Human beings are not only self-conscious minds but embodied and social beings, whose subjectivity is conditioned by their social surroundings. From this point of view, it is natural to suppose that the development and existence of a subject that is distinctively human requires contact with other people. The present contribution discusses medieval ideas concerning the intersubjective constitution of human being by looking at the medieval reception of two ideas, which Aristotle presents at the beginning of (...) his Politics: (1) human beings are political animals by nature, which means that those who live outside of political communities due to their nature are either deficient or above humanity – they are beasts or gods; and (2) human beings are parts of political communities, and as such, comparable to hands in a body. When medieval philosophers consider these ideas from metaphysical and normative perspectives, they distinguish different senses in which human beings are naturally political. In effect, they draw a nuanced picture of the relation between an individual human being and the political community, and in so doing they distance themselves from a literal reading of Aristotle. An analysis of the medieval discussions reveals how the social aspect of human subjectivity emerges in medieval political philosophy and how medieval philosophers conceptualise the Aristotelian distinction into three kinds of beings – the beast, the human, and the god. (shrink)

The Human Being in History affirms the ontological dignity of the human being, arguing that the challenges posed by the twenty-first century are not just political, economic, and social, but existential and metaphysical. In the face of these challenges, philosophy must show how to confront issues in a new way: not as problems that admit technical resolution, but as questions which involve openness to meaning and which demand the exercise of freedom.

Unified explanations seek to situate the traits of human beings in a causal framework that also explains the trait values found in nonhuman species. Disunified explanations claim that the traits of human beings are due to causal processes not at work in the rest of nature. This paper outlines a methodology for testing hypotheses of these two types. Implications are drawn concerning evolutionary psychology, adaptationism, and anti-adaptationism.

The evidence of human wickedness in the world is so transparent that no rational person can dispute its reality. This paper approaches the question of the human person from an African philosophical perspective and explores the relation between the apparently free-acting human being and God conceived as the creator of the world and the ultimate cause of the human being. The paper will proffer answers to the following question: to what extent can the human being (...) be absolved of blame for the evil they perpetrate in a world conceived in African traditional religion and thought as the creation of a high deity who could have foreseen the negative bent of human nature and should have made human nature inclined to goodness all of the time? The paper will make novel contributions to the debate about human nature in African philosophical discourse by recasting the human being as a homo melancholicus, or melancholy being, whose evil inclination in the world can best be understood in the context of a tragic vision of reality. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to explain human rationality. The fundamental principles of human thought are stated in terms of Balzer's Principles, and their operations in everyday life are illustrated. The natural numbers are defined and explained in a fresh fashion. Paradoxes, including those of class theory and material implication, which have signaled that all is not well in our logical systems, are laid to rest here. The explanation of human rationality has more than logical interest, (...) for it touches upon the human values embedded in our rationality. The book carries the message that all human beings are fundamentally equal. (shrink)

Terminal discharge or discharging terminally ill patients from hospitals in Tanzania as any other end-of-life care decision does not go without moral dilemma. Although the resolutions of end-of-life care decisions in hospitals in Tanzania focus much on material order rather than moral order, this paper shows the moral imperative of terminal discharge. The paper picks one of the controversial bioethical moral issues that are always raised in end-of-life decisions; ‘the distinction between human beings and human-person’ and analyzes (...) it through linguistic categories of Kiswahili language. From the reflections on the semantic charge of human beings (binadamu in Kiswahili) and human-person (mtu in Kiswahili), it is possible to infer that their distinction holds to moral criterion that may influence terminal discharge in Tanzania. The former is a quality that is inborn in so far as anyone who is born as a human being has nature humanity (ubinadamu). The latter, however, introduces a nuance according to which the moral component enables to take humanity away from animality up to humanness (utu). The question is that of knowing, in terminally ill discharge, whether the end-of-life decision makers act out of humanity (ubinadamu) or humaneness (utu). (shrink)

In this introduction we highlight Norbert Elias’s bold attempt to build a general model of the human sciences, integrating the social and natural sciences. We point to a range of different disciplines, emphasizing how he rarely developed a consistent critique of individual disciplines, though he often made some very fruitful suggestions about they should be reconceptualized in a relational and more integrative way. Based on our own research on survival units and the contributions to this special issue, we discuss (...) the innovative potential of his ambition for transdisciplinary research, while at the same time offering an overview of some of the limitations in his theoretical perspective. We reassess his attempt to integrate the natural and social sciences within one universal testable model, and, at the same time, we consider areas like religion and economics that were rarely systematically investigated in his own theoretical approach. (shrink)

The traditional philosophical questions around human freedom are to do with how to square freedom for human organisms with increasingly scientific understandings of the universe itself. At the beginning of Western philosophical consciousness, Plato, unlike later philosophers eligible of the label rationalist, maintained that there are obstacles to free and rational agency, owing in no small measure to pressures exerted by the human psyche from what later were referred to as biological drives and drives for social status. (...) In subsequent eras, these obstacles came under the heading of “weakness of will”—a conception shared widely in popular and traditional culture. Today the realities of addiction, social stresses, forces of habit, culture, social position, and group identity, together with psychological findings about cognitive biases, have come to dominate the landscape of empirically-based obstacles to agency. Can the image of the human being under the microscope of contemporary science, including cognitive and social science, be reconciled with the “manifest image” of human beings as sources of their individual behaviors (and held responsible accordingly), particularly if the scientific image is best construed in terms of governance by laws of nature? (The phrases manifest image and scientific image were coined by the twentieth-century American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars, see Sellars 1962.) How is it possible to square the idea of laws of nature with the manifest image in which humans exercise free agency as they play their various parts in the drama that is life? Does the manifest image thus square better with a theistic image of the world, as both seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes and eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant seem to have thought, and by contrast the scientific image square better with atheism? A deterministic universe, such as was proposed during the Enlightenment, was early on thought to pose a threat to the idea of human freedom. (It does not pose the same threat to the idea of a sovereign creator, however, because the notion of a creator of the universe already puts the entity who qualifies for the office outside the regime of those laws, ahead of them both in time and in ontological status.) One traditional answer to the threat has been the notion of compatibilism— which simply asserts that freedom and determinism are not incompatible. The devil, of course, has been in the details of explaining how this can be so, and many schools of thought on the matter exist. It is worthwhile noting that there are enormously compelling reasons, from the quantum regime so well described by quantum theory, to reject determinism: the laws governing the universe are simply not fully deterministic. This, of course, vitiates the need to confront the threat as originally posed. However, the trouble, if one follows along this line of thought, is to make sense of the nature of freedom in a world governed partly by deterministic laws and partly by nondeterministic ones that admit of an element of chance. Is such a world itself any more compatible with the idea of human freedom? In this section we grapple with the question of human freedom, what it could mean, and whether it is best accepted in the context of a form of theism. We find that theism has no more resources for addressing these difficulties than atheism does. (shrink)

Recent theological anthropology emphasizes a dynamic and integral understanding of the human being, which is also related to Karl Rahner's idea of active self-transcendence and to the imago Dei doctrine. The recent neuroscientific discovery of the “visual word form area” for reading, regarded in light of the concept of cultural neural reuse, will produce fresh implications for the interrelation of brain biology and human culture. The theological and neuroscientific parts are shown in their mutual connections thus articulating the (...) notion that human beings shape and transcend themselves both at the biological and at the cultural level. This will have relevant implications for the timely topic of human uniqueness in science and theology, and in proposing a new research perspective in which theology may consider culture along with its biological import, but not necessarily in strictly evolutionary terms alone. (shrink)

What is the importance of the notion 'human being'? The contributors to this collection have radically different approaches, some accepting and others denying its validity for a proper understanding of what a person is and for our ethical thought about each other. Contributors on both sides of the divide eloquently defend their views in ways that stand in sharp contrast to some current work in moral philosophy and philosophy of mind. Epistemological and theological issues are also raised in the (...) provocative and wide-ranging discussions stimulated by the volume's theme. (shrink)

This essay explores a variety of important Chinese conceptions of the actual and ideal relationship between human beings and the rest of the natural world. It presents views from the earliest period of historical China, the latter part of the Shang dynasty (ca. 1200–1050 bce), and from representative thinkers of other periods, extending down to the last imperial era, the Qing dynasty (1644–1911 ce). There is a fairly clear line of development from the earliest period, when the Chinese (...) saw the natural realm as chaotic, dangerous and largely inscrutable, to a later view of the world as well ordered, inclined toward human good and more open to understanding. This later view was first expressed during the “Eastern Zhou” (770–221 bce), and reached a mature and systematic form in the following Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce). Subsequent periods saw remarkable variation in the specific features of this view but its general form – a belief in a well ordered and manageable world, inclined toward human good and open to human understanding – remained dominant throughout subsequent Chinese history. (shrink)

The idea of antithetical human nature and the concept of man as a bivalent creature are heuristic to reveal the problem of human being.The traditional antinomic splitting of anthropological features into one’s own – another’s, immanent – transcendent, freedom – necessity, good – evil, happiness –misfortune, etc. acquires a specific coloring in the Ukrainian realities. Purpose is to reveal the ambivalence of the image of a person, which acquires special features in the Ukrainian realities. Methodological basis are the (...) principles of the phenomenological description of subjective experience, the means of historical and philosophical analysis, hermeneutical methods of understanding and interpretation.Discussion. These or those anthropological modes constitute the variability of the human (O.Bollnov, C.Jung, K.Jaspers, J.-P.Sartre, E.Fromm). The reasons for the mosaic nature of the human image are rooted in the existential inexhaustibility of the anthropological palette. The existence of man in the overtones of antinomies is evident in the studies of both domestic classics (V.Lypynsky, I.Franko) and modern Ukrainian philosophers (V.Malakhov, D.Sepety), and Western thinkers (V.Frankl, V.Tatarkevych, G.Hofstede). Conclusion. Controversial nature of the classical opposition of freedom – necessity turns in the Ukrainian realities into the opposition of “will” as an expressive meaningful constant and depressingly deathly “bondage”, and acquires tension of the binarism “freedom – death”. “Will” as the only state acceptable to a person, the authentically own, native way of being turns to a spectrum of modulations of the anthropological attribute of “oneself” as a native oecumene, a truly familiar and close space, opposed to the “alien” – land, people, language, custom, etc.The idea of parity of both – male and female – cores is quite adequate, since in Ukraine the Cossacks was an embodiment of perfect masculinity, “chivalrous nature”, similar to Western chivalry – with similar to chivalrous cult foundations (for example, the cult of the Mother of God and the cult of the Virgin Mary). After all, the ideology of the Cossacks demanded the convergence of the concepts of “nobleman” and “Cossack” as one who was “granted the liberties of a knightly people”.Controversial nature of the modes of life meaning, happiness disappears, losing expressive signs of confrontation and turning into a tense uniqueness of the constants of meaning of life, fate, finiteness of a person as a whole.The concept of happiness, extrapolating into the opposition of happiness /fate – disaster /sorrow (deprivation, misfortune), powerful for Ukrainian culture, is connotative with “will” (after all, “what kind of freedom is such a fate...”), on the one hand, and “underweight” – an evil fate, on the other hand. However, on the existential plane, the life-meaning ethical component of happiness loses its dramatic controversial vector: happiness with its internal semantic and moral modulations is a selfsufficient value. (shrink)

This book is a collection of the selected proceedings of the 4th International Conference "Human Being in Contemporary Philosophical Conceptions," which was held under the patronage of UNESCO at Volgograd State University (Russia) on May 28-31, 2007. In the letter to the organizers, Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura wrote: "I should like to congratulate you on this important initiative to promote philosophical reflection, which is one of the central objectives of UNESCO's Intersectoral Strategy on Philosophy." There is an interesting fact: the (...) 19th World Congress of Philosophy in Moscow (1993) had no session on philosophical anthropology, the next Congress in Boston (1998) had one such session, the 21st Congress of Philosophy in Istanbul (2003) had already four sessions, and the 22nd World Congress of Philosophy in Seoul (2008) had six sessions on philosophical anthropology. Obviously, we may observe a new anthropological renaissance in contemporary thought. This book serves the philosophical anthropology becoming as well. Perhaps an idea of integral studies is the most attractive trend in the contemporary philosophy and science. The book presents an experience in integral philosophy of human being. Also, the development of philosophical anthropology is closely connected with practical tasks. Our political activities, welfare projects and educational programs can become really useful only when we are guided by knowledge of what human being is, what we are able to do, what are own needs, and what we must become. Philosophical anthropology could correctly define the research purposes of all human sciences. This volume includes various reflexions and styles of thinking. By this, all the papers demonstrate metaphysics of respect for human being. The contributors, scholars from the different countries, are open for free discussions and fresh ideas. (shrink)

Human Being Human provides an original perspective on what it is to be a human being, the value of popular culture, the relationship between the individual and the collective and our assumptions about truth, reality and power. Written in a highly accessible style, this book is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying and will fascinate anyone interested in contemporary psychology, cultural studies, film and media, social history and psychotherapy."--Jacket.

_ The Subject of Human Being_ discusses the basic powers of human kind arising from the foundation of the biological brain and manifesting in extraordinary psychological and social capacities and developments. The book consolidates theoretical insights into social ontology from several thinkers, whose profound advances toward understanding the relationship between individuals and society ought to revolutionize social theory as understood and practiced in the social sciences and humanities. Drawing from critical realist social theory developed by Bhaskar and Margaret (...) Archer, John Searle’s philosophy of mind and social ontology, Husserlean and Sartrean phenomenology of consciousness, and Lacanian and existential psychoanalytic theory, the book seeks to portray a unified social ontology that is materialist, emergent, realist, dialectical, processual, and liberatory. Offering a dialectical and progressive view of human being to counter the forces of exploitation and division inflicted on human kind and the ecosystems in which we reside, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of critical realism, philosophy and sociology. (shrink)

Inclusive fitness theory provides a compelling explanation for the evolution of altruism among kin. However, a completely satisfactory account of non-kin altruism is still lacking. The present study compared the level of altruism found among siblings with that found among friends and mates and sought to reconcile the findings with an evolutionary explanation for human altruism. Participants (163 males and 156 females) completed a questionnaire about help given to a sibling, friend, or mate. Overall, participants gave friends and mates (...) as much or more help than they gave siblings. However, as the cost of help increased, siblings received a progressively larger share of the help, whereas friends and mates received a progressively smaller share, despite the fact that participants were closer emotionally to friends and mates than they were to siblings. These findings help to explain the relative standing of friends and mates as recipients of altruistic aid. (shrink)

ARE HUMAN beings material substances? If not, are they made of material stuff? And is the world otherwise materialistic? These are ancient questions for which the dominant intellectual framework of our age compels us toward affirmative answers. In this paper, I want to reinterpret the questions, critically examine the currently most popular way of making the case for the affirmative answers, and argue for a somewhat novel way of casting negative answers in search of a more adequate philosophical (...) understanding of human beings, minds, and persons. (shrink)

From the dawn of human intelligence to the present era, the question ‘does God really exist?’ has been important for human being. Is there any proof of his existence? Philosophers, scholars, preceptors, monks and even atheists have tried to find the answer in their own ways. Various schools of Indian philosophy have also expressed their views about God’s existence. Some schools of Indian philosophy have accepted the ideas of karma, karmaphala, rebirth etc. They have denied to admit the (...) existence of God due to their own philosophical standpoint hence they have presented a series of arguments to refute the existence of God. Udayanāchārya, a famous Indian philosopher of the 10th century A.D., belonging to the Nyāya School, has shown some refined arguments to prove the existence of God. This paper presents his way of reasoning examining whether the belief in the existence of God is reasonable or not. (shrink)

John Dupre warns that our understanding of human nature is being distorted by two faulty and harmful forms of pseudo-scientific thinking. Not just in the academic world but in everyday life, we find one set of experts who seek to explain the ends at which humans aim in terms of evolutionary theory, while the other set uses economic models to give rules of how we act to achieve those ends. Dupre demonstrates that these theorists' explanations do not work and (...) that, if taken seriously, their theories tend to have dangerous social and political consequences. For these reasons, it is important to resist scientism: an exaggerated conception of what science can be expected to do for us. Dupre restores sanity to the study of human nature by pointing the way to a proper understanding of humans in the societies that are our natural and necessary environments. Anyone interested in science and human life will enjoy this book--unless they are its targets. (shrink)

Human dignity seems very important to us. At the same time, the concept ‘human dignity’ is extrordinarily elusive. A good way to approach the questions “What is it?” and “Why is it important?” is to raise another question first: In virtue of what do human beings have dignity? Speciesism - the idea that human beings have a particular dignity because they are humans - does not seem very convincing. A better answer says that (...) class='Hi'>human beings have dignity because and insofar as they are persons. I discuss several versions of this idea as well as several objections against it. The most promising line of analysis says that human beings cannot survive psychologically without a very basic form of recognition and respect by others. The idea that humans have a very special dignity is the idea that they owe each other this kind of respect. All this also suggests that human dignity is inherently social. Non-social beings do not have dignity - nor do they lack it. It is because we are social animals of a certain kind that we have dignity - not so much because we are rational animals. (shrink)

Purpose. The article highlights the demand for critical thinking in everyday life at the present stage of development of globalized culture and emphasizes the role of philosophy as a source of rationality. Philosophizing, which is determined by the psychosociocultural matrix, sets the toposes, vocabulary and rhythms of meaning making, their preservation and transformation. The purpose of the article is to concretize the practices of socio-cultural communication, primarily through the social institute of education, where individuals interact with the psychosociocultural matrix of (...) philosophizing, which mediate the general and individual level in philosophical culture. Theoretical basis of the study are cultural anthropology and phenomenological methods. Originality of the study: based on the philosophy of intersubjectivity, we actualized the rational grounds for formation of adequate judgments in modern culture at the level of everyday life. This justifies the inevitability of the spread of various forms and types of philosophical education, philosophical thinking, ideas and values developed in philosophical communities beyond the narrow circle of professional philosophers. This implies the systemic involvement of philosophers as professionals of meaning-making in solving problems in various non-academic fields – politics, economics, law, etc. The formation of skills of philosophical critical thinking in the process of preparing young people for active civil life is no less important aspect of this. Conclusions lead to an understanding of the existential importance of philosophy and philosophizing and the need for organized forms of knowledge transfer such as the Faculty of Philosophy of the Classical University. There is a mutual interest and interaction of the general culture of society and philosophy as a special kind of culture. Because philosophy actively configures other forms of culture, contributes to the creation of sociocultural identities precisely because of its ability to conceptually reproduce the core of the psychosociocultural matrix that underlies the existence of all these different forms within one society. The sociocultural macro level of philosophical spiritual practices is formed by the psychosociocultural matrix of the philosophical tradition, which retains its longevity from the emergence of philosophy and goes through its history, demonstrating the features of the national reception of philosophy as a national-specific embodiment of sociocultural macro level of the psychosociocultural matrix. (shrink)

In Kant's Human Being, Robert B. Louden continues and deepens avenues of research first initiated in his highly acclaimed book, Kant's Impure Ethics.

In this article Cristoph Wulf examines the basic concepts of pedagogy and educational science in the German-speaking world, looking at education and socialization from the perspective of educational anthropology. He makes evident that the complex German concept of Bildung, in particular, can only be fully understood by means of a historical and philosophical analysis.

This report presents a comprehensive set of recommendations for protection of human beings who are trafficked for the purpose of organ removal or are targeted for such trafficking. Developed by an interdisciplinary group of international experts under the auspices of the project Trafficking in Human Beings for the Purpose of Organ Removal, these recommendations are grounded in the view that an individual who parts with an organ for money within an illegal scheme is ipso facto a (...) victim and that the crime of trafficking in human beings for the purpose of organ removal intersects with the crime of trafficking in organs. Consequently, the protection of victims should be a priority for all actors involved in antitrafficking activities: those combating organ-related crimes, such as health organizations and survivor support services, and those combating trafficking in human beings, such as the criminal justice sectors. Taking into account the special characteristics of THBOR, the authors identify 5 key stakeholders in the protection of human beings trafficked for organ removal or targeted for such trafficking: states, law enforcement agencies and judiciary, nongovernmental organizations working in the areas of human rights and antitrafficking, transplant centers and health professionals involved in transplant medicine, and oversight bodies. For each stakeholder, the authors identify key areas of concern and concrete measures to identify and protect the victims of THBOR. The aim of the recommendations is to contribute to the development of a nonlegislative response to THBOR, to promote the exchange of knowledge and best practices in the area of victim protection, and to facilitate the development of a policy-driven action plan for the protection of THBOR victims in the European Union and worldwide. (shrink)

Defended by scholars such as John McDowell and Julia Annas, the naturalism of second nature (NSN) claims that the virtues are part of a rational second nature in- stilled through moral education. While NSN emphasizes that rationality, fully devel- oped, results in autonomy from nature, it is considered a sort of naturalism because the development of rational second nature unfolds through entirely natural processes. Critics object that NSN does not utilize human nature as a standard of evaluation, which is (...) a problem for a view that claims to be a sort of naturalism. This paper at- tempts to meet this charge by introducing a novel way to understand the normative significance of human nature. It argues that NSN supports an analysis of human nature as the raw material of the virtues and, as such, the basis of a kind of aesthetic evaluation. Specifically, human nature is the basis of humaneness, a kind of beauty that belongs to what elevates or refines human nature. Thus, according to the fortified naturalism of second nature the ethical significance of human nature is explained by recognizing how the virtues exemplify a kind of beauty that only humans can have. (shrink)

Far-reaching promises made by nanotechnology have raised the question of whether we are on the way to understanding human beings more and more as belonging to the realm of technology. In this paper, an increasing need to understand the technological re-conceptualization of human beings is diagnosed whenever increasingly “technical” interpretations of humans as mechanical entities are disseminated. And this can be observed at present in the framework of nanobiotechnology, a foremost “technical” self-description where a technical language (...) is adopted. The arena in which the decision is made on increasing the use of technological understanding to define mankind will not be found in the surgery room in which one works with implants, nor the NBIC-laboratory, in which “nerve plugs” are supposed to be developed. The thesis of this paper is that such arena is rather related to the manner in which concepts of humanity are associated with it, how we think and talk about ourselves, and which consequences we draw out of it. (shrink)

Our recent article begins by describing a new technique for creating human–animal chimeras. This technique—known as interspecies blastocyst complementation—may enable us to generate human organs inside of human–pig chimeras (and/or other kinds of chimeric animals). One central concern about farming human–pig chimeras for their organs is that their moral status would be uncertain and potentially significant. Our article is partly, but not only, about such concerns. At the heart of our paper are two broader questions. First, (...) how should we treat beings of uncertain moral status? And second, do our reasons for thinking that human–pig chimeras have uncertain moral status also provide reason to think regular, non-chimeric pigs have uncertain moral status? We thank Mike King, Christian Munthe, David Resnik, Per Sandin and Rob Streiffer for their commentaries on our paper, each of which serves to clarify the ethical issues at play. In this response, we want to respond to one criticism, acknowledge the force of several others, and point towards some philosophical work that remains to be done. First, the criticism. Resnik questions the parallel we draw between human–pig chimeras and regular pigs. In the case of regular pigs, there is currently a social consensus (or near consensus) that it is morally acceptable to farm pigs for food. For Resnik, this consensus imposes a special burden on those who wish to argue against it; ‘one needs substantial evidence that the majority view is wrong’.1 Since an equivalent consensus does not exist in relation to human–pig chimeras, one might think that moral uncertainty concerns have less force (or require greater support) in the context of meat production than human–animal chimera research. We do not think the social consensus in favour …. (shrink)

Human beings are a cultural species. This predicament enables them to take on many different cultural identities, all of which transcend the bounds of natural behavior of other species. To contemplate this predicament through philosophy is to reflect on such questions as, What makes cultural forms of life possible? What is encompassed in them? What lies at their core? What distinguishes them from natural forms of life? What brings them about, sustains, and causes them to change? Philosophical answers (...) to these questions predate abstract ways of thinking, as they are sometimes embedded in ancient mythical and religious narratives. Such is the story told in the first three chapters of the book of Genesis in the Bible, revealing how human beings became the cultural beings that they are. This study suggests how that ancient and most celebrated story in the literature of the West may be read as harboring insightful philosophical observations on the cultural nature of human beings. It first focuses on the very concept of cultural forms of life, revealing its complicated conceptual links to natural forms of life. It then offers an interpretive framework for reading mythical, symbolic narratives. Using these ideas, it provides a philosophical reading of the Biblical narrative, disclosing it to harbor a metaphysically oriented conception of nature and two insightful philosophical overviews of the cultural nature of human beings. Both overviews endow human beings with an ability to manipulate nature, but in different ways: the first by subjugating parcels of nature to human will; the second by subjugating human beings themselves to a value-laden conception of things and ethical forms of life. Thus, human beings are portrayed as natural creatures possessed of a cultural nature that enables them to transform nature and recreate themselves through their unique cultural predicament. (shrink)

Upon Scheler’ s death in 1928, Martin Heidegger remarked that he was the most important force in philosophy at the time. Jose Ortega y Gasset called Scheler "the first man of the philosophical paradise." The Human Place in the Cosmos, the last of his works Scheler completed, is a pivotal piece in the development of his writing as a whole, marking a peculiar shift in his approach and thought. He had been asked to provide an initial sketch of his (...) much larger works on philosophical anthropology and metaphysics--works he was not able to complete because of his early demise. Frings' new translation of this key work allows us to read and understand Scheler's thought within current philosophical debates and interests. The book addresses two main questions: What is the human being? And what is the place of the human being in the universe? Scheler responds to these questions within contexts of said two projected much larger works but not without reference to scientific research. He covers various levels of being: inorganic reality, organic reality (including plant life and psychological life), all the way up to practical intelligence and the spiritual dimension of human beings, and touching upon the holy. Negotiating two intertwined levels of being, life-energy ("impulsion") and "spirit," this work marks not only a critical moment in the development of his own philosophy but also a significant contribution to the current discussions of continental and analytic philosophers on the nature of the person. (shrink)

This book offers a philosophical analysis of what it is to be a human being in all her aspects. It analyses what is meant by the self and the I and how this feeling of a self or an I is connected to the brain. It studies specific cases of brain disorders, based on the idea that in order to understand the common, one has to study the specific. The book shows how the self is thought of as a (...) three-fold emergent self, comprising a relationship between an objective neural segment, a subjective neural segment and a subjective transcendent segment. It explains that the self in the world tackles philosophical problems such as the problem of free will, the problem of evil, the problem of human uniqueness and empathy. It demonstrates how the problem of time also has its place here. For many people, the world includes ultimate reality; hence the book provides an analysis and evaluation of different relationships between human beings and Ultimate Reality (God). The book presents an answer to the philosophical problem of how one could understand divine action in the world. (shrink)

Depression is a debilitating condition, but it can also be an awakening: one that calls attention to what is termed dimensions of expertise that come with the spatial and temporal structure of human beings and that are necessary for offering some counter to the debilitating force of the condition. Expertise has a significant ontological status: it is directly associated with who we are as creatures who can hear and respond to the call of conscience, desire acknowledgment and have (...) an obligation to share this life-giving gift with others, and whose very being is characterized by a perfectionist impulse to better its standing in the world. A story concerned with medical expertise is offered to illustrate in concrete terms these specific matters. (shrink)

In the fourth section of Goethe’s Zahme Xenien we find the quatrain from which I have taken the theme of such an old and new controversy, which, as I hope, concerns both Germanic studies and the other humanities: “What was it that kept you from us so apart?” I always read Plutarch again and again. “And what was the lesson he did impart?” “They were all human beings—so much is plain.”1 In the very years when Goethe wrote these (...) lines, that is in the 1820s, Hegel repeatedly gave his lectures on the philosophy of history. Right at the beginning he formulated the opposite view which I should like briefly to characterize as “cultural relativism.”Every age has such peculiar circumstances, such individual conditions that it must be interpreted, and can only be interpreted, by reference to itself…. Nothing is shallower in this respect than the frequent appeal to Greek and Roman example which so often occurred among the French at the time of their Revolution. Nothing could be more different than the nature of these peoples and the nature of our own times.2 What is at issue here is not, of course, Hegel’s assertion that ages and peoples differ from each other. We all know that, and Goethe, the attentive reader and traveler, also knew, for instance, that the Roman carnival differed in its character from the celebrations of the Feast of Saint Rochus at Bingen, both of which he had described so lovingly. What makes the cultural historian into a cultural relativist is only the conclusion which we saw Hegel draw, that cultures and styles of life are not only different but wholly incommensurable, in other words that it is absurd to compare the peoples of a region or an age with human beings of other zones because there is no common denominator that would justify us in doing so. 1. ‘Was hat dich nun von uns entfernt?’ Hab immer den Plutarch gelesen. ‘Was has du den dabei gelernt?’ Sind eben alles Menschen gewesen.’ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sämtlich Werke. Jubiläums-ausgabe in 40 Bänden 4:73; with commentary.2. See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Vorselungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte, Werke, 20 vols. , 12:17. E. H. Gombrich was director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition at the University of London from 1959 to 1976. His many influential works include The Story of Art, Art and Illusion, Meditations on a Hobby Horse, The Sense of Order, Ideals and Idols, The Image and the Eye, Tributes, Aby Warburg, and New Light on Old Masters. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry include “The Museum: Past, Present and Future” , “Standards of Truth: The Arrested Image and the Moving Eye” , and “Representation and Misrepresentation”. (shrink)

Based upon a brief outline of existential-phenomenological ontology we present a theoretical and practical understanding of humanbeing, which is suited for a methodologically reflected approach to qualitative research. We present the phenomenological distinction between threedimensions of corporeal intentionality(structural, generative and dialectic intentionality) that form elementary events and structures of meaning. Various aspects of human being are better scrutinized with these concepts of intentionality, such as the association of individual being or collective being (e.g. groups) with the less differentiated anonymity (...) of human being. The aim of our framework is to support the qualitative researcher in grasping the experience of the human life in closer accord with how this being actually unfolds and is lived. Application of the presented framework is illuminated with empirical examples from educational, health and psychological contexts. Finally, we discuss the methodological implications that our approach has for qualitative investigations of human being. (shrink)

It seems that at conception something is formed which, due to its genetic make-up, has the potentiality to develop into a full-blown human being. Many believe that in virtue of this potentiality, this organism, the human zygote or early embryo, has an intrinsic value which makes it wrong to use or produce it merely as a means to some end, e.g., some scientific end such as to produce embryonic stem cells. Against this it is here argued, first, that (...) it does not follow from the fact that something has a potential to become a human being that it already is a human being. In fact, a human being begins to exist no earlier than a couple of weeks after conception, at the stage known as gastrulation. Thus, even granted the questionable assumption that something has intrinsic value in virtue of being a human being, the zygote will not have intrinsic value. Secondly, the value an embryo has in virtue of its potentiality to become a full-blown human being can only be instrumental, a value as a means. But Of course it cannot be wrong to treat that which has merely instrumental value as a mere means or instrument to some end. (shrink)

This article argues in favour of voluntary active euthanasia in human beings on the grounds that we (society in general) perform euthanasia on valued companion animals when their suffering is considered great. I argue that suffering is a morally relevant criterion that should be considered in all cases (human and animal) of euthanasia. I further argue that human beings possess autonomy, a morally relevant difference to companion animals, that allows them to reason about their futures (...) in a way that animals cannot, which gives us more reason to grant euthanasia, if requested autonomously by terminally ill patients who are experiencing extreme suffering. I consider objections around the sanctity of human life and sufficient palliation. I argue that neither of these objections give sufficient reason to deny competent human beings euthanasia if autonomously requested. (shrink)