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Copyright of Fichte -- Studien is the property of Brill / Rodopi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Everyday aesthetics, at its core, is based on the supposed dichotomy between art and life, considering life as something routine-like, and art as the breaking of the routine, something charismatic. Different authors of everyday aesthetics use different words to describe this dichotomy. For example, in his article “What is ‘Everyday’ in Everyday Aesthetics?”, Ossi Naukkarinen simply uses everydayness and non-everyday-like, while Arto Haapala, in his “On the Aesthetics of the Everyday: Familiarity, Strangeness, and the Meaning of Place” uses the terms familiarity and strangeness. The authors also propose different ways of bridging this dichotomy. However, as the paper shows, the real question is not how to bridge the dichotomy itself but rather whether the dichotomy exists in the first place. Moreover, the paper suggests a change of direction in future investigations of everyday aesthetics, and focusing on the nuances that exist on the routine-charisma and charismatic-routine spectrum, supported by academic research and the personal account of the paper’s author art project. Moreover, the implications of this shift extend beyond the boundaries of everyday aesthetics.

Copyright of Nietzsche - Studien is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, I reinterpret the ethics of aidagara (betweenness, »inter-«) of Watsuji Tetsurô (1889–1960) as a narrative ethics. I begin by showing that such a re-reading is possible, by examining how Watsuji’s early existentialism shows a concern for the meaning of life, and how his shift to hermeneutics shows how this private sense of meaning is expressed intersubjectively. These are the theoretical foundations for any narrative approach. I then develop two forms of narrative ethics from this philosophy. First, I examine a »personal narrative ethics,« which I develop via the theories of developmental/personality psychologist Dan P. McAdams (1954–), particularly showing how his view of agency and communion and their development in narrative identity concretely express Watsuji’s »dual-negative structure« between individuality and totality. But I contribute to this narrative psychology using Watsuji, by showing a theory of narrative transformation—seen practically in narrative therapy as »re-storying.« Second, and yet another contribution to narrative theory, is »historical narrative ethics,« which shows how storying incorporates social and historical elements, and how re-storying can serve to transform these socio-historical narratives as well. In this way, I argue for a narrative re-reading that contributes to Watsuji’s philosophy with an examination of how it might be concretely expressed (and empirically researched), but at the same time contributes from Watsuji’s philosophy with a framework that consolidates narrative formation, transformation, and historical contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper attempts to propound a new understanding of the experience of the world and others on the basis of a radical phenomenology of the body, as it is revealed in the originary impressibility as affect and desire. This impressibility shapes every relation to beings and others due to the unity of an originary life that founds individuation before any temporal difference, having ethical consequences for a plural communality, which can no longer be characterized by means of mere abstract processes of objectivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies Amos 5. The focus is on the hopeful perspective opened by the admonition to "seek the Lord" (v. 4, 6). What this means is explained by v. 14: to seek the Lord means to seek good and not evil which leads to life. Eventually, hating evil and loving good is equated with establishing "justice in the gate" (v. 15). The last oracle in the collection of ch. 5 explains that this is not fulfilled in the cult but by strengthening "justice and righteousness". Although the thin hope of the chapter vanishes towards the end the ideas of Amos 5 are taken up and further developped in other prophetic writings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present and analyze different formulations of human beings ultimate goal in Ayn Rand’s philosophy. I offer an analysis of Rand’s own formulations, namely that the ultimate goal is (i) one’s own life, (ii) one’s survival qua man, and (iii) one’s own happiness. The remainder of the paper is focused on two other possible formulations of the ultimate goal from an Objectivist perspective: (iv) one’s own flourishing and (v) happy life. My thesis is that all these formulations – both Rand’s and the two others – are not only compatible with each other but also complementary.

This paper builds on my previous work, “God in Public: A Prolegomena to Public Theology in the Romanian Context,” where I made an argument for the need of public theology in the Romanian context and offered a brief introduction to the nature of this new field. Now I present several issues that would need attention in a public theology in our context. One such issue, to begin with, is the atrophy of the capacity for dreaming, for envisioning a better world, of the capacity for imagination and hope. Most of people living through the difficult period of a long transition period, with such a high rate of corruption, poverty and uncertainty, have lost any hope for a positive social change. There are no solid institutions and structures in these young democracies and people are really struggling to live a normal life. Similarly, other crucial dimensions of life have been downplayed and so in need to be recovered, such as work, family, civil society, justice, to name just a few. It is argued that a public theology for Romania and for the entire region of Central and Eastern Europe would need to address exactly these kinds of issues: a vision for a better world, Christianity and nation-building, faith and work, faith and society. The paper concludes by pointing to several example of platforms that are very promising for public theology.

This paper outlines a hypothesis regarding the close connection between two problems in Georges Canguilhem’s work. The first problem is that of Canguilhem’s insistence to include considerations about natural selection in his work and of the role that this notion could play therein. The second problem consists in Canguilhem’s tendency to often use the term “life” as the subject of his sentences, even though this tendency may seem to at least partially contradict some of the central theses advanced in his philosophy. This paper attempts to show that these two problems should not be viewed as being isolated from one another, that there is a strong connection between the two and that a certain interpretation of the first one allows us to make sense of the second. To put it otherwise, the aim of this paper is to show that a particular interpretation of the role of natural selection in Canguilhem’s work could help explain why “life” plays the role of a preferred grammatical subject in his writings.

One does not speak gladly about death, and this is why we feel sometimes even constrained to avoid some words. Death threatens the existence and takes from a person the very thing that he/she holds dear: the life. In life, we are used to find solutions, ways of escaping entanglements, while in dealing with death this is not possible anymore. Man's reaction is most of the time that of fear. Due to such feelings and due to imagination, each language has developed and is still developing collocations that come to describe this phenomenon, which is death. In the present paper we will follow the collocations developed in the German and Romanian culture. In both languages, the subjective attitude of the speakers has generated, and is still generating, fix phrases, the asymmetries deriving from the different development of some material and cultural activity in the geographic regions of the two nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Virginia Woolf ’s Mrs Dalloway (1925) and Pierre Lemaitre’s The Great Swindle (2013), with the aim of pointing out that these two novels share strikingly similar presentations of post-First World War urban social conditions. We first emphasise that in both novels there is visible post-war progress (in London and Paris, respectively), marked by obvious enthusiasm, which is, however, weakened by war consequences. In addition, we detect the presence of the sandwich board job in each novel as indicative of post-war emotional ambiguity. We then claim that the post-war social revival, as the characters of Septimus in Mrs Dalloway and Édouard in The Great Swindle suggest, is constantly being slowed down by some war survivors who, due to harsh war experiences, cannot reintegrate into society, but instead negate their own lives. Thus, as we further stress, they seem to embrace death much before they actually die. Assisted by Elizabeth Grosz’s theory of interface, we derive conclusions about the characters’ communication with the city. Lastly, we offer examples of Septimus’s and Édouard’s obsession with and anticipation of personal deaths, and of a hidden interpretation of their post-war deaths as war dying. Our final goal is to answer whether the two representatives of war survival renunciation, despite living through the war, can be said to die metaphorically in it. In addition, we recognise and (re)define a collective understanding of the war in relation to post-war novels.

Our paper aimes to show that the work of Eminescu is built on an antropogonical background and from this derives, what G. Calinescu and T. Vianu, names c osmogony and sociogony. Like great spirits of universal culture, the poet try to reveal to himself not only the divine mistery, but, first of all, the human one. Eminescu define human being like a "part" of 'whole", who is liable to himself to know his own condition and his talents. Being a complex and also contradictory, made of raw material and spirit, human has to learn to die in order to achieve one important thing: understanding that he is a "part" blessed with divene characteristics. In another wor ds, the human being must become aware that his meaning in this world is to live beyond by his limits.

The subject of life, birth and death constitutes one of the main topics in Democritus’ reflection on human questions. He seeks to understand what men think about the processes of birth and death and how they, accordingly, determine their behavior and attitudes. His reflections comprise a wide range of perspectives and aspects that include examining human behaviour and investigating how it reveals a certain temperament or inclination, inquiring about the nature of these processes and extending the analyses of the processes of birth and death to whole beings through the couple generation-corruption. In the present paper, I intend to examine the main theses and arguments which appear in the testimonies and fragments through which Democritus’ thought was transmitted from antiquity. Furthermore, I will also discuss the hypotheses that for Democritus the most important opposition was not life-death, but rather birth-death and that, at the same time, his idea of nature and life comprises both processes in the perspective of atomistic philosophy. I shall show that corruption has to be considered in two different ways, that is, in the context of physical processes that keep the kosmos in its persistence and in the context of the existence of natural beings, both living and lifeless.

The idea of the relation between art and life as becoming-life of art is a consequence of specific modern developments ranging from the Enlightenment to capitalism. This assemblage of thought and practice is present in one of the most dominant art forms today, and the task of this paper is to reassess the current state of affairs in art considering that the current state of affairs in art is a symptom of the global society of control. In order to be emancipatory art, on the one hand, Art presupposes de-substantialization and deessentialization of the biopolitically formed life and the category of Man, while on the other hand it also presupposes a new „generic in-humanum“ (in Badiou), that is, a people to come (in Deleuze) as the basis of politicity. Hence, emancipatory art needs to break away with the human in order to reach that which is beyond the current democratic materialism.

In Parts of Animals II.10, 655b37-656a8, Aristotle tacitly identifies a group of animals which partake of “living only”. This paper is an attempt to understand the nature of this group. It is argued that it is possible to make sense of this designation (i.e. “merely living animals”) if we consider that some animals, which are solely endowed with the contact senses, do nothing more than mere immediate nutrition by their perceptive nature and have no other action. It is concluded that some of Aristotle’s merely living animals would be certain kinds of sponge, certain sea anemones and the ascidians among testacea

The paper confronts the reader with Nietzchean critical approach to history, truth, life, and education. Far away from progressive-euphoric ideologies of 19th, the authors consider the following questions: How children live historical occurences when being tought in classrooms (for example in Italy, Japan, etc.), how can we strengthen their ability for reflected relations to history as well as for interconnecting between past, present, and future life? Psychological, pedagogical, and philosophical considerations meet intercultural contexts.