Contemplation and Mythosophy: the Amphiboly of Landscapes in the Works of Ernst Jünger. Ernst Jünger’s immanent mythology of vitalism hasn’t as yet found its place in Modernity, being regarded as suspect or unworthy of any serious post-metaphysical approach. Nevertheless, its original significance is manifest in the spatial descriptions that deploy a genuine polymorphism of human nature and an archetypal Aesthetics. Jünger’s landscapes thus express at least two different levels of amophiboly that encompass his status as a specific literary figure, apart (...) from both Metaphysics and Deconstruction. His solutions, varying throughout the evolution of his work, aim the enigmatic and unthinkable articulation of Myth and History, the topological frontiers between creative decision and the vertical advent of an injunction, open like a wound towards the Faustian destiny. (shrink)

The Demon Women and Their Masquerades – a Few Symptoms of Japanese Cinema. The demon woman is a frequent theme in Japanese cinema, pertaining to more than an imaginary hypostasis of femininity. Jacques Lacan, in his brief and rare references to Japanese Cinema and particularly to Nagisa Oshima’s Realm of the Senses, points out the specific power of feminine eroticism which goes beyond the masquerade. This unanalysible power of japanese women is stated by Lacan within the context of what he (...) calls the sinthome in his analysis of James Joyce’s oeuvre. This paper is a psychoanalytical approach of Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu Monogatari based on the aforementioned concepts and elaborations. Wakasa, the main feminine character, is thus connected to Lacan’s views on Woman (femme), on the relation between the Phallus and the feminine masquerade and, ultimately, to the Real dimension of the phantom. (shrink)

Two hundred and twenty-six state employees completed a structured questionnaire that investigated their ethical values and training needs. Top management were more likely to have attitudes against cronyism and giving advantage to others. Individuals higher in the organizational hierarchy, and female employees were more likely to believe that discriminatory practices were an ethical concern. In addition, employees with a larger number of clients outside of the organization were more supportive of the need to maintain strict confidentiality in business dealings. Employees'' (...) awareness and use of the organization''s code of conduct generally proved to be poor predictors of ethical values. Other analyses revealed that a variety of sociodemographic factors, job characteristics and ethical values predicted specific areas of training needs in ethics. (shrink)

This book explores three worlds shared by the humans in their collective experiences. It identifies and explores the world of commonsense, the world of religion, and the world of science as three essential dimensions of human experience. The book helps understand that humans can gain comfort and pleasure in commonsense, achieve meaning and purpose from religion, and attain truth and rationality through science. It actively applies theories to and develops theoretical explanations from different domains or situations of human existence. This (...) book is of interest to theorists, researchers, instructors, and students across major academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

The book outlines the contribution of passivity to the constitution of phenomena as diverse as temporal syntheses, perceptual associations, memory fulfillment and cross-cultural communication.

This article is about reductionism; as a tendency of thought, reductionism tells us that the hole can be explained as the sum of its parts. From this principle, one can deduce that the properties and laws of complex systems can be explained by the laws and properties of simple systems. On the other ..

The story is frequently told about how with the publication of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) in 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus (d. 1543) looked beyond the vanity of human self-centeredness and perceived that Earth was just one of several planets revolving around the sun. In doing so, he triggered the modern scientific revolution as people began to look at themselves and their place in the universe in a more objective light.

Since the beginning of the scientific revolution, believers have had to reconcile their beliefs with science. This has always proved difficult. If an all-perfect God created the universe and its physical laws, why would he have to step in to perform miracles and answer prayers? If, as all the evidence indicates, the universe, including humans and their brains, is matter and nothing more, how can we possibly live forever? Theologians try hard, but never come up with satisfactory answers.

The dissertation is an interdisciplinary study of the dismantling effects postmodern discourses have within the humanities. Postmodernism's anti-foundationalism, I argue, can only take shape around questions of ultimacy and sacrality in human existence. The dissertation explores the emergence, persistence and metamorphosis of the ultimate and the sacred in art history, modern literature, continental philosophy, and religion. Central figures studied in the work include Mircea Eliade, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Andre Malraux, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

By comparing the interpretations of the inconceivable in the two teachings of two different cultures, the author is trying to understand the prerequisites of one of the most mysterious and incomprehensible phenomenon of human culture: the ability of a human consciousness to extend beyond its own boundaries basingon the inconceivable as something absolutely incomprehensible in principle. This paradox constitutes the basis to the majority of total acts of rethinking the whole conceptual field, the world all-at-once. Realizing that everything can be (...) comprehended except for the very act of comprehension that is happening here-and-now, the author is comparing the two methods in order to understand not “what” but “how” this can be accomplished. (shrink)

1. bd. Allgemeine moralphilosophie.--2. bd. Besondere moralphilosophie.