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The Passion Of The Western Mind
''The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View'' is a 1991 book by the cultural historian Richard Tarnas. Summary Tarnas argues that the movement from the Greek and Christian world views, through modernity and to postmodernism can be seen as a natural and dialectical unfolding of a collective mind or psyche. Tarnas outlines the intellectual-cultural development of the modern world view from its origins in Greek and Judaeo-Christian mythologies. He then argues that with the advent of postmodernism, the modern world is in a serious spiritual crisis, which manifests as the global ecological crisis. He proposes that a potential resolution, which he calls ''the participatory framework'', has also been in development in the West for centuries. Tarnas first describes the ancient world view, in which the self is undifferentiated from the world-soul in a '' participation mystique''. The rise of the great monotheistic religions began with th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history paintings. Influenced by European painters, but with a strong American sensibility, he was prolific throughout his career and worked primarily with oil on canvas. His paintings are typically allegoric and often depict small figures or structures set against moody and evocative natural landscapes. They are usually escapist, framing the New World as a natural eden contrasting with the smog-filled cityscapes of Industrial Revolution-era Britain, in which he grew up. His works, often seen as conservative, criticize the contemporary trends of industrialism, urbanism, and westward expansion. Early life and education Born in Bolton le Moors, Lancashire, in 1801, Cole immigrated with his family to the United States in 1818, settling in Steubenville ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Participatory Theory
Participatory theory is a vision or conceptual framework that attempts to bridge the subject–object distinction. According to Jorge Ferrer, "the kernel of this participatory vision is a turn from intra-subjective experiences to participatory events in our understanding of transpersonal and spiritual phenomena." Participatory epistemology A participatory epistemology is a theory of knowledge that holds that meaning is enacted through the participation of the human mind with the world. Originally proposed by Goethe, it has been discussed extensively by cultural historian Richard Tarnas. In a participatory epistemology, meaning is neither solely objective nor solely subjective. That is to say that meaning is not, per modern or positivist views, found solely outside of the human mind, in the objective world, waiting to be discovered. Nor, per postmodern or constructivist views, is meaning simply constructed or projected onto an inherently meaningless world by the subjective ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kantian
Kantianism is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term ''Kantianism'' or ''Kantian'' is sometimes also used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and ethics. Ethics Kantian ethics are deontological, revolving entirely around duty rather than emotions or end goals. All actions are performed in accordance with some underlying maxim or principle, which are vastly different from each other; it is according to this that the moral worth of any action is judged. Kant's ethics are founded on his view of rationality as the ultimate good and his belief that all people are fundamentally rational beings. This led to the most important part of Kant's ethics, the formulation of the categorical imperative, which is the criterion for whether a maxim is good or bad. Simply put, this criterion amounts to a thought experiment: to attempt to universalize the maxim (by imagining a worl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cartesian Dualism
Cartesian means of or relating to the French philosopher René Descartes—from his Latinized name ''Cartesius''. It may refer to: Mathematics * Cartesian closed category, a closed category in category theory *Cartesian coordinate system, modern rectangular coordinate system *Cartesian diagram, a construction in category theory *Cartesian geometry, now more commonly called analytic geometry * Cartesian morphism, formalisation of ''pull-back'' operation in category theory * Cartesian oval, a curve *Cartesian product, a direct product of two sets * Cartesian product of graphs, a binary operation on graphs * Cartesian tree, a binary tree in computer science Philosophy * Cartesian anxiety, a hope that studying the world will give us unchangeable knowledge of ourselves and the world * Cartesian circle, a potential mistake in reasoning * Cartesian doubt, a form of methodical skepticism as a basis for philosophical rigor * Cartesian dualism, the philosophy of the distinction between mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constructivist Epistemology
Constructivism is a view in the philosophy of science that maintains that scientific knowledge is constructed by the scientific community, which seeks to measure and construct models of the natural world. According to the constructivist, natural science, therefore, consists of mental constructs that aim to explain sensory experience and measurements. According to constructivists, the world is independent of human minds, but knowledge of the world is always a human and social construction. Constructivism opposes the philosophy of objectivism, embracing the belief that a human can come to know the truth about the natural world not mediated by scientific approximations with different degrees of validity and accuracy. According to constructivists, there is no single valid methodology in science but rather a diversity of useful methods. Etymology The term originates from psychology, education, and social constructivism. The expression "constructivist epistemology" was first us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of modernism, opposition to epistemic certainty or stability of meaning, and emphasis on ideology as a means of maintaining political power. Claims to objective fact are dismissed as naïve realism, with attention drawn to the conditional nature of knowledge claims within particular historical, political, and cultural discourses. The postmodern outlook is characterized by self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism; it rejects the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization. Initially emerging from a mode of literary criticism, postmodernism developed in the mid-twentieth century as a rejection of modernism and has been obse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Disenchantment
In social science, disenchantment (german: Entzauberung) is the cultural rationalization and devaluation of religion apparent in modern society. The term was borrowed from Friedrich Schiller by Max Weber to describe the character of a modernized, bureaucratic, secularized Western society. In Western society, according to Weber, scientific understanding is more highly valued than belief, and processes are oriented toward rational goals, as opposed to traditional society, in which "the world remains a great enchanted garden". Enlightenment ambivalence Weber's ambivalent appraisal of the process of disenchantment as both positive ''and'' negative was taken up by the Frankfurt school in their examination of the self-destructive elements in Enlightenment rationalism. Jürgen Habermas has subsequently striven to find a positive foundation for modernity in the face of disenchantment, even while appreciating Weber's recognition of how far secular society was created from, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Secularization
In sociology, secularization (or secularisation) is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward non-religious values and secular institutions. The ''secularization thesis'' expresses the idea that as societies progress, particularly through modernization, rationalization, and advances in science and technology, religious authority diminishes in all aspects of social life and governance."The Secularization Debate" chapter 1 (pp 3 [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scientific Revolution
The Scientific Revolution was a series of events that marked the emergence of modern science during the early modern period, when developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature.Galilei, Galileo (1974) ''Two New Sciences'', trans. Stillman Drake, (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Pr. pp. 217, 225, 296–67.Clagett, Marshall (1961) ''The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages''. Madison, Univ. of Wisconsin Pr. pp. 218–19, 252–55, 346, 409–16, 547, 576–78, 673–82 Hannam, p. 342 The Scientific Revolution took place in Europe starting towards the second half of the Renaissance period, with the 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus publication '' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium'' (''On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres'') often cited as its beginning. The era of the Scientific Renaissance focused to some degree on recovering the knowledge of the ancients, and is considered to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Objective Reality
In philosophy, objectivity is the concept of truth independent from individual subjectivity (bias caused by one's perception, emotions, or imagination). A proposition is considered to have objective truth when its truth conditions are met without bias caused by the mind of a sentient being. Scientific objectivity refers to the ability to judge without partiality or external influence. Objectivity in the moral framework calls for moral codes to be assessed based on the well-being of the people in the society that follow it. Moral objectivity also calls for moral codes to be compared to one another through a set of universal facts and not through subjectivity. Objectivity of knowledge Plato considered geometry to be a condition of idealism concerned with universal truth. In ''Republic'', Socrates opposes the sophist Thrasymachus's relativistic account of justice, and argues that justice is mathematical in its conceptual structure, and that ethics was therefore a precise and obje ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transcendence (religion)
In religion, transcendence is the aspect of a deity's nature and power that is completely independent of the material universe, beyond all known physical laws. This is contrasted with immanence, where a god is said to be fully present in the physical world and thus accessible to creatures in various ways. In religious experience, transcendence is a state of being that has overcome the limitations of physical existence, and by some definitions, has also become independent of it. This is typically manifested in prayer, rituals, meditation, psychedelics and paranormal "visions". It is affirmed in various religious traditions' concept of the divine, which contrasts with the notion of a god (or, the Absolute) that exists exclusively in the physical order (immanentism), or is indistinguishable from it ( pantheism). Transcendence can be attributed to the divine not only in its being, but also in its knowledge. Thus, a god may transcend both the universe and knowledge (is beyon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Axial Age
Axial Age (also Axis Age, from german: Achsenzeit) is a term coined by German philosopher Karl Jaspers. It refers to broad changes in religious and philosophical thought that occurred in a variety of locations from about the 8th to the 3rd century BC. According to Jaspers, during this period, universalizing modes of thought appeared in Persia, India, China, the Levant, and the Greco-Roman world, in a striking parallel development, without any obvious admixture between these disparate cultures. Jaspers identified key thinkers from this age who had a profound influence on future philosophies and religions, and identified characteristics common to each area from which those thinkers emerged. The historical validity of the Axial Age is disputed. Some criticisms of Jasper's include the lack of a demonstrable common denominator between the intellectual developments that are supposed to have developed in unison across ancient Greece, Israel, India, and China; lack of any radical disco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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