Habermas’ Concept of “Lebenswelt” and System and Its Implication for the Position of Religion in Public Life

The concept of “Lebenswelt” (the lifeworld) and the system are essential in Jürgen Habermas's thought. Habermas understands Lebenswelt as background knowledge that people take for granted naively. It becomes the horizon of their daily communication. He emphasizes the importance of coupling Lebenswelt and system. The uncoupling will make society get loss of meaning. Then we ask how he understands the position of religion in public life. How should we place religion as a part of Lebenswelt in making public law? To answer the question, we did the library research by exploring Habermas's works and his commentators. Then I conclude that Habermas offers accommodative participation to religion in public life through discourse. In the discourse, views inspired by religion can be put forward in the public sphere as far as they undergo a rationalization process. They should be openly discussed and tested instead of being taken for granted naively. Views inspired by religion will be accepted as long as they are rational. Discourse practice requires religious groups to be more mature and rational in formulating their ideas in the public sphere. Religious ideas are no longer positioned as closed and anti-criticism

Trần Đức Thảo. A Marxist Theory of the Origins of Human Language

This paper will explore Trần Đức Thảo’s (Từ Sơn, Bắc Ninh, September 26th, 1917 – Paris, April 24th, 1993) work from historical, philosophical, and linguistic points of view. Most notably it will focus on Thảo’s Recherches sur l’origine du langage et de la conscience (1973). According to Marx and Engels, Thảo argued that language was originally constituted during collective cooperative activities. And he also suggested that human specific skills appeared for the first time with the production of first tools. To him, language arose as gestural and verbal indication involved in task-oriented cooperative activities already in hominid societies. Trying to integrate Piaget’s child development psychology with the findings of Spirkin’s anthropology, Thảo described six stages of evolution of genus Homo

DISKURSUS KAMPUNG WISATA (Studi Kasus Diskursus Pembentukan dan Pelaksanaan Program Kampung Wisata Kungkuk, Desa Punten, Kecamatan Bumiaji, Kota Batu)

Penelitian ini mengkaji tentang diskursus kampung wisata, khususnya proses awal perencanaan hingga pelaksanaan Kampung Wisata Kungkuk (KWK) di Desa Punten Kecamatan Bumiaji Kota Batu. Penelitian ini menggunakan teori Diskursus yang dikemukakan oleh Jurgen Habermas. Diskursus merupakan bentuk tindakan komunikatif-intersubjektif yang argumentatif, kritis, dan terbuka untuk mencapai sebuah konsensus dalam sebuah sistem dan lebenswelt. Adapun metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah metode kualitatif dengan pendekatan studi kasus jenis perjodohan pola dan deret waktu. Teknik pengumpulan data yang digunakan adalah wawancara mendalam, observasi dan dokumentasi. Berdasarkan penelitian yang dilakukan, didapatkan 3 hasil penelitian, pertama, pembentukan KWK tahun 2007 tidak komunikatif kepada masyarakat Kungkuk secara utuh karena hanya melibatkan penggagas saja yaitu pihak perhotelan dan beberapa anggota masyarakat. Komunikasi di tingkat penggagas  berjalan komunikatif-diskursif  karenan ditunjang lebenswelt mereka mengenai pertanian yang tak mengetahui pariwisata sehingga mempertanyakan pembentukan KWK. Selanjutnya terjadi  permasalahan  karena lebenswelt ketua KWK adalah pembangunan itu selalu dibuktikan dengan keberadaan bukti fisik sarana prasarana, namun tertipu oleh bantuan dana parpol yang tidak terealisasi  akhirnya KWK berhenti tahun 2009-2011. Kedua, pemerintah membentuk Kelompok Sadar Wisata (POKDARWIS) tahun 2010. Pemilihan Dusun Kungkuk sebagai kampung wisata oleh Kepala Dinas Pariwisata bermakna ganda, satu sisi secara birokratis kepala dinas memiliki wewenang untuk membangun desa wisata tertentu, sisi yang lain lebenswelt beliau sebagai warga Desa Punten yang ingin memprioritaskan pembangunan wisata desanya sendiri terlebih dahulu. Ketiga, program KWK tidak melibatkan POKDARWIS, seharusnya program wisata di desa secara prosedural melalui POKDARWIS, sehingga pemerintah yang memutus tindakan komunikatif para stakeholders.     Kata Kunci: Diskursus, Tindakan Komunikatif, Kampung Wisata

What is Natural about Human Nature?

Chapter in 'Deutsches Jahrbuch Philosophie 2, Lebenswelt und Wissenschaft'Proceedings of the XXI German Congress for Philosophy. Duisburg University, Essen, 15-19 September 2008.N/AEconomic and Social Research Council (UK

The dawn of the copy in the Bronze Age

Contemporary everyday life is dominated by industrially reproduced serial objects that we perceive as easily replaceable in case of dam- age or loss. We are used to seriality, i.e. the existence of what we perceive as identical copies of a certain kind of object. Seen from a long-term perspective, humans have not been able to create visually identical copies in large numbers for the most part of their existence. Seriality only became possible to a larger extent with the invention of the bronze casting technique in the Near East in the early third millennium BCE, from where the technique was introduced to Central Europe in the late third millennium BCE. In my contribution to this volume, I want to elucidate the changes in the perception of the material world that were connected with the new technical possibility of casting large numbers of visually identical objects with casting moulds. I will demonstrate how the ability to produce almost identical copies resulted in the creation of new practices with objects and new ideas about the meaning and potential of objects in the world: the possibility to possess several identical weapons became the hallmark of the Early Bronze Age hero and groups of seemingly identical objects in the form of hoards were considered the most appropriate offering to the gods

On Love and Awareness

In this paper, I will discuss some aspects of a humanistic perspective on love which includes both idealistic as well as realistic elements of love. I will argue that any experience of love is directly affected by the level of self-awareness in an individual, that enables him to recognize the origins of his feelings and allows him to act upon them in an intentional manner. I use the term "awareness" in a similar way as, for example, the Jungian psychologist Arnold Mindell. He describes awareness as the capacity of a living human system which is connected to other minds to discover and to use the perception modality. There is a common element to all feelings which is directly related to the self-awareness of an individual. It is the truism that feelings or emotions accentuate a clear picture of an individual's traits of character. Emotionality without self-awareness is a rather burdensome experience for the transmitter as well as it is for the recipient of an emotion. With this I do not refer to rational control of emotionality. Rather, I refer to an existential human condition, in which the consequences of an individual's action must be realized and accepted by oneself

Chronobiologie und Biologisch-Dynamischer Landbau - Wer eine Wissenschaft vom Lebendigen sucht, kommt an der Chronobiologie nicht vorbei

Die Erkenntnisse der Chronobiologie sind in der heutigen Lebenswelt noch wenig beachtet, auch in der Landwirtschaft. Die verschiedensten Rhythmen koordinieren sämtliche Lebensprozesse und lassen sich z.T. auch landwirtschaftlich nutzen. Einzelergebnisse zur Wirkung natürlicher Rhythmen auf das Pflanzenwachstum werden vorgestellt