ABSTRACTA careful look at societies facing threat reveals a unique phenomenon in which liberals and conservatives react emotionally and attitudinally in a similar manner, rallying around the conservative flag. Previous research suggests that this rally effect is the result of liberals shifting in their attitudes and emotional responses toward the conservative end. Whereas theories of motivated social cognition provide a motivation-based account of cognitive processes, it remains unclear whether emotional shifts are, in fact, also a motivation-based process. Herein, we propose (...) that under threat, liberals are motivated to feel existential concern about their group’s future vitality to the same extent as conservatives, because this group-based emotion elicits support for ingroup protective action. Within the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, we tested and found support for this hypothesis both inside and outside the laboratory. We d... (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 attempts a new interpretation of Heidegger’s existential analysis of the phenomena of fear and anxiety. Heidegger is shown to analyze both phenomena as basic states-of-mind . Basic states-of-mind are taken to differ from other states-of mind in that they are formal phenomena, i.e. phenomena that are not apparent or experienced themselves, but only concretize in apparent and experienced phenomena. As an instance of phenomena, in which the formal phenomena of fear and anxiety concretize, the paper presents hüzün, (...) a collective mood described by Orhan Pamuk in his latest novel. (shrink)

Fear occurs in various forms: existential, pathological, physical and mental. This article gives a general survey of Freud's and Lacan's conceptions. While the founder of psychoanalysis conceives of fear mainly as a corporeal fear of castration, Lacan emphasises the more extended dimension of symbolic castration which is, through the concept of scarcity, directly connected with desire and fear. The pathological side of fear becomes apparent in the defence against existential fear, in phobias, that replace the unfathomable object of (...) fear by a manageable one. (shrink)

This paper attempts a new interpretation of Heidegger’s existential analysis of the phenomena of fear and anxiety. Heidegger is shown to analyze both phenomena as basic states-of-mind (Grundbefindlichkeiten). Basic states-of-mind are taken to differ from other states-of mind in that they are formal phenomena, i.e. phenomena that are not apparent or experienced themselves, but only concretize in apparent and experienced phenomena. As an instance of phenomena, in which the formal phenomena of fear and anxiety concretize, the paper presents hüzün, (...) a collective mood described by Orhan Pamuk in his latest novel. (shrink)

At the time of existential philosophy, the similarities between Kierkegaard's and Heigegger's existential analysis and in particular their understanding of anxiety were usually emphasised. I would like to point out the irreconcilable contrast in the understanding of anxiety of both authors, the difference being that Kierkegaard is the representant of a teleological, Heidegger on the contrary of an a-teleological anthropology.

An existential interpretation of student angst in Chinese universities raises issues of autonomy and freedom. The governance arrangements in China create a conflict for Chinese students who in their coursework are urged to become critical-minded and open-minded. In this essay, Kant’s moral theory provides access to this phenomenon. His theory of duty–rationality–autonomy–freedom relates the liberty of thought to principled action. Kantian ideals still influence western business and university practice and they become relevant in China as that country modernises. (...) The abilities of graduates which officials say the country needs—insightfulness, creativity, innovation, progressiveness and commitment—are only achievable by professionals who are independent minded, rational and who commit to act on their own conclusions. Such people are Kant’s autonomous persons. Chinese students increasingly confront a conflicted educational environment. Universities require students to think, analyse and argue. An outcome of this deliberation is freedom, as construed by Kant as an ‘inner’construct. When students are unable to exercise Kantian freedom in matters which concern them they experience the angst of freedom. Students may carry a burden derived from bridles on information and authoritarian restrictions on dialogue. (shrink)

Existential threat lies at the heart of intergroup conflict, but the literature on existential concerns lacks clear conceptualization and integration. To address this problem, we offer a new conceptualization and measurement of existential threat. We establish the reliability and validity of our measure, and to illustrate its utility, we examine whether different existential threats underlie the association between political ideology and support for specific political policies. Study 1 (N = 798) established the construct validity of the (...) scale, and revealed four distinct existential threats: personal death, physical collective annihilation, symbolic collective annihilation, and past victimization. Study 2 (N = 424) confirmed the 4-factor structure, and the convergent and discriminant validity of the scale. Study 3 (N = 170) revealed that the association between a hawkish political ideology and support for hardline policies was mediated by past victimization, whereas the association between a dovish political ideology and conciliatory policies was mediated by concerns over collective symbolic annihilation. Study 4 (N = 503) conceptually replicated the pattern of findings found in Study 3, and showed that at times of conflict, physical collective annihilation concerns also mediate the relationship between hawkish ideologies and support for hardline policies. In both Studies 3 and 4, when controlling for other threats, personal death did not play a significant role. These results underscore the need to consider the multidimensional nature of existential threat, especially in the context of political conflict. (shrink)

While Woody Allen is generally considered to be a master of the comic genre he created, his serious films are very important in understanding his role as one of this generation's more influential filmmakers. In this work such Allen films as Annie Hall (1977), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Mighty Aphrodite (1995) are analyzed for the common philosophical themes they share. Gender issues, Allen's love-hate relationship with God, narcissism and moral relativism, and the use of the (...) so-called existential dilemma are among the topics discussed. The extensive research is augmented with a rare interview with Allen. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the movie Fight Club, directed by David Fincher, written by Jim Uhls, and first released in the fall of 1999. The movie is based on the homonym novel by Chuck Palahniuk, published in 1996. I will argue that Fight Club is to be understood in primarily existentialist, nonethical, and nonevidential terms, showing the struggle felt by each and every one of us to find a convincing answer to the question of what (if (...) anything) counts as an authentic life that is worth living. Moreover, I will argue that the movie does not merely illustrate the struggle and the existential angst it engenders; it also advances, if not strictly speaking a theoretical answer grounded in an indisputable philosophical reasoning, then at least a practical way to face it. It is only after positively endorsing the claim that absolutely nothing (whatever it may be) externally imposed on a person can give their life ultimate meaning that a person is free to engage in a conscious, laborious, and exhausting attempt at self-affirmation, a full and positive endorsement of one’s own authenticity. (shrink)

This essay compares Freud’s and Heidegger’s concept of Angst. Heidegger’s and Freud’s interpretations are guided by different aims: A) in “Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety” Freud tries to define the concept of anxiety as a main element in neurosis; B) Heidegger’s notion plays a major role in gaining the existential meaning of Dasein. Despite the differences, this essay claims that it is possible to discover a common anthropo-existential interpretation. Anxiety marks the anthropological and existential passage from the (...) non-distinction of the pre-subjective life to the distinction that emerges from the progressive differentiation of the subject from the world. From such a distinction originates the conflict between the tendency to regain non-distinction and the necessity of multiplicity. In Freud, anxiety is the price for the renunciation of indistinction; in Heidegger, anxiety is encountered when this price is recognized as unavoidable. This is the core problem that this study takes into account in order to show the existential and anthropological role of anxiety. I will proceed with an analysis of Freud’s interpretation of anxiety, and then with the Heideggerian notion. The third part points out the affinity between them. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the dis-chronic temporality that characterizes the trauma of birth. In order to show the latter, we compare the temporalities of trauma and aesthetic experience. To perform this temporal analysis, the text adopts a phenomenological viewpoint. (shrink)

With his ontology of anxiety, as developed by Paul Tillich in his well-known work, “The Courage to Be”, he creates, by his own claim, a foundation for dealing with the phenomenon of anxiety in a variety of disciplines, which also serves as a foundation for the well-known American existential psychotherapist Rollo May. However, this does not remain a one-sided influence, but rather an interest in the works of both thinkers with reciprocal interdependencies.

When information is transformed from what has traditionally been a paper-based format into digitized elements with meaning associated to them, new and intriguing discussions begin surrounding proper and improper uses of this codified and easily transmittable information. As these discussions continue, some health care providers, insurers, laboratories, pharmacies, and other healthcare stakeholders are creating and retroactively digitizing our medical information with the unambiguous endorsement of the federal government.Some argue that these enormous databases of medical information offer improved access to timely (...) information, evidence-based treatments, and complete records from which to provide care. To the extent that these claims are true, it would seem that this is a valuable asset that offers immeasurable benefit to all. Others believe this digitization to be an egregious invasion of privacy. In this article, I investigate the broad research questions of whether the public good aspect of capturing private health information outweighs individual interests and whether it is ethical to mandate participation in health information exchanges by all individuals who use the U.S. health system. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger has been one of the most influential but also criticized philosophers of the XX century. With Being and Time (1927) he sets apart his existential analytic from psychology as well as from anthropology and from the other human sciences that deny the ontological foundation, overcoming the Cartesian dualism in search of the ontological unit of an articulated multiplicity, as human being is. Heidegger’s Dasein Analytic defines the fundamental structures of Dasein such as being-in-the-world, a unitary structure that (...) discloses the worldhood of the world; the modes of being (Seinsweisen), such as fear (Furcht) and anxiety (Angst); and the relationship between existence and time. In his existential analytic, anxiety is one of the fundamental moods (Grundbefindlichkeit) and it plays a pivotal role in the relationship of Dasein with time and world. The paper firstly focuses on the modes of being, underling the importance of anxiety for the constitution of human being; secondly, it is shown the relationship between anxiety and world, and anxiety and time: rejecting both the Aristotelian description of time, as a sequence of moments that informs our common understanding of time, and the Augustine’s mental account of inner time, Heidegger considers temporality under a transcendental point of view. Temporality is ek-static, it is a process through which human being comes toward and back to itself, letting itself encounter the world and the entities. The transcendental interpretation of time provided by Heidegger may give its important contribution in psychopathology. (shrink)

We investigate the determinants of decision rights transfer and its effects on the motivation of an agent. The study is based on a laboratory experiment conducted on 130 subjects playing an innovative principal–agent game. Interestingly, the results show that agents do not favour a delegation and a decision is considered rather burdensome. Although the experiment could not give support for the behavioural hypothesis of higher effort provided by participants who receive choice subsequently, the survey illuminates the interaction between delegation motives, (...) effort motivators, goals and other perceptions of the agents. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Crisis of Meaning in Sartor Resartus—Thomas Carlyle's Pioneering Work in Articulating and Addressing the Existential ConfrontationFrank Martelawhat i call an "existential confrontation" is the encounter with the possibility that human life is absurd: created for no purpose and devoid of any lasting value or meaning. It is "the hour of terror at the world's vast meaningless grinding" that William James (Will to Believe 173) examines, described by (...) Todd May (xi) as "the confrontation of our need for meaning with the unwillingness of the Universe to yield it to us." This confrontation with the existential void and the potential absurdity of human existence is often not just an intellectual dilemma, but felt as a deep personal crisis accompanied by melancholia, angst, nausea, or even suicidal thoughts. Young William James confessed in a letter to a friend that "all last winter" he "was on the continual verge of suicide" (quoted in Gunnarsson), writing later that "too much questioning" leads "to the edge of the slope" wherein lies "nightmare or suicidal view of life" (James, "Is Life Worth Living?" 6). Similarly, Leo Tolstoy (54) reports how his inability to identify a lasting meaning of life drove him to a "state of lunacy" where "the best I could do was to hang myself."Despite a few earlier allusions—most famously the Book of Ecclesiastes proclaiming that "all is vanity and a striving after wind," and Shakespeare's Macbeth lamenting that life is "a tale told by an idiot … signifying nothing"—the existential confrontation is predominantly a modern phenomenon (Martela, A Wonderful Life). The modern history of descriptions of existential confrontations start at the turn of the nineteenth century, and includes Søren Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death, Leo Tolstoy's A Confession, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Camus's Outsider, Sartre's Nausea, and T. S.Eliot's The Waste Land.There are many responses that the confrontation with the existential void has generated. Sartre embraced the lack of values imposed from outside and [End Page 80] emphasized human freedom. Human beings are "cast into this world … condemned to be free" without any "luminous realm of values" providing "justification or excuse," as Sartre famously summarized in "Existentialism Is a Humanism" (29). Other responses range from Søren Kierkegaard's leap of faith and William James's will to believe to Albert Camus's happiness from absurdity.While some of the responses end up finding a new way of connecting with God and faith, and others are explicitly atheistic, embracing the "death of God," a common thread in most responses is an acknowledgment of the situatedness of human experience and an emphasis placed on human subjectivity and the opportunity to live one's life more authentically. While existentialism, broadly conceived, is often seen as the central philosophical tradition dealing with the existential void, the confrontation was very much alive in the United States as well, visible in both literature and philosophy. As already alluded, William James had an existential confrontation in his youth, writing about the topic in "Is Life Worth Living" and other essays in Will to Believe. There has also been much back-and-forth between Europe and the United States around these themes, with the influences crossing the Atlantic on many occasions. For example, William James cites Thomas Carlyle in Will to Believe, while Sartre cites William James in Nausea, when discussing themes related to the existential confrontation. Similarly, Emerson inspired Nietzsche who inspired Josiah Royce. Typically, the histories tracing the early encounters with the existential confrontation acknowledge Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, and Fyodor Dostoevsky as key nineteenth-century predecessors to Existentialism, as all faced directly the question of the meaning of life and the dreadful possibility that life might not have any meaning or value to it.However, there is a key author usually not mentioned in these histories, despite the fact that he played a pivotal role in introducing existentialist themes to the English-speaking audience, coining the phrase "meaning of life" in the English language. Thus, in writing the prehistory of Existentialism, we need to examine Thomas Carlyle and his Sartor Resartus, which has been described by literary historians as "one of... (shrink)

The philosophical argument between Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus can be summarised in their conflicting accounts of skiing and swimming. For Sartre skiing exemplifies the struggle of existence and the angst of the alienated ego. For Camus, swimming represents some glimmering of collective harmony, the possibility of transcendence. Sartre's thinking is inflected by quantum theory and the 'steady state', whereas Camus is more of a wave theorist, with a lingering nostalgia for the 'primeval atom' and a fondness for peak (...) experiences. Put together their separate ways of analysing consciousness suggest a two-phase account of cognition. (shrink)

Gender discrimination continues to plague organizations. While the advent of the Internet and the digitization of commerce have provided both a mechanism by which goods and services can be exchanged, as well as an efficient way for consumers to voice their opinions about retailers (i.e., via online rating systems), recent work has begun to uncover significant biases that manifest during the review process. In particular, it has been suggested that the gig-economy’s elimination of previously anonymous arm’s-length transactions may re-introduce bias (...) into perceptions of quality. In this work, we build upon research that has identified biases based on ascriptive characteristics in rating systems of ridesharing platforms. In doing so, we conduct an online experiment using a series of factorial vignettes to consider not only willingness to transact but post-transaction perceptions of quality. Findings suggest that female drivers are not penalized ex ante for taking on gender incongruent roles, i.e., driving, and experience no penalty when a rider reports a high-quality experience. However, conditional upon a lower quality experience, there is a disproportionate penalty for female drivers. Strikingly, we also observe that historic high quality does not serve as a buffer against such penalties, as prior literature would suggest. These findings underscore the challenges platforms face in ensuring their participants are being evaluated in a fair and impartial way, and highlight the difficulties present when non-employees (customers) are rating non-employees (drivers) of the firm. (shrink)

Background: This article describes the overall attitudes of children, their parents, and attending physicians toward including or excluding pediatric patients in medical communication and health care decision-making processes. Methods: Fifty-two interviews were carried out with pediatric patients (n = 17), their parents (n = 19), and attending oncologists (n = 16) in eight Swiss pediatric oncology centers. The interviews were analyzed using thematic coding. Results: Parenting styles, the child's personality, and maturity are factors that have a great impact upon the (...) inclusion of children in their health care processes. Children reported the desire to be heard and involved, but they did not want to dominate the decision-making process. Ensuring trust in the parent–child and physician–patient relationships and respecting the child as the affected person were important values determining children's involvement. These two considerations were closely connected with the concern that fantasies are often worse than reality. Seeking children's compliance with treatment was a practical but critical reason for informing them about their health care. The urge to protect them from upsetting news sometimes resulted in their (partial) exclusion. Conclusions: The ethical imperative for inclusion of children in their health care choices was not so much determined by the right for self-determination, but by the need to include them. If children are excluded, they imagine things, become more isolated, and are left alone with their fears. Nevertheless, the urge to protect children is innate, as adults often underestimate children's coping capacities. (shrink)

This was printed long ago at a transitional phase in the writer's life. It speaks of the angst of being alone in a cooling world.

Philosophy and Hip-Hop: Ruminations on Postmodern Cultural Form opens up the philosophical life force that informs the construction of Hip-hop by turning the gaze of the philosopher upon those blind spots that exist within existing scholarship. Traditional Departments of Philosophy will find this book a solid companion in Contemporary Philosophy or Aesthetic Theory. Inside these pages is a project that parallels the themes of existential angst, corporate elitism, social consciousness, male privilege and masculinity. This book illustrates the abundance (...) of philosophical meaning in the textual and graphic elements of Hip-hop, and thus places Hip-hop within the philosophical canon. (shrink)

PYRRHONIAN BUDDHISM: AN IMAGINATIVE RECONSTRUCTION -/- Author: -/- Adrian Kuzminski 279 Donlon Road Fly Creek, NY 13337 USA -/- Description of Pyrrhonian Buddhism: -/- The ancient Greek sceptic philosopher, Pyrrho of Elis, accompanied Alexander the Great to India, where he had contacts with Indian sages, so-called naked philosophers (gymnosophists), among whom were very probably Buddhist mendicants, or sramanas. My work, entitled Pyrrhonian Buddhism, takes seriously the hypothesis that Pyrrho’s contact with early Buddhists was the occasion of his rethinking, in a (...) Greek philosophical idiom, of what he experienced in those encounters. This has major implications for our understanding of both Buddhism and Pyrrhonism. -/- Pyrrho’s rethinking of Buddhism, I argue, enabled him to introduce into Greek philosophy and culture several key Buddhist notions. These include the primacy and interdependence of immediate phenomenal experience (which the Buddhists called dependent origination), the suspension of judgment about beliefs lacking phenomenal verification (reflecting the scepticism of the Buddha about ‘unanswered’ or ‘metaphysical’ questions), and the promise of personal enlightenment said to follow such suspension, which Pyrrho called ataraxia, and the Buddhists called bodhi. -/- Pyrrho, like Socrates, wrote nothing, but the movement he founded—Pyrrhonism--became an important tradition in Western philosophy. When the texts of later Pyrrhonian philosophers, particularly Sextus Empiricus, were redicovered during the Renaissance, they sparked a reexamination of the foundations of knowledge, thereby helping to prompt the modern scientific revolution. -/- The notion that early Buddhism played a pivotal role in the birth of ancient Greek Pyrrhonian philosophy remains provocative, but has found increasing support in recent years. An earlier work of mine, Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism (Lexington Books, 2008), was, as far as I know, the first book-length comparison of the common features of the two traditions. My current work, Pyrrhonian Buddhism, seeks to broaden and deepen this comparison. It argues that ancient Greek Pyrrhonism is best understood as a fully developed but hitherto largely unrecognized Western version of Buddhism. -/- The Introduction reviews our current understanding of Pyrrhonism in light of recent scholarship on ancient Greek-Indian cultural exchanges, and outlines the methodology I employ. -/- Part I of the book offers re-readings of the classic Pyrrhonian texts, with parallels to Buddhism in mind, including Diogenes Laertius (Chapter One), Sextus Empiricus (Chapter Two) and Timon and Aulus Gellius (Chapter Three). -/- Part II enlists the rubric of the Three Turnings of the Wheel of Dharma to illuminate the fundamental points of comparison between early Buddhism and ancient Pyrrhonism. -/- The First Turning (Chapter Four) centers on the Buddhist insistence on the dependent origination of the objects of immediate consciousness, which can also be found in the understanding of immediate experience expressed in the phenomenalistic atomism of the Pyrrhonists. The Second Turning (Chapter Five), as posed by the ‘unanswered questions’ of the Buddha and the ‘emptiness’ of the Madhyamaka, finds its Pyrrhonian correlation in the suspension of judgment over ‘indeterminate’ beliefs. And the Third Turning (Chapter Six), reported as bodhi in Buddhism and ataraxia in Pyrrhonism, is shown in both traditions to follow liberation from suffering and existential angst, caused by what the Buddhists call our attachments and the Pyrrhonists call our beliefs. -/- Other Writers/Commentators: -/- Aspects of the Pyrrhonian/Buddhism question have been addressed by Edward Conze, Everard Flintoff, Thomas McEvilley, Jay Garfield, Mathew Neale, Ethan Mills, Christopher Beckwith, and Robin Brons, among other recent writers. The book-length studies on the issue (since my earlier work) are by Beckwith (Greek Buddha) and Neal (Madhyamaka and Pyrrhonism). Other writers/scholars with relevant expertise include C. W. Huntington, Jr., Charles Goodman, Stephen Batchelor, Dan Lusthaus, Rupert Gethin, and Mark Siderits. -/- . (shrink)

Recently ethical implications of human resource management have intensified the focus on care perspectives in management and organization studies. Appeals have also been made for the concept of organizational care to be grounded in philosophies of care rather than business theories. Care perspectives see individuals, especially women, as primarily relational and view work as a means by which people can increase in self-esteem, self-develop and be fulfilled. The ethic of care has received attention in feminist ethics and is often socially (...) construed as a feminine ethic. Although well developed in the caring professions there remains no model or definition of the care ethic in management literature with little care research undertaken. This paper develops the concept of the care ethic using Heidegger’s philosophy, namely, care is fundamental to human being. To show Heideggerian care, an individual notices, pays attention to another and responds in ways to empower and enable. In a study which aimed to analyze women’s lived experience of career, we applied the philosophically grounded methodology hermeneutic phenomenology. Findings revealed the power of Heideggerian care, Sorge, as a key factor in creating meaning. From this, we propose that care has potential as a theoretical and philosophically based construct with strong practical implications. It provides a way of understanding the care ethic, lies at the heart of our being, and is essential to meaning in our grelationships and undertakings. Crucially, it can provide reprieve from the existential angst that trademarks our being. (shrink)

The law consists of both internal and external rules, but in both cases they regulate the behaviour of the subjects towards each other. This can be viewed from a phenomenological perspective in the sense that people have a drive to make sense of their world, and the rules that are developed essentially enable them to relate to the world in this way. If anything interferes with this drive, then it causes peoples’ existential upset. That is why the state both (...) enforces these rules between its own nationals, but also with regards to the outsiders. However, in doing so, the state must also be mindful of ensuring that it interprets the rules fairly. If it does not do so, then this may negate the purpose of law by causing the existential unrest. Although in the past this may have been done on a national basis, in that it has been necessary to maintain just the national values of a state in order to ensure that people could lead their lives, globalisation has altered the identity of people. They are no longer just national citizens, but also global citizens, and are increasingly relying on global values to fulfil their existential nature. (shrink)

The question of life’s meaning is a universal question that not only cuts across various cultures but also resides at the back of the mind of almost every individual that has ever existed. The very desire to continue striving in this world suggests that there is something about life that makes it worth living. Even in the throes of despair and suicide, there is something that drives the existential angst that awakens such despair. Both striving and despair in (...) life stand as subtle and benign answers to questions about whether one considers his/her life meaningful. In African philosophy today, answer to the question of life’s meaning from an African perspective is receiving more attention now than it has in the last few decades. This chapter is a summary of some of the dominant views in the current literature on African conceptions of meaning. Specifically, it explores traditional conceptions of meaning such as the love view, the God’s purpose view (destiny and divine law view), the vital force view, the communal view, and the (Yoruba) Cluster view, as well as the more contemporary views such as living a religious life and the contemporary cluster view. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming our world: today machines not only can mimic human actions but out-perform human agents in many activities, including learning and thinking. AI offers revolutionary solutions and new possibilities in transportation, business, communication, medicine, law, and other domains. While some welcome this brave new world, others fear the threats AI pose to people’s livelihoods, social relations, individuality, freedom, and perhaps even the very survival of the human species. No doubt some of this existential angst (...) is exaggerated, but AI does raise questions for our understanding of the world and ourselves that require serious reflection, including questions about adequacy of education in various aspects. This chapter offers, from the perspectives of John Dewey’s Pragmatism as well as Confucianism, some reflections on the role of the humanities in education in response to the opportunities and challenges of the development and widespread use of AI. It shows that Dewey and Confucius share similar views regarding the humanistic purpose of education and their philosophies of education offer arguments for why humanities education will be relevant, if not more important, when many jobs we are familiar with become obsolete. Their attitudes toward the economic motive in education will help us rethink the meaning of work in a “world without work.” At the same time, they offer a critical evaluation of contemporary humanities education, which have failed to realize their visions of personal cultivation and growth. Among its failings is the continued dichotomy between the humanities and the sciences. In the age of AI, it has become even more vital to integrate them to avoid science and technology from becoming materialistic and anti-human while the humanities become merely literary and without any means to transform the world. (shrink)

Ways of Being Free: Introduction -- War Is Everything's Father: History and Death as Causes of Existential Angst -- Introduction: Causes of Existential Angst -- Change and Changelessness in Midnight's Children -- The Road of Existential Struggle in The Famished Road -- History and the "Nervous Condition" in The English Patient -- Death as a Drive to Meaningful Existence in Midnight's Children -- Becoming Dead-to-the-World in The English Patient -- Ideological Re-appropriation through Death in The (...) Famished Road -- Authenticity -- Authenticity: Introduction -- From Self-Sufficiency to Inoperative Community in The English Patient -- Revolution Revisited in The Famished Road -- From Communalism to the Comic Absurd in Midnight's Children. (shrink)

Beauvoir and Irigaray on the sources of the strangely intense existential angst of the 21st century woman.

Self-harm, or self-mutilation, is generally viewed in academic literature as a pathological act, usually born out of trauma and/or a psychological and personality defect. Individuals who engage in self-harm are usually seen as damaged, destructive, and pathological. While self-harm is not a desirable act, this paper argues through the narratives of those who engage in such acts that self-harm may be better construed as a meaningful, embodied emotional practice, bound up in social understandings of psychological pain and how best to (...) attend to such pain. In particular, this paper suggests that those who engage in self-harm practices are performing embodied, socially situated acts of healing, survival, and self-creation in a physical attempt to retell complex, fragmented stories of abuse, existential angst, trauma, and loss of self. While these individuals may be more or less successful in such attempts, this paper suggests that understandings of self-harm would benefit from more nuanced approaches to individuals’ embodied expressions of pain that take into account the difficult nature of psychological suffering and the effects of trauma. (shrink)

‘Uncanny’ works by a number of contemporary artists are analysed in relation to the themes and insights of both cybernetics and existentialist philosophy. This reveals that central ideas from these largely neglected fields remain current and potent within innovative art practices. Artists employ cybernetic systems to provoke aesthetic sensations of the uncanny, while simultaneously encapsulating existentialist concerns. Pierre Huyghe’s mysterious installation responds to the life-breath of visitors to mutate human cancer cells. Susan Collins and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer construct cybernetic worlds-within-worlds to (...) render us beings-for-others during intimate encounters with strangers. Urich Lau and TC&A involve and implicate the audience in eerie expressions of what existentialist term being-towards-death. These artworks prompt feelings of separation, alienation and existential angst; and emphasize human estrangement within a mysterious, incomprehensible or absurd world. But a cybernetic-existentialist reading also reveals that their evocation of human disquiet and isolation is tempered by an equal emphasis on positive notions of feedback loops, ‘separation with communion’, existential freedom and authentic interactions with the world and with Others. The artworks articulate cybernetics’ and existentialism’s shared interest in collapsing boundaries and erasing distinctions: between agents within a system; between the self and the Other; and between perceiving, feeling and acting. (shrink)

In a secular society, does Christmas mean anything anymore? As we stuff ourselves with plumped-up turkeys, unwrap the latest useless gadget, and gather round the family tree, what real relevance does the festive season have and why do we perpetuate it? The Philosophy of Christmas is designed to be a fun book but one underpinned by an exploration of serious philosophical issues. The way we celebrate Christmas says a lot about the way we relate to each other, our society and (...) values. For instance, did you know that Santa's outfit is only red and white because those are the colours of the Coca Cola company? Already a bestselling author, Stephen Law takes a look at such things as the virgin birth (David Hume's theories on miracles), Bertrand Russell's turkey, the existential angst of Santa, and peace on earth to produce a humourous, varied and thought-provoking collection. (shrink)

This paper examines Hermann Hesse's penultimate novel, The Journey to the East, from an educational point of view. Hesse was a man of the West who turned to the idea of 'the East' in seeking to understand himself and his society. While highly critical of elements of Western modernism, Hesse nonetheless viewed 'the East' through Western lenses and drew inspiration from other Western thinkers. At the end of The Journey to the East, the main character, H.H., believes he has found (...) the solution to his despair. This paper argues that he has not, at least not in the fullest sense Hesse came to see was possible. H.H. relies too heavily on faith and abandons reason too quickly in seeking to become 'absorbed' into the Other that he regards as his higher self. An answer to H.H.'s existential angst can be found in Hesse's final novel, The Glass Bead Game, where educational growth through the development of a critical, questioning, inquiring attitude is a central theme. (shrink)

This was written for the Archdiocese of Calcutta's mouthpiece, The Herald in 2009 and published there. The audience is chiefly popular and not the usual academic audience both within Catholicism or in the academe in general. This essay makes a case for us in understanding and empathizing with the essential loneliness of the Catholic Religious (as understood by a married Hindu man). Further, literature is shown hear as effective therapy for resisting loneliness and as a therapeutic tool for self-help by (...) Catholic Religious. The author is not in possession of the published article but has been informed that copies of The Herald, Kolkata are kept at Goethals's Library, St. Xavier's College, Kolkata. (shrink)

“Exiled” Spanish philosopher José Gaos was the first to translate, in its entirety, Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit . Emilio Uranga, a student of Gaos in Mexico City (exiled since 1938), appropriates Heidegger’s ontological hermeneutics in an effort to expose the historico-existential structures making up “ lo mexicano, ” or Mexicanness. Uranga’s Análisis del ser del mexicano (1952) freely and creatively employs the methods of existential analysis, suggesting that the being-there of the Mexican being is ontologically “insufficient” and (...) “accidental”—modes of being reflected in existential expressions of sentimentality, indifference, and angst particular to this form of life . As a work indebted to Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, Analysis of the Being of the Mexican fails to be faithful to this method. This, however, is the source of its value. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: one, to introduce the Anglo–American philosophical readership to Uranga’s existential phenomenology; and, two, to disentangle the lines of thought that make up Uranga’s Análisis and in the process defend Uranga from the possible charge that he ignorantly misappropriates Heidegger’s method. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Existential Analytic: Terminable or Interminable? Death's Representatives: Some Dead Ends The Existential Approach: Death in/from/as Life The Modalities of Mortal Existence Getting Ahead of Ourselves: Heidegger's Analysis between Angst and Conscience.

In this paper the author presents two different modes of relationship between phenomenological psychopathology and philosophy. The dominant mode conforms to the medical-psychiatric discourse which takes pathological time experiences as negative deviations from the ‘normal’ and ‘adequate’ equivalent. In this mode phenomenological description of ‘disturbed’ time experiences requires philosophy to provide an insight into the ‘essence’ of time and an essentially adequate experience of time. Only such a philosophical insight can deliver a valid reference point for investigating what is really (...) missing in pathological time experiences. This philosophical reference point can either consist in a metaphysical-normative concept of time and time experiences, or in a transcendental concept of how normal and abnormal time experiences are constituted in the inner consciousness of time. There is another mode of relationship which conforms to Freud’s discovery that pathological symptoms are not just negative alterations of the ‘normal’ but hide an own ‘meaning’. The author makes the case for the use of philosophy to unveil the specific kind of meaning in pathological experiences of time. She refers to existential philosophy in this respect, and in particular to its concept of Angst as a fundamental philosophical experience. This allows for a hermeneutic approach to ‘disturbed’ time experiences. What looks from a pure psychiatric perspective to be a mere ‘disorder’ of the ‘normal’, becomes understandable as a specific form of ‘suffering from one’s own temporality’. She argues that people with disturbed time experiences are especially sensitive to anxiety-laden experiences of what it means to be temporal, whilst ‘normal’ people can screen them out in favor of a ‘mentally undisturbed’ everyday life. (shrink)

Ancient Israel's wisdom literature dealt explicitly with moral education. Applying this literature to modern challenges of business ethics requires reading the texts in the light of existential structures that bond the ancient with the modern world. Such structures could include the temporal categories of present and future along with the challenging angst of managing the future. By providing conflicting positions the ancient wisdom literature provides an attitude of heart for the modern person, especially the modern business person, whose (...) all-absorbing attention to the future may well be based on an underlying existential situation behind much unethical behavior in modern business. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article considers the relationship of Heidegger's metaphysics of Being-toward-death to what Heidegger describes as “the enigma of motion,” that is, to Dasein's “historicality.” In doing so, the article confronts a series of questions concerning fundamental realities of animate life, realities centering on angst in the face of death, but including curiosity and fear, for example, all such realities being what Heidegger terms “states-of-mind” or “moods.” Thus, the article basically questions Heidegger's elision of a Leibkörper, not only in terms (...) of feelings but in terms of an exaltation of language, an insular notion of Dasein's historicality, and a narrow and deficient depiction of animals in his “philosophical biology.” Through a critical examination of the phenomenological disclosure that Heidegger seeks in his metaphysics of Being-toward-death, the article shows that death and the very concept of death hinges on being a body, a temporally finite animate body. Thus, however metaphysical its exposition, Being-toward-death is existentially anchored in being a body. (shrink)