Individual and Society

As a result of focusing on other themes, anthropology hasn’t developed sophisticated theoretical tools to analyse individuals. The philosopher Ernst Tugendhat has proposed a theory of the individual. In this article, the author tries to fathom in how far Tugendhat provides a useful template for an anthropology of the individual. In view of this aim, the author tests Tugendhat’s theory with empirical anthropological studies, in which individuals play a major role, and with Albert Piette’s writings on the individual. By confronting Tugendhat with these anthropological writers, he shows that Tugendhat’s theory covers a significant part of how anthropologists perceive the individual, but he also identifies those points in Tugendhat’s theory that might need to be elaborated further. Finally, the author tries to show that explicit reflection on the nature of individuals enables anthropologists to give more differentiated accounts of individuals.

The book is dedicated to Holy Scripture, Traditional Culture, Moral Law and Theology of Human Worship. Religious Faith in Supreme Value of Human, Open Religion or Human Worship is the eternal Open-Soul religion and contemporary spiritual movement of creating the God by Self-Believing, Self-Confidence and Self-Ownership of every mind of Universe realized as Human Soul in the center of all fullness of being. Considering God as Human continuation to infinity, Human-Worshippers understand Supreme Value of Human as sacred unity of Human and eternal Universe. Religious studies characterize Open Religion as "a kind of religious pacifism" because of tradition of respect and admission of all Religions and Philosophies in the world, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Animism, Magic, Humanism, Skepticism and Atheism, seeking elements of Human Worship in every Culture. With bless of God, the book compiled and published by Yurii Sheliazhenko, Soul Society of Universe Faith Keeper, Head of Open Religion Institute.

This article presents a reading of Mill in which his view of self is social rather than individualistic. I will provide criticisms of the radically-individualist interpretations of Mill offered by John Gray, R. P. Anschutz, and Robert Wolff. Gray and Anschutz get Mill wrong from the right, and Wolff gets Mill wrong from the left. Mill's individualism has at times been overstated, leading to a neglect of the importance that he places on positive community influence of moral agents. This heavy emphasis on individual detachment can lead to an (intended or not) impression that Mill's individual is thoroughly atomistic. An overemphasis on the individualism in Mill neglects the importance of community's role in nurturing the individual to be united with fellow citizens, to develop sympathetic affections, and to be integrated into a unified web of corroborative associations.

The article aims to be theoretical, and to consider the impact of the word «ontology» in anthropology. I will start from an observation of religious worship, in which at least humans, various objects and a divinity are present, as well as actions, movements, statements, perceptions and various thoughts. I shall then try to use the word «ontology» on at least two different levels: on the one hand, to describe entities, the presence of which must be assumed if the situation is to remain consistent, and on the other hand, to focus on what really exists, beyond what people do and say. Finally, I will explore the advantage of this «realist» point of view.

The paper aims to reconstruct and analyze the model established by Kant between 1784 and 1797 concerning the Church-State relationship. We will start by considering Kant’s essays of 1784, in order to understand why the conflict between the public and private use of reason particularly affects the figure of the clergyman. Then, we will show that Kant’s view on the relationship between Church and State expresses the necessity for the ethical community to keep together two apparently conflicting aspects: the unconditioned necessity of each member to follow the interior moral legislation, and the conditioned necessity to play a role in the political community as a juridical subject. Finally, we will focus on how Kant’s model, insofar as it is shaped by the concept of reconciliation, could be taken as either positively or negatively paradigmatic for two key authors of German idealism,
namely, Fichte and Hegel.

In this theoretical article, the author examines the rarely discussed but ubiquitous references to relations in anthropology. Research themes, explicatory concepts, work methods: everything seems to pass through relations. But is this not too much? And what about the existence of each human singu- larity, each individual? Does this not risk being absorbed by this excess of relationism? The author offers a critical evaluation of relationism and invites us to observe human existence, presented as a theme, concept and method associated with anthropological knowledge.

For decades, an essay of the same name by the historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler was decisive for the relationship between historical science and psychoanalysis, at least within Germany and on a theoretical level - with the fatal consequence that Wehler's argumentation was guided by the highly contestable assumption of an exclusive relationship between psychoanalysis, which allegedly proceeds purely in terms of individual psychology, and historical social science, which is primarily interested in collective diagnoses, which considerably impeded the dialogue between the disciplines. Yet an alternative theoretical model was already available at the time Wehler's essay was published: Norbert Elias's sociology of figuration, which was strongly influenced by psychoanalysis and group therapy, could have shown social science-oriented historical research a way to investigate the network of relationships between individual and 'collective' psychological processes without artificial dichotomies. Admittedly, Elias's theory of civilization, for its part, does not sufficiently take into account the moment of a collective or social unconscious. Therefore, after a critique of Wehler's critique and an appreciation of Elias's model, this essay is devoted to those approaches that attempt to explore and conceptually define a supra-individual unconscious.

Sucharita Dutta-Asane is an upcoming talent in the Indian short-story circle and it's easy to see why. With her lyrical writing style and empathetic approach to social flaws and topics that are taboo, she creates stories from seemingly everyday occurrences that still make the reader pause and reflect. Dutta-Asane is an independent editor and short-story writer and her stories have been published in anthologies across the world, earning her several awards. Even though the stories have been culled from uncommon human experiences, they are hauntingly familiar because they are coming from the perspective of characters who we all have met either in person or know through someone else.

"The extremely high level of individuation in humans is a major anthropological fact ... Other living species do not possess it to such a high degree, to the level that defines consciousness of the self, awareness of existing as singular, regardless of any psychological, social or cultural slant that could be placed on that individuality. It is oxymoronic of anthropology as the science of human beings to homogenise these units socioculturally, since the characteristic feature of existence is that it is implacably private and singular." (Albert Piette, The Volume of Being).

This paper has been the object of a discussion forum, in  Open Anthropology Cooperative (February 2016) started and organised by Huon Wardle. To read the discussion : http://openanthcoop.ning.com/forum/topics/the-volume-of-being-an-upcoming-oac-seminar-in-february

Resumo: Ação que intencionaliza a construcionalidade humana de acordo com um arcabouço paradigmático institucionalizado pela sociedade (ou melhor, através de uma de suas classes ou segmentos, em nome dela), o processo formativo-educacional tende a atribuir caráter preeminente à constitutividade do ser social ou a absolutizar a estruturalização individual, cujas vertentes o texto em questão aborda, ilustrando a primeira através do pensamento de Durkheim e recorrendo a Rousseau para exemplificar a segunda, embora até mesmo nesta haja um rastro de prerrogativas que esboçam a silhueta do cidadão, arquétipo
não circunscrito àquela, mas que pode emergir, e emerge, guardando relacionalidade com a contextualidade sociocultural (e consequencialmente política, econômica, histórica), como o
demonstra Bourdieu.

Abstract: Action that intencionaliza human construcionalidade according to a institutionalized framework paradigm society [or rather through one of their classes or segments, in her name], the formative-educational process tends to assign preeminent character to be constitutivity social or absolutizing structuralization individual whose strands text in question covers illustrating the first by thinking of Durkheim and Rousseau to illustrate using the second, although even in this there is a trail of prerogatives that outline the silhouette citizen, not limited to that archetype, but that may emerge, emerge, guarding relatedness with the socio-cultural contextuality [of consequence and policy
economic, historical], as shown by Bourdieu.