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The paper revisits the question of immortality with Dostoevsky's reference to 'eternal memory' as a leitmotif. Starting with Agamben's discussion of Hegel, language, and death, the paper notes three ways in which language is understood as mimetic. For Hegel (according to Agamben) language imitates death. However, Heidegger highlighted the challenges of speaking authentically about death in such a way as to raise the further question as to the nature or capacity of language. For Herder, language imitates nature and poetry is the supreme expression of language. How this might work in relation to our thrownness towards death is explored by Michael Theunissen in his study Pindar, where he sees poetic language as essentially imitating a divine hope in relation to death. The paper concludes how this might be restated in the context of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sexual instinct is a basic biological urge in humans to experience sexual pleasure and beget progeny through sexual relations. However, it is considered a sacred act of procreation in Indian culture and society. For most Indians, a woman is a personification of the mother goddess and her sexuality is a sacramental subject of worship. But the gulf between the ideal imagery and the real-life situation of a woman is a glitch in her sexual expression and choices. Irrespective of the projection of women's inherent sexual energy as being sacred, it is deeply controlled and structured by social institutions. She is not a free sexual being but a situated mother; her sexual choices are located within the institution of marriage maintained exclusively for getting a male heir for the family lineage. This paper expounds and explores the pervasive but ignored women's unseen sexual coercion in the form of maternal choice in Indian society. The dichotomy presented in the symbolic representations of the mother goddess's powerful sexuality--illustrated in mythologies and scriptures, and the social construction of real-life mothers' sexuality influence their choices. It also investigates how her maternal sexual choices are devalued, and viewed as unreal, unethical, and sinful activity. Lastly, it may be said that the divine projection of women as mother Goddesses and the exaltation of their procreative capacity deprive them of their sexual choices. It appears as a free choice but there is a hidden coercion that women fail to understand is the greatest cause of their sexual enslavement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tradition and modernity as epistemic categories are often seen as complete antitheses, and therefore, the traditional and ethnic rituals attached to "divine sacrality" are often sidelined as irrational by modern instrumental logic. This political undermining and thereby endangering of the "divine sacred," especially in the semi-secular context of rural South Asia, invariably results in cultural "theocide," which automatically leads to extreme sociocultural upheaval. That is precisely what this paper plans to scrutinize by closely reading Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay's classic Bengali novel Hansuli Banker Upakatha translated as The Lore of Hansuli Turn. While exploring the sociocultural roots of "theocide," this paper will specifically focus on the phenomenological dissimilarity between the "Deus absconditus"1 (the hidden God) of the "modernized" West and the enfleshed divine avatars in South Asia, closer not just to embodied human existence but also to non-human existence. Adding to that, the paper will also examine the religious concept of the "sacredscape"2 and its spatial eco-theological connection with divine sacrality by utilizing Mircea Eliade's idea of 'hierophany." Finally, deviating from the hyper-rationalized discourse of "modern enlightenment," the paper will highlight the "post-secular" notion of inner enlightenment, which seamlessly synchronizes with the South-Asian tradition of spiritual enlightenment(s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex social organisation, technological skills and specialised foraging strategies are considered as modernity indicators in the history of Homo sapiens' evolution. However, the timing and nature of these abilities are poorly understood. Research on the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic faunal remains and settlement patterns in the Zagros Mountains of Iran proposed the model of 'game management' for hunter-gatherer societies, reflecting their advanced cultural development affected by their environmantal contxt in this part of the world. Using various methods, including ecological landscape structure analysis, site location and archaeological remains, this paper reveals that the Late Pleistocene's hunters had a considerable focus on strategic corridors. We argue this behaviour improved the hunters game management tactic among the Upper Palaeolithic population in the Dasht-e Rostam area of the Southern Zagros Mountains. We demonstrate how the environmental adaptability accelerated Homo sapiens' modernity around 40 kyr ago. Although this proficiency resulted in increasing meat supply, it required a high level of intra-group communication and fitness, seasonal adaptations and specific technologies to compete with other predators using the same strategy in the Southern Zagros. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the process of influence between various cultural and historical traditions in philosophy has been taking place for thousands of years, this inter-cultural interaction is occurring at a more accelerated pace in the information age. While philosophers throughout history have used visual representations to understand philosophical influence and historical origins and the distribution of philosophical ideas and sub-disciplines, this paper stresses the importance of philosophical visualizations to represent the global interactivity of philosophy. It provides various visualizations to represent global philosophical interaction, the penetration of Western philosophical ideas into non-Western philosophical traditions, and the appropriation of non-Western traditions by Western philosophers. Such visualizations are important in the contemporary age to promote regional philosophies, to understand philosophical influence and to understand the promotion of a kind of pluralism which remains engaged with the global world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Araucaria is the property of Araucaria-Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofia, Politica y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The current interlinked and escalating socio-ecological crises have necessitated a deep sustainability turn, requiring the rethinking of many currently taken-for-granted assumptions, norms, and practices related to the natural environment, science, and technology. This challenge raises the question of where a shift of such magnitude is more likely to occur. This paper addresses this question by developing a new Industrial Modernity Index to estimate structural constraints to major transformative change in different countries. Drawing on the recent Deep Transitions framework, we use a multi-dimension (ideas, institutions, practices) and multi-domain (natural environment, science and technology) approach, combining data on attitudes towards the natural environment, beliefs about science and technology, institutional quality, environmental regulations, material input, energy supply, land use, vehicle density, scientific publications, and patenting into a new composite indicator. In contrast to many established sustainability and welfare metrics, our results from 63 countries show that the top-performing group cross-cuts the Global North/South divide. These countries may thus form the core experimentation and learning space for the possibly emerging major sustainability turn, the Second Deep Transition. • Measuring the country-level 'thickness' of industrial modernity in 63 countries • Accounting for ideas, institutions, and practices regarding environment and STI • Scores can be interpreted as transformative potential for deep sustainability turn. • Rankings reveal geographical diversity going beyond the North/South divide. • Top-performing countries from Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]