part, I propose appropriate ontological and epistemological notions, as well as the societal aspects pertaining to contemporary public health. Ideas of Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt, and the “social quality theory” are introduced to propose notions for
Search Results
Toward Comprehensive Conceptualizations of Contemporary Public Health
Participation as the Cornerstone of Appropriate Methodologies
Harry Nijhuis
In The International Journal of Social Quality
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 60–84 (25 total)
Towards a Historical Ontology of Violence
Yusuf Has
My aim in this article is to move the problematic of violence and its role in politics to a historico-ontological plane. I propose a perspective that breaks with the dominant subjectivist concept of human violence and its metaphysical foundations, which fail to distinguish this concept from that of aggression. According to this perspective, we are already in the field of violence in our everyday social existence, regardless of our personal choices or intentions, the sources of which are systemic. The ontological essence of this systemic violence lies in the fact that it is not external to human subjects but is engraved in their very social being by penetrating into the discourses, practices and frames of mind that make up their historical disposition, which makes it in many instances harder to escape than subjective violence. What I call from this ontological perspective the 'violence of closure' has the effect ultimately of suppressing the possibilities of social being open to human beings in their given historical situation, by normalising the existing way of social and political existence, and closing them off to alternatives. I argue that to this violence of closure must be opposed the violence of dis-closure, which, in its various particular intellectual and practical forms, can open up human social existence to its repressed possibilities.
Ontologies and Politics of Biogenomic 'Race'
Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther and Jonathan Michael Kaplan
All eyes are turned towards genomic data and models as the source of knowledge about whether human races exist or not. Will genomic science make the final decision about whether racial realism (e.g. racial population naturalism) or anti-realism (e.g. racial scepticism) is correct? We think not. The results of even our best and most impressive genomic technologies under-determine whether biogenomic races exist, or not. First, different sub-disciplines of biology interested in population structure employ distinct concepts, aims, measures and models, producing cross-cutting categorisations of population subdivisions rather than a single, universal biogenomic concept of 'race.' Second, within each sub-discipline (e.g. phylogenetics, conservation biology), genomic results are consistent with, and map multiply to, racial realism and anti-realism. Indeed, racial ontologies are constructed conventionally, rather than discovered. We thus defend a constructivist conventionalism about biogenomic racial ontology. Choices and conventions must always be made in identifying particular kinds of groups. Political agendas, social programmes, and moral questions premised on the existence of naturalistic race should accept that no scientifically grounded racial ontology is forthcoming, and adjust presumptions, practices and projects accordingly.
Online Supplement A
Jean-Paul Gagnon
SUPPLEMENT A
2,234 Descriptions of Democracy: An Update to Democracy’s Ontological Pluralism
Online Supplement B
Jean-Paul Gagnon
SUPPLEMENT B
2,234 Descriptions of Democracy: An Update to Democracy’s Ontological Pluralism
Online Supplement C
Jean-Paul Gagnon
SUPPLEMENT C
2,234 Descriptions of Democracy: An Update to Democracy’s Ontological Pluralism
Evolutionary Thermodynamics and Theory of Social Quality as Links between Physics, Biology, and the Human Sciences
Jaap Westbroek, Harry Nijhuis, and Laurent van der Maesen
uncovering truth about reality in mathematical formulas. Because the ontology of physics is grounded on the reversibility of time, it is able to reproduce experimental research without the influence of events in time. All other sciences, however, are based on
In The International Journal of Social Quality
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 57–86 (30 total)
Searching for a New Way of Thinking about Society
A Noospheric Social Quality Orientation for Development toward Sustainability
Vyacheslav Nikolayevitch Bobkov and Nikolay Vyacheslavovich Bobkov
associations, viewed qualitatively, are the architects of societal life. In any society, many separate individuals and community groups differ in their orientation and realization of their quality of life. The ontological assumptions underlying this
In The International Journal of Social Quality
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 73–91 (19 total)
Contradictory Concepts
An Essay on the Semantic Structure of Religious Discourses
Lucian Hölscher
The widespread opinion among conceptual historians is that political concepts are always contested in their actual usage. Religious concepts in modernity are also not only contested; they are constructed on an ontological contradiction. They imply that the object to which they refer exists, and at the same time that it does not. I demonstrate this idea using four religious concepts: religion, God, the beyond, and spirit. I conclude with discussion on the reality status of religious concepts in modern historiography and religious studies.
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2015
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 69–88 (20 total)
Eternity and Print
How Medieval Ideas of Time Influenced the Development of Mechanical Reproduction of Texts and Images
Bennett Gilbert
created that it “emanates.” Plotinus flattens the process of creation: as emanation it is a strictly rational development of the ontologically dependent many out of the absolutely simple One and not at all a temporal process. 26 Gregory will stand for
In Contributions to the History of Concepts
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2020
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 1–21 (21 total)