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Copyright of Colloquium Helveticum is the property of Aisthesis Verlag Gmbh & Co. KG 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.)

Recent culture wars, as fueled by right-wing extremists and warmongers over an identitarian and biologistic understanding of culture, require philosophy of culture to contradict and articulate its self-understanding. The article is structured along four theses that contest widespread assumptions, unfold their problematics and outline perspectives of cultural philosophy: 1. culture is not a being; 2. critique is not enmity; 3. technology is not a doom; 4. history is not destiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the numerous studies focused on the sociopsychological factors involved in seismic preparedness, we have limited knowledge of the impact pathways from fatalism belief and optimism orientation to preparedness. This study proposed a theoretical model to examine the intertwined relationships among fatalism belief, optimism orientation, and risk perception regarding public seismic preparedness based on a survey in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region in China. The results indicate that fatalism belief can directly reduce an individual's seismic preparedness intention. In addition, such beliefs negatively moderate the positive relationship between the probability perception of earthquakes and skill preparedness. Moreover, optimism orientation has dual effects. On the one hand, it directly enhances the public's intention to prepare. On the other hand, it makes people underestimate their perceptions of the consequences of earthquakes, which indirectly reduces their willingness to materially prepare. Furthermore, we found that fatalism belief can negatively moderate the positive relationship between optimism orientation and material preparedness. These findings contribute to safety education for earthquake disaster risk reduction (EDRR) strategies, especially those used where fatalist culture is prevalent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It might appear as though all the dire warnings regarding end times would only yield despair, nihilism, resignation and the paralysis of panic. This would certainly be the case if the world we live in now were the best of all possible worlds, and if the ‘we’ of the Anthropocene were an unavoidable point of view generated by the common calamity of the future. There is, however, another virtual ‘we’ that is made possible by the dire warnings of ‘our’ end. Rather than one’s possible non-being amounting to the determinism of a death sentence, freedom emerges and is made possible by imagining life beyond the point of view of what has come to call itself ‘the human’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout his life, British composer Sir Arthur Bliss (1891–1975) placed great importance on the value of music. He saw it as something that could bring peace and healing and as an 'art that reaches beyond the world.' In his artistic creed, set out in 1934, Bliss speaks of music as inherently linked with emotion in its form as a crucial mode of human expression, both in listening and in its composition. His philosophies on these are fairly well documented; he spoke publicly on contemporary composition and wrote extensively on his own experiences with music, not least in his autobiography, As I Remember. Equally, he and his wife both write of his music as an embodiment of the 'private' Arthur Bliss, one in which we might find something of the man hidden from the general public. With this in mind, and given Bliss's view of music as something with spiritual value, this article aims to examine his previously neglected philosophies on composition, exploring themes of emotion, identity, and destiny through an exegesis of his writings, lectures, and broadcasts, and by probing the composition and context of A Colour Symphony, Meditations on a Theme by John Blow, and Shield of Faith. Using a lens of Douglas Davies' idea-value-belief series supported by Davies' theory of cultural intensification it argues that, for Bliss, music can be seen as more than an idea—it was a value, a belief, and perhaps even a religious belief. In its conclusion, this article suggests that we can uncover a form of spirituality in Bliss's attitude to music and view this attitude as something which acts 'against death'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review of Jerusalem Story (www. jerusalemstory.com), a website created by Qatar’s Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, doubles as a measured critique of philosophical, historical, and existential affects including fatalism, teleology, and pathos. The website project may have arisen out of the once and future unification of Palestinian resistance around Shaykh Jarrah in 2021, which encapsulated the overarching centrality of Jerusalem to Palestine’s past, present, and future. Heacock notes that while the site has multiple entrance points and is brilliantly illustrated, the question remains whether the population studied is sufficiently inclusive. Certain issues are skirted, probably due to the multiplicity of themes it already evokes. The review compares Jerusalem Story to two notable existing websites, the Institute for Palestine Studies/Palestinian Museum’s “Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question” – Palquest, and Palestine Remembered, and places it alongside other sources, written, oral, and pictorial. The reviewer sees in the website a tendency to evaluate essential milestones (Jordan’s severance of ties in 1988, the Oslo accords, the apartheid wall) teleologically as cynical, failed, or sadistic decisions from the start. Such interpretations are treated as axioms, rather than hypotheses requiring sober analysis. Absent are Jerusalemites’ issues involving each other in addition to their colonial oppressor. Despite the site’s discursive tendency to treat their condition as one of sheer suffering bereft of that dynamic agency which has kept them firmly resilient and fiercely resistant, the review concludes that the site adds a great deal to our knowledge and empathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This dialogue begins with the question of "concrete Marxism," which is at the foundations of "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics." The concrete is analysed in terms of Marx's dialectic between freedom and necessity, as also in Marx's early work on Epicurean materialism and in Engels's "Dialectics of Nature" and "Anti-Dühring." We include a discussion of Hegel's dialectic between the actual and the rational. Subsequently, we move to the relationship of socialist construction to the (non-socialist) past and a socialist future. We adduce examples from Marx's "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," as well as the Chinese concept of mingyun (destiny/future) and explore the implications of Lenin's critique of "left wing" impatience with the past. The issue here is the mistake of a "leftist" effort to make the leap—through sheer voluntary effort—into communism as an over-compensation for practical deficiencies and, on the other hand, the possibility for revolutionary socialism of appropriating and transforming the positive advances of bourgeois culture and civilisation. We conclude with some preliminary observations on the communist prospect, emphasising the concrete form of the dialectic of productive forces and relations of production and the reasons why this form highlights the importance of the former as a motive force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present research, we examined the links among relative financial scarcity, thinking style, fatalism, and well‐being and their roles in predicting protective behaviors against COVID‐19. Study 1 (N = 120) revealed that after an experimental manipulation to induce the perception of relative financial scarcity (versus financial abundance), people who perceived higher relative financial scarcity changed their thinking style to a more concrete mindset. In Study 2 (N = 873), the relative financial abundance–scarcity situation was measured, and the results showed that the greater the perceived relative financial scarcity was, the more concrete the mindset and the lower the sense of well‐being. Importantly, we found that individuals who felt poorer but maintained an abstract thinking style reported higher well‐being. Study 3 (N = 501) examined the influence of a concrete thinking style in people who perceived that their economic situation had worsened with the pandemic. The results showed that when this vulnerable population presented a more concrete mindset, they reported lower well‐being, higher fatalism, and lower protective behavior against COVID‐19. Thus, maintaining an abstract mindset promotes higher well‐being, lower fatalism, and greater protective behaviors against COVID‐19, even under economic difficulties. Because thinking style can be modified, our results encourage the development of new social intervention programs to promote an abstract mindset when people face important challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studii de Ştiintă şi Cultură is the property of Studii de Stiinta si Cultura 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.)

Copyright of Turkey Journal of Theological Studies is the property of Turkey Journal of Theological Studies 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.)

Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North dramatizes the violence of colonialism and patriarchy and their impact on the African psyche. This article shifts from the prevailing scholarship on Mustafa, the main protagonist, to locate hope in what one does, not merely as an abstract concept. The unnamed narrator exemplifies Salih's vision of a postcolonial subject that recognizes the perils of binary thinking and aspires instead toward an ethic acceptance of vulnerability and difference. Invoking Tia DeNora's conception of hope as "an orientation to action" and "a space for possibility," I show how the narrator's embrace of hope is linked to and complicated by the effects of colonialism and patriarchy in his Sudanese village. Overall, the aim of this article is threefold: first, to examine Salih's critique of female negation and male hegemony; second, to highlight Salih's rejection of passivity and fatalism--how both undermine individual and collective agency and reinforce female negation in society; and, lastly, to consider Salih's postcolonial utopianism and privileging of autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on the notions of revolutionary time and Islamic destiny in Charlotte Al-Khalili's piece on martyrdom during the 2011 Syrian uprising. It outlines the specifics of urgency and the broader temporalities that they articulate and constitute runs. An overview of the materialized at a time when work on one's own salvation between Christ's first is presented.

Second Demographic Transition (SDT) theory proposes that rising individualism and secularism lead to new attitudes that drive new family and fertility behaviors. Scholars have argued that analyzing heterogeneity in attitudes and behaviors in populations experiencing family change can clarify SDT processes. This study uses data from the Relationship Dynamics and Social Life study to describe how attitudinal heterogeneity in one small geographic area relates to predictions of SDT theory. We draw on earlier latent class analysis (LCA) that identified groups that share patterns of attitudes in a sample of young women from a midwestern US county. LCA allows inductive identification of heterogeneous subgroups defined by attitudes themselves, which SDT theory posits as a key causal factor in demographic change. We compare the heterogeneous patterns of attitudes in these subgroups of young women to predictions of SDT theory, then compare groups' subsequent fertility at early adult ages. We find that most groups endorse some attitudes predicted by original SDT theory, but only one group matches most of those predictions. We identify other groups with attitudes consistent with the American religious exceptionalism model and the diverging destinies model, as well as heterogeneity beyond that predicted by these theories. Subsequent fertility at early ages is patterned by membership in these attitude groups. We discuss how the findings might shed light on possible demographic trajectories in the USA and argue for the value of identifying and tracking the prevalence of such groups in nationally representative samples over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Lendemains is the property of Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH & Co.KG 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.)

Copyright of Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) 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.)

Jean-Luc Nancy was concerned with commencement at several levels, of several kinds, in several senses, because he could speak of commencement with affirmation, which means with audacity. From the hospital in July 2021 he completed his last essay, which was intended to commence the project of "the other beginning of philosophy" envisaged by him, Shaj Mohan, and Divya Dwivedi, and he titled it "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking." In and through it are gathered all of Nancy's critical reflections on destiny, on the antisemitic components of the Heideggerian history of being, on the ends of philosophy that we must reckon with, on origins and archaeophilia, on the an-archique essence of philosophy and democracy—and this means for us, on another sense of commencement than arche, which could allow us to prepare another beginning of philosophy than the Heideggerian one, and to respond to Nancy's wager "Pourquoi pas en finir?" Nancy has not left us; rather, we are only now commencing with Nancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does one understand the relationship between a person and their objects of belief in the philosophy of Religion? How does the object of belief impact individuals' lives, choices, decisions, and what they become in the future? The character of religion is binding, and the object of belief in a being - transcendent or immanent as the sole determinant of the fate and destiny of individuals leaves room for many questions that border on freedom and responsibility. By introducing Onyenachiya to the discussion of the phenomenon of religion from an African philosophical approach to religion, the authors argue that there is a certain threshold of self-evaluation and relationship between a person and their object of belief which is significantly cooperative and collaborative. Although onyenachiya, a concept that stems from an African epistemic context (Igbo), has no corresponding English translation, it is a contraction of two independent words, onye (person, giver, who) and chi (personal god, doppelgänger). The two are joined together by conjunction, 'na' with the suffix 'ya' at the end, emphasizing the chi's personal and unique nature. The authors argue that if chi is connected to a person's destiny, onyenachiya demonstrates an agent-centered destiny, which gives room for agency, accountability, and responsibility and gives a new account of religious tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In much of the literature concerning African theories of meaning, there are certain clues regarding what constitutes meaningfulness from an African traditional perspective. These are theories of meaning in life such as the African God's purpose theory, which locates meaning in the obedience of divine law and/or the pursuit of one's destiny; the vital force theory, which locates meaning in the continuous augmentation of one's vital force through the expression and receipt of goodwill, rituals and the worship of God; and what I will call the transcendent communal normative theories, where meaning is located in the positive contributions one makes to his/her society, whether as a human being or as an ancestor. I contend that all these theories have one thing in common that unifies them - and that is the legitimization of God's existence through the continued sustenance of the universe. This, I will show, constitutes the meaning of life (in cosmic terms) from an African traditional religious perspective. To argue for this thesis, I will first tease out the basic tenets of the previously described theories of meaning. I will then analyse the metaphysical underpinning of the African relational ontology and how it reflects on the subject of being. Finally, I will end by showing the role of the universe in legitimizing the existence of God as a thing in the world, and how that constitutes the meaning of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This article explores an important aspect of the constellation of elements that contribute to the construction of the image of 'Sappho' from antiquity to the twentieth century, that of Sappho's ultimate destiny after her fatal leap from the Rock of Leucas. I first argue that the story of Sappho's leap lies behind the description of the Underworld in a long fragment of a fifth-century Attic comedy, the Miners of Pherecrates, and that indeed 'Sappho' appeared as a character in the play. The next sections examine the background and the iconic function of Sappho's leap in the underground Basilica near Porta Maggiore in Rome and connects all these elements to the way in which the Underworld is represented in Sappho's textual fragments. The fifth section of the article deals with the ways in which Sappho's fate was reconfigured from the Renaissance onward, examining first visual, musical and dramatic representations. In the final part I focus on the ways the motif is transformed by Baudelaire and Yourcenar. The image of the poetess can shift from being an icon of an eschatological message of new life to one of an exemplary failure, two poles that have an impact both on the reception of classical antiquity and on the vision of the destiny of poetry itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Turkey is one of the countries with the highest prevalence of diabetes in Europe, with about one in every seven adults diagnosed with diabetes mellitus. By 2035, Turkey will have the highest number of people with type 2 diabetes in Europe, at almost 12 million. Mortality rates have increased with the increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes, especially in the younger population, such that half of the deaths come from those under sixty. The beliefs and mental state of patients with chronic illnesses like diabetes can affect disease outcomes and the patients’ self-management. Self-care and diabetes medications are important components in improving the disease outcome, though many studies have shown that these activities can be negatively related to fatalism about the disease state. The aim of this study was to investigate the reliability and validity of the Turkish version of the Diabetes Fatalism Scale (DFS), which was developed by Dr. Leonard Egede. Materials and methods. This was a methodological study. The scales were administered to a total of 139 patients with type 2 diabetes. The content and construct validity of the scale were assessed. The construct validity was evaluated using confirmatory factor analysis, and the reliability was assessed in terms of internal consistency. Results. In terms of the population tested, 54.7 % of the participants were men, 73.4 % were married, 54 % had one additional disease other than diabetes, 18 % were high school graduates, the mean age was 50.20 ± 16.82 years, the average duration of diabetes was 19.31 ± 14.25 years, and mean glycated hemoglobin level was 7.06 ± 0.65 %. It was found that the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling-size adequacy was 0.770, indicating an adequate size, and the chi-square value was 1078.402. When the fifth item was excluded from the study and the analysis was repeated, the KMO coefficient was 0.802 and the chisquare value was 1020.244, p = 0.000. The Cronbach’s alpha value reached 0.806, indicating a good internal consistency. The Cronbach’s alpha values of the other subscales also seemed to be at a very good level. Conclusions. Our study showed that the DFS is a valid and reliable scale for the Turkish society. DFS-T is a suitable scale for health professionals to use to assess diabetes fatalism in adults with diabetes in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China many petrochemical plants are adjacent to residential areas. Despite this, the people who live in these areas appear indifferent to the threat of toxic pollution and chemical explosions, even though they are aware of the danger. Building on historical and social studies of ignorance, I show how residents in a southern Chinese city live with the threat of petrochemicals by practicing what I call the "art of unnoticing," a contrived form of ignorance that enables them to live with the reality of pollution and reclaim their agency in face of the unavoidable. In light of this, I reflect on the limit and complexity of the global environmental justice when willful ignorance is at work. The next step forward is to understand what it is that people are unnoticing, as well as what unnoticing can do to people's lifeworlds. [ignorance, toxicity, chemicals, risk perception, industrial pollution, fenceline communities, environmental justice, fatalism, China] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The motif of the journey is present in many of the works of migrant writers in Italy. This article analyses the motif of journey in the works of two women writers: Albanian author Anilda Ibrahimi and Polish author Barbara Serdakowski. The journey does not refer only to the physical act of travelling but also to the metaphorical journey of one’s life and that of getting to know oneself and rebuilding one’s identity. Moreover, characters take a mental journey to their past memories through flashbacks. Characters wish they could go back in time but they realize it is impossible. The return instead is an emotional one which presents itself as a reunion of the separated destinies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how white, rural, working‐class men come to be seen, by employers and themselves, as a "natural fit" for mobile work in resource extraction. Examining mobility between eastern Canada and the Alberta petroleum industry, I trace longstanding racial, geographical, and gendered explanations of these workers as dependent and averse to work. I draw on interviews with employers, employment counsellors, and mobile workers, and media representations to consider how these narratives function to shape and constrain workers' political imaginaries and understandings of themselves. The pervasive story of these workers as undeserving has enabled the emergence of a contrasting working subject: the hard‐working, flexible "east coast" worker who is a natural fit for mobile work in resource extraction. I argue that, despite the challenges of mobile resource work, the interplay of stories that pathologise and celebrate these workers has encouraged their attachment to resource extraction as the pathway to a better life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The artifact, the fetish, the apocrypha and the idea of the imperfect copy as derived from the Gnostic doctrines, which are all mostly attributable to the magical-mythical category of the simulacrum, are just some of the possibilities for investigating the theme in the work of Jorge Luis Borges. In order to further develop our research, it is also interesting to focus on the intricate panoply of inverted, symmetrical, repeated and overwritten destinies that have crammed the Argentinian author’s work since its narrative beginnings, and that can be viewed as devices for the creation of the double. The aim of my article is to analyze some of Borges’s stories in which the theme of identity usurpation is linked to that of infamy and to show how, while playing the game of being and appearing, such a paradigm starts as a pure esthetical divertissement in the first narrative experiments (Historia universal de la infamia) and then, in Ficciones and Aleph, acquires an ethical-moral meaning by intertwining with the themes of honor, justice, and revenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of the leadership core of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is the objective law and experience summary explored by the CPC in leading Chinese revolution, construction and reform. It is conducive to upholding and strengthening the CPC's overall leadership and promoting the continuous development and growth of the cause of the Party and the people. Looking back on the century-long history of the CPC's struggle, it can be seen that the CPC's leadership core is the backbone, the anchor and the ballast of the development of the Party and the country. And the establishment of the CPC's leadership core has decisive significance to the future and destiny of the country and the success or failure of the cause. The CPC must have the most authoritative, influential and experienced leadership core. On the new journey of building a strong modern socialist country in all respects and realizing the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation, we must resolutely uphold Xi Jinpin's leadership core of the Party Central Committee and the whole Party, and safeguard the core in all aspects of political constructions, national governance, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

W. Montgomery Watt is one of the orientalists whose works have been translated into Turkish and have been the subject of academic studies in different departments. W. Montgomery Watt, in his doctoral study titled “Free Will and Pre-Destination in Early Islam “ dealt with the belief in fate in Islam and wanted to support his opinion with the interpretations he brought to verses and hadiths. In the aforementioned study, he claimed that there is a conflict between the hadiths and the verses, while accepting the existence of the emphasis on freedom of will in the verses, he wanted to present the hadiths as fatalistic/forced. She claimed that there was a contradiction between the verses and hadiths, so that there were two opposite currents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1922 through 1936, Susie Wiseman Yergan resided and worked in South Africa. As the coworker of Max Yergan, the first Black secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association, she generated funds, delivered speeches, and founded the Unity-Home Makers' Club. By 1935, the organization gave birth to the largest network of women's clubs in the Eastern Cape. In the United States, she worked to link the political and spiritual destinies of Black Americans and Black South Africans and challenged White Christians on their complicity in imperialism. She contended that freedom was a global rather than a national pursuit, intersectional, nonviolent, based in Christian principles, and interracial rather than separatist. The absence of Wiseman Yergan's work and philosophy in the archival record and historical scholarship is emblematic of her moderate philosophical activism in a narrowed framing of the interwar Black Freedom Struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liberation is a psychological attribute that primarily aims towards peace of mind followed by emancipation from fetters. Every individual covets liberation through their actions and expects a conducive milieu to experience the same. However, for oppressed people, the journey to liberation is convoluted as it involves escape from many elements. In a hierarchical society like India, liberation means liberation from the whole structure in which religious affiliation plays an important role. The marginalized section of the population seldom has the liberty to choose for their lives and they continue to remain subordinated under age-old power relations, which are garbed in the names of destiny and ordinance. For them, liberation is a quest to make an identity and reinstate the value of self-worth. Christianity, with the Church as its mission partner, seeks to liberate these caged souls from their precarious standings. This study will try to show how the Canadian Baptist Mission, with a primary objective to evangelize, left a trail of aspiration among the tribal Savaras of Ganjam to undertake the pursuit of liberation and fight oppression on their own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of an intertextual study comparing the text of Benedict XVI’s Spe salvi with earlier texts published by him as Joseph Ratzinger. The comparison shows that, decades before publishing Spe salvi, our author had already enunciated certain fundamental theses regarding worldly utopias and freedom’s role in the diversification of human final destinies. On the other hand, in the encyclical he does not develop his speculation on the nature of the human soul, as he does in earlier works. The presence of specific themes in Spe salvi and the absence of others may be indicative of the long-term concerns of Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, as well as the varying dogmatic weight he attributes to his own eschatological conceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims at showing that knowledge of the cultural milieu – folk tales – and of ancient rhetoric – the chreiai – is necessary in order not to misinterpret the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. But it is also decisive to proceed with narrative analysis, in other words to identify the plots at work, to see also how the characters are gradually built, to determine how the different themes are organized – the social question of poverty and wealth, the reversal of destinies, the afterlife, resurrection, conversion – and which one rules the others. The conditions of an accurate hermeneutic being respected, it is then possible to see what the parable tells us of the salvation we can hope for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working with Twitter data, this paper offers new findings on the #BlackLivesMatter movement and "racial awakening" of summer 2020. Framing methods to address this important moment, this paper contends that cultural studies and critical race studies can be enriched through an engagement with new computational approaches. We analyze how white and racial minority voices talked about race and track their fraught contestation for leadership of racial discourse over the summer of 2020. We uncover a surprising story of white colorblindness even in the midst of a "racial awakening," a story that questions claims that the Trump presidency and the summer of 2020 ushered in a new era of US racial consciousness. And we show how a Black and minority discourse with transformative potential surged and receded. For cultural studies, our data and analysis revise Raymond Williams's influential model of cultural evolution by introducing a new concept: the insurgent, a long-building minority cultural strain that surges to contest the dominant culture in a moment of crisis. For critical race studies, our findings revise prominent theorizations of colorblindness, racial ideology, and hegemony. By revealing the messy and unconscious feelings characterizing colorblindness, our data contest theorizations of colorblindness as an ideology and counter the focus on articulate beliefs in theories of racial hegemony. Ultimately, this paper shows that bringing data methods focused on moments of cultural contestation and mass communication into dialogue with field-specific theory and qualitative analyses can expand our models of how race, discourse, and culture operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experience of this ongoing pandemic has not been a common and terrifying danger only. It has also been a sign of unity of our scattered post-secular humanity, as the question of our forgotten common nature seems to come to the fore again. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the organism encounters a foreign substance, it responds with mutual and regular interactions at different stages of the immune system. In airway diseases, the first encounter is at the epithelial level, where innate immune cells and their responses form the first leg of the protective mechanism. The most important barrier for environmental damage is the epithelial barrier. However, the epithelial barrier is not just a mechanical barrier. The formation of the microbiome on the epithelium and the tolerance or intolerance to environmental factors are vital. This vital balance is maintained between the epithelial surface and the subepithelial innate immune system. This is achieved by the epithelial line, which is a mechanical and functional barrier between them. In this respect, epithelial barrier function preservation has an important role in the development and prognosis of airway disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"As a nation, we have done better in extending freedom than in educating for it" (107-8), writes Diana Schaub, who helps us correct this shortcoming in her excellent new study, I His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation i . On the Second Inaugural remark, "both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God", Schaub comments that Lincoln had "the rhetorical luxury" of assuming a biblical faith among his listeners - an assumption unavailable to today's politicians (143). This is indicated in part by its peculiarly abstract language (never naming America, the U.S., or Gettysburg) but still more, in Schaub's astute perception, by the fact that it presents Lincoln's last word - the capstone of a decade of commentary - on the Declaration of Independence. As Schaub observes, by his peculiar retellings of these events - at once terse and equivocal - the young Lincoln guided his audience toward a more distanced and dispassionate reflection amid the gathering storm over slavery. [Extracted from the article]

Even though the so called fornaldarsogur ('sagas of the ancient times') appeared in Christian Scandinavia during the 12th and 13th centuries, the fact is that the motifs and topics of the ancient Scandinavian myths and legends still play a major role in those literary works. In particular, the fate and the sword are given a prominent place in the Volsunga saga, especially with reference to the Volsungs' deeds and misfortunes. Hence, the aim of this paper is to elucidate to what extent the tale establishes a symbolic relationship between that weapon and the future of two of its main characters: Sigurðr and Brynhildr. After analysing how destiny works in the story, on the one hand, and what the familiar meaning of the Volsung sword is, on the other hand, it will be possible to conclude that the weapon symbolises the tragic and violent separation of the couple in the saga. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the few direct solutions that Nietzsche gives for the overcoming of nihilism is the facing of the thought of eternal recurrence. Being the heaviest of all thoughts, it may seem that through Heidegger's filter it will become a sort of metaphysical concept, but his analysis may at least help us see it as an axis around which thought can pivot, at least for a moment. Kundera sees the contradiction between lightness and weight as the most problematic of all, as it is difficult to see the burden as something positive when emancipation seems to always be an attempt to achieve total freedom, a search for lightness. We argue that "the heavy thought" makes us confront fatalism and affirm freedom, while lightness makes freedom by becoming impossible. The eternal recurrence is the idea that offers motivation to intervene in the chain of determinations and to influence them decisively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) 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.)

This paper approaches the work of the great Romanian playwright and prose writer I. L. Caragiale from a personal perspective. The author focuses on the concept of destiny and the ambiguities of this concept in Caragiale’s thought. The ambiguity of destiny, always defined between the comic and the tragic, between the sublime and the grotesque, is investigated here, showing that Caragiale had an extraordinary philosophical openness, which he translated into situations and characters. Some emblematic human figures, situations and lines from Caragiale’s work are briefly analysed and the modernity and prophetic nature of his political thought are also treated. All these aspects were elements that stimulated the author’s practical interest in staging or making films inspired by Caragiale’s work. Caragiale profoundly shaped the author’s conception of the actor’s art and the role of theatre direction: this is the conclusion of the present paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on OChSl. and post-OChSl. tradition the contribution investigates the destiny of the rendering of Gr. οἶδα. In the OChSl. translation of the Gospel alternates older ⰲⱑⰴⱑ with younger ⰲⱑⰿⱐ. ⰲⱑⰴⱑ continues the transformation *ṷoid-h2 e+i of proto-Ie. *ṷoid-h2 e while ⰲⱑⰿⱐ is the result of an inner-Slavic analogy. In OChSl. the 1.sg.pres. of the paradigm (‑)ⰲⱑⰴⱑⱅⰻ occurs in the simplex in five, in the compound in three instances. In the simplex, it is impossible to confirm the originality of ⰲⱑⰴⱑ for the first translation of the Gospel. In the compound, -ⰲⱑⰴⱑ only in one occurence claims originality. Both, the OChSl. and the post-OChSl. evidence show, that the occurrence of ⰲⱑⰴⱑ is not the result of the filiation of manuscripts alone, but is partíally due to local divergences and is among others a feature of manuscripts of east-Bulgarian origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 6 December 1959, the image of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurating the Damodar Valley Corporation dam project in Bihar with a 15-year-old Adivasi girl called Budhini Manjhiyan was flashed across the national newspapers. This was an iconic moment in the national debate around development and change which was to dominate modern India on whether lands, predominately rural and tribal, were to be flooded to benefit the nation. Years later, in 2016, when the newspapers caught up with Budhini, she had returned to Jharkhand and was struggling to make ends meet for herself and her children. Her story resonates with the ways in which, in recent times, Adivasis are becoming increasingly visible as subjects in debates around indigeneity, identity, conversion, development, and climate change. The post-colonial Indian state and its allies, with a developmentalist agenda uppermost in their minds, have made loss of land, displacement, migration, and forced resettlement a part of Adivasi experiences. Forces of globalization, often in tandem with the policies of the Indian state, are engulfing marginal spaces. The increasingly powerful majoritarian narrative of the state subsumes alternate voices with easy nonchalance. The foregrounding of planetary narratives on the fate of humanity in the era of the Anthropocene erases the importance of particular locales and specific communities that could offer an alternative to declensionist narratives. But amid this marginalization, there also lies a story of the assertion of Adivasi agency. Voices of Adivasis—although multiple and fractured—can be heard as they assert their identity, express their politics, and creatively negotiate with the state and its institutions. Scattered across India in geographically differentiated terrains, pursuing different occupations, and speaking different languages, the experiences of Adivasis are varied, as they inhabit many worlds. Their stories point to the multiplicity of cultures and myriad ways of thinking that must be accommodated within the ambit of the nation, and yet offer the possibilities of different ways of living and being on this earth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The novel O som do rugido da onça (2021), written by Micheliny Verunschk, reclaims the expropriating fatalism of our historical past through the journey made by a zoologist named Spix and a botanist named Martius to Brazil to "conduct scientific research for the sake of science and humanity". However, the novel essentially refers to the two indigenous children who, having survived the sea voyage, docked with the scientists in Munich. In poetic prose, the narrative responds to the need to recreate the inner world of its characters, the Miranha girl Iñe-e and the boy Juri, who have been condemned to muteness by exile. Thus, the narrative presents itself as a creative bricolage or, according to its author, as a "transcreation" of "myths" which are mainly marked by an imaginary whose characteristics may be defined by the notion of "Amerindian perspectivism". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose in this article to contribute to the expansion of the interpretation of Oedipus the King, by Sophocles, beyond the Freud's indication that it anticipated the Oedipus Complex. We will argue that this play has an important political and religious content as well as a psychological one, as Hölderlin defends based on a highlight of a moment in the plot that Freud quotes with a little mistake: it was not the oracle that associated the plague with the murder of Laius, but Oedipus, who could have read the advice to "Ban out the blemish of the city" as a simple statesman, but he did so too infinitely. Thus, his "hamartia" (error) was to have been driven by the "nefas" (excess) of wrathful curiosity, which led him to mix religion (infinite) and politics (finite), and to mischaracterize both domains. We will also disagree with Freud that there is an "opposition between destiny and will" in the myth: there is, rather, an identity between them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Hegel, the public misery caused by poverty and pandemic is a reality that individuals must face in order to sustain their livelihoods; moreover, it constitutes an important reference in the governance of different types of communities. In the context of Hegel’s philosophy of right, the public misery of the individual undergoes a transformation from the theological concept of “destiny”, to the philosophical one of “spirit”, which Hegel then constructed as a unique system for “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit). After he has formed the concept of ethical life, Hegel used it as a means to refine three governance approaches for the salvation (emancipation) of the individual; namely the governance of the church, the governance of civil society and the governance of the state. This article shows the logic of the evolution of Hegel’s three governance approaches in the process of change as he shaped the concept of ethical life. This not only reveals the inner structure of the relations and inferences of the categories in logic, but also reveals the dynamic mechanism of the proposition about “entity as subject” in phenomenology, so as to dialectically interpret Hegel’s way of salvation and his three governance approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I compare and contrast how Boethius (in Consolation of Philosophy), the author of Beowulf, J. R. R. Tolkien (in The Lord of the Rings), and C. S. Lewis (in Till We Have Faces) found ways to integrate their Christian theological and philosophical beliefs into a work that is set in a time and place that possesses the general revelation of creation, conscience, reason, and desire, but lacks the special revelation of Christ and the Bible. I begin by using Lewis's own analysis of the Consolation in his Discarded Image to discuss what it means for a Christian author to write in a pre-Christian mode. I find a model for such writing in Ecclesiastes, and discuss how Boethius, while confining himself to the pagan wisdom of Greece and Rome, points the way from philosophical consolation to theological transformation. I then use Tolkien's 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics' to unpack the distinction between the author's Christian faith and the purely pagan consolation he offers to his characters, and locate that dynamic in the epic itself. Next, I explore how Tolkien, in imitation of Beowulf, balances a deep sense of loss and fatalism with an intimation of a higher providence guiding all. Finally, I show how Lewis, in imitation of Boethius, finds in the pagan world of his novel seeds of a greater revelation to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]