This paper argues that the role of nature in Aquinas’s account of virtue, action and law does not require the kind of adherence to Aristotle’s ‘metaphysical biology’ that is refuted by Darwin because of the way Aquinas transforms nature as applied to a rational being and as an analogy to elucidate virtue, habit and law. Aquinas’s grounding of ethics and law in the notion of nature is also not a kind of intuitionism designed to answer all moral questions and stop all ethical debates but a model which gives principles; these principles in turn are not that from which all conclusions can be derived with universality and certainty but are principles which are the topic of reasoned and ongoing debate about their interpretation and application in particular laws or practices. The paper then examines Aquinas’s application of the principles of natural law to evaluate human law as an example of this reasoned debate, which is both subject to error and correction, showing how Aquinas’s notion of nature can work in practical applied ethics.
The article presents a collection of reflections on the shell as an object placed in a cultural context. Symbolism of the shell and its possible artistic representations are the main focus. There are over 30 symbols or symbolic representations of the shell classified into 7 categories. These are described with supporting examples from culture, art and myth. Particular attention was paid to the anthropological meanings of the shell with reference to characteristics or aspects of human behaviour.
The author is attempting to follow the influence of various ideologies on the way nature, gardens and landscape are perceived. She discusses the 17th century, and the relationship of a geometrical garden to French absolutism (Versailles), the influence of the British liberal thought on the idea of a casual garden (J. Addison and the Whigs Party), dependence between the idea of freedom and the way the role of nature was understood in the times of the French Revolution (J.J. Rousseau), The Cult Of Nature (J.W. Goethe, A. Humboldt) and nationalistic and racist motifs in German nature (W.H. Rhiel and the wildlife conservation movement), in the gardens (W.P. Tuckermann, W. Lange) and in the landscape (Bismarck’s monuments and towers) in the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century. The author refers to the connection between eugenics and the idea of garden city and the influence of the German neo-religious movements on the landscape (cemeteries in Seelefeld and Hilligenloh, The Sacred Grove of Saxons Sachsenhein).
The article is devoted primarily to two Polish proverbs: “Każdy rad tam chodzi, gdzie się urodzi” (Everyone likes to go where they were born) and “Każdy tam ciągnie, gdzie się ulągnie” (Everyone is drawn to where they came from). They were mentioned by Julian Krzyżanowski, who concluded that their meaning is erotic, pornographic even, a view challenged and rejected in the article, and replaced with the author’s own explanations. Three most important meanings have been established: 1. when urodzi and ulągnie denote growth, prosperity, profit; 2. concern a return to the birth place: home, town, homeland; 3. tell us that people are ruled by inclinations, customs, nature, i.e. old Polish nałogi (habits) and przyrodzenie (nature); cf. M. Rej’s “Muszą myśli nasze tam ciągnąć, gdzie je przyrodzenie wlecze; do czego kogo nałóg a przyrodzenie ciągnie, tym się zawżdy para i tego pilnie szuka” (Our thoughts are necessarily drawn to where nature attracts them, what habit and nature attracts one is what one always does and diligently seeks). The author has also established that the Polish proverbs in question have their European predecessors: Greek, Latin, Egyptian, e.g. “Habit is the second nature of man” (Aristotle), “Everyone is dragged on by their favorite pleasure” (Trahit quemque sua voluptas – Virgil); “To each his own is beautiful” (Suum cuique pulchrum — Cicero), “You will return to your own mud floor, you will find your sycamore (Egyptian).
The purpose of the article is to present the methodological aspect of the problem of professional training of preschool stuff in the context of domination of axiological approach to education work with future teachers, substantiation the role of environmental and aesthetic values in the educational system of priorities that pedagogues are to realize during their work with preschool children, formulation the ways of correcting the future kindergarten teachers value treatment to nature during professional training. Theoretical methods related to the study of the philosophical and conceptual research methodology in the field of educational paradigms, causal analysis of educational phenomena, comparative juxtaposition of foreign and native scientific approaches to value education priorities are used. The author singled out the ways of correction of value attitude to nature of future kindergarten teachers in the studying the obligatory and optional courses and during teaching practice and extracurricular activities: rejecting of unilateral utilitarian focus on learning the basics of science and commissioning axiological potential of students a wide range of moral and aesthetic evaluative criteria relationship to reality; transforming the ways of students perceiving and evaluating nature into the motivation mechanisms of attitude towards it; raising the status of artistic and aesthetic activity of students to accumulate valuable experience through artistic and creative experiences; forming of individually-shaped attitudes of future kindergarten teachers to the nature with the transformation of them into educational activities settings based on the highest educational priorities. The practical significance of the research results is determined with the possibility of implementing them into the process of training future preschool education professionals to enrich their educational activity axiological potential. During the process of professional training a teacher’s value consciousness becomes at the thoughtful correction facility, since the teacher is a potential carrier and conductor of environmentally justifiable attitude towards nature. As the prospects for further research studies suppose the adequate methods and educational technologies search for in the domestic and foreign experience of educational innovation.
One of the most significant current discussions in Chinese philosophy is the problem of interpreting the notion of wú wéi. As one of the popular concepts of ancient Chinese thought, wú wéi was used and differently interpreted in various philosophical schools from the very beginning. In this article, the Daoist notion of wú wéi will be explored as the “art of stopping when it’s time to stop”, taking the philosophical approach and appealing to the text of the Zhuangzi. The critical investigation into the sinological literature allows us to reveal several different contemporary attitudes towards wú wéi as the aim, process, and ground for the “ideal” human existence
The article discusses possible ways of overcoming the environmental crisis. It is based on Šmajs’ evolutionary ontological understanding of the environmental crisis of nature, which distinguishes between natural and cultural evolution and demonstrates the opposing relationships between them. It critically develops one of Šmajs’ proposals for initiating a biophilic transformation of culture by dealing with some of the consequences of the economic crisis (specifically unemployment).
While metaphor constitutes one of the most important phenomena studied by cognitive semantics and cognitive poetics, one specific type of metaphor, the so-called image metaphor, receives little attention in cognitive theory and research. Image metaphors are quite frequent in poetry and prose, especially in descriptions of the natural world. They are markedly different from conventional conceptual metaphors and entrenched metaphorical expressions found in everyday language, as they do not involve a more tangible source domain and a more abstract target domain. In an image metaphor, both the source and the target are specific physical entities. Unlike conceptual metaphors, which help people to conceptualize, reason and talk about abstract concepts and ideas in terms of more tangible domains, image metaphors serve entirely different purposes. They emphasize certain similarities between various entities or they create such similarities. The article presents a small part of my study of image metaphors in descriptions of nature in Thoreau’s writings. It focuses on image metaphors in two of his later, less known and discussed texts: the essay “Autumnal Tints” and his last manuscript called “The Dispersion of Seeds.” Thoreau uses image metaphors in order to point out that the natural world is full of likenesses and universal patterns or in order to defamiliarize ordinary phenomena which he describes.
The article investigates how the concept of nature is metaphorically construed in the writings of Henry David Thoreau, one of the earliest and most influential nature writers. The analysis has been inspired by insights from cognitive linguistics and cognitive poetics, especially Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Fauconnier and Turner’s Blending Theory. Several different metaphorical construals of the concept of nature appear in Thoreau’s writings which have been examined in this study, including Walden, The Maine Woods, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, a selection from his journal, and two collections of his earlier and later natural history essays and manuscripts. One can encounter there, obviously, conventional personifications of nature, such as Mother Nature, which, however, is questioned by Thoreau, as well as the occasional construal of nature as a companion or a bride. Other conventional conceptual metaphors, which are more frequently employed by him, include the metaphorical construal of nature as a work of art or as a literary work and once, more unconventionally, as a concert. Natural entities are also construed as other kinds of products. An original metaphor, which frequently appears in Thoreau’s late manuscript on the dispersion of seeds, is the personification of nature as a forester.
The purpose of this article is to show different responses to the question about the causes and the way out of the ecological crisis. In many environments, today there is a belief that the man is the greatest danger to the environment because if the world and humanity are to survive, the number of people in the world should be reduced to the minimum. The Holy See sees a different way out of the ecological crisis. Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Centesimus annus in 1991 said “human ecology”, according to which in the fi rst place you should put the man who is the master of creation, but not in an absolute way, because his authority was from God, before whom he must give an account of his deeds.
The author analyzes artistic practices associated with the natural world, “from land art to garden art”. In an overview of historical currents in art (since the 1960s), plant art is highlighted as an instrument of critique of land art, and a self-standing current which, among other things, addresses social issues and ecological threats. The author also analyzes specific examples of garden-related artistic practices within the cityscape, considering the criteria under which certain projects can be seen as successful (models to emulate). The text concludes with open-ended questions about the place of plant art in present-day critical discourses, i.e. with respect to landscape architecture, bioart, and technonature.
The analyses deal with the descriptions extracted from Nad Niemnem [On the Niemen] by Eliza Orzeszkowa and Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Letters from a Journey to America] by Henryk Sienkiewicz. The studies focus on the chosen features of the descriptions of nature by referring to the textological and stylistic research methodology. Indices of parametric features (such as size, height, length, width, depth, thickness and shape) and indices of sensory feedback have been juxtaposed with one another. The analyses show that the repertoire of linguistic and stylistic devices used by E. Orzeszkowa is by and large the same as the one used by H. Sienkiewicz due to their reference to the Romantic tradition. The descriptions differ in the intensity of the mentioned indices and in their function. Sienkiewicz’s descriptions of nature are more concrete and definite, while Orzeszkowa’s are more creative, with a tendency to poeticise nature.
PL
The analyses deal with the descriptions extracted from Nad Niemnem [On the Niemen] by Eliza Orzeszkowa and Listy z podróży do Ameryki [Letters from a Journey to America] by Henryk Sienkiewicz. The studies focus on the chosen features of the descriptions of nature by referring to the textological and stylistic research methodology. Indices of parametric features (such as size, height, length, width, depth, thickness and shape) and indices of sensory feedback have been juxtaposed with one another. The analyses show that the repertoire of linguistic and stylistic devices used by E. Orzeszkowa is by and large the same as the one used by H. Sienkiewicz due to their reference to the Romantic tradition. The descriptions differ in the intensity of the mentioned indices and in their function. Sienkiewicz’s descriptions of nature are more concrete and definite, while Orzeszkowa’s are more creative, with a tendency to poeticise nature.
The author analyzes Karolina Grzywnowicz’s installation Weeds (2015): a meadow which the artist replanted from two villages in Bieszczady-whose inhabitants had been resettled in 1944-1950-into a site adjoining a street in Warsaw. The meadow was promptly mowed by the municipal services, and thus became a twofold commemoration. First, it was a deliberately created yet subtle and poetical monument to the displaced people. Second, in a manner unanticipated by the artist, it grew into a symbolic martyrdom memorial of the “green urban anarchists”: weeds in other words. The author analyzes the relationships between non-human lives and history, asking whether the marginal history of plants is ever noticed in scientific and social reflection, as well as wondering about the role of plants in commemoration and why they fail as a medium of memory.
The claim that all living creatures constitute a wholeness in the world of nature is a primary thought of the Chinese philosophy. It links both cosmological and anthropological motifs. Living creatures are interconnected and interdependent. The world of nature is tao. Tao is wholeness. The world of nature is in constant flux set by progressive cycles in which individual changes take place. When the world of nature remains stable, it reaches equilibrium. Life can develop in a harmonious way. Chinese anthropology treats the human as a microcosm of the world of nature. Man is an intermediary between Heaven and Earth and a descendant of the interpolating cosmic and earthly powers. An ideogram, found in China, presents the human figure as a tree rooted in the Earth, with hands outstretched like branches towards Heaven, deriving power from both above and below.
From a very young age till the last days of his life, Stanisław Staszic was occupied by the question of the relationship between God and Nature. In particular, the Polish thinker was interested in the vision of the world in which human life and Nature were seen in unison, in accordance with laws of reason and the outcomes of scientific investigations. His deliberations on Nature validated his monistic worldview, encompassed within a deistic general framework. Staszic pointed out many times that natural order is the creation of God, however, earthly issues are in the hands of humans. In the last years of his life he withdrew from God. He did not accept the Church’s hierarchy, while his approach to the Creator was ambivalent.
This work is to discuss the content of inspired texts concerning homosexuality. Homoeroticism was a phenomenon well-known and tolerated in the communities of the Ancient East. The authors of the Bible are opposed to the practice of homosexual acts finding them in contrary to the nature and will of God revealed in the act of creation (cf. Gen 1–2). Holiness Code defines it as “an abomination” (Lev 18,22) punishable by death (Lev 20,13). The Apostle Paul in his mission ad gentes teaches that homosexual acts are the result of human perversity which turns the truth of God into a lie. In the act of same-sex intercourse people assume roles opposite their nature, causing it to become distorted.
The starting point for the discussion presented in the article is the question whether it is possible and reasonable to distinguish the non-anthropocentric essay. The author refers to the latest genological findings, indicates why the assumed descriptive categories make it difficult to recognise that genre, and then formulates a range of counter-arguments (with a particular focus on subjectivity) and defines certain requirements for the non-anthropocentric essay. The later part of the article is devoted to the work of Michał Cichy as an example of a non-representative embodiment of that form. His essays, related to the concepts by Tim Ingold and Tadeusz Sławek, are examined from the angle of the practice of intertwining the open world, which abolishes the hitherto dominating position of the human subject and creates space for non-anthropocentric expression.
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