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Lévinas
Emmanuel Levinas (born Emanuelis Levinas ; ; 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work within Jewish philosophy, existentialism, and phenomenology, focusing on the relationship of ethics to metaphysics and ontology. Life and career Levinas was born on 12 January 1906, into a middle-class Litvak family in Kaunas, in present-day Lithuania, then Kovno district, at the Western edge of the Russian Empire. Because of the disruptions of World War I, the family moved to Kharkiv in Ukraine in 1916, where they stayed during the Russian revolutions of February and October 1917. In 1920, his family returned to the Republic of Lithuania. Levinas's early education was in secular, Russian-language schools in Kaunas and Kharkiv. Upon his family's return to the Republic of Lithuania, Levinas spent two years at a Jewish gymnasium before departing for France, where he commenced his university education. Levinas began his ...
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Face-to-face (philosophy)
The face-to-face relation () is a concept in the French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas' thought on human sociality. It means that, ethics, ethically, people are responsible to one-another in the face-to-face encounter. Specifically, Lévinas says that the human face "orders and ordains" us. It calls the Subject (philosophy), subject into "giving and serving" the Other.Paul Marcus''In Search of the Good Life: Emmanuel Levinas, Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living'' Karnac Books, 2010, p. 16. Overview Lévinas' phenomenological account of the "face-to-face" encounter serves as the basis for his ethics and the rest of his philosophy. For Lévinas, "Ethics is the first philosophy." Lévinas argues that the encounter of the Other (philosophy), Other through the Face (sociological concept), face reveals a certain poverty which forbids a reduction to identity (philosophy), Sameness and, simultaneously, installs a responsibility for the Other in the Self (philosophy), Self. Lévinas' accou ...
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Other (philosophy)
In philosophy, the Other is a fundamental concept referring to anyone or anything perceived as distinct or different from oneself. This distinction is crucial for understanding how individuals construct their own identities, as the encounter with "otherness" helps define the boundaries of the "self."''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'' (1995) p. 673. In Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, the Other plays a particularly important role in this self-formation, acting as a kind of mirror against which the self is reflected and understood. The Other is not simply a neutral observer but an active participant in shaping the individual's self-image. This includes the idea of the "Constitutive Other," which refers to the internal relationship between a person's essential nature (personality) and their physical embodiment (body), reflecting the interplay of internal differences within the self. Beyond this individual level, the concept of "the Other" extends to broader social ...
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Talmud
The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewish culture, Jewish cultural life and was foundational to "all Jewish thought and aspirations", serving also as "the guide for the daily life" of Jews. The Talmud includes the teachings and opinions of thousands of rabbis on a variety of subjects, including halakha, Jewish ethics, Jewish philosophy, philosophy, Jewish customs, customs, Jewish history, history, and Jewish folklore, folklore, and many other topics. The Talmud is a commentary on the Mishnah. This text is made up of 63 Masekhet, tractates, each covering one subject area. The language of the Talmud is Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. Talmudic tradition emerged and was compiled between the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the Arab conquest in the early seve ...
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Western Philosophy
Western philosophy refers to the Philosophy, philosophical thought, traditions and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratics. The word ''philosophy'' itself originated from the Ancient Greek (φιλοσοφία), literally, "the love of wisdom" , "to love" and σοφία ''Sophia (wisdom), sophía'', "wisdom". History Ancient The scope of ancient Western philosophy included the problems of philosophy as they are understood today; but it also included many other disciplines, such as pure mathematics and natural sciences such as physics, astronomy, and biology (Aristotle, for example, wrote on all of these topics). Pre-Socratics The pre-Socratic philosophers were interested in cosmology (the nature and origin of the universe), while rejecting unargued fables in place for argued theory, i.e., dogma superseded reason, ...
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Jewish Philosophy
Jewish philosophy () includes all philosophy carried out by Jews or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until the modern ''Haskalah'' (Jewish Enlightenment) and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism, thus organizing emergent ideas that are not necessarily Jewish into a uniquely Jewish scholastic framework and worldview. With their admission into broader modern society, Jews with secular educations embraced or developed entirely new philosophies to meet the world's demands in which they now found themselves. Medieval rediscovery of ancient Greek philosophy among the ''Geonim'' of 10th-century Babylonian academies brought Rationalism, rationalist philosophy into Tanakh, Biblical-Talmudic Judaism. During the ''Geonic'' period, philosophy was generally in competition with Kabbalah. Both schools would become part of classic Rabbinic literature, though the decline of scholastic r ...
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Middle-class
The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Common definitions for the middle class range from the middle fifth of individuals on a nation's income ladder, to everyone but the poorest and wealthiest 20%. Theories like "Paradox of Interest" use decile groups and wealth distribution data to determine the size and wealth share of the middle class. Terminology differs in the United States, where the term ''middle class'' describes people who in other countries would be described as working class. There has been significant global middle-class growth over time. In February 2009, ''The Economist'' asserted that over half of the world's population belonged to the middle class, as a result of rapid growth in emerging countries. It characterized the middle class as having a reasonable amount o ...
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Ethics
Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics. Normative ethics aims to find general principles that govern how people should act. Applied ethics examines concrete ethical problems in real-life situations, such as abortion, treatment of animals, and Business ethics, business practices. Metaethics explores the underlying assumptions and concepts of ethics. It asks whether there are objective moral facts, how moral knowledge is possible, and how moral judgments motivate people. Influential normative theories are consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. According to consequentialists, an act is right if it leads to the best consequences. Deontologists focus on acts themselves, saying that they must adhere to Duty, duties, like t ...
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Phenomenology (philosophy)
Phenomenology is a philosophical study and movement largely associated with the early 20th century that seeks to Subjectivity_and_objectivity_(philosophy), objectively investigate the nature of subjective, consciousness, conscious experience. It attempts to describe the universal features of consciousness while avoiding assumptions about the external world, aiming to describe Phenomenon, phenomena as they appear, and to explore the meaning and significance of lived experience. This approach, while philosophical, has found many applications in qualitative research across different scientific disciplines, especially in the social sciences, humanities, Phenomenology (psychology), psychology, and cognitive science, but also in fields as diverse as health sciences, Phenomenology (architecture), architecture, and Human–computer interaction, human-computer interaction, among many others. The application of phenomenology in these fields aims to gain a deeper understanding of subjectiv ...
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Existentialism
Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that explore the human individual's struggle to lead an authentic life despite the apparent absurdity or incomprehensibility of existence. In examining meaning, purpose, and value, existentialist thought often includes concepts such as existential crises, angst, courage, and freedom. Existentialism is associated with several 19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who shared an emphasis on the human subject, despite often profound differences in thought. Among the 19th-century figures now associated with existentialism are philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, all of whom critiqued rationalism and concerned themselves with the problem of meaning. The word ''existentialism'', however, was not coined until the mid 20th century, during which it became most associated with contemporaneous philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beau ...
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Lithuanian Jews
{{Jews and Judaism sidebar , Population Litvaks ({{Langx, yi, ליטװאַקעס) or Lita'im ({{Langx, he, לִיטָאִים) are Jews who historically resided in the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania (covering present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, the northeastern Suwałki Region, Suwałki and Białystok regions of Poland, as well as adjacent areas of modern-day Russia and Ukraine). Over 90% of the population was killed during the Holocaust. The term is sometimes used to cover all Haredi Jews who follow an Ashkenazi Jews, Ashkenazi, non-Hasidic Judaism, Hasidic style of life and learning, whatever their ethnic background. The area where Litvaks lived is referred to in Yiddish as {{lang, yi, {{Script/Hebrew, ליטע {{lang, yi-Latn, Lite, hence the Hebrew term {{lang, he-Latn, Lita'im ({{lang, he, {{Script/Hebrew, לִיטָאִים ). No other Jew is more closely linked to a specifically Lithuanian city than the Vilna Gaon (in Yiddish, "the genius of Vilna"), ...
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Philosopher
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western philosophy, Western, Islamic philosophy, Arabic–Persian, Indian philosophy, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the Spirituality, spiritual problem of how to reach Enlightenment in Buddhism, enlighten ...
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Theology
Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the supernatural, but also deals with religious epistemology, asks and seeks to answer the question of revelation. Revelation pertains to the acceptance of God, gods, or deity, deities, as not only transcendent or above the natural world, but also willing and able to interact with the natural world and to reveal themselves to humankind. Theologians use various forms of analysis and argument (Spirituality, experiential, philosophy, philosophical, ethnography, ethnographic, history, historical, and others) to help understanding, understand, explanation, explain, test, critique, defend or promote any myriad of List of religious topics, religious topics. As in philosophy of ethics and case law, arguments ...
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