Katarina Majerhold - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Katarina Majerhold
Časopis za kritiko znanosti, 2024
In this article I present Aristotle's three-part structure (plot, climax, denouement) of narrativ... more In this article I present Aristotle's three-part structure (plot, climax, denouement) of narrative, which is characteristic for drama and screenwriting. I show that this structure is characterised by a focus on the bad, on (natural, social, personal) catastrophes, conflict, violence, domination and war, and that the driving force of the story is some problem or obstacle that the protagonist/heroine has to overcome, with the latter resulting in a change in the protagonist/heroine. The problem or obstacle also serves as a temporal driver of the story. Instead of Aristotle's three-part structure, I offer my own structure, which focuses on the good, the joyful, the egalitarian, and is not based on the problem and obstacle driving the axis and timing of the story. Instead, we can talk about the »eternal now« and the completion of character.
Key words: narration, drama, film, Aristotle, Dirik, Öcalan, Plato
What Philosophy Can Tell You About Your Lover, 2012
Love, its Origin and Modifications through Time : Main Philosophical Concepts of Love through Western History, 2016
What is love? We all wish to have the answer to one of the most universal, mysterious and all per... more What is love? We all wish to have the answer to one of the most universal, mysterious and all permeating phenomenon on this planet. And even if we perhaps have a special feeling and intuitive insight that love is: »everything is related to everything else, but closer things are more closely related«, as Waldo Tobler wrote in First Law of Geography (1970), we have still not found and offered a full or ultimate definition of a multifaceted, dynamic, creative and all-encompassing phenomenon such as love is. Another view of love is, as Spinoza said, that love is a product of the Common that constantly aims upward to the point of engaging in the love of God, that is, the love of nature as a whole, the common in its most expansive form. For him, every act of love, one might say, is an ontological event in that it marks a rupture within an existing being and creates new being and it is just another way of saying that what is ineluctably Common, what refuses to be privatized or enclosed, remains constantly open to all. To say love is ontologically constitutive, then, simply means that it produces the Common. However, since love is an ontological event, 1 I sincerly wish to thank Ida Raudan and Sharon Kaye for their valuble comments, thorough reading and reviews of my book! the creation of a new Common also coincides with different concepts throughout history since each period brings a new way of being and living. Thus each period in history offers a prevailing concept of love: in ancient, pre-Socratic times we have Empedocles' Love (Eros) and Strife (Neikos); in Socratic times, Plato's Eros and Aristotle's Philia; in the Middle Ages, St. Paul's Agape and St. Agustine's Caritas; in Renaissance Rousseau's notion of a modern romantic pair of Emile and Sophie; in modern time Freud's love as transference; in postmodern time Nussbaum's compassionate, reciprocal, erotic, and individual love; in feminist movement we get to know about women's liberation in thought, spirit and body and last but not least gay, lesbian and queer theory offers knowledge and insights into what does it mean the difference between sexual identity and sexual orientation. This does not mean, however, that each representative concept of the period speaks of a totally new or innovative concept of love; many of them are interdependent and/or a modification of another. 2. Presocratic Period Vassily Kandinsky: Composition VII (1913). Empedocles (cca. 495-435 BCE)-Philotes and Neikos Empedocles was a Sicilian, a high born citizen of Acragas and one of pre-socratic philosophers, among whom were also Heraclitus and Parmenidus. Empedocles is the last Greek philosopher who wrote in verse, which indicates that he knew the work of Parmenides who also wrote in verse style. Empedocles' work should be understood not only in relation to Parmenid's but also to Pitagora and sensualists who emphasized the notion of our senses. On the other hand, we can claim that his notion of Love and Strife as fundamental cosmic forces on which his cosmology and ethics lie is a very original thesis that no other philosopher afterwards continued (in some ways Freud was the only one who used his notions of Love and Strife in his notions of Eros and Thanatos). In Empedocles cosmology love stands as a cosmic, consistent principle due to which the world exists through a mixture of elements, or as he says: »From these (Elements) come all things that were and are and will be; and trees spring up, and men and women, and beasts and birds and water-nurtured fish, and even the long-lived gods who are highest in honour. For these (Elements) alone exist, but by running through one another they become different; to such a degree does mixing change them.« (Empedocles, fr. 21). For Empedocles, elements are like letters in an alphabet and serve as metaphors, which emphasizes the ability of elements to form different types of matter which provide different combinations in the same way as a limited number of letters can form different words through combination of the letters, or basic colours can be used to create different hues and patterns. The cause of this mixture and of these combinations is the cosmic force of Love (Philotes)-the force of attraction and combination, and Strife (Neikos)-the force of repulsion and fragmentation. These two forces are engaged in the eternal dialectic and they each prevail in turn in an endless cosmic cycle: »I shall tell thee a twofold tale. At one time it grew to be one only out of many; at another, it divided up to be many instead of one. There is a double becoming of perishable things and a double passing away. The coming together of all things brings one generation into being and destroys it; the other grows up and is scattered as things become divided. And these things never cease continually changing places, at one time all uniting in one through Love, at another each borne in different directions by the repulsion of Strife.« (Empedocles, fr. 17). This cycle of love-strife consists of four phases: two 'full' phases, governed at one time by love and at an other by strife, as well as two 'transitional' phases: a phase from strife to love, and a phase from love to strife. In the beginning, Sphere was filled with love and the four elements were so close together that we could not discern them. After some time, however, Strife came into Sphere and Love started to outflow from it. When the Strife gained enough concentration in the Sphere, it resulted in the movement and fragmentation of the four elements into separate forms. But it seems that Empedocles needed 'evolution' (development) in his cosmology, and ensuing dynamic movement of the cosmos, and therefore he introduced movement through two transitional (alternating) phases, phases from love to strife and from strife to love. In this way, he got a third phase in which, as a consequence of the previous phases, love regains power through coming into the centre of the Sphere, while strife at the same time moves to its margin. And then, in the fourth and the last phase of the cycle, strife returns to the centre, and love moves to the margin. This process then repeats over and over again. It is believed that the idea of love and strife moving in and out of the sphere is an echo of Empedocles medical knowledge (he was also a well-known physician), especially of the function (systole and diastole) of the heart. Thus, according to Empedocles, the world exists in continuous movement through different phases of a cycle, under which a certain type of stability exists in eternal elements. And it is precisely this continuous movement of the elements which produces a continuous state of organic evolution and from which all beings originate. As we have seen, Empedocles presents a unique concept of love as the pair of opposites, love and strife, from which all life springs. Empedocles has not had many followers, but we know that Freud designed his highly influential life (Eros) and death (Thanatos) drives according to Empedocles love-strife principle. Vassily Kandinsky: Points (1920). 3. The Classical (Socratic) Period The Socratic period is marked by two most important philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, each standing on opposite grounds. Plato, somewhat logical and abstract and at the same time mystical, is burdened by old Pythagoreian and Orphic myths which somewhat connect his notion of Eros to love for Divine wisdom through which we wish to reach (through anamnesis) the world of Eternal Forms/Ideas of Truth, Beauty and Goodness (this world is in fact our home, Heaven) and Aristotle, who defined love as a form of Philia (friendship) where we strive to do good for the other's sake on one hand, while on the other he conceived marriage as a kind of biological-economical contract where each of the sexes have their own role through which they contribute to the common goal-better quality of survival and raising of the children. Courtship (cca. 4 BCE). a) Plato (428-347 BCE)-Eros Plato, born a nobleman in an aristocratic family, was not only a philosopher but also a mathematician, a student of Socrates and, later on, a teacher of Aristotle. He was the first to lay the foundation of the Western philosophy and science. He also founded the first known academy which can be considered as the first institution of higher education in the Western world. One of the things which had the biggest impact on his philosophy, however, was the crisis of the ancient Greek culture which had been flourishing for nearly 200 years at that time: it seemed to him that life was very much exposed to contingent tuchē in many different forms, while at the same time the Athenian people were obsessed with the idea that cultural progress could erase that uncontrollable contingency from their lives. And that progress found its hope in the contrast between tuchē (luck, what happens without our consent), and technē (art and science based on our knowledge, will and power). Ancient Greeks connected the story of human progress with the discovery of technē. Plato's Protagoras offers a critique of the conservative Athenian society with its philosophical addition: true societal progress lies in the development of the new technē-technē which is practical and with empiric reasoning subordinated to counting, measurement, weighingin other words geometry, algebra, and the universal truth found in abstract mathematics and logic. His attitude is echoed also in his concept of love as presented in Symposium, although he changed his abstract outlook on love as universal Ideas (of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness) later in Pheadrus to meet also the erotic and 'subjective' aspect of the Ideal Love. In Symposium, meaning a feast, he presents seven speeches in honour of love, one after another, going from left to right in the order in which they are reclining at the table. He introduces seven speakers who represent five types of love known up to that time, Socrates offering a unique and...
The Gift (from the book What Philosophy Can Tell about Your Lover), 2012
Who makes the best lover? The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates once held a raucous drinking par... more Who makes the best lover? The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates once held a raucous drinking party at which he posed this question. Various Athenian notables were present and they all offered different answers, reflecting every colour of the rainbow. The intrepid reporter Plato recorded it all for posterity in a work called the Symposium. Throughout history, many readers have found their answer to our question in one or another of theSymposium's theories, but we have to ask whether even three of the best might be missing something.
Love as A Creative Dynamic Work, 2020
I shortly present the various concepts of love in the Western history, such as (Orphism, Twin Sou... more I shortly present the various concepts of love in the Western history, such as (Orphism, Twin Souls, Platonism, Catholicism, Courtly, Romantic and Psychoanalytic love) and then move on to creating my concept of love as a creative dynamic work. I argue that the aforementioned concepts are unrealistic and disatisatifying because they measure success of a partnership only by restoring some previously supposedly lost, divine or premordial wholeness and/or emphasizing eternal desire with unfulfilled love. My concept of love thus offers realistic expectations of the partnership and include creativity, dynamics and sort of 'adventure' because this kind of love involves active creative partners who negotitate, consent and work on the type of the relationship they mutually agreed with aim of one and only one motive, that the partnership would be happy, peaceful and satisfying for both partners and would not allow violence, abuse, unequality, exploatation, cheating, manipulation.
Časopis za kritiko znanosti, 2024
In this article I present Aristotle's three-part structure (plot, climax, denouement) of narrativ... more In this article I present Aristotle's three-part structure (plot, climax, denouement) of narrative, which is characteristic for drama and screenwriting. I show that this structure is characterised by a focus on the bad, on (natural, social, personal) catastrophes, conflict, violence, domination and war, and that the driving force of the story is some problem or obstacle that the protagonist/heroine has to overcome, with the latter resulting in a change in the protagonist/heroine. The problem or obstacle also serves as a temporal driver of the story. Instead of Aristotle's three-part structure, I offer my own structure, which focuses on the good, the joyful, the egalitarian, and is not based on the problem and obstacle driving the axis and timing of the story. Instead, we can talk about the »eternal now« and the completion of character.
Key words: narration, drama, film, Aristotle, Dirik, Öcalan, Plato
What Philosophy Can Tell You About Your Lover, 2012
Love, its Origin and Modifications through Time : Main Philosophical Concepts of Love through Western History, 2016
What is love? We all wish to have the answer to one of the most universal, mysterious and all per... more What is love? We all wish to have the answer to one of the most universal, mysterious and all permeating phenomenon on this planet. And even if we perhaps have a special feeling and intuitive insight that love is: »everything is related to everything else, but closer things are more closely related«, as Waldo Tobler wrote in First Law of Geography (1970), we have still not found and offered a full or ultimate definition of a multifaceted, dynamic, creative and all-encompassing phenomenon such as love is. Another view of love is, as Spinoza said, that love is a product of the Common that constantly aims upward to the point of engaging in the love of God, that is, the love of nature as a whole, the common in its most expansive form. For him, every act of love, one might say, is an ontological event in that it marks a rupture within an existing being and creates new being and it is just another way of saying that what is ineluctably Common, what refuses to be privatized or enclosed, remains constantly open to all. To say love is ontologically constitutive, then, simply means that it produces the Common. However, since love is an ontological event, 1 I sincerly wish to thank Ida Raudan and Sharon Kaye for their valuble comments, thorough reading and reviews of my book! the creation of a new Common also coincides with different concepts throughout history since each period brings a new way of being and living. Thus each period in history offers a prevailing concept of love: in ancient, pre-Socratic times we have Empedocles' Love (Eros) and Strife (Neikos); in Socratic times, Plato's Eros and Aristotle's Philia; in the Middle Ages, St. Paul's Agape and St. Agustine's Caritas; in Renaissance Rousseau's notion of a modern romantic pair of Emile and Sophie; in modern time Freud's love as transference; in postmodern time Nussbaum's compassionate, reciprocal, erotic, and individual love; in feminist movement we get to know about women's liberation in thought, spirit and body and last but not least gay, lesbian and queer theory offers knowledge and insights into what does it mean the difference between sexual identity and sexual orientation. This does not mean, however, that each representative concept of the period speaks of a totally new or innovative concept of love; many of them are interdependent and/or a modification of another. 2. Presocratic Period Vassily Kandinsky: Composition VII (1913). Empedocles (cca. 495-435 BCE)-Philotes and Neikos Empedocles was a Sicilian, a high born citizen of Acragas and one of pre-socratic philosophers, among whom were also Heraclitus and Parmenidus. Empedocles is the last Greek philosopher who wrote in verse, which indicates that he knew the work of Parmenides who also wrote in verse style. Empedocles' work should be understood not only in relation to Parmenid's but also to Pitagora and sensualists who emphasized the notion of our senses. On the other hand, we can claim that his notion of Love and Strife as fundamental cosmic forces on which his cosmology and ethics lie is a very original thesis that no other philosopher afterwards continued (in some ways Freud was the only one who used his notions of Love and Strife in his notions of Eros and Thanatos). In Empedocles cosmology love stands as a cosmic, consistent principle due to which the world exists through a mixture of elements, or as he says: »From these (Elements) come all things that were and are and will be; and trees spring up, and men and women, and beasts and birds and water-nurtured fish, and even the long-lived gods who are highest in honour. For these (Elements) alone exist, but by running through one another they become different; to such a degree does mixing change them.« (Empedocles, fr. 21). For Empedocles, elements are like letters in an alphabet and serve as metaphors, which emphasizes the ability of elements to form different types of matter which provide different combinations in the same way as a limited number of letters can form different words through combination of the letters, or basic colours can be used to create different hues and patterns. The cause of this mixture and of these combinations is the cosmic force of Love (Philotes)-the force of attraction and combination, and Strife (Neikos)-the force of repulsion and fragmentation. These two forces are engaged in the eternal dialectic and they each prevail in turn in an endless cosmic cycle: »I shall tell thee a twofold tale. At one time it grew to be one only out of many; at another, it divided up to be many instead of one. There is a double becoming of perishable things and a double passing away. The coming together of all things brings one generation into being and destroys it; the other grows up and is scattered as things become divided. And these things never cease continually changing places, at one time all uniting in one through Love, at another each borne in different directions by the repulsion of Strife.« (Empedocles, fr. 17). This cycle of love-strife consists of four phases: two 'full' phases, governed at one time by love and at an other by strife, as well as two 'transitional' phases: a phase from strife to love, and a phase from love to strife. In the beginning, Sphere was filled with love and the four elements were so close together that we could not discern them. After some time, however, Strife came into Sphere and Love started to outflow from it. When the Strife gained enough concentration in the Sphere, it resulted in the movement and fragmentation of the four elements into separate forms. But it seems that Empedocles needed 'evolution' (development) in his cosmology, and ensuing dynamic movement of the cosmos, and therefore he introduced movement through two transitional (alternating) phases, phases from love to strife and from strife to love. In this way, he got a third phase in which, as a consequence of the previous phases, love regains power through coming into the centre of the Sphere, while strife at the same time moves to its margin. And then, in the fourth and the last phase of the cycle, strife returns to the centre, and love moves to the margin. This process then repeats over and over again. It is believed that the idea of love and strife moving in and out of the sphere is an echo of Empedocles medical knowledge (he was also a well-known physician), especially of the function (systole and diastole) of the heart. Thus, according to Empedocles, the world exists in continuous movement through different phases of a cycle, under which a certain type of stability exists in eternal elements. And it is precisely this continuous movement of the elements which produces a continuous state of organic evolution and from which all beings originate. As we have seen, Empedocles presents a unique concept of love as the pair of opposites, love and strife, from which all life springs. Empedocles has not had many followers, but we know that Freud designed his highly influential life (Eros) and death (Thanatos) drives according to Empedocles love-strife principle. Vassily Kandinsky: Points (1920). 3. The Classical (Socratic) Period The Socratic period is marked by two most important philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, each standing on opposite grounds. Plato, somewhat logical and abstract and at the same time mystical, is burdened by old Pythagoreian and Orphic myths which somewhat connect his notion of Eros to love for Divine wisdom through which we wish to reach (through anamnesis) the world of Eternal Forms/Ideas of Truth, Beauty and Goodness (this world is in fact our home, Heaven) and Aristotle, who defined love as a form of Philia (friendship) where we strive to do good for the other's sake on one hand, while on the other he conceived marriage as a kind of biological-economical contract where each of the sexes have their own role through which they contribute to the common goal-better quality of survival and raising of the children. Courtship (cca. 4 BCE). a) Plato (428-347 BCE)-Eros Plato, born a nobleman in an aristocratic family, was not only a philosopher but also a mathematician, a student of Socrates and, later on, a teacher of Aristotle. He was the first to lay the foundation of the Western philosophy and science. He also founded the first known academy which can be considered as the first institution of higher education in the Western world. One of the things which had the biggest impact on his philosophy, however, was the crisis of the ancient Greek culture which had been flourishing for nearly 200 years at that time: it seemed to him that life was very much exposed to contingent tuchē in many different forms, while at the same time the Athenian people were obsessed with the idea that cultural progress could erase that uncontrollable contingency from their lives. And that progress found its hope in the contrast between tuchē (luck, what happens without our consent), and technē (art and science based on our knowledge, will and power). Ancient Greeks connected the story of human progress with the discovery of technē. Plato's Protagoras offers a critique of the conservative Athenian society with its philosophical addition: true societal progress lies in the development of the new technē-technē which is practical and with empiric reasoning subordinated to counting, measurement, weighingin other words geometry, algebra, and the universal truth found in abstract mathematics and logic. His attitude is echoed also in his concept of love as presented in Symposium, although he changed his abstract outlook on love as universal Ideas (of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness) later in Pheadrus to meet also the erotic and 'subjective' aspect of the Ideal Love. In Symposium, meaning a feast, he presents seven speeches in honour of love, one after another, going from left to right in the order in which they are reclining at the table. He introduces seven speakers who represent five types of love known up to that time, Socrates offering a unique and...
The Gift (from the book What Philosophy Can Tell about Your Lover), 2012
Who makes the best lover? The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates once held a raucous drinking par... more Who makes the best lover? The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates once held a raucous drinking party at which he posed this question. Various Athenian notables were present and they all offered different answers, reflecting every colour of the rainbow. The intrepid reporter Plato recorded it all for posterity in a work called the Symposium. Throughout history, many readers have found their answer to our question in one or another of theSymposium's theories, but we have to ask whether even three of the best might be missing something.
Love as A Creative Dynamic Work, 2020
I shortly present the various concepts of love in the Western history, such as (Orphism, Twin Sou... more I shortly present the various concepts of love in the Western history, such as (Orphism, Twin Souls, Platonism, Catholicism, Courtly, Romantic and Psychoanalytic love) and then move on to creating my concept of love as a creative dynamic work. I argue that the aforementioned concepts are unrealistic and disatisatifying because they measure success of a partnership only by restoring some previously supposedly lost, divine or premordial wholeness and/or emphasizing eternal desire with unfulfilled love. My concept of love thus offers realistic expectations of the partnership and include creativity, dynamics and sort of 'adventure' because this kind of love involves active creative partners who negotitate, consent and work on the type of the relationship they mutually agreed with aim of one and only one motive, that the partnership would be happy, peaceful and satisfying for both partners and would not allow violence, abuse, unequality, exploatation, cheating, manipulation.