The courage to be and the end of the world (original) (raw)
Related papers
Humanity as the Will to Power: Affirmation and Danger in the Eternal Return
InCircolo - Rivista di Filosofia e Culture , 2020
I present an image of humanity as the will to power expressed in context of affirmation and danger in the eternal return. Nietzsche argues the death of God not as a theological argument but as an existential challenge for humanity to be re-experienced. It is read in light of the eternal return: without ontological references or quasi-transcendentals, how is life to be lived? Deleuze contextualizes Nietzsche's critique of nihilism qua a typology of active and reactive modes of being, however I go beyond to provide what I consider an anthropological account. I do this by differentiating the will to power from individual willing and present the danger that an affirmation of life entails. Nietzsche challenges us with the eternal return. With this, one is led to realize that she is her own destruction (Untergehen) at the same time as her overture (Übergehen). She has the ability, power, capacity to overcome and self-create. With this realization one ought to remain truthful to this in form of truth-telling (Redlichkeit). Nietzsche projects humanity as a perilous crossing over from nihilism to affirmation with an embrace of an ethics of danger. This crossing over is a mark of life as the will to power. It is an overcoming of nihilism and the assurance amidst nihilism's farce that the godhead is dead and that the eternal return is a daunting challenge we cannot escape from. With these, we are afforded an image of humanity as the will to power.
About Human Condition and Spirituality
2016
Nowadays, the mankind is enthused about a real informational explosion but it the anxiety about the human mission also appears: "the humankind, enthused about its own discoveries and its power asks itself with anxiety which is its place and role in the Universe (Gaudim et Spes 3). Yesterday and today, the human being realized that he cannot "answer these fundamental questions which always have tormented his heart regarding the end and the beginning and hence his sense of existence" (Benedict XVI, Discourse, Pontifical Gregorian University Rome, the 4-th of November 2006). The 21 st century is marked by a return to spirituality because the need for spirituality "reaffirms with power, so far that the observers... reach the conclusion attributed to Andre Malraux: «The 21 st century will be religious or will not be at all»". 1 Nowadays, spirituality means searching for wisdom and there are questions as: who are the humans, where do they come from and where do they go. Under these circumstances, we have to establish some ethical benchmarks. 2 This void makes place for the religious fundamentalism, a laic spirituality based of consumerism described as "a process through which goods are the services created, produced, used and exhausted". 3 But the human must switch from the state of consumer to the state of citizen." 4 Here is about "the necessity of surpassing a selfish ethics." 5
The concept of Being in our Era
Being is the ontological essence of the human person. The long and continuous process of self-identification, starting from the very beginning of the human life aims at knowing the real Being. The phenomenology of Being has been extensively studied, analyzed and discussed in the fields of philosophy, psychology, ethics and sociology in the course of the history of self-knowledge. In Heraclitean philosophy the Being was associated with the Word (λόγος), in Empedoclean one it was implicated in the rivalry between Love and Strife, in Platonic philosophy the human Being has eternal self-identity and it is related with the Self-Knowing, the self-control and the establishment of the inner peace and harmony. According to Aristotle, the purpose of the human Being is to live for the virtue. In Neo-Platonists, Being was involved in the struggle between soul and flesh, expecting the eventual victory of the spiritual over the carnal entity. In the Skepticism, the Being is aiming at searching for the truth, avoiding any dogmatism, in the endeavor to establishing inner peace, tranquility and apathy. Descartes identified Being with Thinking, as fundamental element of the Existence. According toKierkegaard, Being is the essence of the existence, always related with the existential anxiety and the endeavors for spiritual purification and perfection. According to Heidegger, the “Being” of the human being is Existence, distinguished into authentic Being and into Being in the world (Dasein), which is related with the temporality. According to Sartre the “Being” is a self-caused being, planted inside the material reality, determined by Nothingness. The man of our era exists in a climax of existential anxiety and insecurity. The moral and spiritual values are challenged by the Idol of the economic prosperity and the materialistic well-being. The spiritual values, the search for the truth, the strive after perfection, eternity, inner peace, are weakened under the pressure of the merciless economic demands. However, the real Being of the human person, created for the eternity and shaped according to unaltered moral principles and values, would continuously endeavor to search for the truth, the harmony, the spiritual beauty, the knowledge, the morality and the sanctification of the human, principles which overcome the Temporality and the Nothingness.
Discourse about the end of the world
Lingua Posnaniensis, 2015
The increased prevalence of discourse concerning the expected end of the world was observed in various countries and manifested in various genres especially in the years 2000 and 2012. Some of the discourse was conducted in a serious manner, whereas other instances included humorous motifs and were used for commercial purposes.The aim of this paper is to take a closer look at the typical motifs prevailing in the discourse concerning the end of the world, with special emphasis on the humorous aspect - both universal and culture-specific. Texts found on Polish, German, English and Russian websites were analyzed.In the studied material, the end of the world was understood literally and broadly - in terms of extermination of the human race, eschatology - or narrowly, in terms of statistical data concerning the death of a given number of people, or even individually, referring to the imminent ending of each person’s particular world. T he metaphorical meaning of the end of the world was ...
Fear and courage in existental analytic and in radical phenomenology
Questions of fear, anxiety and courage are in the foreground of existential analitic. They are analyzed in the context of the possibility of non-being, which appears at the core of the existence. Heidegger shows that existence is a drama played between being and non-being. In his answer, he insists that being can be properly understood only if considered as positivity, which doesn’t need any reason to be. Being is “to be” in itself. Radical phenomenology as developed by Michel Henry makes a step forward by pointing out that being is not able to prevail over non-being by itself, but in as much as it is given sense by the newborn life. Life, which is an absolute auto-affirmation, gives sense to the future and new being. Key words: positivity of being, life, fear, courage, existential analytic, radical phenomenology
This article develops a philosophy of courage/couragelessness that problematizes the fear/fearlessness dialectic in positing fear as the 'lessness'. From this point of departure we enter into a discussion of how intimacy with the Nothing-Infinite Eternal facilitates the attainment of eternal-courage (i.e. fearlessness) and the necessity of studying fear from the perspective of states of being like fearlessness and enlightenment that embody the teleological potentials of humanity's conscious-cultural evolution. To properly understand the (un)nature of fear in Colonial Modernity we must study the relationship with fear that is made possible by attaining to the teleological potentials of human consciousness.
“The Meaning of Life” during a Transition from Modernity to Transhumanism and Posthumanity
Journal of Anthropology, 2012
The articles argues that due to the rapid development of new technology the boundaries of life and death, as well as the different phases of our physical, social and spiritual life are getting less clear-cut and evident than they have been before in the Western, traditionally dualistic cultural and historical experience. Thus, at the moment we are in a transitional stage in our understanding of "human life" is gaining new dimensions in form of "post-humanism" and "trans-humanism". The current neo-holistic view of the universe and the human place in it requires us to consider the "existential risks" and seriously ponder the effects of the technological evolution to our social, cultural, ethical and metaphysical frameworks and normative principles.
Letter to the End-of-the-World Generation
Convivial Futures
It is in solidarity with you who today view the adult world with apprehension and wonder about the future that I write this text. I ask for your permission to offer my experience as a history teacher and researcher on scenarios for the future, which led me to write the book Auroville, 2046: After the end of one world. I am 55 years old, have two children who are young adults, and am witnessing the intense awareness among youth about what awaits us long before they reach my age. The testimonies are touching, and the coronavirus pandemic was an accelerant of this view. If a virus can turn the world upside-down like it did, imagine the scale of damage wrought by the tragedies that scientists have said will come to pass, such as climate change. I want to start by sharing a visionary episode that happened to a young and brilliant student twenty years ago, who wrote under my supervision a monograph about the urban development of the small alternative community of Capão in the Chapada Diamantina, Brazil. His dedicated and competent work earned him a glowing approval from the jury of the urbanism course at the State University of Bahia. As usual, the supervisor embraced the student, welcoming him to the world of researchers, which he was preparing to enter with evident talent. When I asked him about his plans about a possible master's degree, he surprised me by saying he would live in Capão and probably be a tour guide. Astonished, I told him that he was so intelligent and talented that he should become a teacher, to which he replied with something like, "Dear professor, if I am indeed that smart, I cannot arrange my life to serve this world in decay."