically or existentially meaningful way. The relation of images to world is, then, an illumination or a disclosure of world. The first of these relations remains, to a large extent, immanent to the poem, but may be seen as an analogue of the essentially human experience of inhabiting a world. The second relation transcends the poem and relates the poem immediately to the existential framework of human dwelling. (shrink)

On a widely accepted view, what gives meaning to our lives is success in valuable ground projects. However, philosophers like Kieran Setiya have recently challenged the value of such orientation towards the future, and argued that meaningful living is instead a matter of engaging in atelic activities that are complete in themselves at each moment. This chapter argues that insofar as what is at issue is meaningfulness in its primary existential sense, strongly atelic activities do not suffice for (...) meaning. Instead, finding one’s life meaningful is warranted both by sustainable success in valuable prospective (future-oriented) projects, and by success in reflexive projects that aim to promote or realize a practice-dependent value that can be realized at each moment, but never for good. The latter kind of activities are only weakly atelic, since their aim remains distinct from the activity, and individual actions gain significance from serving a long-term commitment. Thus, whether our ground projects are prospective or reflexive, what we do at each moment contributes to leading a meaningful life only when it’s connected in the right way to what we do at other moments. (shrink)

Rapid advances in AI-based automation have led to a number of existential and economic concerns. In particular, as automating technologies develop enhanced competency they seem to threaten the values associated with meaningful work. In this article, we focus on one such value: the value of achievement. We argue that achievement is a key part of what makes work meaningful and that advances in AI and automation give rise to a number achievement gaps in the workplace. This could limit people’s (...) ability to participate in meaningful forms of work. Achievement gaps are interesting, in part, because they are the inverse of the (negative) responsibility gaps already widely discussed in the literature on AI ethics. Having described and explained the problem of achievement gaps, the article concludes by identifying four possible policy responses to the problem. (shrink)