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In this article the author presents the conception of existentialist pedagogy and its, basic principles. She introduces the representatives of existentialism and analyses the experience of the Summerhill existentialist school: its purpose, tasks, the standpoint for a child, and the content and organization of education.
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This article points to the interdisciplinary overlap of literary and journalistic work by Albert Camus and political philosophy. Unfortunately, political thoughts that represent a significant aspect of his work are often overshadowed by the exaggerated appeal of many interprets and literary critics to the philosophy of absurdity and its existential dimension. The article proposes the interpretative framework of human nature as a unifying element between the concepts of absurd and revolt, and uses it to assess Camus’s moderate political position. The article concludes that Camus’s works can be useful in considering the necessary conditions for political discussion and interpersonal dialogue, and in highlighting the importance of literature within this dialogue.
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The notion of existential anxiety originally came up with the philosophers of existentialism in the last century. They referred to it as the basic aspect of human existence, namely the anxiety of finiteness, isolation, and nonsense of being. They are resulting in the freedom to choose the meaning of life, the world, and oneself. Psychotherapeutic approaches that consider existential phenomenology as their philosophical basis work with this human experience, underlining its determining meaning, but despite references to it, they do not usually deal with it systematically. GT‘s founder, Fritz Perls, also approached anxiety from an existential point of view and considered it a necessary step in the search for individual meaning. The article tries to explain existential anxiety as a necessary consequence of the awareness of one‘s own existence as being in the world and at the same time looks at specific manifestations of its presence in individual experience in biological, psychological, social life, and therapeutic context. The article is based on a lecture given in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2013, as part of 195 a summer psychotherapeutic training organized by the Gestalt Associates Training Institute in Los Angeles.
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In this article we analyze the idea of «inner speech» from a philosophical perspective. To do this, we start with the psychological category as a tertium quid between the ideas of thought and language. We will show that philosophers has always put inner speach in the center of their interests, from the socratic semeion daimonion to the existentialist «call of conscience», from the musical exhortation of Phaedon to the myth of the inner city, the Christian theology of prayer and confession, Cartesian introspection, German idealism and Gandhi’s inner voice, among other episodes. The notion of inner speech serves us to illuminate important moments in the history of philosophy and religion, as well as helping us to understand the versatility of the phenomenon beyond the psychological category, which ranges from the negativity of criticism and retraction to the positive character of Christian life, from non-transferable speech to a universal language linked to silence.
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The article presents the experience of Hrуhoriі Skovoroda's philosophy of thinking in the context of the concept of man's rooting. It is emphasized that the basis for the teaching of the philosopher were moral and ethical reflections, and their main object was the spiritual world of man, knowledge of nature and the essence of personality, possibilities and the necessity of achieving happiness and freedom. The latter is realized through self-knowledge, moral perfection of man, through activities aimed at self-creation and the search for affinity. The understanding of the “affinity of labor” by Н. Skovoroda correlates with the concept of man's rooting by virtue of the existential nature and orientation of unrooted man who has no support in the world. The anthropologically-existential character of the concept of “affinity of labor” is emphasized, which makes it possible to define it as a spiritual and practical way of man rootedness, the epicentre of which are moral values and personal feelings.
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This study analyzes Sartre's conception on temporality, which the philosopher considers as “an organized structure” so that past, present and future are “structured moments of an original synthesis”. For Sartre, temporality is not a universal time, containing all beings, but the way of being of for-self: a being always at distance from itself, since it is never in mere identification with itself. Since for-self is inevitably forced to come out of itself in order to reach itself, the nothingness its own structure. Therefore, the being of for-self is, in the same time, behind and in front of for-self, so for self is the being that is not what it is, and is what it is not. There are three ways of being away from itself, which Sartre calls ek-stases: not to be what you are – that is ek-stasis of past, to be what you are not – that is ek-stasis of future, and to be what you are not, and not to be what you are – which is ekstasis of present. In conclusion, temporality comes into the world through for-self, representing the intra-structure of being which is its own nothingness. Without for-self, which is nothingness and pure spontaneity, temporality would not exist.
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Čovjekovo neprestano lutanje za smislom života dovodi ga do jedinoga smislenog i koliko-toliko razumnog odgovora: smisao života je postići vječnost i raj nebeski. Raj (neki oblik tog raja, neko individualno, subjektivno mjesto za koje se čovjek zalaže, kojem čovjek teži, mjesto sa svim mogućim užicima, blagostanjem i blagodati) cilj je kojem čovjek teži i žudi cijelog života pateći se i mučki trpeći zemaljski život; raj je mjesto blaženstava i vječne bezbrižnosti. Sve izvan toga je neprihvatljivo, isuviše nisko i isprazno. Čovjek lakše trpi bič maćehe zemlje kada zna da je kraj njegova puta zapravo prag raja nebeskog u bilo kojemu njegovu obliku, neovisno o društvenomu i nacionalno-religijskom poimanju koncepta raja.
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In his extensive correspondence, Gustave Flaubert expresses a number of opinions and writes his fantasised autobiography, which he stages by directly involving his authorial self in epistolary situations where captatio benevolentiae leads him to put forward either a suffering self or a self experiencing strong emotions. He thus seeks to create an epistolary identity for himself, to create a “Flaubert” trademark.
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“Who am I?” asks Breton in the opening of Nadja, but what he really means is “Who am I haunting?”. With self-knowledge being a pursuit, the appeal of the street proves too strong to resist. Through the analysis of experiences that change the self profoundly or give it a completely different configuration, we will examine to what extent this confident stroller manages to reach, in his deepest essence, that point where the opposites cease to be contradictions.
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The Valeryan Self is a simple condition of knowledge which serves to ensure the unity of consciousness. Empty and unknowable, it is almost identical to Kant’s transcendental subject. Under the impulse of his nihilistic inclination, Valery denies this influence and ends up destroying the unity of his ego by carrying out multiple divisions.
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The poet's quest for identity is realized in André Breton’s works through a projection on a female figure which takes the form of the fairy Mélusine in the poetic story Arcane 17. However, his rewriting of the myth is part of an Armenian constellation which is constituting itself in the life of the poet at the same time. The search for the inverted alter ego leads to the chimera-self through which we can hear the echo of the founder of Lusignan’s kingdom.
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The author evokes the personality of the Flemish poet, writer and professor, Eugène van Itterbeek, as he came to know him, and his life in Belgium and, later, in Romania.
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This text is a tribute to Belgian professor and poet Eugène van Itterbeek. We describe the exile of the writer, born in Leuven, to Sibiu and Cisnădioara, and we highlight his academic, cultural and literary activities.
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Eugène van Itterbeek knew the works of Emil Cioran inside out, but their attitudes towards life were completely opposite. Van Itterbeek’s view on its good and beautiful aspects were in direct contradiction to Cioran’s pessimism. What they had in common, however, was the recognition of everyday reality as a revelation of the truths of life and the ‘ethics of precision’ as an ethics of writing.
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This is a dialogue between the author and Christiane Rancé, starting from Joubert’s book, Le Courage d’être heureux. Carnets 1774-1824 (Éditions des Instants, 2021). We address such topics as the moralists, their writing, happiness, the quest for truth, the aphorism, humanity, the style and contemporary problems of civilization.
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In this article, the author analyzes Merleau-Ponty's position on the issue of the subject, as it appears in his work Phenomenology of Perception. She finds that the philosopher approaches the subject from several perspectives: as a thinking subject, which is consciousness, as a perceptual subject, which is the body, and as a plenary or total subject, which expresses the close unity of the two, and which he calls "existence." The author highlights the specificity of the subject as existence and emphasizes that this existence represents human existence. Analyzing human existence as a subject, the author also addresses the issues of intersubjectivity, history and freedom.
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For Emil Cioran, life is unbearable, meaningless, full of errors and "bestiality." Trying to get out of the horizontal existence, to conquer eternity and infinity, man shows his incapacity to go beyond himself to merge with the Absolute or God. But drama occurs especially when it understands that God is a being more helpless than man, and the Absolute is Nothing. Therefore all the hopes collapse, and man must assume his suffering for which he has no cure and which defines his existence in all its aspects. But the suffering, effect of awareness of the mismatch between man and his own life, has not only a negative meaning, but also an eminently positive one, because it ennobles man and opens to him new ways of existential realization.
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The aim of the article is to show the influence of digital transformation on the human condition. Based on desk research, the author addresses the issue of the relationship between new technologies and human existence in the context of relationality. Referring to the assumptions of symbolic interactionism, the author points out that relationships between people are constitutive value in human life. Digital transformation, whose overarching goal is the optimization of economic and social processes, introduces a number of changes in the models of interpersonal relations. These changes have a different effect, which the author presents by presenting various positions. There is also a foundation of humanity on the accounts, which Pierpaolo Donati describes as a transcendental matrix that cannot be replaced by technological solutions in any way. This conclusion implies a final reflection on the need to maintain a certain moderation in the field of technological transformations caused by digital transformation.
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Human persons have the basis of their identity in the Trinitarian God. Human being a person is not a quality of human nature, but a relational event, analogous to intra-Trinitarian Communion. That is why people can be an image of the Holy Trinity life only in the community of the Church. J.D. Zizioulas believes that the person is not a static whole, but a reality open to relations. Being a person implies not only the “openness of being”, but also a movement towards building a communion that transcends the boundaries of one’s own self. Man exists as a biological being, but the action of God’s grace realizes the personal way of being of human beings, transforms their distorted individuating existence and enables their ecclesial existence. The personalization of the human being takes place in the communion of the Church. It can be achieved through a union with Christ in baptism only in the Holy Spirit, under the influence of a great sacramental initiation, and the Eucharist is not only an assembly but also a way to historical fulfilment and revelation of man’s eschatic existence.
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Research by psychologists in the late 1990s has shown that older people have significant needs that cannot be met by psychotherapy, social work or other areas of help, as older people face meaning, dignity, religion, love necessity, morality, death and other existential issues (Erichsen, Buessing, 2013). Most often, professionals working with the elderly have noticed a problem of loneliness caused by self-alienation and selfrejection (Moustakas, 2008). These experiences clearly illustrate the phenomenon of existential loneliness in the lives of the elderly. If the problem of existential loneliness is not solved, it causes psychosocial problems that turn into existential anxiety and cause a sense of meaninglessness, which Yalom (1980) identifies as one of the four existential “gifts” next to death, freedom, and isolation. Studies focusing on the loneliness of older people in the European context are rare. However, the existential needs and existential loneliness of the elderly are discussed instead by Edberg & Bolmsjö (2019) and Sjöberg et al. (2019) . The aim of this study is to reveal a multidisciplinary perspective on the existential loneliness of elderly wives. A scientific analysis of the literature was performed. The method of this study was chosen to reveal the phenomenon of existential unity from a multidisciplinary perspective, revealing the holistic, existential nature of loneliness. Existential loneliness is associated with a social problem, the origins of which lie in diminished social skills and individual differences between the individuals. The loneliness of the elderly is closely linked to the value system of society and the spread of solidarity in society. From a sociological point of view, existential loneliness is treated as a multi-faceted construct related to the historical and cultural context of society and is therefore in a constant negative transformation within social groups. From the point of view of psychology, existential loneliness is related to the possibilities of a person’s development, deeper self-knowledge, discovery of creativity, on the other hand, existential loneliness has a negative connotation of sadness, helplessness, grief, meaninglessness, or suffering. In the philosophical-theological perspective of the perception of existential loneliness, two aspects emerge related to loneliness as an inevitable existential part of a person and isolation from oneself.
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