Search Results (25)

Focusing on the legend of Phaedra and Hippolytus as developed in Euripides and Seneca and especially in Racine’s Phèdre and taking into account as well its further development in works by Camillo Boito, Luchino Visconti, and Yukio Mishima, I make the following arguments: (1) Contrary to many theologians and philosophers of love, a pathological form of love that issues in murder and suicide should not be regarded as unworthy of serious attention. Racine’s tragedy provides a catharsis for universal experiences of unrequited love and jealousy, a major human phenomenon. (2) Contrary to Paul Valéry, Phèdre’s love cannot be called merely animal, since the analytical insight she develops into her morbid passion carries tremendous moral force and lies at the origin of the European psychological novel, as launched by Madame de La Fayette a year later. (3) Contrary to François Mauriac, even if she is a heroine of desire or concupiscence rather than of “true love” (in contrast to the relatively innocent affections of Hippolyte and Aricie), the incredible beauty of her language resists such an easy categorization. (4) Study of concrete presentations of “love” in literature confirms that the meaning and use of this word is marked by an irreducible pluralism. Philosophical and theological analysis of love has to come to terms with this. (5) The role of a work of art, in crystallizing archetypical emotions and situations in a way that carries authority, is to provide the middle ground between the abstractions of philosophy on the one hand and the uncontrollable diversity of the empirical on the other. Even psychologies or sociologies of love, which claim to be close to the concrete data, need to be anchored in and corrected by the special concrete vision that only great literature can bring. Full article

This article deals with how love and hatred of ideas can influence, and often distort or suppress, critical thinking. Love and hate can serve adaptive intellectual functions, but in practice, they often manifest in maladaptive ways. The article reviews the role of critical thinking in adaptation, then discusses how love and hate can influence critical thinking. The article suggests that teaching critical thinking needs to take into account that real-world critical thinking often bears little resemblance to that shown in tests or in school. We need to teach critical thinking as it exists in the world, not in rarefied settings. Full article

This paper offers a philosophical account of the specific form of romantic love underlying the ideal of love-based marriages. Rather than examining the institution of marriage, it considers marriage as the promise of infinite love between finite persons. Although this promise may seem irrational, even those who never formally marry still invoke phrases like ‘I love you forever’. In three steps, this paper explores what we could possibly mean by infinite love and how it can be rationally promised throughout a finite life. First, I trace the concept of infinite love back to the metaphysical discussions surrounding the emergence of the love-based marriage among German Idealists and Jena Romanticists. Next, drawing on John Searle’s speech act theory, I examine how the ideal of infinite love can be articulated as a promise. Finally, I turn to early existentialist thought—particularly the notions of passion (Lidenskab, Leidenschaft), repetition (Gjentagelsen, Wiederkehr), and the moment (Øjeblik, Augenblick) as developed by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche—to justify the meaning of the marital promise. In short, I propose that instead of interpreting the marital promise as a description of an expected reality, we should approach it as a passionate necessity that discloses the world in a fundamentally indeterminate way. By reframing the marital promise in this light, I aim to show that marital love is compatible both with the ideal of personal autonomy and with an alternative conception of rationality and temporality. Full article

A disease detection network based on a sparse parallel attention mechanism is proposed and experimentally validated in the passion fruit (Passiflora edulis [Sims]) disease detection task. Passiflora edulis, as a tropical and subtropical fruit tree, is loved worldwide for its unique flavor and rich nutritional value. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model performs excellently across various metrics, achieving a precision of 0.93, a recall of 0.88, an accuracy of 0.91, an mAP@50 (average precision at the IoU threshold of 0.50) of 0.90, an mAP@50–95 (average precision at IoU thresholds from 0.50 to 0.95) of 0.60, and an F1-score of 0.90, significantly outperforming traditional object detection models such as Faster R-CNN, SSD, and YOLO. The experiments show that the sparse parallel attention mechanism offers significant advantages in disease detection with multi-scale and complex backgrounds. This study proposes a lightweight deep learning model incorporating a sparse parallel attention mechanism (SPAM) for passion fruit disease detection. Built upon a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) backbone, the model integrates a dynamically selective attention mechanism to enhance detection performance in cases with complex backgrounds and multi-scale objects. Experimental results demonstrate that the model has superior precision, recall, and mean average precision (mAP) compared with state-of-the-art detection models while maintaining computational efficiency. Full article

Psychological well-being is the experience of fewer negative emotions, such as feelings of loneliness, depression, and low mood, and more positive emotions, such as taking pride in one’s life, being enthusiastic about one’s life, and having a highly satisfying purpose in life. In other words, it describes an individual who is happy and free from psychopathology. Psychological well-being in romantic relationships is influenced by several factors, such as empathy, relationship stability, and quality of sex life. This study was conducted to examine the relationship between psychological well-being and empathy, quality of sexual life, love, relationship intimacy, and relationship stability among women in romantic relationships. This study included 415 female participants aged 23–45 who had been in a romantic relationship for at least 12 months. Data were collected using the Sociodemographic Data Form, the Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWBS), the Basic Empathy Scale (BES), the Sexual Quality of Life Scale—Women’s Form (SQLS), the Relationship Stability Scale (RSS), the Passionate Love Scale (PLS) and the Romantic Relationship Closeness Scale (RRCS). Independent group t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Pearson correlation analysis, and regression analysis were used to analyse the data. The analyses found that the variables that predicted psychological well-being were the relationship satisfaction sub-dimension of the relationship stability scale, quality of sexual life, empathy, and having children. In addition, correlational analysis revealed that empathy, sexual quality of life, intimacy in romantic relationships, relationship satisfaction, and relationship attachment were significantly positively correlated with psychological well-being. In terms of demographic information, it was found that scores for evaluating options in the relationship increased as education level increased; scores for investing in the relationship increased as education level decreased; passionate love was more common among working women; having children increased psychological well-being but decreased intimacy in romantic relationships; and quality of sexual life increased as seriousness in the relationship increased. The results of this study may be useful to psychologists and psychiatrists in their studies of female clients, to sociologists and public health specialists in their studies of women, and to policy makers in determining public health policies. Full article

Adolescence is a time of elation and sublime emotions which are also reflected in partner relationships, within a context characterised by materialism and social structures in which gender relations are affected by the domination/subordination model. This paper analyses the affective-sexual relationships of adolescents as a place of violence, power relations, domination and submission. It also studies the importance of social networks in their way of interacting and learning. The methodology used was, on the one hand, the review of bibliographic material regarding romance, partner relationships, gender violence and using of networks, and, on the other hand, the analysis of the results obtained from two studies carried out by the University of Granada, with quantitative and qualitative information on adolescents in Andalusia. The results of this research indicate that relationships are permeated by the idealisation of romantic love and by stereotypes leading to practices of control and possession. Full article

Researching the question of how the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), and by extension other institutional systems, respond or do not respond to the lived reality of abuse and its cover-up cannot be done without seeking to understand the underlying issue: What is the RCC responding (or not responding) to? One elucidating and perhaps surprising answer lies in the little and often misunderstood word vulnerability. Vulnerability, most probably counter-intuitively, has in fact the power to enhance violence or to reverse its destructive influence. This thought forms the basis for an exploration into what Professor Dr. Hildegund Keul has named the vulnerability and expenditure paradox. The logic in both of them seems understandable and straightforward. Yet, when genuinely understood, they are unsettling. They reveal an uncomfortable dilemma, a reality check and, ultimately, a choice as the paradox raises the rather earthly question: do we attempt to cheat death and therefore lose life, or do we opt for “creation through loss”? The first might, though linked to violence, lead to a feeling of security and invulnerability. The second exemplifies the passion of authentic suffering, humility and identity dependence. From a Christian perspective, it is the incarnation of love. Full article

The Dutch intellectual Allard Pierson (1831–1896) is often considered to be an example of secularism. In 1865, he resigned as a minister from the Dutch Reformed Church in order to promote true humanity in society at large. This article explores how Pierson’s true humanity can be considered as an ultimate concern (Tillich) or a religion without religion (Caputo) by reading him through the lens of John D. Caputo’s thinking. Both Caputo and Tillich developed a non-institutional and undogmatic understanding of religion, in which religion is related to a universal human love, passion, or ultimate concern that is not necessarily linked to a religious institution or doctrine. After an elaboration of Caputo’s religion without religion, the article discusses Pierson’s thinking in the context of nineteenth-century theological modernism and debates on the modernist’s right to stay in the church. Then, Pierson’s reasons for his resignation and his true humanity are examined. It becomes clear that Pierson did not choose secularism over religion, but rather surpassed the religious-secular divide by a focus on our common human nature. Being human was more important than being Christian, which exemplifies the late-nineteenth-century move from a theistic Christianity towards a humanistic religiosity or humanism. Full article

The Spanish Golden Age tragedy is assembled around the conflict of passions, which does not find an adequate channel of expression in words because there are feelings that cannot be confessed if one wants to preserve life. However, such intense emotions cannot be hidden for a long time, either. The characters discover that the eyes speak in silence and cannot lie, so they appeal to their sincerity at crucial moments. Such examples can be found in the declarations of love addressed to inaccessible or forbidden women or in the narratives of women who report sexual assault or husbands who believe they have been dishonored. In this article, we will analyze all these circumstances to demonstrate that, if they contradict the lips, the eyes are the windows of the soul, and they speak a language that is as expressive as it is eloquent. Full article

Late-medieval devotional literature embraced visualization as a means of providing the reader-devotee with the experience of being a virtual witness during a text-guided meditation. Based on a new reading of Cransken van minnen, a Middle Dutch prayer book from Franciscan milieus, this paper will propose a framework based on the interrelations between visualization and other key aspects pointed out in recent research as significant for understanding this type of literature: affective reactions, anamnesis and virtual witnessing. This framework entails two assumptions. The first is that visualization, especially with Mary as the compassionate “focaliser”, was instrumental in achieving the goal of devotion, which was to promote an affective reaction (contrition). The second is that this prayer book offered devotees an experience of anamnesis (“recalling”) that depended on the provision of sensory perceptions through which readers could become virtual witnesses to the events meditated upon. Using a combination of philological and literary–historical methods, the structure and content of this prayer book are scrutinized in detail to provide new insights into the strategies used by the compiler to infuse the prayer discourse with elements suggesting visual perception. Full article

Studying brand love is vital for hospitality establishments because it helps them understand their customers’ feelings and perceptions toward their brands, especially with the growing number of hospitality brands. However, previous hospitality research has neglected the relationship between customer value and brand love. Therefore, this study investigates the influence of customer value on brand love of fast-food restaurants with a moderating role of electronic word of mouth. The research model was empirically evaluated on 385 fast-food restaurant brand customers in Greater Cairo, Egypt, who had previously participated in restaurants’ online communities. We used structural equation modeling to examine the research data. Results indicated that customer value is crucial in increasing brand love sub-dimensions (i.e., intimacy, passion, and commitment). The results also confirmed that the utilitarian value affects more than the hedonic value of brand love sub-dimensions, and the latter significantly impacted customer loyalty. In addition, electronic word of mouth moderated the relationship between the two types of customer value and brand love sub-dimensions. Hence, the current study adds a new factor (i.e., customer value) that affects the brand love of restaurants to the hospitality literature. Accordingly, the study will present several practical implications to increase customer value and, thus, brand love and customer loyalty. Full article

This article begins with an analysis of Simone Weil’s notion of “impersonality”, which implies disengagement from earthly attachments, deep introspection, and connection with an “anonymous” God, that is, with an imagined spiritual force of purity, located beyond the observable secular world. “Impersonality” encourages purification (or catharsis) from frantic passions (excited by such attachments); it inspires love, which Weil associates with respect and selfless devotion to social justice. My goal is to identify a shared set of similarities between Weil and Martin Luther King Jr. on the issue of individual catharsis, acknowledging also important divergences. King—contra Weil—claimed that rejection of frantic passions is incited through connection with a “personal” (rather than “anonymous”) God, with a high moral power, which responds to individual prayers and leads men and women into the path of love. Like Weil, King associated love with mutual respect and social justice. Both Weil and King believed that individual catharsis should lead to civil disobedience, whose ultimate objective is collective catharsis, that is, the abandonment of deeply rooted attitudes and beliefs (on behalf of a collectivity) that (sometimes unknowingly) perpetuate injustices, causing great suffering. By reflecting on the viewpoints offered by these thinkers, the present study will attempt to shed light on the process by which collective catharsis shifts public attitudes. The aim of civil disobedience, I will explain, is to dramatize social evils (such as racism and social exclusion), making large portions of a society aware of their passive reproduction of attitudes that contribute to the perpetuation of such unjust practices. Full article

The scientific process of understanding natural phenomena such as evolution is an important tool for human progress, so it is good to know where it begins and where it ends, or where it leads. In this article, we put forward the observation that mysticism begins when, in understanding phenomena, we move into the intellectual realm of the unobservable and invisible material and personal life processes, which are interconnected in two ways. On the one hand, the material life processes, which can be contemplated mystically by means of scientific explanations, analogical models, and imagination, are the reason for the purposefulness of identities that are the fruit of personal processes. These are experts, professional and amateur scientists, and lay scientists who are attracted to identity precisely because of the material life processes in which they have an interest, enthusiasm, or passion. On the other hand, it is precisely their mental engagement with these material life processes through the mystical contemplation of the beautiful solutions to nature’s problems that makes them true since truth is classically conceived precisely as the correspondence between intellect and a thing. Discerning the truth of hypotheses, theories, mid-range theories, and meta-theories, however, requires humility at all levels because of the collective way of seeking truth. In this process of truth discernment, it is necessary to accept humbly that I may be wrong and that my neighbor may be right, which ultimately leads us to the mysticism of the Triune God’s merciful love. Full article

Śrī Nāth is one of the most important images of Krishna being worshipped at the temple of Nathdwara in Rajasthan. His devotees consider him to be a living god, he appears in their dreams, and according to their sayings they are in direct contact with him. Śrī Nāth, originally a local deity, is equated with the major Hindu god Krishna. However, while Krishna may be one of the most important gods in India, he is also ambiguous through his acts and words, if not bluntly unreliable. This double nature of Krishna is reflected in the cult of Śrī Nāth. There is an interesting interaction between Śrī Nāth (implying Krishna himself), the main gurus of his cult, i.e., Vallabha (Vallabhācārya) and the latter’s son and main successor Viṭṭhalnāth and his devoted disciples. At times, Śrī Nāth feels the need to stick to the official Brahmanical cult of the temple rituals, on other occasions, there is no problem in transgressing any given official rule. The same is true for the primary teachers, who are often put on par with Krishna himself or one of the celestials closely connected to him. Additionally, the disciples can apparently do anything in their frenzies. All of this reinforces the idea that this entire cult belongs to another world (alaukik). It is part of the everyday world (laukik) of Hindu India, but meanwhile, each and every rule can be ignored if the supernatural breaks through. Even the distinction between Hinduism and Islam at times simply does not seem to be of importance anymore. Muslims can become addicted to the passionate love for Krishna through the form of Śrī Nāth, so it is sometimes stated. Each and every partaker in the cult may share the visions of the initiated devotee, at times even without proper initiation. This all adds to the experience of the supermundane and supernatural in this particular cult. Full article

The timelessness of the matters of love and heartbreak is evident from the place that these themes have historically held in the literature. Fictional representations of love and estrangement are frequently recovered within legal reasoning, because of the nature of the stories portrayed, or the ethical-normative judgements and frames of reference on which their literary enunciation is based. In the field of law, the formal structuring of these matters and its penal relevance draw on ‘crimes of passion’ as an example and a sign of the legal conditions, interpretative constructs, and sociological conceptions that organize and give meaning to subjects, facts, and norms. Whether it is the cause that justifies the fact, a mitigating factor that modifies the crime or punishment, or a particularly reprehensible and perverse circumstance, this ‘crazy little thing called love’ has provoked and shaped different levels of censure and comprehension throughout history. That very elasticity is the starting point for this article, which examines the legal frameworks and the legal, literary, and historical imaginations that circulate and connect diverse interpretative communities, as well as the discursive debates over authority and normativity, in the different fictions and functions linked by their aspiration to truth and justice. Full article