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Phenomenological research has focused on embodiment. This paper examines how the body is experienced in passive contemplation, understood as a finite province of meaning in Alfred Schutz's sense. The six features characteristic of any province of meaning (epoché, form of spontaneity, tension of consciousness, sense of self, temporality, and sociality) function distinctively in each province of meaning and alter one's experience of one's body. In the foundational province of pragmatic everyday life, one transforms deliberately and bodily the surrounding world, but this experience undergoes modifications in the religious/spiritual contemplative province. To clarify passive contemplation, the paper develops, as a contrast, active contemplation, the active, restless pursuit of chains of appresentational symbols and images. In passive contemplation, one separates from everyday life, orients toward unity rather than dialogue with God, refrains from following appresentative chains, and relaxes one's tension of the consciousness/body (e.g., through breathing), single-mindedly attending to God's presence. One can trace passive contemplation genetically to a primordial entwinement with one's mother's body, in which subjective/objective boundaries are blurred (as in Merleau-Ponty's "flesh"). In passive contemplation, one assumes an often-wordless social role (child, lover) toward God and abides tranquilly in the present rather than moving distractedly toward any future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of economics, work is typically considered a form of barter for wages. This perspective reduces work to a mere activity serving profit, productivity, and, ultimately, the economy. Such a reduction also diminishes the person performing the work, treating them merely as a "cog in a machine." To fully appreciate its true meaning, work must be seen as labor serving temporal goods and as a pathway to contemplation. This paper argues that personalist economics is necessary to achieve contemplative labor, affirming the totality of the person--as composed of both body and soul--involved in work and economic activity. Consequently, both the person and their work are irreducible to mere profit, productivity, and economic activity. In this light, the paper seeks to answer the question: Is it possible to retrieve the meaning of the person in today's economy through labor? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights to the Member States has given rise both to a controversial phraseology and a controversial case-law. This paper offers a reconstruction of the constitutional intent and proposes a conceptualization in conformity with the structural function and the constitutional contemplation of the pouvoir constituent. As to the phraseological debate, it demonstrates that the Charter's application to the Member States may occur by reason of either "implementation" or "interpretation" of EU law and the two strands are embraced but not synthetized by "scope" as a collective term. As to the substantive debate, it demonstrates that the CJEU's case-law on "implementation" is not only amorphous but also inconsistent with the Charter's constitutional mandate. The paper proposes a novel approach based on the notion that the application to the Member States is accessory to the supremacy of EU law. The paper's argument is presented in the following steps. First, the paper presents the pristine rationale and constitutional function of the application to the Member State through its emergence and historical context. Second, it provides a taxonomy and critical overview of the CJEU's amorphous case-law and presents the Court's futile attempt to create a coherent doctrine that faithfully reproduces the constitutional contemplation behind the diagonal application and that reflects the division of competences between the EU and its Member States. Third, it sets out the proposed doctrine of "displacement." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses narrative inquiry, ethnographic observations, and philosophical consideration of phenomenology to explore the role of mindfulness training, specifically a yoga-based practice, in supporting resiliency, academic achievement, and holistic well-being. Holistic well-being has become a critical and significant area of focus in education as increasing stress, anxiety and depression are resulting in both mental and physical illness, causing a significant decrease in overall resiliency observed both in students and teachers. This problem has been compounded by COVID-19, increasing use of technology and social isolation (Kush, Badillo-Giocoechea, Musci, & Stuart, 2022). It is critical to seek ontological ways of being and epistemological opportunities that consider relationality and holism to deepen our understanding of the complexity of our human experience, individually and collectively. The purpose of this paper is to offer proactive considerations to achieve well-being in our increasingly complex and overwhelming educational environments by considering the lived experience of the author as a yoga practitioner, academic researcher, and classroom educator. It begins by exploring the concept of interconnectivity and reflection on lived experience, and then it establishes a working definition for both resiliency and yoga. It then connects the key concepts of yoga practice to educational neuroscience, curriculum, teaching, and learning. Finally, it explores practical applications to teaching and learning and future research to be considered regarding resiliency, yoga, and holistic well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a theoretical exploration that works through a global Indigenous consciousness. As a critically reflexive story work and auto-ethnographic contemplation it begins by confronting a presumed genealogy in a post-apocalyptic world of coloniality through a global Indigenous lens. Extending beyond racially legalised genealogical ancestry, the metaphysics of indigeneity in the context of Western modernity can be re-positioned as a metaphor of past future human-being-ness or person/people-hood. Global Indigeneity and Indigenous metaphysics are framed as a portal and entry beyond coloniality through fugitive sociality and subversive relationality. Confronting the tensions of colonially purist and racially essentialist categories of indigenous identity, lineages of the post-post-apocalyptic world are forming in the enduring social connections embodied in an Indigenous genealogical consciousness of the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to demonstrate that the poetic oeuvre of Derek Mahon oscillates between two contrary impulses: a temperamental affinity towards a morose form of solitariness and a more warily sanguine desire to break out of such isolation by seeking out connections. Attempts to make connections, however, prove difficult, especially when directed at society and people in general than when in the presence of nature or objects of contemplation. Even moods of contemplation prove to be less a matter of escaping from solitariness than of finding relief in a solicitude that negotiates with the condition of being alone (and of always feeling alone) through the writing of poetry. Poetry thus represents a form of solicitude that enables the poet to translate solitariness into the more amenable form of solitude, at least until the urge to step out of being alone starts the cycle again. The paper attempts to show how metaphor and metonymy play a significant role in the see-saw between the desire to make connections and the temporary relief afforded when solitariness is translated into a form of solitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is about a practice-based research on curating exhibits of sounds and exhibits for and about listening in the Philippines. The term "sounds" is used in this essay to refer to sound art works and music. As one of the few active curators who have been exhibiting sound/music in Manila in the past decade, I reflected on exhibits I have curated over the years as well as exhibits curated or staged by my contemporaries. This essay is a contemplation on and examination of lessons from such exhibits that may be useful in developing curatorial practice for sound exhibition in the Philippines. Special attention is given to exhibiting sounds as a counterpoint to the more conventional acts of performing sounds or exhibiting objects to look at. The act of exhibiting sounds, though it may appear random, actually expands the curatorial practice. This paper proposes that in exhibiting sounds, the task and responsibility of curators are not limited to selecting or putting up objects but cover a trifecta of affective actors. Sounds, spaces, and bodies perform together in sound exhibits, where each component contributes to a wholeness that the exhibit tries to achieve. Specifically, this paper focuses on exhibited sounds as omni-participant, observable boundaries of spaces, and frames audiences of such as listening bodies. Understanding the nature of sound as an exhibitable object (i.e., a physical object, idea, or sensation) vis-à-vis the act of exhibiting and of exhibition, as well as the place of sound among the audience, forms a complex armature that shapes the particular challenges and opportunities of exhibiting non-visual (art) objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within IR, scholars are starting to consider difference on the level of ontology rather than epistemology. Other worlds are introduced into IR's political pluriverse, however, these are often encountered in faraway places, thereby playing into the colonial narrative that ontological difference does not exist in the 'West'. This paper introduces another real from within the 'disenchanted North' that is shaped by contemplative activists: people using contemplation as a form of protest. An engagement with contemplative activism challenges our commonly held assumptions about what contemplation and social change are, thereby undermining the institutions of 'science' and 'religion' underlying the universe. It argues that the project of political ontology in IR should consist of two moves: drawing in other, in particular spiritual, realities into the political imaginations of IR and challenging the ontological assumptions underpinning concepts. Consequently, it suggests that the pluriverse in IR should be a methodological rather than an ontological commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the making of Bamiyan Buddhas beyond the Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan since 2002. Recounting the building and rebuilding of a monastic complex in Bangkok, the study focuses on one of these new Buddhas, more complete than the "original" Bamiyan Buddha of the dually inscribed grotto, "Bamiyanguha-Bamiyan Museum", at Wat Saket. In their global manifestations, the Bamiyan Buddhas have emerged as mobile sites, as place holders with direct and indirect citations to the destroyed Buddhas of the valley. The building of Wat Saket's Bamiyan Buddha is situated within larger transnational histories of planned, projected, rejected, and reproduced Bamiyan Buddhas, within stylistic decisions related to questions of shifting material media, scale, and iconography involved in copying and reproductions, in the context of Thailand's changing engagements with itinerance, multiplication, and copying strategies around Buddha images, and in national and global circuits of collecting, exhibitions, gift, and piety. The museum, specifically the cave-museum of Wat Saket, as a site of retinal and haptic vision which continues to challenge and blur the distinctions between curatorial visions, specialist pedagogy, visual instructions, aesthetic contemplation, and rapidly shifting and evolving complex of ritual practices and leisure, remains at the heart of this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Kojève's account of history and philosophy of science. Kojève's understanding of science can be characterized as internalism, which is evident in his holistic view of philosophy, theology, quantum physics, and the history of classical Newtonian mechanics. It precipitates the facilitation of a further inquiry into the Christian genesis, secular evolution, and subsequent de-Christianization of scientific thought. The paper includes a critical scrutiny of Kojève's philosophical tenets, followed by a comparative analysis of the views of Hegel, Koyré, and Kojève. The primary objective of this research is to juxtapose Kojève's doctrines with Hegel's contemplations on the history and philosophy of science. In addition to identifying affinities, notably the emphasis on the Christian concept of God's Incarnation for the advancement of science, I draw the distinctions between the positions of Hegel, Kojève, and Koyré, specifically concerning the valuation of mathematical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are more than 150 (grand and micro) theories of emotion. Even as European phenomenological perspectives do mention self and agency, the mainstream discourse on emotion in psychology is quite limited in presenting a coherent theory of affective process. A key aspect of Euro-American theories of emotion is that, these theories are topographically flat, thus, unable to provide mechanisms of transformation of emotion relevant for well-being. In this paper, a theory-based framework for emotional transformation through understanding Indian concepts in āyurveda, yoga sutras and the nātya is discussed. Second, the paper proposes that it is Śānta (the Indian conceptualisation of peace) alone, that permits a substantive possibility to a radical re-emotion or experiencing and articulating well-being. The concept for a radical re-emotion is called Bhāvanā, indicating the possibility of conscious and radical re-creation and re-imagination of affective relationships with objects, concepts, processes and people in the world, re-orienting from the isolated 're-appraisal', 'self-regulation and control' of emotion as discussed in the mainstream paradigm. The paper contends that these culturally relevant models educate and inform global psychology theory and applied practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of analogia entis has undergone a long intellectual development and gained unprecedented importance in the twentieth century with the elaboration of Przywara. It seems difficult to correlate the development of this classical theological idea with Thomas Merton (1915–1968). Nevertheless, in the face of the challenges of the modern world, Merton's way of thinking resonates with many of the connotations of analogia entis as articulated by Przywara. This paper attempts to argue that Merton, in his late works, alludes to the metaphysics, epistemology, and, by extension, the methodology of inter-religious dialogue that analogia entis entails by elaborating on the ideas of natural contemplation, symbolism, and metaphysical intuition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Towards the end of his life, Bataille became increasingly fascinated by prehistoric culture. His analysis of the Lascaux cave frames it as the symbolic site of our birth, envisioning in its art the final step to anthropogenesis: we, as a species, became human once we began smearing pigment on cave walls. Bataille’s account of this dual birth of art and humanity is neither an ode to our rational mind nor to our capacity for aesthetic contemplation. Rather, the murals adorning the cave would be the result of primordial ecstatic experiences. For Bataille, art ties in with excess: an activity devoid of use-value rising above necessity or instinct. Lascaux becomes the scene of a primordial crime against utility. Bataille’s cave stands as a counterargument to the enlightenment’s fixation on progress and productivity. The decades since, have seen our obsession with productivity grow even more pervasive. This paper explores the constellation of excessive behaviours which Bataille presents as key to the birth of art and, through an autoethnographic study, asks whether, and how, this ‘spectrum of excess’ is still relevant to artists today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn the film Sans Soliel, Chris Marker challenges received wisdoms with regard cinematic production of real worlds and real people. In Marker’s techniques, Jacques Rancière observes an intensely political, highly accessible, art form that leads to a theorisation of cinema for its democratic and educational functions. In this paper we take up Rancière’s interest in the democratic and educational functions of cinema through a reading of three films: Sans Soliel, Minority Report, and After Yang. Marker’s essayist cinema produces an uncanny experience of anthropological irony, and a mode of rethinking imperialism, revealing stories of communities that typically do not get told. Spielberg’s film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s story is a cautionary contemplation on the ethics of the future of a police force that has access to visions of the future. Kogonada’s poetic lens muses on what it is to be human, what it is to be a family, and what it is to be a child and a parent negotiating complexity, loss, and identity. Each film is of interest here for the openness with which they engage thinking about democracy and education. They are democratic and educational precisely because they do not tell us what to think about democracy and education. Each film at the same time provides insight into Rancière’s thinking about the functions of cinema in producing senses of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In academic theology, prayer is often relegated to the theologian's private life. 1 What happens when prayer is integrated in a theologian's ethnographic research, challenging this divide? In this paper, I explore my experience of reading my own interview transcriptions from research with women in Palestine, utilizing the practice of lectio divina. This form of contemplative prayer forces the reader to slow down and meditate on the text, rather than solely engaging the transcription through an analytical frame. In this way, the words of the interview transcription are engaged as more than information and data; in the context of contemplative prayer, the insights of those I spoke with mediate God's presence. I further suggest that lectio divina encourages the researcher to continue to encounter her 'informants' as full persons, even during the 'analysis' stage of her project, as well as calls her to grapple with how this (re)encounter with the interviewee in the transcription may require her to move beyond writing to engage in concrete acts of solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Correspondence and Opinion provide a ‘human voice,’ serving as the captivating elements that grab readers' attention and stimulate contemplation. The extent of ChatGPT's involvement in writing raises controversy. We tested ChatGPT's capability to generate readable Correspondence or Opinion, producing an English Opinion from a Japanese abstract. We also tasked ChatGPT with creating Correspondence and Reply for an English→German translated Opinion. Opinion, Correspondence, and Reply output here were found to be readable and reasonable. While preliminary, these results suggest that ChatGPT can generate such articles, prompting serious concern about AI taking over the ‘human voice.’ Some regulatory measures may be needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A notion that has arisen from historical-critical analysis – that the Gospels are primarily 'theological' rather than straightforwardly 'historical' documents – is explored in terms of the aspect of patristic thinking that has been described as 'mystical theology'. Here, the ancient concept of the mental faculty called the nous becomes relevant because it was often seen in the patristic writings as essentially intuitive in its operation. It was therefore related primarily to a noetic, contemplative apprehension of reality, rather than to discursive rationality. This concept is relevant not only to understanding the Gospels but also to a pluralistic understanding of the world's faith traditions, so that there is a potential link between our way of reading the Gospels and our way of assessing religious pluralism. Both may therefore be seen, in a new way, as aspects of a post-critical spirituality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text explores Aristotle's theory of the good, which suggests that moral virtue is always beneficial for human beings, even if it may seem counterintuitive. The debate centers around how moral virtues, such as courage, contribute to the contemplative life. The text also discusses the importance of courage in Aristotle's philosophy and its connection to the survival and well-being of communities. It suggests that a further account of the value of courage is needed to fully understand its importance. Additionally, the text explores Aristotle's views on reproduction and how it relates to the desire for immortality and the preservation of one's existence. Overall, the text highlights the complexity of Aristotle's views on courage and the need for a comprehensive understanding of its value in the good life. [Extracted from the article]

In this article, we will delve into Theodor W. Adorno's sociology. The general aim is to study Adorno's theory of society and its relation to sociological interpretation. What primarily distinguishes Adorno from other sociologists (of his time and today) is that he considers society to be the fundamental concept of the discipline. Theorising on the post-liberal capitalism of his time, Adorno proposes the concept of the exchange society, which is understood as an antagonistic totality that reproduces itself through the suffering it inflicts on socialised individuals. Within texts dating back to the 1960s, such as 'Society', Adorno engages in an exploration of comprehensive sociology and the sociology of social facts, reciprocally examining them. He confronts one with the other in a proposal of an interpretative model of the comprehensibility or incomprehensibility of society. This intellectual confrontation, while avoiding synthesis, leads Adorno to two main outcomes. First, it yields a diagnostic perspective on social theory, portraying capitalist society as simultaneously rational and irrational, comprehensible and incomprehensible. Second, it hints at a sociological interpretation of specific phenomena. In addition to exploring this central theme in Adorno's sociology, we will also shed light on his distinctive approach to classic texts and concepts. Specifically, Adorno links to the received terminologies but incorporates them into constellations that imbue them with eloquence by revealing the underlying objective moments they encapsulate. The theoretical significance of this article lies in the aim to demonstrate that Adorno's contributions to sociology are not merely borrowed from philosophical contemplations. Instead, they arise from an immanent critique of the sociological tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to understand how attitudinal factors influence individuals' choices for further developing carsharing. To address the gap, a household survey was carried out to obtain the individual's attitudes toward carsharing. The Transtheoretical Model is used to divide the adoption process of carsharing into five stages, including precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. Two Integrated Choice and Latent Variable Models with or without the attitudinal features are evaluated for the effects of latent attitudes on the above five stages. Additionally, the attitudinal factors at each stage are analyzed and compared, and the effects of the flexible and hard measures on the adoption process are discussed. The results indicate that the proposed attitudinal factors well reflect individuals' adoption stage of carsharing and show different effects on the five adoption stages. The policy implications for facilitating carsharing require coordinating flexible and hard measures in different cognitive stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the impact of Plato's views on atheism and impiety, relayed in the Laws, on Clement of Alexandria. Clement employed the adjectives godless (atheos) and impious (asebēs) often in his writings as accusations against pagan philosophers and/or heretics, but also in his defence of Christians against the very charge of atheism on account of their rejection of pagan gods (Stromata 7.1; cf. Tertullian's Apologia 10). I argue that Clement, perceptive of Plato's defence of philosophical contemplation (theōria) and its civic benefits in the Laws, reworked the latter's association of disbelief with excessive confidence in fleshly pleasures (Leges 888A) in tandem with his stipulation of virtue as the civic goal of his ideal colonists of Magnesia who ought to attune to the divine principles of the cosmos. Thus, Clement promoted the concept of citizenship in the Heavenly kingdom, secured through contemplation and its ensuing impassibility. For Plato and Clement, atheism was the opposite of genuine engagement with divine truth and had no place in the ideal state. Although Clement associated the Church with peace, his views were adapted by Firmicus Maternus to sanction violent rhetoric against the pagans in the fourth century when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though Tolkien valued verbal and literary art more highly than visual aesthetics, his conscious allusions to visual theories proposed by Goethe and Romanticists such as Coleridge and Blake indicate the value he perceived in visual art to create art that facilitated individual transformation. In 'Leaf by Niggle' Tolkien's Romanticism resists the atomistic values that preceded the Romantics and that he recognized in his own day. Coleridge's Romanticism of privileging both the individual and the general derived from a devotion to the contemplation of nature, which resonated with Tolkien. Like Blake, Tolkien averred the virtue of attention to minute particulars as well as the unity of the whole, which appears in the assemblage of Niggle's Tree. Transcendence begins by apprehending a greater unity encompassing individuality, which translates into a necessary self-effacement in favor of a naturalistic interconnectedness. This self-effacement extends to include aesthetic considerations as well selfish desires and thus enables the transcendence of others by encountering the visual sublime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine two ways to approach Anselm's argument: as a logical demonstration and as a persuasive piece of reasoning—one that notably persuaded Anselm himself. First, I follow Ermanno Bencivenga and argue that Anselm's argument is a logical illusion. The deduction is not simply invalid, nor is it simply unsound; instead, it appeals to two mutually inconsistent sets of assumptions, each of which is rationally defensible. Consequently, the argument emerges as either valid or sound, but not both simultaneously. I also argue that this peculiar piece of reasoning should not be classified as an "ontological" argument. When interpreted as a persuasive piece of reasoning, the argument appeals to experience—an experience of something alluded to by the phrase "something than which nothing greater can be thought." Here, the logical apparatus primarily serves to channel and refine contemplation on this experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to approach Sanjuanist mysticism from a queer perspective. It is not a monolithic apology to queer people, nor a treatise on mystical interpretation, but an effort to recognize and validate the spiritual experience of LGBTIQ+ people. It takes some mystical passages from St. John of the Cross that help to read the experience of queer life in a mystical key. With this, the potential of mysticism to combat those phobic, segregating, and unjust ideologies that mistreat so many people because of their sexual orientation and gender identity dissidence is manifested. Although it is problematic, talking about this is an act of epistemic, sociocultural, and religious justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study, entitled "Environmental Protection and Contemplation," explores the complex interplay between contemplative practice and environmental protection measures. It suggests that contemplative activities can greatly increase both individual and group commitment to environmental stewardship. Examples of these practices include mindfulness, meditation, and profound ecological thinking. The study explores a range of contemplative qualities and makes links with sustainable practices, ecological consciousness, and the development of a strong bond between people and the natural environment. This study adds to the larger conversation about environmental ethics by offering insights that may guide future efforts to promote a happy coexistence of humans and the natural world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article examines the use of contemplation in the religious poetry of John Lydgate, a fifteenth-century Benedictine monk and poet from England. While our understanding of Lydgate as a Benedictine poet has gained scholarly momentum, his paraliturgical writings have received less sustained attention. In this article, I argue that Lydgate democratizes the millennium-old monastic practice of lectio and meditatio by introducing a new contemplative mode for lay- and non-Latinate people in the vernacular, which I refer to as a performative lectio domini. This lectio is on an image instead of scripture and takes place within the context of the liturgy. Lydgate offers directions for participation in a liturgical ritual, enabling his readers to fully inhabit the surplus of materiality, somatic movements, and figurative language emanating from the liturgy in order for them to abandon themselves to contemplation in the crux of the rite. By looking at the poem On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est as a case study, I demonstrate how for Lydgate the liturgical kiss becomes a threshold of encounter with Christ through the incarnation. Rather than producing an emotive response, as is often characterized, the liturgical kiss fosters an intellectual illumination and deeper knowledge of Christ crucified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern dairy cows are dependent on viable protein sources to maintain adequately high and persistent milk production. However, qualified protein sources, such as soybean meal are usually high and not easily available. Feed-grade urea (FGU) has been utilized in dairy diets for decades to help economically. Some portions of dietary nitrogen are a point in this case. Nonetheless, FGU can be considered as a potential source of microbial protein, only if adequate timely fermentable nitrogen sources are supplied to the rumen microbes for successful microbial protein synthesis. In addition, FGU has a rapid degradation rate in the rumen, which may cause microbial toxicity and excessive ammonia and urea production, leading to environmental issues. It means that the effective use of FGU would be challenging. Accordingly, by improving rumen synchrony and metabolism and cow performance such limitations can be overcome through the development of slow-release urea (SRU). However, compared with FGU recent studies do not fully support the practical and economic effectiveness of SRU, towards improved cow metabolism and performance. More experiments particularly with varying dietary fermentable energy sources are required to conclusively decide if SRU may be a practical contemplation towards increased dairy production sustainability or it is just an expensive useless fantasy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]