When one is going through a personal hardship, it is often comforting, or emotionally helpful, to hear from someone else who has gone through something similar. This is a common, familiar human phenomenon, but this chapter argues that it is philosophically puzzling. Unless one is in some sort of moment of vice, one would not want the other person to have suffered the hardship, and one should be pained to hear that they have. And yet the phenomenon is that hearing (...) about their similar hardship makes one feel better, rather than worse. Why is that? The chapter considers a range of intuitive replies. It argues that while each might be part of the story, none resolves the puzzle. There remains a question as to why the phenomenon does not reflect a vice of insufficient care or concern for others. It then considers two possible answers, drawing on ideas from Adams and Bommarito, but argues that neither are satisfactory. The aim of the chapter is to bring out the puzzle and show that it is difficult to resolve. But it ends with a suggestion for a resolution. (shrink)

This article brings out ethical aspects arising in Plato’s classical critique of narrative and imitative art in The Republic, especially when it comes to reading stories about the past. Socrates’s and Glaucon’s most important suggestion, I argue, is to cultivate an ethical consciousness where one ought to see the distinctions between how the real and the imaginary in narratives are to be conceived, and what that insight ethically demands of the reader. Taken as an ethical insight for the reader when (...) engaging in narrative understanding, this should be to resist the temptation to think that past suffering and misery as told in a story can be read analogously to narratives having a tragic plot. The article clarifies the meaning of Plato’s critique through the ideas of Simone Weil, Emmanuel Lévinas and Iris Murdoch. These existential moral philosophers work towards having an ethical consciousness in one’s personal relationship with stories of our lifeworld. (shrink)

Of course, salaries were paid in cash because, nowadays, people no longer receive wages in the form of extra pants or a few bottles of fish sauce, which were non-negotiable.

Satisfying the demand of questioning the contemporary condition implies, first of all, a criticism of present times. From this point of view, it becomes clear that art and revolution whilst practices of creative disruption are undoubtedly in crisis. Hence, it is imperative to re-read Guy Debord, who not only refused the aestheticization of politics, but also the politicization of aesthetics. For the hermeneutics of contemporary, his work is, of course, essential. Proving it is, in short, the purpose of this paper.

Aesthetics is thought of as not only a theory of art or beauty, but also includes sensibility, experience, judgment, and relationships. This paper is a study of Bernard Stiegler’s notion of Aesthetic War (stasis) and symbolic misery. Symbolic violence is ensued through a loss of individuation and participation in the creation of symbols. As a struggle between market values against spirit values human life and consciousness within neoliberal hyperindustrial society has become calculable, which prevents people from creating affective and (...) meaningful attachments to symbols in relation to our retentional apparatuses, technology and memory. Such tension can be thought of as a dissonance between overlapping domains of social life, private and public. New Media is a reflection of aesthetic dissonance, an experience such as being bored and entertained at the same time, between antagonistic experiences, values, and behavior. Moreover, new media is at once a medium of customizing aesthetic experience individually as well as the threat and practice of prioritizing calculability and modeling of consumer behavior in favor of capitalistic effectiveness, which results in the simultaneous categorization of an individual as a data point, putting those who do not fit an algorithm’s premises at a disadvantage. (shrink)

This chapter corrects for Susan Sontag's undeserved neglect by contemporary ethical philosophers by bringing awareness to some of the unique metaethical insights born of her reflections on photographic representations of evil. I argue that Sontag's thought provides fertile ground for thinking about: (1) moral perception and its relation to moral knowledge; and (2) the epistemic and moral value of our emotional responses to the misery and suffering of others. I show that, contrary to standard moral perception theory (e.g. Blum (...) 1994), Sontag holds that we can have general moral perceptual knowledge. I then explore Sontag's idea that certain emotional responses, like sympathy and compassion, can sometimes be impertinent, in virtue of their having false or illusory content. I explain why this is so, and show the epistemic and motivational problems it poses for moral sentimentalism. (shrink)

Many moral philosophers have criticized intensive animal farming because it can be harmful to the environment, it causes pain and misery to a large number of animals, and furthermore eating meat and animal-based products can be unhealthful. The issue of industrially farmed animals has become one of the most pressing ethical questions of our time. On the one hand, utilitarians have argued that we should become vegetarians or vegans because the practices of raising animals for food are immoral since (...) they minimize the overall happiness. Deontologists, on the other hand, have argued that the practices of raising animals for food are immoral because animals have certain rights and we have duties toward them. Some virtue ethicists remain unconvinced of deontic and consequentialist arguments against the exploitation of animals and suggest that a virtue-based approach is better equipped to show what is immoral about raising and using animals for food, and what is virtuous about ethical veganism. (shrink)

Abstract: Modernization has brought about many changes in the socio-cultural arena of life, worldwide. With the advent of science and technology, life has become so much easy, in every nook and corner of the world. The leaders of some of the great economies and corporates have devised policies, so many in number, that could make life so much sophisticated, but complex. The last century has given the world many things to cheer about, but at the same time, it has made (...) life miserable too. Prophecies made by ancient greats about the immoral practices during the hard times came to be true, as the life of a human being is just a stray bullet away. Radiations, pollution, market, pandemics, and joblessness add to many other miseries that have come in the form of physical and biological warfare and violence. Besides this, political and social instability adds to the miseries of this list, as there have been disparities and discrimination in the name of religion, sex, color, and caste too. Keywords: Modernization, Instability, Freedom, Leadership, Non-violence. (shrink)

The theme of essential futility, absurdity, utter incomprehensibility of life and death is stressed in almost allthe writings of Albert Camus. Like Buddha he was shocked by the sight of human misery and mortality. Yet, paradoxically was attracted to the essential desirability of it. Although completely ruffled by the consciousness of an ambiguous and silent God, he was not unaware of “that strange joy that comes from a tranquil conscience”, a perfect inner harmony one experiences on attaining true knowledge. (...) Upanishads are a search for this very reality underlying the flux of things. Malraux, Sartre, and others had already developed this line of thought before Camus. What is essential and original in him is, firstly, that the world’s absurdity not a cause for despair, but on the contrary, a spur to happiness. And secondly, that , mortality and suffering actually enhance the value of life: they invite men to live more intensely. In addition to absurdity another subject the Upanishads insistently deal with is ethics, the purity of human conduct. Very much in the manner of the Existentialists, the Upanishads, aeons before, hold man himself responsible for his actions. Dr. Radhakrishnan, very aptly says that Existentialism is a new name for an ancient method. In Albert Camus and India Sharad Chandra has put forward a convincing comparative study of the two philosophies as expounded in their respective literatures. Her argument is that the parallel ideas found in the two views are not mere fortuitous conclusions but, either the result of seminal influence, or emanation of a common, deeper vision. Reading of the book will help the reader to form a firm opinion. Camus had read the Gita and had attended the lectures given by Swami Shraddhananda of the Ramakrishna Mission in Paris. (shrink)

The existence of evil, pain and suffering is considered by many philosophers to be the most vexed question concerning the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect deity. Why would a loving God permit wanton acts of cruelty and misery on the scale witnessed throughout human history? In this essay, Leslie Allan evaluates four common theistic responses to this problem, highlighting the benefits and challenges faced by each approach. He concludes with a critical examination of a theistic defence (...) designed to show that the problem of evil is not a problem at all. (shrink)

In philosophical literature, the complex emotional state of ressentiment gained popularity through the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. According to Nietzsche, ressentiment was a bad feeling that reflected the suppressed anger, the pain of impotence, and the general misery of the weak when they compared themselves to the strong and talented members of society. Max Scheler took up Nietzsche’s thesis and described ressentiment as a complex condition characterised by a thirst for revenge. Moreover, ressentiment has the annoying property of presenting (...) itself as having some merit: the modern social and political context offers more than enough examples. First, the aim of this article is to take a closer look at Nietzsche’s ‘man of ressentiment,’ an odious personality characterised by weakness, deep frustrations, and hypocrisy. It will turn out that ressentiment has many different shades that paint a somewhat different picture and raise philosophical questions about positive valuation, vulnerability, and the sense of injustice. Second, we shall be working on the link between the psychology of ressentiment and the temptation to lack integrity in writing, art, or science. The well-described and well-known fact that academic fraudsters evolve in disguise, that they first reactively endorse values very different from their own values, and that these plagiarist authors, second, embark on long-term projects repeating their misdeeds and errors, as if it were normal, are two facts worthy of our attention. (shrink)

By far the most respected response by theists to the problem of evil is some version of the free will defense, which rests on the twin ideas that God could not create humans with free will without them committing evil acts, and that freedom is of such value that it is better that we have it than that we be perfect yet unfree. If we assume that the redeemed in heaven are impeccable, then the free will defense faces what I (...) call the Heaven Dilemma: either the redeemed in heaven are free, in which case it is false that you cannot be free without doing evil, or they are not, in which case (heaven being better than earth) it is false that we are better off with freedom and evil than without either. James Sennett has tried to defend a view of freedom that effectively allows us to be impeccable in heaven so long as we are not on earth, while claiming that we are free in both. I argue that this view leads to a new dilemma: either there is no point to earth at all, and given its miseries, it is wrong for God to make us pass through it to get to heaven (especially if we face the risk of ending up in hell), or Sennett’s view consigns millions who die tragically young to an eternity of unfreedom. (shrink)

This paper attempts to bring the traditional theodicy on the question of evil and the Divine Providence, to its logical conclusion, in such a way that a believer is challenged to totally accept the implication of his or her faith in God. To have faith is to completely surrender to Divine Providence. It is to completely surrender ones free will to the rational conclusions or consequences of faith in the Divine Providence. Hence, this paper is for those who are perplexed (...) due to the Pandemic. Especially for Christians whose faith in God is perplexed because of their existential experience of the COVID 19 pandemic as evil. The existential reality of dread and misery caused by this pandemic is globally and more subjectively experienced due to the digitalization of this age. This shows how disastrously powerful the digitalization of our world can be in the proliferation of dread, misery and hopelessness. (shrink)

This article examines the meaningful intervention that Gert-Jan Van der Heiden’s recent book, The Voice of Misery: A Continental Philosophy of Testimony, makes in the developing field of the philosophy of testimony. I argue that this intervention is accomplished through a phenomenological investigation into the nature of the testimonial object and of the demand that it makes upon one who bears witness. In taking such an approach, I argue, Van der Heiden initiates an ontological turn in the field of (...) testimonial theory, shifting the conversation away from a debate about the conditions in which belief in testimony is justified – a debate that has in many ways defined the field for philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition. I suggest that Van der Heiden’s account is helpful in demonstrating that, in many cases, doing justice to a testimonial object requires an epistemic-ethical attitude other than belief. The article concludes by developing a few questions for Van der Heiden based on my interpretation of his project, including to what extent his phenomenology of testimony can account for how often our receptivity to testimony depends on the default trust that we have in others by virtue of our fundamental immersion in social life. (shrink)

Seneca asserts in Letter 121 that we mature by exercising self-care as we pass through successive psychosomatic “constitutions.” These are babyhood (infantia), childhood (pueritia), adolescence (adulescentia), and young adulthood (iuventus). The self-care described by Seneca is 'self-affiliation' (oikeiōsis, conciliatio) the linchpin of the Stoic ethical system, which defines living well as living in harmony with nature, posits that altruism develops from self-interest, and allows that pleasure and pain are indicators of well-being while denying that happiness consists in pleasure and that (...) pain is misery. Augustine divides the narrative of his own development into the stages of babyhood (infantia), childhood (pueritia), adolescence (adulescentia), and young adulthood (iuventus) in the Confessions, a text wherein he claims familiarity with more than a few works of Seneca (Conf. 5.6.11). Furthermore, he had access to Stoic accounts of affiliation not only in Seneca’s Letter 121, but also in Cicero’s On Goals, and in non-extant sources of Stoic ethical theory. After pointing out that Augustine endorsed the notion of self-affiliation outside of the Confessions, I raise the question of whether he also makes the notion of affiliation thematic in his philosophical autobiography. I argue that he does indeed present himself and some of his primary relationships – with his mother and his long-term girlfriend – in terms of personal and social oikeiōsis. In addition, his self-critiques in the early books of the Confessions can be more fully understood if compared to Stoic developmental theory. He depicts himself as failing to progress intellectually, socially, and morally: although he passed through the successive constitutions, becoming physically larger and cognitively capable, he did not mature correctly by the standards of his Stoic sources. (shrink)

The ancient Stoics believed that virtue is the only true good and as such both necessary and sufficient for happiness. Accordingly, they classified food as among the things that are neither good nor bad but "indifferent." These "indifferents" included health, illness, wealth, poverty, good and bad reputation, life, death, pleasure, and pain. How one deals with having or lacking these things reflects one’s virtue or vice and thus determines one’s happiness or misery. So, while the Stoics held that food (...) in itself contributes nothing to a person’s happiness, how one obtains, prepares, and serves it, and both what and how one eats, all reveal a person’s character as good or bad. Thus, understanding the purpose of food, the necessity of frugality, and the virtue of temperance are all important in Stoicism. This paper traces the ethical views on food from Zeno of Citium and Chrysippus to Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. They agree that the wise and temperate know that simple, inexpensive foods in moderate amounts produced locally are easy to get and prepare, healthy for the body, and good for the mind. Thus, Stoicism dictates frugality of diet and the rejection of ambitious eating, gluttony, luxuries, delicacies, and gustatory extravagance. Some Stoics favor vegetarianism. All Stoics think it wise to limit eating and drinking to strict bodily need and to eradicate all food anxieties. (shrink)

Frederick Douglass (1817–1895) argued that newly emancipated black Americans should assimilate into Anglo-American society and culture. Social assimilation would then lead to the entire physical amalgamation of the two groups, and the emergence of a new intermediate group that would be fully American. He, like those who were to follow, was driven by a vision of universal human fraternity in the light of which the varieties of human difference were incidental and far less important than the ethical, religious, and political (...) idea of personhood. Douglass’s version of this vision was formed by natural law theories, and a Protestant Christian conception of universal human fraternity, as it was for much of the abolition movement in the US and Britain. His vision and his fierce commitment to abolitionism, moreover, were characterized by his own experience of slavery. His political and ethical vision, his moral universe, generated his conception of America, his interpretation of the US constitution, and his solution to the Nation’s race problem. Unpacking Douglass’s vision will help us understand those positions that follow his legacy. Just as those who argue that race ought to be conserved turn to the figure of W.E.B. Du Bois, those who disagree with the conservation of race need to consider Douglass’s arguments, and their relationship to Douglass’s assimilation-amalgamation solution. Moreover, those that work under the long shadow of Douglass would do well to carefully consider the historical reasons why Du Bois’s and Booker T. Washington’s strategies for racial justice eclipsed Douglass’s. This chapter reviews Douglass’s religious and political ideals, his application of them to the issues of race, black American identity, and constitutional interpretation, and how his ideals and positions developed into his projection about the future of race in the US. All of these matters are guiding features of the anti-race and racial nominalist positions in the contemporary conservation of race debate. Additionally, this paper asks that we consider the cognitive and emotional conflicts that arise within us as we reflect upon Douglass’s vision and this Nation’s contradictions and failures in its long racial history. Douglass, of course, frequently referenced this conflict; it was at the center of his experience of being American. In his first narrative, Douglass characterized this conflict as his “soul’s complaint.” As a slave he yearned for freedom, and came to understand the liberal political and religious ideals that surrounded him. God’s justice or the ideal of American justice were not immanent; this gave him much pain and caused in him a good measure of moral disorientation, yet he resolved to make up for the absence of divine and natural justice through his own and other subaltern resources. And as a freeman and abolitionist he yearned for a greater reconciliation of the Nation: between black and white, and between the Nation and its ideals. In both instances the obstacles to his desires, the enormity of the task, and the elusiveness of Justice often left him somewhere between madness and reconciliation to his misery. His turmoil, a reaction of moral indignation and disorientation, a reaction to bondage in the putative land of liberty, is ours as well. (shrink)

Sri Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of the Sikhs, contains numerous references to the worship of the divine in Nature. The Sikh scripture declares that human beings' purpose is to achieve a blissful state and be in harmony with the Earth and all creation. Millions of Sikhs recite Gurbani daily wherein the divine is remembered using the symbolism from Nature, esp. air, water, sun, moon, trees, animals, and the Earth. The human mind loses communion with Nature and ultimately with (...) God by being self-conceited. It causes misery all around, is a repeated assertion of Sikhism. The contemporary environmental crisis is an outcome of the actions of such a self-conceited human mind. By affirming God's immanence and His presence in the creation, the Sikh religion imparts the spirit of self-righteousness to the entire subject of Nature. Sikhism is a remarkable religious and cultural phenomenon; several important themes emerge within its universe of beliefs. On the ecological front, the theology of Sikhism suggests that humans must live in harmony with Nature. The Sikh Gurus exemplified many of these teachings, and their examples continue to inspire contemporary social, religious, and environmental leaders in their efforts to protect the planet. In this presentation, the prime environmental teachings of Sikhism are shared with the community. (shrink)

What is so appealing about the figure of the master criminal? The answer lies in the kind of solution he provides to the problem of suffering. Rather than just accounting for affliction—as, for example, does Leibniz’s theodicy—such a figure enchants it, transforming mundane objects into actual or potential clues, everyday incidents into moves in a cosmic conflict, random misery into a purposeful pattern. The master criminal (the shadowy villain of _The Usual Suspects_, say) thus constitutes a secular replacement for (...) the Devil, making possible a negative reenchantment of the world. (shrink)

Bhakti yoga is a unique approach to achieve freedom through concurring egoism. Ramanujacharya has explored a non-dualistic and theological way to experience the higher self through the bhakti. Therefore, this study examines the potentiality of the teachings of the Ramanujacharya on Bhakti for the Yogic Bhakti Sadhana. Ramanujacharya represents the philosophical school of Vedanta. His philosophical and theological teachings are based on the Vedic text of Prastana Trayam. Ramanujacharya is majorly concerned about the practice of bhakti or devotion in his (...) philosophy. The accomplishment of the Ramanujacharya is based on Vaisnavism. Which is an experience of the Saguna form of Vishnu. Through the practice of Sadhana Saptaka individual continues his practice of Bhakti Sadhana, and ultimately the individual is driven to the Praptti. In Praptti individual achieves the state of self-surrender which is the essence of the Bhakti Sadhana. Therefore, the synthesis of these teachings highlights that through the utilization of the Bhakti Sadhana individual can concur his egoism through the achievement of parama – purushartha of Ramanujacharya teachings. Therefore, according to yoga, the flow of the mind creates egoism in the individual. The practice of Ramanujacharya bhakti yoga directs the individual to the cessation the egoism and free from misery through self-surrender and self-realization. Therefore, Ramanujacharya's teachings of Bhakti Sadhana have the potential of cultivating the ego-less pure jivatman as prescribed in the yoga Sadhana. (shrink)

Iconic photographs are visual arguments depicting an, often dramatic, particular situation showing victims of disasters. Spectators watching the photo of the particular situation, empathise with it, and project the feelings evoked onto the events that form the context for the scene in the picture. This mobilises them into political action. In the process, however, the depicted personal misery is perused to exemplify the larger events. The tragedy of iconic photographs is analysed not as the misery experienced by the (...) depicted persons, but as the breach of their right to shame which is required for the photo to acquire iconicity. Examples are addressed, as well as the contrast classes of the self-portrait and Byzantine icons. (shrink)

In asserting that the desire to possess what we cannot exclusively and permanently have lies at the root of human misery, Spinoza's Ethics discloses a problem that requires a political response. Although the final part of the Ethics appears to be the least practical of Spinoza's writings, it nonetheless foregrounds the tangible problem of our desire for possession, our desire to have what gives us joy. Moreover, it proposes a remedial practice by means of which this problematic desire might (...) generate satisfaction and strength rather than frustration and suffering. The "remedy for the affects" demands a reorientation of one's possessive desire corollary to the fundamentally affective and affirmative understanding of justice propounded in Spinoza's political writings. The cure for the possessive lovesickness portrayed in the Ethics, I aim to show, entails institutions of justice insofar as they operate upon our proprietary desires. (shrink)

I intend to dismantle a piece of historiographic mythology created by self-styled ‘Revisionists’ (Hill, Alvey, Oslington, etc.). According to the myth, Adam Smith endorsed several of the traditional proofs of God’s existence; he believed that the order existing in the world is a morally good order implemented by Divine Providence; he believed that evil in the world is part of an all-encompassing Divine Plan; and that the ‘invisible hand’ is the hand of the Christian God who leads the rich to (...) employ their wealth for the greater benefit of the greatest number. I argue instead that there is a remarkable analogy between Smith’s and Kant’s theory of religion. Smith’s philosophy is a third way between Rationalism and Phyrronism, arguing that doctrines confirmed by reason in every field, from natural science to theology, are nothing more than combinations of ideas agreeable to the imagination; if we try, on the basis of both Smithian texts and their context and co-text, to reconstruct his lectures on natural theology, all kind of evidence converge in indicating that he reduced proofs of God´s existence to ‘inventions of the imagination’ and argued that philosophical theism is not different in status from primitive belief in invisible beings, or that it is as unwarranted as any system is, and besides that it generates a moral conundrum; he argued also that teleological explanations are no more and no less imaginary than those based on efficient causes, that the teleological order we may imagine in the world is not too bad from a ‘consequentialist’ point of view, and yet it is far below any moral standard; I argued that this is by no means a proof of Smith’s ‘irreligion’ and also that no convincing proof of any turn from religion to irreligion on his part has been provided so far, and finally that the two viable options he left open were either dismal unbelief or Theism on a moral basis. I defend this third way by proving that what Smith’s lost lectures on natural religion said can be reconstruct with some plausibility and what they did not say with absolute certainty; I argue that he developed a sharp criticism of natural theology, that he argued that at the root of religion there are a number of principles of the mind that make religious belief a ‘natural belief’; I do so by reconstructing, first, the context of the missing lectures (sect. 2); then the contents of their first part, considering the proofs of God’s existence and his attributes (sects 3-4); the ‘principles of the mind’ lying at the root of polytheism (sect. 5), of philosophical monotheism (par. 6), and of pure and rational religion (par.7); I contend, then, that his vindication of toleration is consistent with ‘pure and rational religion’ (par. 8) and that attempts to prove a phantom conversion to ‘natural religion’ or ‘irreligion’ result from misreading (par.9). My conclusions are the following: i) Adam Smith claimed that any natural theology is impossible; ii) There is in fact some kind of order in the world, and it proves useful to a point in allowing for humankind’s survival, but it doesn’t meet any minimal moral criterion; iii) the world is not teleologically ordered; we may indeed imagine such order for mental economy, but the world abounds in misery and depravity; iv) consequences of human wickedness and insanity do, happily enough, deviate from intended outcomes; we may feign invisible mechanisms at work behind, but to mistake them for a hidden mechanism is as childish as the primitive’s belief in ‘invisible beings’. v) there are indeed themes from theological doctrines in Smithian economic theory, but they not the kind of rational theology ‘discovered’ by the ‘New View’; they are instead Augustinian and Jansenist themes. vi) Smith’s theological doctrines did – as suggested by Waterman – have a bearing on his economic theory not by ‘doctrinal dependence’ but – as suggested by Harrison – in the more modest role of source of blueprints for economic explanation. (shrink)

Here we analyse the legitimacy of government actions during the Covid-19 pandemic (lockdowns, social distancing, and masks) and the way they restrict individual choice and derail society by appealing to the masses. Rather than focusing on scientific research on the actual virus, we focus on the set of arguments typically provided by pro-measures individuals to show that they are based on the concepts of cognitive misery, lazy option, and problem substitution. We discuss some of the most notorious slogans and (...) provide counterarguments to show that governments, media, experts, and other institutions have been led by the inertia of a confusing problem based on arbitrary and entangled grounds. Our conclusion is that governments, media, and industry are forcing “one-liners” (slogans) upon the true minority under attack: the single individual. Only when the single individual manages to become a sufficiently strong power, consideration of personal choice is granted. (shrink)

According to the results of 162 respondents survey, the affective and cognitive components of feelings of guilt in the space of Ukrainians’ collective consciousness were described. This space is complex, but poorly structured, capable of appearing and spreading little understood defensive assessments and attitudes. -/- The content of relevant processes recorded the following trends: undifferentiated feelings of guilt, general self-accusations, accusations of Ukrainians themselves for historical failures, shame for Ukrainians’ violence, readiness to recognize or not to recognize Ukrainians’ guilties, accusations (...) of Ukrainian powers of different periods, denunciation of Soviet power, Ukrainians’ feelings to be innocent victims of Russia, the avoidance of political guilt. -/- In defining of the perpetrators of Ukrainian historical miseries the agents of Russian-Soviet influences and the Ukrainian authorities of various times unconditionally dominate. Psychologically more problematic is the sphere of recognition / non-recognition by Ukrainians of their own faults. One can speak of the presence of a basic affective background – the experience of undifferentiated feelings of guilt. -/- The Ukrainians’ consciousness is characterized by two main emotional-value positions: denialdefensive (we are not guilty of anyone) and avoiding-defensive (we are only guilty of ourselves). The opposite self-accusatory position (we are guilty of others and should ask them for forgiveness) has a relatively small share. -/- The denial-defensive position essentially correlates with the narcissistic Ukrainian identity. The avoiding-defensive position reflects the conciliatory Ukrainian identity. Recognizing the historical blames of Ukrainians and a need to apologize concerns the representatives of humanistic Ukrainian identity. It means understanding the real state of affairs without illusory idealization, the ability to profoundly experience one’s involvement in the Ukrainian world, and the willingness to assume moral responsibility for the sins of the past. (shrink)

In his 1968 poetry collection „Fadensonnen“, Paul Celan offers a hermetic blend of existentialism and mysticism, which is unusual in two respects. Firstly, the European philosophy of existence, especially with its proponents Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Martin Heidegger, had gone to great lengths to criticize and delegitimize the Abrahametic religions, for the concept of god seemed to be an obstacle to humanity in pursuit of its own humanization. Secondly, in the aftermath of the holocaust, the idea of man wanting (...) to merge with a god that had not prevented this cruelty from happening had lost much of its plausibility. Despite these two objections, Celan's poems address the struggle of togetherness in a world that negates the mere possibility of otherness, trying to salvage the unique identity and dignity of the other. With this in mind, the modus operandi of his poems is that of a butcher: Whatever has previously been alive – before the Shoah – now has to be stripped bare of its layers of individual and collective history, has to become less than body and flesh. In this way, the poems' inherent pain and misery transform the reader into a nobody, for only a nobody has got the prerequisites to encounter other people unbiasedly in their unique wholeness. Within this space of encounter, only the reminiscence of body and sexuality exists, commemorating the other, so that radical corporeality seems to be the prerequisite for togetherness. In this ahistorical sphere there is no room for a god that permitted the holocaust, redefining mysticism as the connection between men instead of one between man and god. Celan's poems act as a catalyst, for they exclude god from the spheres of man, making poetry a memorial site to the dead and the ones living in pain. This way, the poems are trying to save Eros (in the sense of creaturely love) from being mutilated by the crimes of European history while at the same time aiming at rehabilitating mankind in a post-holocaust world. (shrink)

The adventurous Indian spirit , took Indians to unknown lands, where they had to face untold miseries and hardships. Despite that , the soaring spirit of these pioneer immigrants was never subdued. They toiled hard, made these new lands their home and contributed to their growth and development in multifarious ways. This is also the story of human evolution. In this chain of events, the story of Komagata Maru has a special historical significance. it resonates beyond 1914, linking to freedom (...) movements in India and the right to vote for South Asians in Canada. It has helped the North Americans to move on from the insecurities of "Hindu Invasion" to the blooming of "Multiculturalism". (shrink)

If Jewish Bolsheviks could put an end to the imperial rule of the Romanovs, could they pose a threat to the vision of a Third Reigh? A question the German National Socialists are likely to have asked themselves before and on the eve of plotting the rise of the Nazi regime. After all, Europe had had a long-standing relationship with blaming the Jews for the world’s miseries. A relationship Germany was ready to refuel, as indicated by German Field Marshal Walter (...) von Reichenau, when he stated that ‘the most essential aim of war against the Jewish-bolshevistic system is a complete destruction of their means of power and the elimination of Asiatic influence from the European culture.’ But the German fears of Jewish interference with their great scheme for Europe’s future, must surely have been inspired by more than just the age-old conspiratorial allegation that Jews were the main forces behind world politics. As such, this essay will seek to inspect the apparent rise of antisemitic fears at the time, and put a case forward to show how religion played into all this. (shrink)

This is not a perfect book, but it is unique, and if you skim the first 400 or so pages, the last 300 (of some 700) are a pretty good attempt to apply what's known about behavior to social changes in violence and manners over time. The basic topic is: how does our genetics control and limit social change? Surprisingly he fails to describe the nature of kin selection (inclusive fitness) which explains much of animal and human social life. He (...) also (like nearly everyone) lacks a clear framework for describing the logical structure of rationality (LSR—John Searle’s preferred term) which I prefer to call the Descriptive Psychology of Higher Order Thought (DPHOT). He should have said something about the many other ways of abusing and exploiting people and the planet, since these are now so much more severe as to render other forms of violence nearly irrelevant. Extending the concept of violence to include the global long-term consequences of replication of someone’s genes, and having a grasp of the nature of how evolution works (i.e., kin selection) will provide a very different perspective on history, current events, and how things are likely to go in the next few hundred years. One might start by noting that the decrease in physical violence over history has been matched (and made possible) by the constantly increasing merciless rape of the planet (i.e., by people's destruction of their own descendant’s future). Pinker (like most people most of the time) is often distracted by the superficialities of culture when it’s biology that matters. See my recent reviews of Wilson’s ‘The Social Conquest of Earth’ and Nowak and Highfield’s ‘SuperCooperators’ here and on the net for a brief summary of the vacuity of ‘true altruism’ (group selection), and the operation of kin selection and the uselessness and superficiality of describing behavior in cultural terms. -/- This is the classic nature/nurture issue and nature trumps nurture --infinitely. What really matters is the violence done to the earth by the relentless increase in population and resource destruction (due to medicine and technology and conflict suppression by police and military). About 200,000 more people a day (another Las Vegas every 10 days, another Los Angeles every month), the 6 tons or so of topsoil going into the sea/person/year –about 1% of the world’s total disappearing yearly, etc. mean that unless some miracle happens the biosphere and civilization will largely collapse during next two centuries, and there will be starvation, misery and violence of every kind on a staggering scale. People's manners, opinions and tendencies to commit violent acts are of no relevance unless they can do something to avoid this catastrophe, and I don't see how that is going to happen. There is no space for arguments, and no point either (yes I'm a fatalist), so I'll just make a few comments as though they were facts. Don't imagine I have a personal stake in promoting one group at the expense of others. I am 78, have no descendants and no close relatives and do not identify with any political, national or religious group and regard the ones I belong to by default as just as repulsive as all the rest. -/- Parents are the worst Enemies of Life on Earth and, taking the broad view of things, women are as violent as men when one considers the fact that women's violence (like most of that done by men) is largely done in slow motion, at a distance in time and space and mostly carried out by proxy -by their descendants and by men. Increasingly, women bear children regardless of whether they have a mate and the effect of stopping one woman from breeding is on average much greater than stopping one man, since they are the reproductive bottleneck. One can take the view that people and their offspring richly deserve whatever misery comes their way and (with rare exceptions) the rich and famous are the worst offenders. Meryl Streep or Bill Gates or J.K Rowling and each of their kids may destroy 50 tons of topsoil each per year for generations into the future, while an Indian farmer and his may destroy 1 ton. If someone denies it that's fine, and to their descendants I say "Welcome to Hell on Earth"(WTHOE). -/- The emphasis nowadays is always on Human Rights, but it is clear that if civilization is to stand a chance, Human Responsibilities must replace Human Rights. Nobody gets rights without being a responsible citizen and the first thing this means is minimal environmental destruction. The most basic responsibility is no children unless your society asks you to produce them. A society or a world that lets people breed at random will always be exploited by selfish genes until it collapses (or reaches a point where life is so horrific it's not worth living). If society continues to maintain Human Rights as primary, to their descendants one can say with confidence "WTHOE". -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

Ātmānuśāsana (commonly spelled as Atmanushasan) by Ācārya Guņabhadra presents profound concepts of the Jaina Doctrine in a form that is easily understood. Remarkable for its poetry and meaning, it expounds that right faith (samyagdarśana) is the cause of merit, and wrong faith of demerit. To have belief in the true nature of substances is right faith. Dharma is the man’s most excellent possession. The conduct that leads to merit is dharma and it results in happiness after destroying misery. Whether (...) happy or miserable, dharma should be the only pursuit of man. True happiness is not the momentary sprinkling of the pleasures of the senses. Long-life, wealth and sound body are obtained from the previously earned merit (puņya). Under the spell of sinful karmas, the man experiences misery. Excellent men with discrimination work hard, incessantly and cheerfully, for the sake of their future lives. The happiness attained through austerity (tapa) can never be attained by craving for wealth. No dust of disgrace ever touches the feet of the man fortified by austerity. The ascetic goes on to perform austerity while protecting his body, for a very long time. Through the power of austerity he vanquishes his natural enemies, like the passions of anger, etc. In the after-life, he automatically and speedily attains liberation as the culmination of his human effort. (shrink)

Ācārya Kundakunda’s (circa 1st century BCE) Pravacanasāra is among the most popular Jaina Scriptures that are studied with great reverence by the ascetics as well as the laymen. Consciousness manifests in form of cognition (upayoga) – pure-cognition (śuddhopayoga), auspicious-cognition (śubhopayoga) and inauspicious-cognition (aśubhopayoga). Pure-cognition represents conduct without-attachment (vītarāga cāritra). Perfect knowledge or omniscience (kevalajñāna) is the fruit of pure-cognition (śuddhopayoga). The soul engaged in pure-cognition (śuddhopayoga) enjoys supreme happiness engendered by the soul itself; this happiness is beyond the five senses (...) – atīndriya – unparalleled, infinite, and imperishable. Omniscience (kevalajñāna) is real happiness; there is no difference between knowledge and happiness. Delusion (moha), the contrary and ignorant view of the soul about substances, is the cause of misery. The soul with attachment (rāga) toward the external objects makes bonds with karmas and the soul without attachment toward the external objects frees itself from the bonds of karmas. The stainless soul knows the reality of substances, renounces external and internal attachments (parigraha) and does not indulge in the objects-of-the-senses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Socratic Virtue: Making the Best of the Neither-Good-Nor-BadJ. Clerk ShawNaomi Reshotko. Socratic Virtue: Making the Best of the Neither-Good-Nor-Bad. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv + 204. Cloth, $68.00.In this engaging and provocative book, Naomi Reshotko advances a naturalistic interpretation of Socratic philosophy, i.e., of those views expressed by Plato’s Socrates that best comport with Aristotle’s descriptions of Socrates. She contrasts her reading with those that (...) project foreign commitments onto the text, including: (i) moralism, or the separation of ethics from empirical science; (ii) two-dimensional semantics, or theories of meaning that distinguish the semantic contribution to a psychological state made by its subject’s conception of its objects from that made by its actual objects; and (iii) privileged access, or psychological theories that grant human beings incorrigibility concerning some aspect of their own psyches.Part I reviews and synthesizes views that the author shares with Terry Penner: that all desire is for one’s own real (not apparent) good, so that an agent’s belief about what is overall best for her invariably guides her actions; that all human virtue is identical to wisdom; and that virtue, so understood, guarantees the greatest possible satisfaction of the desire for one’s own real good, and so makes one live as well as possible.Part II places the distinction among the good, the bad, and the neither-good-nor-bad (NGNB) at the center of Socratic ethics. On Reshotko’s reading, the only goods are virtue and happiness, and the only bads vice and misery. She does not adequately explain why all actions are NGNB (16, 173), even though actions are individuated by their actual consequences (34–36), so that every action is either good or bad (98). Virtue’s goodness is due to its stable nomological (not conceptual or logical) connection to happiness. This makes virtue the only unconditional, other-generated good, while happiness is the only unconditional, self-generated good—its goodness does not depend on any nomological relation it enters into.Part III provides more detail about virtue and happiness. First, Reshotko explains that virtue is wisdom because it is the science of human happiness, and that this science is identical to every other science. Strictly speaking, nobody knows anything without knowing everything, although some people do grasp “some parts of knowledge” (160). Reshotko advocates this view as a solution to the closing puzzles of the Charmides. Socrates and Critias cannot figure out how temperance benefits, first because they assume that it is knowledge [End Page 132] of all things except good and bad, and then because they assume that it is knowledge of good and bad in isolation from other sciences (173a–175a). But if Socratic wisdom is the structured grasp of everything, then their puzzle is resolved. Second, Reshotko claims that happiness is a life maximally composed of pleasures. While she is sympathetic with the view that happiness is composed of modal pleasures (see G. Rudebusch, Socrates, Pleasure, and Value, Oxford 1999), she concludes that sensate pleasures can also be parts of happiness (185n7).The book’s major flaw is its limited engagement with textual evidence that seems to tell against the author’s readings and its limited coverage of alternative interpretations from the secondary literature. I mention three striking examples here.First, Reshotko argues that harming others is inconsistent with self-benefit because of the likelihood of reciprocal harm (65–71). She then notes passages where Socrates speaks as though harming others harms one’s soul simply by making it more unjust, which makes vice sound like a self-generated bad. Gorgias 472c–481b is particularly problematic in this respect, since Socrates claims there that doing injustice is less painful (but worse) than suffering it. Reshotko tries to make such passages conform with her initial explanation: harming others tends to entrench false beliefs that harming others is consistent with self-benefit, which leads to more harm of others and so more reciprocal harm (71–72, 174). This may be workable, but absent more extensive argument, it seems like an ad hoc maneuver.Second, Reshotko wants to avoid giving... (shrink)