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Homo Faber
''Homo faber'' () is the concept that human beings are able to control their fate and their environment as a result of the use of tools. Original phrase In Latin literature, Appius Claudius Caecus uses this term in his ''Sententiæ'', referring to the ability of man to control his destiny and what surrounds him: ''Homo faber suae quisque fortunae'' ("Every man is the artifex of his destiny"). In older anthropological discussions, ''Homo faber'', as the "working man", is confronted with ''Homo ludens'', the "playing man", who is concerned with amusements, humor, and leisure. It is also used in George Kubler's book, '' The Shape of Time'' as a reference to individuals who create works of art. Modern usage The classic ''homo faber suae quisque fortunae'' was "rediscovered" by humanists in 14th century and was central in the Italian Renaissance. In the 20th century, Max Scheler and Hannah Arendt made the philosophical concept central again. Henri Bergson also referred to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Being
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedality, bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex Human brain, brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture, and language. Humans are highly social and tend to live in complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from family, families and kinship networks to political state (polity), states. Social interactions between humans have established a wide variety of values, norm (sociology), social norms, and rituals, which bolster human society. Its intelligence and its desire to understand and influence the environment and to explain and manipulate Phenomenon, phenomena have motivated humanity's development of science, philosophy, mythology, religion, and other fields of study. Although some scientists equate the term ''humans'' with all members of the genus ''Homo'', in common usage, it generall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Creative Evolution (book)
''Creative Evolution'' (french: L'Évolution créatrice) is a 1907 book by French philosopher Henri Bergson. Its English translation appeared in 1911. The book proposed a version of orthogenesis in place of Charles Darwin, Darwin's mechanism of natural selection, suggesting that evolution is motivated by the élan vital, a "vital impetus" that can also be understood as humanity's natural creative impulse. The book was very popular in the early decades of the twentieth century. The book also developed concepts of time (offered in Bergson's earlier work) which significantly influenced modernist writers and thinkers such as Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann. For example, Bergson's term "duration" refers to a more individual, sense of time, subjective experience of time, as opposed to mathematical, objectively measurable "clock time." In ''Creative Evolution'', Bergson suggests that the experience of time as "duration" can best be understood through intuition (knowledge), intuition. Acco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concepts In Philosophical Anthropology
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by several disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts, and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences. The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach called cognitive science. In contemporary philosophy, there are at least three prevailing ways to understand what a concept is: * Concepts as mental representations, where concepts are entities that exist in the mind (mental objects) * Concepts as abilities, where concepts are abilities peculiar to cognitive agents (mental states) * Concepts as Fregean senses, where concepts are abstract objects, as opposed to mental o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Human Condition
''The Human Condition'', first published in 1958, is Hannah Arendt's account of how "human activities" should be and have been understood throughout Western history. Arendt is interested in the ''vita activa'' (active life) as contrasted with the ''vita contemplativa'' (contemplative life) and concerned that the debate over the relative status of the two has blinded us to important insights about the ''vita activa'' and the way in which it has changed since ancient times. She distinguishes three sorts of activity (labor, work, and action) and discusses how they have been affected by changes in Western history. History ''The Human Condition'' was first published in 1958. A second edition, with an introduction by Margaret Canovan, was issued in 1998. The work consists of a prologue and six parts. Structure I – The Human Condition Arendt introduces the term ''vita activa'' (active life) by distinguishing it from ''vita contemplativa'' (contemplative life). Ancient philo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artificiality
Artificiality (the state of being artificial or manmade) is the state of being the product of intentional human manufacture, rather than occurring nature, naturally through processes not involving or requiring human activity. Connotations Artificiality often carries with it the implication of being false, counterfeit, or deceptive. The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his ''Rhetoric (Aristotle), Rhetoric'': However, artificiality does not necessarily have a negative connotation, as it may also reflect the ability of humans to replicate forms or functions arising in nature, as with an artificial heart or artificial intelligence. Political scientist and artificial intelligence expert Herbert A. Simon observes that "some artificial things are imitations of things in nature, and the imitation may use either the same basic materials as those in the natural object or quite different materials.Herbert A. Simon, ''The Sciences of the Artificial'' (1996), p. 4. Simon distinguishes between ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Alternative Names For The Human Species
In addition to the generally accepted taxonomic name ''Homo sapiens'' (Latin: "sapient human", Linnaeus 1758), other Latin-based names for the human species have been created to refer to various aspects of the human character. The common name of the human species in English is historically ''man'' (from Germanic), often replaced by the Latinate ''human'' (since the 16th century). In the world's languages The Indo-European languages have a number of inherited terms for mankind. The etymon of ''man'' is found in the Germanic languages, and is cognate with ''Manu'', the name of the human progenitor in Hindu mythology, and found in Indic terms for "man" (''manuṣya, manush, manava'' etc.). Latin ''homo'' is derived from an Indo-European root '' dʰǵʰm-'' "earth", as it were "earthling". It has cognates in Baltic (Old Prussian ''zmūi''), Germanic (Gothic ''guma'') and Celtic (Old Irish ''duine''). This is comparable to the explanation given in the Genesis narrative to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Frisch
Max Rudolf Frisch (; 15 May 1911 – 4 April 1991) was a Swiss playwright and novelist. Frisch's works focused on problems of identity, individuality, responsibility, morality, and political commitment. The use of irony is a significant feature of his post-war output. Frisch was one of the founders of Gruppe Olten. He was awarded the 1965 Jerusalem Prize, the 1973 Grand Schiller Prize, and the 1986 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Biography Early years Frisch was born in 1911 in Zürich, Switzerland, the second son of Franz Bruno Frisch, an architect, and Karolina Bettina Frisch (née Wildermuth). He had a sister, Emma (1899–1972), his father's daughter by a previous marriage, and a brother, Franz, eight years his senior (1903–1978). The family lived modestly, their financial situation deteriorating after the father lost his job during the First World War. Frisch had an emotionally distant relationship with his father, but was close to his mother. While at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homo Faber (novel)
''Homo Faber'' (german: Homo faber. Ein Bericht) is a novel by Swiss author Max Frisch, first published in Germany in 1957. The first English translation was published in Britain in 1959. The novel is written as a first-person narrative. The protagonist, Walter Faber, is a successful engineer traveling throughout Europe and the Americas on behalf of UNESCO. His world view based on logic, probability, and technology is challenged by a series of incredible coincidences as his repressed past and chance occurrences come together to break up his severely rational, technically oriented ideology. Plot During the 1930s, Walter Faber, who works at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich ( ETH Zurich), meets the art student Hanna. The two become lovers, and one day Hanna reveals that she is pregnant. Faber asks her to marry him, but she hesitates. Faber receives an offer from Escher Wyss to work in Baghdad and he accepts it; he and Hanna split up. Before his departure, Faber asks ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information, and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context. Intelligence is most often studied in humans but has also been observed in both non-human animals and in plant intelligence, plants despite controversy as to whether some of these forms of life exhibit intelligence. Intelligence in computers or other machines is called artificial intelligence. Etymology The word ''wikt:intelligence#English, intelligence'' derives from the Latin nouns ''wikt:intelligentia, intelligentia'' or ''wikt:intellectus, intellēctus'', which in turn stem from the verb ''wikt:intelligere, intelligere'', to comprehend or perceive. In the Middle Ages, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson Le Roy, who also succeeded to Bergson at the ''Académie française'' and was a fervent Catholic, extended to Revelation, revealed truth his conventionalism, leading him to privilege faith, heart and sentiment to dogmas, speculative theology and abstract reasoning. Like Bergson's, his writings were placed on the Index by the Vatican. Debate with Albert Einstein In 1922, Bergson's book ''Durée et simultanéité, a propos de la theorie d'Einstein'' (''Duration and Simultaneity: Bergson and the Einsteinian Universe'') was published. Earlier that year, Albert Einstein had come to the French Society of Philosophy and briefly replied to a short speech made by Bergson. It has been alleged that Bergson's knowledge of physics was insufficient and that the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Appius Claudius Caecus
Appius Claudius Caecus ( 312–279 BC) was a statesman and writer from the Roman Republic. The first Roman public figure whose life can be traced with some historical certainty, Caecus was responsible for the building of Rome's first road (the Appian Way) and first aqueduct (the Aqua Appia), as well as instigating controversial popular-minded reforms. He is also credited with the authorship of a juristic treatise, a collection of moral essays, and several poems, making him one of Rome's earliest literary figures. A patrician of illustrious lineage, Caecus first came to prominence with his election to the position of censor in 312 BC, which he held for five years. During Caecus's time in office, aside from his building projects, he introduced several controversial but poorly-understood constitutional reforms: he increased the voting power of the poor and landless in the legislative assemblies, and admitted lower-class citizens to the Roman Senate, though these measures wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. Arendt was born in Linden, which later became a district of Hanover, in 1906, to a Jewish family. When she was three, her family moved to Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia, so that her father's syphilis could be treated. Paul Arendt had contracted the disease in his youth, and it was thought to be in remission when Arendt was born. He died when she was seven. Arendt was raised in a politically progressive, secular family; her mother was an ardent supporter of the Social Democrats. After completing secondary education in Berlin, Arendt studied at the University of Marburg under Martin Heidegger, with whom she had a four-year affair. She obtained her doctorate in philosophy writing on ''Love and Saint Augustine'' at the University of Heidelberg in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
