Theodor Ziehen January 22, 2012
Posted by nellysiska in girls, history, philosophy, science.Tags: causal laws, customary manner, german psychologist, metaphysical knowledge, parallel components, private scholar
add a comment
Theodor Ziehen
Theodor Ziehen, the German psychologist and philosopher, was born in Frankfurt am Main and served as professor of psychiatry at the universities of Jena, Utrecht, Halle, and Berlin. He lived as a private scholar in Wiesbaden from 1912 to 1917, when he returned to teaching as professor of philosophy and psychology at the University of Halle. He retired in 1930.
Ziehen’s viewpoint in epistemology is in the broadest sense positivistic. Knowledge must start with that which is experientially given, which Ziehen termed “becomings” (gignomene). From this “gignomenal principle” follows the “principle of immanence”, according to which there is no such thing as metaphysical knowledge of the transcendental, and therefore it is nonsensical to want to know that which is not given.
The first task of philosophy thus consists in seeking the laws of all that is given (the “positivistic” or “nomistic” principle). According to Ziehen, such a “gignomenological” investigation leads to the conclusion that the traditional antithesis between the subjective, mental world of consciousness and the objective, material external world is inadmissible because the given is “psychophysically neutral”.
We must, however, distinguish two kinds of law-governed relations: The gignomene are to be called mental insofar as they are considered with regard to their “parallel components” (the mental, subjective ingredients of experiences, which parallel certain physiological processes); and the gignomene are to be understood as physical insofar as attention is fixed on their “reduction ingredients” (“reducts”), which are subject to causal laws.
Xavier Zubiri January 22, 2012
Posted by nellysiska in girls, history, philosophy, science.Tags: christian existentialist, Christian ontologist, doctorate of theology, edmund husserl, martin heidegger, philosophy
add a comment
Xavier Zubiri
Xavier Zubiri, the Spanish Christian ontologist, was born in San Sebastián. He was professor of the history of philosophy in Madrid from 1926 to 1936 and in Barcelona from 1940 to 1942, after an absence abroad during the Spanish Civil War. He then left university teaching to give well-attended “private courses” in Madrid. His influence in Spain has been out of all proportion to the scanty amount of his published work.
Zubiri has been called a Christian existentialist, and indeed that is one aspect of his effort to synthesize neoscholastic theology with certain contemporary philosophies (those of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and José Ortega y Gasset) and with modern science. To achieve this harmonizing of separate disciplines, Zubiri undertook studies in theology, philosophy, and natural science that could well have occupied three scholarly lives.
He took a doctorate of theology in Rome and of philosophy in Madrid (where he studied under Ortega) before attending Heidegger’s lectures in Freiburg and studying physics, biology, and Asian languages in various European centers. He translated into Spanish not only metaphysical works by Heidegger but also texts on quantum theory, atomic science, and mathematical physics generally.
From this extensive study Zubiri concluded that positive science and Catholic philosophy were separate points of view concerning the same reality. The philosopher-theologian cannot dispute, correct, or complete anything in science, but neither does he have to accept the philosophical opinions of scientists.
Rites of Passage January 12, 2012
Posted by nellysiska in Uncategorized.Tags: arnold van gennep, liminal phase, naming ceremonies, pupa stage, rites of passage, victor turner
add a comment
Rites of passage
Rites of passage are rituals or ceremonies that individuals in many societies must endure in order to pass from one stratum of life to another. Some examples of rites of passage include naming ceremonies, initiation into adulthood, marriage, child-birth, and funerals.
Arnold Van Gennep described rites of passage, or rites des passages, in his 1906 book of the same name. Van Gennep discussed the significance to individuals and society of certain ceremonies or life events that act as a doorway from one stage of existence into another.
While passing through this doorway, the initiate found him or herself in a dangerous stage or interface (in some cases literally) of liminality, after the Greek for “threshold”. Van Gennep further subdivides rites of passage into rites of separation (preliminal rites), for example, funerals, transition rites (liminal rites) such as initiation, engagement, and pregnancy, and rites of incorporation (postliminal rites) like marriages.
