The intention behind writing the present essay on the Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy was to find the guiding idea that, acting as a thread of Ariadne, could...Show moreThe intention behind writing the present essay on the Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy was to find the guiding idea that, acting as a thread of Ariadne, could connect Hegel’s early philosophical project with what across the following argument will be referred to as the paradox of temporality. Deliberately, the above title refers to ‘temporality’, and not to ‘Time’. Temporality is not a term employed by Hegel in his writings. In a strict sense, what Hegel explicitly refers to as Time is limited to natural Time, and any other sense that might be associated with a temporality beyond natural Time is understood by Hegel as History —not as temporality. In Hegel’s works, Time and History pertain to the different realms of Nature and Spirit. Nevertheless, at the same time, for Hegel Nature and Spirit constitute instances in the unfolding of the Absolute Idea. Far from being a merely pure or abstract form, the Absolute Idea exists and becomes concrete as both realms. Consequently, beyond the letter of Hegelian philosophy, there is a common element to ‘Time’ and ‘History’, in that they both are the existing logical figure of finitude, or of ‘that which has its negation out of itself’ . The central claim of the present essay is that, in Hegel’s philosophy, there is this larger and contradictory logic connecting ‘Time’ and ‘History’ (a paradox of temporality), and that the paradoxical nature of this logic can be explained by an early concept found in the Difference: the notion of absolute identity. Therefore, the following argument will consider two main questions. Firstly: what are the main aspects of the contradiction of temporality in Nature and in Spirit? Secondly: how does Hegel’s early notion of absolute identity account for this paradox of temporality?Show less
How do speakers of different languages think about time? Studies showed that people who speak different languages behave differently on spatial-temporal ordering tasks. However, these differences...Show moreHow do speakers of different languages think about time? Studies showed that people who speak different languages behave differently on spatial-temporal ordering tasks. However, these differences usually correlated with that languages writing direction. This study looks at whether it is language that causes different results or writing direction by recreating such a spatial-temporal ordering experiment with preliterate children from two different languages. Interestingly, the results in this experiment did not seems to point to either one of the possibilities. The children did not perform either uniform within a language group or completely random in both language groups. One thing that can be said is that the preliterate children did perform differently from adults is similar experiments, so the possible influence from a language’s writing system cannot be rules out, however, there might be more factors at play.Show less
For decades an objective within Linguistics as a study field has been to assess the existence or strength of a link between language and thought. The present study focuses on crosslinguistic...Show moreFor decades an objective within Linguistics as a study field has been to assess the existence or strength of a link between language and thought. The present study focuses on crosslinguistic differences of intrusion of the spatial domain within the temporal domain by comparing Native English speakers to Mandarin-English bilinguals. With deviation in linguistic construction of space = time metaphors between the two languages, the main question subject to this study is whether linguistic differences bear influence on the conceptualization of the abstract domain of time. Furthermore, an insight is given in the manner abstract concepts are concreted by the human mind with an emphasis on bilingual processing. As the processing within the bilingual mind has been subjected to much debate over recent year, an attempt to reconcile various views has been laid bare. The present study exists of two replicated tasks which yielded different conclusions in their original state. While the results of the present study remain inconclusive, one task hints at a global difference between Mandarin-English bilinguals' conception of time and English native speakers' conception of time. The other task has not revealed any implication on linguistic processing due to crosslinguistic differences.Show less
For decades an objective for linguistics as a study field has been to assess the existence and/or strength of a link between language and thought. The present study focuses on crosslinguistic...Show moreFor decades an objective for linguistics as a study field has been to assess the existence and/or strength of a link between language and thought. The present study focuses on crosslinguistic differences in observed intrusion of the spatial domain on the temporal domain by comparing English monolinguals toMan darin-English bilinguals. The main question in this study is whether the observed linguistic differences in the temporal domain between Mandarin and English bear influence on the conceptualization of this domain by the human mind. The present study comprises of two replicated experiments. When the two presently replicated experiments were conducted originally they drew deviating conclusions from one another regarding a similar question. While the results of the present study remain inconclusive, results hint at a global difference between Mandarin-English bilinguals’ conception of time and English native speakers’ conception of time based on language. This hint implicates that there might be an underlying effect of language on the mental representation of time. The second experiment has not revealed any implication on linguistic processing due to observed crosslinguistic differences.Show less
In recent years, in the field of contemporary literature, greater attention has been put on literary productions dealing with environmental pollution or destruction, prompting the surge of...Show moreIn recent years, in the field of contemporary literature, greater attention has been put on literary productions dealing with environmental pollution or destruction, prompting the surge of environmental criticism – ecocriticism – to a well developed and independent discipline within the environmental humanities. Nevertheless, the field, as Karen Thornber correctly noted, has been mainly focused on issues raised by western literary works. Environmental fictions – or ecofictions – produced in East Asia, despite their preoccupations with pollution and environmental disaster, are usually excluded from the analyses of ecocritics. In Japan in particular, after the Fukushima disaster of March 3, 2011, varied literary works – from short stories to novels and poems – have addressed topics of nuclear pollution and environmental disaster. Therefore, it becomes paramount to focus on this gap in ecocriticism and start to develop more comprehensive studies of ecofictions expanding beyond literary production in English or western languages. This thesis, presenting as a case study the novel Somersault (1999) – by the Japanese author O̅e Kenzaburō, tries to address this gap by focusing on the narrativization of nuclear disaster in relation to the representations of time and space. After the introduction of an analytical tool comprehensive of various theoretical concepts, this study endeavors to demonstrate the importance of accounting for those elements revealing deeper environmental concerns that are often overlooked by critics in literary productions. My study of narrrativizations of time and space, as they take shape in this Japanese case study, shall prove productive also for the analysis of other ecofictions produced in different languages and arising from varied cultural traditions. Furthermore, an analytical tool linking together temporality and space could enable comparative studies between East Asian and Western ecofictions. This study could thus contribute to the field of ecocriticism by allowing for a diversification in the understanding of perceptions of time and space in literary works from different literary and cultural traditions dealing with the threat, or in the aftermath, of an environmental disaster.Show less
Research master thesis | Archaeology (research) (MA/MSc)
open access
Perception of time is a constituting pillar in the Maya worldview. The Maya calendar system, which has been in use for thousands of years, however, is currently under threat by a variety of...Show morePerception of time is a constituting pillar in the Maya worldview. The Maya calendar system, which has been in use for thousands of years, however, is currently under threat by a variety of developments. This research master thesis focuses on the contemporary practices and beliefs related to the Maya calendar in Mexican and Guatemalan Maya communities by analyzing ethnographies published between 1889 and 1982. The aims are firstly to analyze the forms in which the traditional time perception has continued over time, and secondly to examine how changes in the field of Maya research have affected the specific ethnographic investigations on the Maya calendar. The main part of this thesis includes a literature study on three entangled topics which all have influenced how scholars currently look at the Maya calendar. Firstly, a synthesis of the different ethnographic works is provided, in which the different forms of Maya calendar systems in Mexico and Guatemala are discussed. The Maya calendar has played an important role in Maya archaeology and anthropology. This thesis provides the first overview of ethnographic research since a doubtful publication dating from 1952. The goal of synthesizing the ethnographies is to provide new insights in the variety of contemporary practices and beliefs related to time among the Maya. Secondly, based on this inventory, this thesis examines the changing ethnographic approaches towards this topic. By examining the assumptions, interpretations and approaches in the light of their time, it becomes clear how we have come to our current view on the Maya calendar system. Thirdly, this thesis looks into cultural continuity and how rituals contribute to the continuation of calendar systems and their related worldviews. Due to the decreasingly traditional way of life, more research into this topic is very much needed. Additional to the literature research and a small-scale ethnographic fieldwork has been performed among the Yucatec Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, focusing on the perception of time based on environmental observations and related rituals. The empirical data that were collected during this fieldwork are presented in the final part of this thesis.Show less
