Existentialist Psychologist Viktor Frankl Explains How to Find Meaning in Life, No Matter What Challenges You Face. Free will often seems like nothing more than a cruel illusion. We don’t get to choose the times, places, and circumstances of our birth, nor do we have much control over the state of our states, regions, or nations. Even the few who can design conditions such that they are always secure and comfortable find themselves unavoidably subject to what Buddhists call the “divine messengers” of sickness, aging, and death. Biology may not be destiny, but it is a force more powerful than many of our best intentions. And though most of us in the West have the privilege of living far away from war zones, millions across the world face extremities we can only imagine, and to which we are not immune by any stretch.
While imprisoned, he faced what he described as “an unrelenting struggle for daily bread and for life itself.” Frankl’s primary achievement as a psychotherapist was to found the school of “logotherapy,” a successor to Freudian psychoanalysis and Adlerian individual psychology. A Fortiori Logic: Innovations, History and Assessments - Avi Sion - Google Books. Confucius and Martin Buber: Understanding Goodness | The Huffington Post. The central Confucian virtue of jen, most often rendered as “goodness,” defines the proper relation of one person to another, a relationship always articulated for Confucianism in ethical terms. Its core foundational meaning is best understood in terms of the Confucian virtue of shu, reciprocity, defined by Confucius as: “Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you” (Analects 15:23). The virtue of goodness thus occupies a critically important position within Confucian teaching. Still, how do we get a handle on the concept of “goodness,” its meaning and its actions and how it can be applied in a contemporary context?
Let me suggest a way of understanding Confucian “goodness” through an unlikely comparison — Confucius and Martin Buber. One of the great Jewish theologians of the 20th century, Martin Buber (1878-1965) proposed a unique way of describing relationships within humanity and between humanity and God. Meanwhile, what about the Confucian virtue of goodness? I and Thou: Summary. I and Thou is written as a series of long and shorter aphorisms, divided into three sections. The aphorisms within each section are arranged without any linear progression; that is, they are not supposed to be read as subsequent steps in an argument, but as related reflections. Each of the three sections taken as a whole comprises a stage in Buber's larger argument. The first part of the book examines the human condition by exploring the psychology of individual man. Here Buber establishes his crucial first premise: that man has two distinct ways of engaging the world, one of which the modern age entirely ignores.
In the second part of the book, Buber examines human life on the societal level. The fundamental concept underlying the entire work is the distinction drawn in the first section between the two modes of engaging the world. In the third section, Buber gives us his solution to modern man's woes. Martin Buber's I and Thou. Martin Buber’s I and Thou Martin Buber’s I and Thou (Ich und Du, 1923) presents a philosophy of personal dialogue, in that it describes how personal dialogue can define the nature of reality. Buber’s major theme is that human existence may be defined by the way in which we engage in dialogue with each other, with the world, and with God. According to Buber, human beings may adopt two attitudes toward the world: I-Thou or I-It. I-Thou is a relation of subject-to-subject, while I-It is a relation of subject-to-object. In the I-Thou relationship, human beings are aware of each oher as having a unity of being.
In the I-Thou relationship, human beings do not perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, but engage in a dialogue involving each other's whole being. In the I-It relationship, on the other hand, human beings perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, and view themselves as part of a world which consists of things. Buber, Martin. Buber, Martin. Martin Buber was a prominent twentieth century philosopher, religious thinker, political activist and educator. Born in Austria, he spent most of his life in Germany and Israel, writing in German and Hebrew. He is best known for his 1923 book, Ich und Du (I and Thou), which distinguishes between “I-Thou” and “I-It” modes of existence.
Often characterized as an existentialist philosopher, Buber rejected the label, contrasting his emphasis on the whole person and “dialogic” intersubjectivity with existentialist emphasis on “monologic” self-consciousness. In his later essays, he defines man as the being who faces an “other” and constructs a world from the dual acts of distancing and relating. His writing challenges Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Simmel and Heidegger, and he influenced Emmanuel Lévinas. Buber was also an important cultural Zionist who promoted Jewish cultural renewal through his study of Hasidic Judaism. Table of Contents 1. 2. A. B. C. D. E. F. 3. A. The Golden Rule. The most familiar version of the Golden Rule says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Moral philosophy has barely taken notice of the golden rule in its own terms despite the rule’s prominence in commonsense ethics. This article approaches the rule, therefore, through the rubric of building its philosophy, or clearing a path for such construction.
The approach reworks common belief rather than elaborating an abstracted conception of the rule’s logic. Working “bottom-up” in this way builds on social experience with the rule and allows us to clear up its long-standing misinterpretations. With those misconceptions go many of the rule’s criticisms. The article notes the rule’s highly circumscribed social scope in the cultures of its origin and its role in framing psychological outlooks toward others, not directing behavior. A raft of additional rationales is offered to challenge the rule’s reputation as overly idealistic and infeasible in daily life. Table of Contents 1.