Browsing by Subject "Human"

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Open Access
Ecological rift and human alienation from nature: a materialistic understanding
(University of North Bengal, 2024-03) Terence Samuel, M. P.
A deep chasm is felt in the relation between nature and human due to excessive depletion of nature with the aid of modern technological advances that coincide with the capitalist growth process. The chasm is described by John Bellamy Foster as ‘ecological rift’. With the growing awareness about the ecological rift, the environmentalists try to address the issue in various ways –ranging from the advocacy of moralistic use of nature by humans to the minimal/austere use of nature, from gazing back on the conceptions and use of natural resources by the pre-modern and indigenous communities to the suggestions about transplanting them in the present epoch, and from the advocacy of preservation of natural resources to the consideration of nature as a separate entity that needs the positive intervention of humans to restore its pristine growth. However, what is lacking in such future-oriented prescriptive endeavours is the lack of scientific and materialistic understanding of the complex web of nature-human-society relationship. Hence natural history needs to be studied along with the social history, in spite of the fact that there is an active change within the nature itself. This paper attempts to propose that the ecological rift cannot be addressed through moralistic compass nor techno-capitalism, without addressing the contradictions that exist in the nature-human relationship in the capitalist mode of production and its social praxis.
Open Access
Human experience: study of its structure
(Eveleigh nash grayson, 1929) Haldane, Viscount
Open Access
The Mapping of Posthumanism: A Philosophical Study
(University of North Bengal, 2024-03) Thoibisana, Akoijam
Posthumanism designates a series of reactions to the idea of the study of man in terms of humanism. The studies of posthumanism, like any other studies with the same prefix ‘post’ namely postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, etc. include in itself the studies of humanism, modernism, structuralism, colonialism, and the like. The term ‘post’ has also been often used in two senses, one in terms of time frame, that is historically, and the other, as a style of thought. Posthumanism also includes within itself the studies of man’s relation to machines or technology on the one hand, and animals or non-human on the other hand. Lyotard for example used the term ‘inhuman’ in his essay Postmodern Fable to discuss the nature of posthumanism. Posthumanism has also been approached from many different aspects from literature to art to science- fiction. The paper, however, confines its discussion on the philosophical discussion of the same. Accordingly, the paper is divided into three sections. First, give a brief overview of the philosophy of (hu)man, the question of Being, and humanism. Second, is an attempt to present the postmodernist (or rather the poststructuralism) account of understanding man or rather the end of man. The crux of the paper is the mapping of the philosophy of posthumanism through the lens of deconstructing humanism. This will be explicitly discussed in the third section of the paper. Keywords: