Beyond

Using the metaphor of transcendence in his work Beyond, Daniel Armstrong takes us to other-worldly experiences via the anecdotal behaviours of people using a telescope. Each person looking into the telescope reveals more about themselves through their physical viewing behaviours than the universe they are attempting to look at or into. Armstrong’s work examines that infi nite and unsettled space between the ‘here and now’ and the ‘what might be out there’.

Consumption and the meaning of life

Through an analysis of data from depth interviews with modern American consumers, we examine whether and how individuals quest for life’s meaning through consumption. Our analysis identifies three worldviews that are differently related to the experience of transcendence through consumption. A rationalist worldview is revealed as being unrelated to such a pursuit. It contrasts two magical worldviews held by most informants in which consumption objects are infused with supernatural and metaphysical beliefs that animate life’s meaning for them. Our discussion highlights how recognition of magical worldviews contributes to consumer theory, methods, and concepts of investigation.

Monumental vision : a confrontation with the image of the Eternal Return

"Monumental Vision” is a nuanced summary of Nietzschean nihilism and the Eternal Return as rite of passage for free subjects and as condensed image of speculative intelligence proper. Utilizing Gerhard Richter’s “Sheet 692” from Atlas, a series of photographs of the mountains and lake at Sils Maria, Switzerland, as summary judgment of the limit imposed by this condition on all systems of representation, this form of vision discloses the chiasmus embedded in consciousness itself. In constantly revisiting Sils, the very location where Nietzsche “suffered” the vision of the Eternal Return, Richter has engaged repeatedly this origin for what has come into his work via Nietzsche – that is, an elective veil that refuses all compromises with transcendence until such is merged with immanence.

As situated amidst modernist “ideology as intellection”, and subsequent nascent forms of anti-modernism, the Eternal Return as image also signals the return of the Kantian “aesthetic-teleological” synthesis in non-discursive or purely visual agency. As an elective form of aesthetic vision, and as image of time insofar as it registers an overwhelming externality (Other) that nominally swallows and empowers the subject at once, this excoriating sense of universal praxis underwrites artistic and architectural production of the highest order, renegotiating concepts of the paradigmatic.

Utilizing Georg Simmel’s late work on Rembrandt (1916) and his encounter with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (1907), the essay suggests that by the 1920s the avant-garde premises of modernism had already come under attack by an ahistorical and synoptic vision here denoted “monumental vision,” which also contains the imprint of eschatological time (invoking a schism present in rationality as such). The two readings of this image perpetrated by Karl Löwith in Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same (Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen, 1935), or the cosmological and the ethical, while considered irreconcilable by Löwith, have since the 1960s been recalibrated through the figure of the event to pose possible scenarios out of the stalemate of the confrontation between Self and Other (ipseity and alterity) buried within this image as limit. In this manner, the image of the Eternal Return stands at the boundary between two forms of time (or two worlds) and signals the irreducible confrontation present in speculative thought and the necessity of closure through an aesthetic vision that produces a unitary field for all creative acts.

Notably, Nietzsche’s startling vision from Zarathustra suggests that the limit imposed by the Eternal Return is also a mask for an austere condition within subjectivity closely resembling the conundrum of Fichte’s I facing I, or thought turned toward thought itself (absolute subjectivity as cipher for Being). In Alenka Zupančič’s reading, in The Shortest Shadow: Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Two (2003), the Eternal Return effectively contains a secret formal function that grinds all “error” to dust – a highly suggestive interpretation that also neutralizes the schism introduced by Löwith between the cosmological and the ethical.

The western humanist tradition

In this essay, I describe the development of at least three traditions of humanism: the Platonic, the Aristotelian, and the Promethean. These traditions have developed and intermingled so as to produce the complex and multifaceted face of humanism today. The first, Platonic tradition involves a turning away from the world in order to find wisdom and spirituality in a metaphysical realm. The Aristotelian tradition stresses the need to be at home in the world and happy in life even as we contemplate their unchangeable realities. It speaks of the perfectibility of human beings in muted tones and shows a reverence for the changeable world, as well as for the fragile, vulnerable, fallible, and mortal condition of being human. However, it is the Promethean tradition, with its celebration of science, progress, and technology, that has had the greatest effect upon modern civilization and spirituality. The culmination of these various streams of thought was the Enlightenment: a movement that its greatest philosopher, Immanuel Kant, interpreted as giving humanity permission, for the first time, to think for itself. But the Enlightenment leads to a disenchanted world in which spirituality seems to have no place. I argue that my subjectivity is a transcendent reality and that our very subjectivity becomes a real self and a social being insofar as it is drawn towards the Other. Accordingly, a humanist spirituality is possible in the form of reverence, love, and humility in the presence of transcendence. While religions give the names of their gods to this transcendence, humanism gives it other names: Subjectivity, the Other, Beauty, Goodness, and Truth.

The spiritual implications of sexual abuse : not just an issue for religious women?

Although there is now some recognition that sexual abuse, particularly that which occurs in religious settings, has spiritual implications for women who have been abused, the spiritual implications of sexual abuse which occurs beyond the confines of specific religious practices and beliefs tend not to be acknowledged. Taking a stance that all people, irrespective of their involvement in a formal religion, are inherently spiritual, this paper identifies the key concepts associated with spirituality as meaning, identity, connectedness, transformation and transcendence. Examples as to how each of these may be issues following the experience of sexual abuse are provided. This approach challenges prevailing notions that sexual abuse only has spiritual implications for women who identify with a particular religious tradition. Instead it is argued that an experience of sexual abuse can be critical for the spiritual life of any woman who is subjected to abuse.

Death and life at the cinematic beach

In this article, I will examine the ways in which the beach and its shoreline is designated as both a mortal and immortal location in cinema. On the one hand, I will suggest that the beach and the shoreline can bring death to those who visit it temporarily or who go there to claim it as a permanent home of their own. The beach creates a set of narrative and aesthetic possibilities for tragic endings, murderous encounters, physical and existential suicides, and spectacular battles between opposing forces to take place. The dangerous beach, then, is locatable as a site that participates in, and helps enact, loss and the death wishes of those who come to contemplate endings, kill or fight on its shifting sands, watery edges and lost horizons. On the other hand, the beach and its shoreline will be understood as a liminal place and space, where regeneration possibilities are enacted. In cinema, death at the beach and its shoreline may not always be the end but a new start beyond the life of the frame. At the beach, within the coastal water, mortality becomes immortality, flesh and body becomes transcendence and spirit, and the death of one self can lead to the (re)birth of another.

Sustainable consumption as a means to self-realization: a Hindu perspective on when enough is enough

In this paper, I investigate the religious notion of self-realization or self-actualization in the context of sustainability, and argue that sustainability is the means to this end. I am particularly interested in Hindu perspectives on self-realization or the Purusharthas. The Purusharthas provide an interesting sustainability critique because they consider the satisfaction of material want as an important step to self-actualization; the reconciliation of want and need is a fundamental sustainability tension. The issue of growing want is doubtless an important one, given the rapidly growing middle classes in the developing world that aspire to Western material dreams, as illustrated by the case of Delhi. The Purusharthas may be seen to give consumption legitimacy; however, I argue that it is the selective understanding and institutionalization of the religious message that causes the sustainability problem. Viewed in their entirety, the Purusharthas provide the correct prescriptions for the sustainable enjoyment of want, and take the adherent beyond sustainability into greater transcendence or self- awareness.

Corporate social responsibility in professional team sport organisations : towards a theory of decision-making

Research question: 

Eye tracking the sublime in spectacular moments of science fiction film

In this chapter I will explore science fiction film spectacle as a particular type of endangering sensorial experience. Employing eye-tracking technology to assess where a small group of viewers look, I will contend that through its spectacular set pieces, science fiction film creates two distinct gazing regimes. First, such spectacular scenes create an experience of sublime contemplation where the viewer is (haptically) lost in the wondrous images liquefying before them. These moments of sublime contemplation create the condition where the viewer feels as if they have had an outer-body experience; one that has been cut free from the borders of the linguistic-led self of everyday life. Second, I will argue that certain scenes of science fiction spectacle work to commodify the viewing experience, creating a gazing pattern that is ‘driven’ by the mechanics of the event moment, by the theme park ride aesthetic and the logic of late capitalism. Set in this sensible, empirical context, the sublime dangers of science fiction film can be considered in two distinct ways. On the one hand, when the viewer is caught gazing in a moment of sublime contemplation there is embodied transgression and transcendence: here I will postulate that the viewer exists purely as a carnal being, or are newly if momentarily constituted as post-human, in the impossible present or possible future world that has been spectacularly imagined for them. On the other hand, when the viewer is presented with a spectacle that demands attention to the mechanics and drivers of the scene as it unfolds, a viewing position is created where the very rhythms of the theme park ride is created, where capitalist life is simply being re-engineered. Sublime and spectacular science fiction endangerment, then, liberates and destroys, and it is the encounter between these two vexing poles that is of central concern in this chapter. My focus will predominately be on the eyes, on vision. Undertaking a small-scale empirical study that uniquely utilizes eye tracking technology, this chapter will concentrate on what viewers attend to, gaze at and ‘contemplate’ when viewing two differently constituted ‘spectacle’ sequences: the sun explodes scene from Sunshine (Boyle, 2007) and the Godzilla enters Manhattan scene from Godzilla (Emmerich, 1998).

A questão da autodidaxia em educação e seus fundamentos nas filosofias de Kant e de Heidegger

O livre arbítrio na forma de uma independência de que todo ser humano é capaz no processo formativo, não poderia permanecer restrito, também no campo da Educação, à afirmação vaga de uma autonomia relativa característica de todo processo social. A procura de seus fundamentos filosóficos, na esperança de poder encontrar determinações mais precisas de sua possibilidade, é dever irrecusável para quem pretende escapar a uma certa ambiguidade ideológica. Esta ambiguidade se manifesta, por um lado, na incorporação do determinismo dos fenômenos naturais ao campo social e, por outro, na valorização daquilo que pertence à essencia do homem: a capacidade de constituição de sua própria humanidade"junto ao processo de formação"do social. Kant e Heidegger. cada um de maneira própria, mas de modo algum excludentes entre si, permitem fundar filosoficamente a autonomia formativa, através da categoria transcendência. Em Kant, a liberdade, enquanto possibilidade inscrita no âmbito da humanidade do homem de inaugurar uma ação absolutamente nova, à revelia do mecanismo causa-efeito dos fenômenos naturais; e em Heidegger, a abertura da pré-sença - entidade ontológica do homem - que lhe permite constituir sua humanidade junto à constituição/revelação do mundo constróem a realidade daquilo que chamamos livre-arbítrio.

A Influência da estrutura de valores na expressão da autenticidade do líder

Diversos estudos evidenciam as vantagens da presença de líderes autênticos nas organizações. O presente estudo visa identificar as prioridades, em termos de valores, que impactam na autenticidade de um líder, ou seja, investigar quais as prioridades, em termos de valores, de uma pessoa, que podem influenciar no seu desempenho como líder autêntico. Mais propriamente, quais os Valores – considerando a estrutura de valores propostas por Schwartz (2005) – estão relacionados à expressão das dimensões que compõem as características descritas, na literatura, como sendo o perfil do líder autêntico. Para tanto, foi realizada uma pesquisa quantitativa, com questionário aplicado a 295 indivíduos de organizações com natureza e atuação diversas. Os dados foram analisados a partir de técnicas estatíticas multivariadas, utilizando análise fatorial e regressões lineares múltiplas e hierárquicas. Os resultados apontam que, de todos os valores propostos por Schwartz, apenas a Auto Transcendência relaciona-se positiva e significantemente com a Liderança Autêntica. Não foram identificados quaisquer efeitos de moderação ou interação, na expressão de Liderança, em relação aos pares de variáveis que representam os quadrantes da estrutura de valores. Assim, o estudo aponta para a Auto transcendência, traduzidos nos tipos motivacionais da benevolência e do universalismo, como principal fator preditor da autenticidade de um líder, esta sendo potencializada na medida em que o mesmo amplia suas experiências de coordenação e avança em idade ou tempo de vida.

Empresas como agentes de benefício para o mundo: reflexão sobre visões de futuro no Brasil

O objetivo desta pesquisa consistiu em explorar os fatores comuns das visões de futuro de três segmentos da comunidade paulistana (executivos, empreendedores sociais e pensadores), especialmente no que diz respeito às possíveis alianças cooperativas entre o mundo dos negócios e a sociedade como um todo, como também as estratégias utilizadas para concretizá-las. Indagamos se, com suas experiências de vida, os sujeitos entrevistados protagonizavam suas visões de futuro; quais eram os aspectos em comum dessas visões referentes ao futuro e ao futuro dos negócios; as estratégias utilizadas para concretizar essas visões comuns, percebidas como positivas, e de que maneira podiam contribuir para o desenvolvimento de uma relação cooperativa entre os negócios e a sociedade. Utilizamos 30 entrevistas (10 em cada segmento), em amostra acidental, gravadas e, posteriormente, submetidas a uma análise segundo o referencial da Psicologia Social de Enrique Pichon-Rivière, incluindo alguns dos indicadores do processo interacional (cooperação, comunicação e telecomunicação) e da reação dos entrevistados e entrevistadores com relação aos conteúdos aplicados (transferência e contratransferência). Baseamo-nos no protocolo de Investigação Apreciativa do projeto "Business as an Agent of World Benefit" da Weatherhead School of Management e conceitos convergentes com o referencial adotado no que se refere ao interjogo entre o homem e o mundo, o protagonismo, o contar histórias, o projeto como planejamento de futuro e a criação de novas metáforas. Com relação ao futuro imaginado, encontramos como resultado unânime a preocupação com o meio ambiente, a mudança de valores (com a revisitação da noção de bem-estar, as “mortes subjetivas” por preconceito, o acolhimento expandido aos profissionais da saúde e a saúde como valor); a interconexão (presente no mundo contábil, nos modelos econômicos equitativos, na visão do administrador como estadista, na integração entre o “dentro e fora do negócio”, na consciência da riqueza como medida global e não individual, na ética, no voluntariado por consciência, no cuidado com o ambiente, consigo mesmo, com o outro e com a vida e a morte); coerência, vínculo e escuta (com foco na qualidade das relações e não na tecnologia, no honrar o próximo, no compartilhamento de experiências, na mão dupla entre negócios e comunidade, no bom trato para com as crianças e adultos), inclusão/exclusão (com a criação de espaços públicos intencionalmente inclusivos e a real inclusão dos excluídos na empresa); a educação (através do raciocínio que lide com a linearidade vigente e estimule pensar na complexidade, do reconhecimento de aspectos saudáveis e construtivos no cotidiano, e da formação que abrange gerentes, empreendedores e comunidade, incluindo conhecimento, ética e gratidão); interioridade (alma do negócio, intuição, transcendência como diferencial influindo em uma nova percepção de lucro, sacralidade da vida, encontro consigo próprio); lucro (revisão desse conceito com foco na vida, no bem-estar, no enraizamento das pessoas); consumo/consumidor (com relação à mudança na forma de analisar investimentos inteligentes, uma nova visão de pobreza); longo prazo (ligado à sustentabilidade, à autovalorização das pessoas e à educação dos funcionários). Há muitas estratégias atuantes nos diferentes segmentos, as pensadas são: a intencionalidade de inclusão em espaços públicos por diversos agentes, a revisão do conceito de bem-estar, os benefícios compartilhados, a inclusão mais precoce do jovem no mundo dos negócios e não como forma de exploração, o incentivo às atitudes de liderança nos jovens para o novo mundo e o longo prazo, como tema a ser mais aprofundado. Quanto à relação entre negócios e sociedade parece não haver clareza entre os segmentos quanto ao papel desempenhado pelas empresas, pelas ONGs e pelas comunidades. Surgem pontos como a necessidade da expansão de idéias inovadoras por meio de instituições sem fins lucrativos, do fortalecimento da sociedade civil, de um novo conceito de organização social, das ONGs não serem mais necessárias, das comunidades solidárias como instituições de direito e da ampliação do sentido da responsabilidade social estendido ao ecossistema.

The Beatles: ensaio sobre a ética do amor

The thesis intends to discuss the ethics by the way of love. So, it uses as a mention the musical work and the set of attitudes of the group that changed the way of thinking across the 20th Century mass-comm, entering a new way of thinking about the World: The Beatles. Analyzing the lyrics and the writing of the songs was searched the comprehension of he intrinsic love message at the Ethics it expresses. At the musical art of The Beatles political messages had been announced in a time that the World sought a Ethic way beyond the several declared war and the Cold War. Taking the Edgar Morin works as a base, O método 6, Ética (2005), it sought to understand the idea who permeates the human relations: the good, the possible, the necessary. Another works used as a cognitive base were Meus demônios (2003), Cultura de massas no Século XX: neurose (2005), Cultura de massas no Século XX (2006), The Beatles Anthology (2000) and Many years from now (2000). Holding the Ethics idea showed by Morin were established imaginary lines that perpass the behavior of the group known in the entire World understood till nowadays as tolerance, comprehension, peace, love and endurance messengers. The Beatles operate during the sixties a musical reborn, which allowed to the people the discussion and the reflexion about the World and the human being new behavior,endurance but acting with tolerance. Permeating the basic study, we find the Beatles way, the group origin, the fast walk till success, the spiritual choice, who guide their behavior and the end of the band. The music used as a masscomp instrument passes by the condition of a simple way of communicating. It deeply action feeds feelings, allows transcendence and is showed as target of human being transformation. The Ethics in music passes by the ideological barriers and becomes to comprehension with a clear synthony for the man, cause the polyphony and the new musical order establish the messages worldwide