Materialism from Hobbes to Locke

This introduction presents the project of the book, to examine the seventeenth-century debate about materialism that began with the work of Thomas Hobbes. Among those who responded directly to Hobbes, the book focuses on Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Margaret Cavendish. The introduction and book then look at John Locke’s discussion of materialism in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which draws on and responds to that earlier discussion. A central question for all these philosophers is whether human minds are material. They also consider whether animal minds are material, and whether God is. Other philosophical issues, including theories of substance and of the nature of ideas, are repeatedly involved in the discussion. The relation of these discussions to the work of René Descartes is noted.

Gastric ulcers or the peptic ulcer is the primary disease that affects the gastrointestinal system. A large extent of the population in the world are suffering from the disease, and the age group of people those who suffer from ulcers are 20-55years. Herbs are known to the human beings that are useful in the treatment of diseases, and there are a lot of scientific investigations that prove the pharmacological activity of herbal drugs. Practitioners have been using the herbal material to treat the ulcers successfully, and the same had been reported scientifically. Numerous publications have been made that proves the antiulcer activity of the plants around the world. The tablets were investigated for the antiulcer activity in two doses 200 and 400mg/kg in albino Wistar rats in the artificial ulcer those are induced by the ethanol. The prepared tablets showed a better activity compared to the standard synthetic drug and the marketed ayurvedic formulation. The tablets showed a dose-dependent activity in ulcer prevention and treatment. Many synthetic drugs are available for the ulcer treatment, and the drugs pose the other problems in the body by showing the side effects and some other reactions. This limits the use of synthetic drugs to treat ulcers effectively. Herbs are known to the human beings that are useful in the treatment of diseases, and there are a lot of scientific investigations that prove the pharmacological activity of herbal drugs.

The human mind has phased out its traditional anchorage in a natural biological basis (the «reasons of the body» which even Spinoza’s Ethics could count on) – an anchorage that had determined, for at least two millennia, historically familiar forms of culture and civilisation. Increasingly emphasising its intellectual disembodiment, it has come to the point of establishing in a completely artificial way the normative conditions of social behaviour and the very ontological collocation of human beings in general. If in the past ‘God’ was the name that mythopoietic activity had assigned to the world’s overall moral order, which was reflected onto human behaviour, now the progressive freeing of the mind – by way of the intellectualisation of life and technology – from the natural normativity which was previously its basic material reference opens up unforeseen vistas of power. Freedom of the intellect demands (or so one believes) the full artificiality of the normative human order in the form of an artificial logos, and precisely qua artificial, omnipotent. The technological icon of logos (which postmodern dispersion undermines only superficially) definitively unseats the traditional normative, sovereign ‘God’ of human history as he has been known till now. Our West has been irreversibly marked by this process, whose results are as devastating as they are inevitable. The decline predicted a century ago by old Spengler is here served on a platter....

There are two aspects of the hermeneutic: the receptive and the creative. The receptive of the hermeneutic consists in coming to know and acknowledge what has happened, observing what there is as historically effected, foretelling what will happen as a matter of projection of future possibilities, and disclosing / discovering transcendental conditions, fore-structures or horizons of human understanding and interpretation; the creative of the hermeneutic, on the other hand, consists in realizing and demonstrating human sensibilities and human capabilities and needs, conceptualizing what is factual and real based on human cognitive and volitional faculties and experiences, developing values and pursuing regulative ideals of actions, and searching for best possible ways or methods to reach for individual and communal end-goals which will enhance human beings as autonomous entities and moral agents in the world. The receptive is represented by the phenomenological approach to Being and reality whereas the creative is conveyed by an ontology of reflection of human being for self-definition and self-cultivation of human faculties. This amounts to bringing out an existing distinction between ming (what is imparted) and li (the presupposed ground) on the one hand and xing ( human potentiality for being in oneself) and xin (human understanding and interpretation toward action) on the other in the tradition of Confucian metaphysics.Next, I shall focus on Heidegger and Gadamer as taking ontological receptivity (as a matter of fore-structures of Being or Language of human understanding) as the source of meaning of existence and meaningfulness of texts. Th ere are of course creative elements to be identifi ed with forming investigative projects of the Dasein for disclosing truth of the Being, but the main tone is to realize the Being or Language as base structures of our hermeneutic consciousness or hermeneutic space of understanding. Because of spacelimitation, however, I shall leave to another occasion the discussion of the creative formation and positive projection of a transformative cosmological philosophy in the Yijing tradition as represented in my onto-hermeneutics which takes experiences of ≫comprehensive observation≪ (guan) and ≫feeling- refl ection≪ (gan) as two avenues toward human understanding and hermeneutic enterprise of interpretation.

Human beings are so fragile and impatient that they are easily subjected on emotional basis. It is in human nature that they empathise everything that emotionally attach with them. Emotion plays a vital role in the entire world of human relationship. It is not inept to note here that our thoughts are often forms the core of our actions. It reflects the framework of our psychology greatly. There are instances in the world of living where one work affects because of the mood of a person. Deliberately, the writers across the world develop and circle their thoughts around emotional balance of human beings in various points. They successfully stress the effect of a particular crisis and it’s outcomes on human mind. The present research paper deals with the effects of such crisis on the lives of human being who are deeply engulfed in their normal life. The study is a sincere endeavour to bring to the fore a serious effect of Nepali-a politically motivated-uprising on the common man living peacefully, amicably in harmony with nature.

Contradictions of Modernity. Conflicting Configurations and Societal Thinking in Grundtvig's »The Human Being in the World«A Worm - a God. About the Human Being in the World. Ove Korsgaard (ed.). With contributions of Niels Buur Hansen, Hans Hauge, Bosse Bergstedt, Uffe Jonas and Knud Bjarne Gjesing. Odense Universitetsforlag 1997.By Henning EichbergIn 1817, Grundtvig wrote »Om Mennesket i Verden« which can be regarded as a key to the understanding of his philosophy and psychology, but which is difficult to place in relation to his later folkelig, societal engagement. A recent reedition of this text together with some actual comments by Grundtvig researchers is an occasion to quest deeper about this relation.However, it is not enough to ask - as Grundtvig research has done for a long time - what Grundtvig wanted to say, but his text can be regarded as a document of how modem orientation in the world is characterized by conflicting linguistic and metaphorical patterns, which sometimes may tell another story than intended.On the one hand, Grundtvig's text speaks of a lot of dualistic contradictions such as life vs. death, light vs. darkness, truth vs. lie, God vs. devil, human fall vs. resurrection, body vs. spirit, nature vs. history and time vs. eternity. In contrast to the author's intention to produce clarity and lucidity - whether in the spirit of Christianity or of modem rationality - the binary constructions give rather a confusing picture of systematical disorder where polarity and polemics are mixed, antagonism and gradual order, dichotomy and exclusive either-or, paradoxes and dialectical contradictions. On the other hand,Grundtvig tries again and again to build up three-pole imaginations as for instance the threefold human relation to time, space and truth and the three ages of spiritual seeing, feeling and conceptualization resp. of mythology (childhood), theology (youth) and history (adult age). The main history, Grundtvig wants to tell in his text, is built up around the trialectic relation of the human being to the body, to the spirit and to itself, to the living soul.The most difficult to understand in this relation seems to be what Grundtvig calls the spirit, Aanden. Grundtvig describes it as Aandigt Samfund mellem Menneske og Sandhed, »the spiritual community between the human being and the truth«, and this may direct our attention towards samfund, meaning at the same time association, togetherness and society. Aanden is described by threefold effects - will, conscience and faith, all of them describing social relations between human beings resp. their psychological correlate. The same social undertone is true when Grundtvig characterizes three Aande-Livets Spor (»traces of spiritual life«): the word, the history and love. If »the spirit« represents what is larger or »higher« than the single human being and what cannot be touched by his or her hand, then this definition fits exactly to society or the sociality of the human being. Social life - whether understood as culture, social identity or folk (people) - is not only a quantitative sum of human individuals, but represents another quality of natural order. Thus it has its logic that Grundtvig places the human being in between the realms of minerals, plant and animal life on the one hand and the »higher« order on the other, which can be understood as the social existence.In this respect, the societal dimension is not at all absent in his philosophy of 1817. However, it is not enough to state the implicite presence of sociality as such in the earlier Grundtvigian thinking before his folkelig break-through. What was the sociality, more concretely, which Grundtvig experienced during the early modernity? In general, highly dichotomous concepts are dominating the modem discourse as capitalism vs. feudalism, materialism vs. idealism, modernity vs. premodemity, democracy vs. absolutism or revolution vs. restoration; Grundtvig was always difficult to place into these patterns. Again, it might be helpful to try a trialectical approach, transcending the dualism of state and market by civil society as a third field of social action. Indeed, it was civil society with its farmers' anarchist undertones which became the contents of Grundtvig's later folk engagement.

It is knowledge and emotion that haunt human society. From the day the world appeared until the day the world ended, knowledge and emotion existed. According to Thiruvalluvar, knowledge that calms the emotion in his kural. Meyppatu are manifestations of mental consciousness. Tholkkappiyar has numbered the emotions that appear in the human mind in his epic Tholkkappiyam in Chapter Porulathigaaram. He has analyzed the emotions that appear within him in a way that others can know and understand very accurately (Meyppatu). They are eight types of emotions that apply to all human beings in the world. Meyppatu are the expression of human instincts. This dissertation aims to find out how the poetic enlightenment has been manipulated in the poetic epistemology of the numerical facts stated in the economics of Tholkappiam the fact of the matter is that consciousness is an emotional state that paves the way for human happiness. Any living being born into the world wants to be happy. Therefore, the researcher has used the poems of Arivumathi to prove this fact.

Stress management refers to the development of certain psychological and physiological mechanisms that can be learned to reduce the side effects of human body and mind. According to Richard Lazarus and Susan Folk Men, when a person has few resources to reach a goal and the work to be done is too much, then he gets stressed. Research by Walter Cannon and Hans Salleay found that stress has negative effects on the body and mind. It is necessary for every human being to learn the techniques of stress management in order to live a satisfying, balanced and happy life. One of these techniques is the use of music. According to Jain Collingwood, music has such unique power that it reduces stress by affecting us emotionally. The melody of music makes the human mind happy, the lyrics of the song inspire the person and the heart likes the rhythm. Music affects all humans. The tradition of singing and dancing with different instruments in different languages ​​and dialects has been found in all the societies of the world, that is, music provides universal joy. तनाव प्रबंधन का अर्थ कुछ ऐसी मनेावैज्ञानिक और शारीरिक क्रियाआंे की प्रणाली विकसित करने से है जिन्हें सीख कर मनुष्य के शरीर और मन पर पडने वाले दुष्प्रभावोें को कम किया जा सकता है। रिचर्ड लज़ारस तथा सुसैन फोक मेन के अनुसार जब मनुष्य के पास किसी लक्ष्य तक पहुंचने के लिए संसाधन कम होते है और पूरे किये जाने वाले काम बहुत अधिक होते है तो उसे तनाव होता है। वाॅल्टर कैनन तथा हैन्स सेल्ये ने मनुष्यों तथा प्राणियों पर किये गये शोध मे पाया कि तनाव शरीर और मन पर नकारात्मक प्रभाव डालता है। प्रत्येक मनुष्य के लिए यह आवश्यक है कि वह संतोषप्रद, संतुलित और सुखी जीवन जीने के लिये तनाव प्रबंधन की तकनीके सीखे। इन्हीं तकनीको मे से एक है संगीत का उपयोग। जैन कालिंगवुड के अनुसार संगीत मे एैसी अनोखी शक्ति होती है जो कि हमें भावनात्मक रूप से प्रभावित कर तनाव को कम करती है। संगीत की स्वर लहरियाँ मनुष्य के मन को आनंदित करती हैं गीत के बोल व्यक्ति को प्रेरित करते हैं तथा लय मन को अच्छी लगती है। सभी मनुष्यों को संगीत प्रभावित करता है। विश्व के सभी समाजों मंे भिन्न - भिन्न भाषाओं और बोलियों में विभिन्न वाद्यों के साथ गाने तथा नृत्य करने की परंपरा पाई गई है अर्थात् संगीत सार्वभौमिक रूप से आनन्द प्रदान करता है।

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae proposed a theory of everything. Like other Presocratics, Anaxagoras addressed topics that could now be placed outside the sphere of philosophical inquiry: not only did he explore metaphysics and the nature of human understanding but he also offered explanations in physics, meteorology, astronomy, physiology, and biology. His aim seems to have been to explain as completely as possible the world in which human beings live, and one's knowledge of that world; thus he seeks to investigate the universe from top to bottom. This article explores Anaxagoras's world from its basic foundations. It undertakes to show the connections among the metaphysical, epistemological, and cosmological parts of Anaxagoras's theory. The discovery and publication of new material has also enhanced the understanding of Presocratic thought. A spectacular example is the new material from Empedocles of Acragas that has become available.

In the classical age, everything finds its place in a class of things; all classes are ordered; taxonomy represents the order of the world. Discussion of space exemplifies the transition to the world as a table. Descartes and Leibniz advanced a relational conception of space, while Newton held space to function as a container. This transition in conditions of thought affected the way people thought about the “person” who rules and is subject to rule. While Hugo Grotius’s De jure belli ac pacis conveys a Renaissance sensibility, it adapts a medieval-Aristotelian stance on human faculties to suit moral persons, including political bodies. Pufendorf furthered the Grotian position by positing the natural equality of human beings and working out the idea that rights among equals imply correlative duties. In Leviathan, Hobbes located “artificial persons” in an equally artificial setting to illustrate the logic of rule over territory as a contained space.