Earticle

The tree of knowledge, which is said by the Bible to have existed in Eden, has often been often interpreted as that of knowledge of good and evil. Among many knowledges, the knowledge of sex was archaically considered the primitively predominant one in that it was the first one which mankind could observe to perceive in one’s naked eyes. The picking of the forbidden tree of knowledge and thus sex and life has been reinterpreted, however, as the cause of death; hence the negative attitude and superficial down-play of knowledge and over-appreciation of wisdom in Western culture. Behind this paradoxical notion lies the phenomenological observation that where life is, death there is. Snake, actually the godly master of knowledge tree in ancient Christian as well as Sumero-Babylonian Western culture, has undergone such negative transformation: Lordly snake was transformed to Satan and sometimes perceived as Eve and curiously became a death agent/giver. If snake has been regarded as the agent of evil and death, it is mainly because it was associated as the emblem of pagan god. However, the revisionary reading of snake and knowledge gives us wholly different notion of them. The acceptance of knowledge that not only Sumerian Enki and Greek Zeus but also Christian YHWH and sometimes even Jesus himself have been personified as snake reflects the idea that snake was originally an amblematic animal of life. The trite phenomenological notion that we have death because we have life is proven to be one of ex post facto reasoning, or post hoc ergo propter fallacy. With the insightful idea that snake was simultaneously a symbol of death and life, one can step closer to the uroboric realization that life entails death and death again is life. The acceptance of snake as a symbol of knowledge and wisdom, together with the consequential realization that there is no wisdom which is not based upon knowledge and that neither can be separated from each other, directs us to the spiritual awakening and healing consolation that one may regard death as a preparatory process of a different new life. Snake thus tells us that when one can fully meet death, one can have a good and hearty life.

From his practice of Zen meditation Peter Matthiessen learned how to see things as they really are. His Zen way of seeing is reflected in his use of spareness in Far Tortuga. First, Matthiessen tries to present things directly, using simple sentences and avoiding any figurative language in his effort to capture reality as it is. Furthermore, he tries to bring the novel's setting into life through his creative use of spare, empty space, even using white spaces on the printed page. Second, he introduces an idea of spareness into his effort to simplify and clarify the complex issues surrounding the ecological crisis in the Cayman Islands. Third, while his criticism is directed against America as the real cause of the ecological disaster in the region, it is never dealt directly in the novel. Instead, he focuses on its destructive impact on the region, rather effectively leaving it out in the empty and spare space of the text. This helps the reader to see the source of the disaster in a fresh way, to call into question it. In Far Tortuga, Matthiessen successfully shows how spareness helps eliminate any inessential element in his effort to let things speak for themselves.

Zadie Smith’s 2005 novel On Beauty has been generally regarded as a satire of the academic world. Some critics argue that in On Beauty, most male intellectuals fail to achieve its cosmopolitan ideal since the presumed normative hierarchy within the intellectual mind excludes those outside of the main discourse. While partly accepting this argument, this study focuses on the women’s formation of cosmopolitan identities represented in the novel. In this paper, it is argued that Smith’s female characters successfully re-conceptualize the notion of beauty as a feminist, cosmopolitan value, thereby disrupting the unequal social relations present in a stratified cultural system. Here, much attention will be directed to the values that have been traditionally thought of as private and domestic, whose primary concern is to connect a particular cultural experience to that of another, developing a meaningful relationship across boundaries.

The paper explores, examines and reinterprets the text Hamlet from a psychoanalytic point of view that has been suggested but has not been explored in detail. The paper tries to discern whether the actions of Hamlet truly qualifies as a revenge or if the associated tragic connotations are simply from family fallouts, disagreements and misunderstandings that lead to subsequent tragic actions due to Hamlet’s oedipal complex. Hamlet’s obsession and his self-indulgence seems to be key to his ‘actions’ in the play. The paper shows as to why Hamlet should be regarded as a story about petty ‘revenge’ and as to why Hamlet as a traditional tragic hero fails, based on the arguments on the actuality of the Ghost not to mention the actuality of the circumstantial situation represented Hamlet is not a traditional tragic hero for the simple reason that he does not satisfy the aesthetical reasons to be labeled a traditional tragic hero because the reasons for his actions are more for personal satisfaction then noble or honorable. Finally, Hamlet is a personnel vendetta story, a Prince who takes vengeance for something that he cannot posses, mainly his mother. The Oedipal complex is why and where the tragedy starts and ends in Hamlet. It is not something that is Epical in nature but personnel.

Today's crisis in humanities is no other than the crisis of humanities in modern universities. This crisis, however, is also related to the current situation in which knowledge is separated from practice, and intellect, from emotion. A harmony between intellect and emotion is necessary for an ideal human life and to understand the nature of joy in Confucianism can be conducive to such a harmony. In a way, Confucianism is about how to realize humanity (jen) through the change and practice of the subject in his earnest efforts to become a sage. On the one hand, Confucianism emphasizes the importance of mindfulness and the resulting hardships; on the other hand, it speaks of the state of true joy that a human can experience through the practice of mindfulness. In other words, while Confucianism puts emphasis on human efforts to lead a moral life even in the middle of economic hardships, it also talks about how a human can experience joy out of encountering the origin of existence or out of his harmonious relationship with nature. Although these two aspects appear different from each other, they are closely interconnected and the Confucian poet-philosopher Toegye is a prime example. While laying much importance on the practice of mindfulness, he also wrote many poems about the true joy a man is to experience when he encounters the origin of existence or has a harmonious relationship with nature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Spinoza’s theory of emotion and its therapeutic implications. To put it concretely, I shall examine the relation between affect and reason as expounded in Ethics and then draw its therapeutical implications in philosophical contexts. As can be witnessed in his method of demonstration in geometric order, Spinoza’s philosophy is totally different from Descartes’ in style as well as in metaphysics. Descartes’ metaphysics is substance dualism whereas Spinoza’s can be summed up as monism and dual aspects theory. The primary characteristic of Spinoza’s theory of emotion lies in that it considers affect and reason as different aspects of the same individual; that it does not distinguish between them as Descartes does, which is, after all, a logical implication of his double aspect theory. The second characteristic of Spinoza’s theory of emotion is that it explains the relation between reason and aspect through the notion of conatus, the individual’s instinct of preserving himself. Conatus is a logical source of emotion and affect, and accordingly, emotion contains rational elements and can manage affect in Spinoza’s philosophy. For Spinoza, affect is bodily as well as mental, so we cannot escape from negative affect unless we scrutinize it. The paper proceeds as follows. I shall deal with Spinoza’s metaphysical concepts such as substance, attribute, and mode in comparison with Descartes’ counterparts. I shall then examine Spinoza’s theory of emotion and its contents, including the list of forty-eight emotions, and its nature of embodied cognition. Next, I shall discuss the therapeutic implications of Spinoza’s theory of emotion such as therapeutic principles and technics, especially in the frame of philosophical therapy as well as cognitive therapy and rational emotive behavior therapy.