Hedonic and Transcendent Conceptions of Value

In this paper we introduce a conceptual distinction between a hedonic and transcendent conception of value. We posit three linguistic earmarks by which one can distinguish these conceptions of value. We seek validation for the conceptual distinctions by examining the language contained in reviews of cars and reviews of paintings. In undertaking the empirical examination, we draw on the work of M.A.K. Halliday to identify clauses as fundamental units of meaning and to specify process types that can be mapped onto theoretical distinctions between the two conceptions of value. Extensions of this research are discussed

Tocqueville, Pascal, and the Transcendent Horizon

Most students of Tocqueville know of his remark, “There are three men with whom I live a little every day; they are Pascal, Montesquieu, and Rousseau.” In this paper I trace out the contours of Pascal’s influence upon Tocqueville’s understanding of the human condition and our appropriate response to it. Similar temperaments lead both Tocqueville and Pascal to emphasize human limitations and contingency, as Peter Lawler rightly emphasizes. Tocqueville and Pascal both emphasize mortality, ignorance of the most important subjects, the effects of historical contingency on what we take to be human nature, and both represent the complex internal dynamic of human nature in terms of the interplay of “angel” and “brute.” The most important difference between them concerns their relative estimates of human power and the significance of human action. Whereas the motif of human weakness is fundamental for Pascal, Tocqueville repeatedly affirms that, under the right conditions, human beings are “powerful and free.” Beginning from Pascalian premises, and endeavoring to be more faithful to some of those premises than Pascal himself was, Tocqueville aims to illuminate the possibility of an amelioration of the human condition through a “new political science” that redeems the political realm without divinizing it

Gerotranscendence: components and spiritual roots in the second half of life.

According to gerotranscendence theory (Tornstam, 1989), aging persons gradually develop 'a shift in meta-perspective, from a materialistic and rational vision to a more cosmic and transcendent one'. The present study examined the structure of the construct of gerotranscendence, age differences in gerotranscendence, and relations between gerotranscendence and culturally determined meaning in life and death factors, such as levels of spirituality, religious beliefs, moral judgment, and death attitudes. Participants were 467 adults between 17 and 91 years old. Factor analysis of the Gerotranscendence Scale yielded three subscales, Transcendent Connection, Anxiety and Uncertainty, and Active Involvement. Transcendent Connection - the core component of gerotranscendence - was only weakly related to age. However, Transcendent Connection was positively related to spiritual views and practices, relativistic orientation to religious beliefs, moral consistency, higher stages of moral thinking, and negatively related to avoidance of death. Patterns of correlations with the scores on the other two scales were also explored. Together, the findings suggested that individuals' development with regard to issues of spirituality, religiosity, morality, and death attitudes is more fundamental for their development toward 'gero'-transcendence than the natural process of aging.

The undiscovered, 2018-03-30

Music, spoken word, and visual art centered around deep love, transcendent peace, and authentic community.Howard Thurman Center for Common Groun

The sixth Painleve transcendent and uniformizable orbifolds

We consider connection between the Painleve-6 equation and explicitly uniformizable orbifoldsComment: Final version, 4 pages; Painleve equations and related topics, Saint-Petersburg, 201