18th July 2007 | Draft
"Human Intercourse"
"Intercourse with Nature" and "Intercourse with
the Other"
- / -
This overview has been produced partially in support of the
proposed
Universal
Declaration of Responsibilities of Human Intercourse (2007).
Introduction
"Intercourse with the Other"
"Human Intercourse" and "Intercourse with Nature"
References
Introduction
Human intercourse has been considered, from a wide
variety of angles, by several disciplines, including literary studies, sociology,
linguistics and philosophy. Recent work in the fields of intellectual history,
historical semantics, the history of philosophy and the history of civilization
can be seen as providing a set of complementary approaches for investigating
the history of human intercourse.
To the extent that intercourse by humans requires an Other with which to
engage, the table presented in the following section on "Intercourse with
the Other" provides a tentative schema within which to indicate various forms
of encounter. This notably includes links on to the subsequent section
combining citations regarding "Human Intercourse" and "Intercourse with Nature".
The original intention was to identify citations regarding modes of "intercourse
with the divine", as a complement to these citations on "human
intercourse"
and "intercourse with nature". Although many relevant citations are
to be found in the literature on mysticism, the most insightful do not necessarily
use the term "intercourse" -- although this is indeed a very common
metaphor in some mystical poetry. The project was therefore generalized to
include intercourse with various forms of "other" -- distinct from
purely "human intercourse" and from "intercourse with nature".
Since this is a larger challenge, the focus in the table below is on identifying
domains in which such distinct forms of intercourse are to be found -- without
seeking supporting citations.
It is especially relevant to note that what is essential to any of the forms
of intercourse to which pointers are offered (notably in the table) is the
subjective dimension of the experience. Its nature may be questioned, denied,
or reframed within a preferred explanatory framework, but this may do little
to change the potentially transformative learning consequences of that intercourse.
"Intercourse with the Other"
The challenge is to identify the forms of "other" with which people
believe they may be obliged to enter into some form of intercourse, typically
framed as dialogue. It is appropriate to note that:
- the 1st Interdisciplinary
Conference on "The Other" (University of Alberta, 2002) focused
only on literature, linguistics, folklore, language teaching, and translation
- a distinct "ETO" series, the International
Conference on "Engaging
The Other" (Dearborn MI, 2006 and 2007) proposes a universal,
cross-cultural perspective to promote wider public dialogue about images
of "Us
and Them".
Links
are provided below to some definitions of other and
the associated notion of othering.
Aspects of "The Other" may also be explored in terms of analytical
psychology's concept of the Shadow,
following Carl Gustav Jung [more].
A strong point to be made is that many of the cells in the table are (to
some people) associated with existentially challenging forms of intercourse
-- whether framed as
"Malevolent" or "Benevolent". The principal point to be
made is that there are distinct constituencies that attach significance to
the modes of intercourse associated with each cell in the table -- perhaps
with little regard to the others. The left hand column endeavours to cluster
these modes in a useful way. The
contents of the table are very tentative.
The intention is to
highlight abnormal forms of intercourse offering an existential challenge to
habitual ways of being -- and possibly to transformative learning.
Clearly some would prefer to redistribute items within the table:
- to exclude
some modes as altogether inappropriate;
- to merge the "Neutral"
with the "Benevolent", especially to the extent that the latter
is understood to be "transcendental" -- and that experience of
the "Malevolent"
is held to be a (possibly illusory) consequence of failing to comprehend
this;
- to frame the "Malevolent" positively and the "Benevolent" negatively.
| Mode of intercourse |
"Malevolent"
Perceived as destructive, repellent or threatening |
"Benevolent"
Perceived as constructive, attractive or enhancing
|
"Neutral"
(Transcendental) |
Prayer
Communion, ritual
Mysticism |
false deities (of other religons)
(Satan)
"wrathful
deities"
|
divinity of preferred faith (God, Allah,
etc)
"peaceful
deities" |
Tao
gnosticism
panthesism |
| Religion |
infidels (believers of other faiths) |
community of the faithful (Ummah) |
agnosticism |
| Esotericism, occult |
("black
magic") |
("white
magic") |
"magic" |
Possession (Shamanic)
Exorcism, Mediumship, Channelling |
demons |
angels / saints |
| spirits / ghosts / demons |
daimon /
guardian angel (spirit) |
| "voices in the head", multiple
personalities, "familiar
spirit" |
muse, daimon, "voice
of conscience", "invisible
friends" |
| Pilgrimage (spirit of place) |
"bad place" |
"holy place" |
| Alien encounter |
abduction (by
UFOs) |
(channelled) advice |
xenoanthropology, SETI |
| Superstition, risk management, gambling |
inauspicious circumstances, "bad luck" |
auspicious circumstances, "good luck" |
uncertainity (principle) |
| Management of: threat, opposition, strategic
vigilance, security |
enemies, terrorists, criminals, bandits |
competition, negotiation, peace-making |
| Extreme sport |
violent sport |
challenging sport |
| Symbol, emblem, fetish, memorial |
warning, threat, constraint |
care (Red Cross/Crescent), hope, spiritual
integration |
Tao |
| Secrecy |
"dirty secrets" |
incommunicable secrets |
"unsaid" |
| Inhabitual experience |
double
bind ( "catch 22"), "kafkaesque" |
serendipity |
paradox, surreal, coincidence |
| destructive brainwashing, indoctrination |
education, learning |
anomaly research |
| deprived, significantly challenged (mentally,
physically, etc) |
wealthy, significantly endowed (mentally,
physically, etc) |
detachment,
indifference |
| depraved ("ethical impurity", spiritual
impurity),
significantly challenged (morally, etc) |
saintly ("ethically pure"), significantly
endowed (charisma, etc) |
avoidance |
| mortality, death, accident, tragedy, near-death
experience |
courage, heroism, humour |
banality |
| Research (notably on non-human scales, "supernatural") |
irresponsible science
("Dr Strangelove") |
responsible science
("Albert
Schweitzer") |
unknown, unexplained
(very large or very small) |
| Knowing (otherwise) |
unacceptable, dangerous, outdated modes
of knowing |
complementary modes of knowing |
(dreaming, psychedelic experience) |
| ignorance, derangement |
insight, wisdom, revelation |
| Animals |
dangerous wild animals, pests (mosquitos,
flies, slugs, etc) |
talking to pets, etc |
hands-on nature parks |
| Plants |
poisonous foodstuffs, weeds |
talking to plants, etc |
botanical gardens |
| "Intercourse with Nature" |
hurricanes, floods, landslides, lightning,
wildfire, sandstorms |
idyllic settings |
communion with nature, wilderness area,
spiritual ecology |
| "Human Intercourse" |
hostility, antipathy, enmity, xenophobia,
perversions, cruelty, torture, bestiality. paedophilia, grooming, necrophilia
|
empathy, friendship, affinity, loving, intimacy,
tenderness, emotional looping |
detachment |
"Human Intercourse" and "Intercourse with Nature"
Quotations A-L
Farid Alakbarli, Aesthetic
Ideal of the Orient (2006):
Physicians of the medieval East attached great importance to intercourse with nature. To relieve physical and mental fatigue, they recommended that
their patients walk in the garden and inhale the scents of flowers and herbs.
Today, this is called aromatherapy. Patients were also advised to listen to
the singing of birds and the bubbling of a brook or fountain, or to look at
a picturesque landscape.
Simon L. Altmann, The New Enemies
of Rationalism (2003):
Once this new view of Hume's causality is taken, enormously
important ideas follow that fundamentally clarify rational thinking. The principles
of causality, sufficient reason, and regularity or continuity are no longer
enshrined in some realm of metaphysical principles: they are the result of
our intercourse with nature (or at least such nature as we can perceive by
means of our rational and perceptive systems). But the nature that has moulded
such principles in our rational system is entirely macroscopic. No wonder that
when the microworld is studied, absurd results arise if principles that have
been tailored in a different environment are still applied without careful 'editing'.
Francis Bacon, The
Great Instauration (Bacon's Preface to the Novum Organum,
The Works, ed. and trans. Basil Montague, 3 vols., Parry and MacMillan,
1854, 3: pp. 343-4):
But the more ancient Greeks (whose writings have perished) held a more prudent
mean, between the arrogance of dogmatism, and the despair of skepticism;
and though too frequently intermingling complaints and indignation at the
difficulty of inquiry, and the obscurity of things, and champing, as it were,
the bit, have still persisted in pressing their point, and pursuing their
intercourse with nature: thinking, as it seems, that the better method was
not to dispute upon the very point of the possibility of any thing being
known, but to put it to the test of experience. Yet they themselves, by only
employing the power of the understanding, have not adopted a fixed rule,
but have laid their whole stress upon intense meditation, and a continual
exercise and perpetual agitation of the mind.
Bahá'í International
Community, Science,
Religion and the Strategy for Global Development (One Country,
7, 3, October-December 1995):
It is a perception of reality that can be discovered in the earliest records
of civilization and that has been cultivated for several millennia by every
one of the great religious traditions of humanity's past. Its enduring achievements
in law, the fine arts, and the civilizing of human intercourse are what give
substance and meaning to history. In one form or another its promptings are
a daily influence in the lives of most people on earth and, as events around
the world today dramatically show, the longings it awakens are both inextinguishable
and incalculably potent.
Tala Bar, Beauty
and the Beast (2005):
The people taking part in the ritual took animals' shape to
symbolize the various forces of Nature, but it was a dress-up appearance: no
woman actually mated with an animal but with its human representative. But
it is quite possible that during the act, the people involved would identify
deeply with the symbols they represented. This coupling of humans with Nature
was not only physical or sexual, but also a spiritual mating, expressing humans' mental
intercourse with nature.
Madeleine Bunting. Engagement with Nature: We need
an attentiveness to nature to understand our humanity. Guardian, 30
July 2007
It doesn't quite fit to call it "nature writing", because what
makes these books so compelling -- and important -- is that they put centre
stage the interconnections between nature and human beings....The point is
that nature is no longer something to be studied from a position of scientific
detachment, but an experience, a relationship in which human beings are
as much a part of nature as any so called wildlife... "a
really significant element in ascribing beauty to a thing lies not within
itself but in the quality of our attention to it" (Mark Cocker)... We
need the attentiveness to nature to understand our humanity, and of how we
fit, as just one species, into a vast reach of space and time.
John Burroughs, The
Gospel of Nature (Time and Change, Houghton Mifflin,
1912, pp.273-279):
Theology and science, it must be said, will not mingle much better
than oil and water, and your devout scientist and devout Nature student lives
in two separate compartments of his being at different times. Iintercourse
with nature -- I mean intellectual intercourse, not merely the emotional
intercourse of the sailor or explorer or farmer-- tends to beget a habit of
mind the farthest possible removed from the myth-making, the vision-seeing,
the voice-hearing habit and temper. In all matters relating to the visible,
concrete universe it substitutes broad daylight for twilight; it supplants
fear with curiosity; it overthrows superstition with fact; it blights credulity
with the frost of skepticism.
In intercourse with Nature you are dealing with things at first
hand, and you get a rule, a standard, that serves you through life. You
are dealing with primal sanities, primal honesties, primal attractions...
Contrariness; Nerves And Common Sense, 1925):
If we combat another man's resistance, it only increases his tension. No
matter how wrong he may be, and how right we are, meeting resistance with
resistance only breeds trouble. Two minds can act and react upon one another
in that way until they come to a lock which not only makes lasting enemies
of those who should have been and could be always friends, but the contention
locks up strain in each man's brain which can never be removed without pain,
and a new awakening to the common sense of human intercourse.... In dealing
with the contrary minded, the "contrary method" works so long as it is not
discovered; and the danger of its being discovered is always imminent. The
upright, direct method is according to the honorable laws of human intercourse,
and brings always better results in the end, even though there may be some
immediate failures in the process
Allen Carlson, Heyd
and Newman on the aesthetic appreciation of nature
It may well be that all sorts of other perspectives, garnered
through one's personal intercourse with nature and structured by non-scientific
aspects on one's culture may be more "fruitful" in generating aesthetic
pleasure, insight or depth (Aesthetic Appreciation and the Many Stories about
Nature. British Journal of Aesthetics 41 (2001) pp. 125-37).
Warren Colman, Tyrannical
Omnipotence in the Archetypal Father (Journal of Analytical
Psychology, 2000, 45):
This kind of archetypal characterization is also prevalent in those
who are worried by the increasing domination of science and technology in the
modern world. The significance of the name in the 'Gaia' hypothesis speaks
for itself. It is also interesting that the growing awareness of the many ecological
threats to our planet has coincided with the development of feminism. Technology
may then be seen as a tool of masculine domination in which intercourse with nature has become rape and plunder and the wounded earth cries
out against the damage being done to her. Such fantasies and anxieties are
clearly represented in the spate of 'apocalypse' style movies of the 1980s
and early 1990s.
De Montfaucon de Villars, The
Comte de Gabalis (Paris, 1670):
Over the five discourses, we learn that the true adept abandons 'human intercourse' and instead opts to only have intercourse with the spirits
of the air, water, earth and fire. The count claims that many children have
come forth as a result of such encounters.
Thomas Dunlap, Communing
with Nature (History Today, 52, 3, March 2002. pp.31-37):
Nature love as Emerson knew it, and as Wordsworth knew it, and as
any of the choice spirits of our time has known it, has distinctly a religious
value ... [it has that because] in intercourse with nature you are dealing
with things at first hand, and you get a rule, a standard, that serves you
through life. You are dealing with primal sanities, primal honesties, primal
attraction, you are touching at least the hem of the garment with which the
infinite is clothed.
Albert Einstein:
Nature has given us many blessings. If you hold a good intercourse with nature, it would teach you how to live.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
And we have records of the brilliant society that Edinburgh boasted
in the first decade of this century. Such societies are possible only in great
cities, and are the compensation which these can make to their dwellers for
depriving them of the free intercourse with nature. Every scholar is surrounded
by wiser men than he - if they cannot write as well. (The Complete Works
of Ralph Waldo Emerson - Volume VII - Society
and Solitude, 1870)
Jud Evans, Categories
and Sets:
I ask simply this - is the toll in human lives and misery that the negative
aspect of abstractionism engenders worth it? Would we not be better informing
our schoolchildren, [perhaps during their language or sociology lessons]
that whilst the use of abstractions is an essential part of being human,
we should see them for what they are - as essential tools, verbal shortcuts,
periphrastic avoidance strategies, to aid human intercourse, and that we
should not be lulled into a false sense that these human ideas of descriptive
summation [the engrossment of complicated concepts in a few simple abstractions]
Eric Gans, La
mondialisation (Chronicles of Love and Resentment, 227,
3 February 2001):
Rousseau is the patron of those who increasingly communicate about the evils
of increased communication. For Rousseau, human intercourse inevitably spreads
the contagion of mimetic desire, generating the vanity and oppression endemic
to "society." His political solution for the modern world reflects this mistrust
of exchange. One seeks in vain in The Social Contract any reference
to debate or dialogue, even in the legislative system, which devolves upon
a--singular or collective--"legislator," just as sovereignty is the province
of the "sovereign" who expresses the "general will."
Ashish Ganju, A
Proposal for Research on the Growth and Development of Human Settlements:
Viewed from a Cultural and Civilisational Perspective (1998)
Human Settlements have grown and developed in the twentieth century as a
direct consequence of the industrial enterprise of the 18th and 19th centuries,
leading to the unregulated growth of urban agglomerations. In this process
towns and cities have changed in nature to become showcases for technological
advance, generally at the cost of civilised human intercourse. An important
consequence of this has been the unchecked exploitation of natural resources
resulting in a global environmental crisis which threatens the survival of
the human race.
Ben Goertzel, Subself
Dynamics (From Complexity to Creativity: Computational Models
of Evolutionary, Autopoietic and Cognitive Dynamics, Plenum Press,
1997):
From this analysis one might conclude that it is only possible
to enter into an I-You relationship with another intelligence -- and not
with an inanimate object, say, a flower, or a personal computer. But this
would be mistaken. The external world also possesses an emergent, self-unfolding
structure that can be grasped as a whole. Buber recognizes this in his passage
on Goethe:
How beautiful and legitimate the full I of Goethe sounds! It is the
I of pure intercourse with nature. Nature yields to it and speaks ceaselessly
with it; she reveals her mysteries to it and yet does not betray her
mystery. It believes in her and says to the role: "So it is You" -- and
at once shares the same actuality with the rose.
Nature reveals its mysteries to Goethe -- i.e., he paid
it careful enough attention to get to know it as an It; as a dynamic, structured,
changing system full of intricate details. And this effort was repaid by
a glimpse at the whole, by a view of nature as You.
This sort of experience, reported by Goethe, was commonplace
in many past cultures. Communion with nature as a You was, in "primitive" cultures,
understood as communion with God. This experience came almost automatically
to individuals who lived in nature every day, and who were raised to relate
to nature as a thinking being rather than as an inert physical "environment." This
is the sad aspect of current political disputes about environmental issues.
Businessmen are asked to respect nature on abstract moral grounds. But such
respect can never be genuine, because it comes out of an I-It relationship
with nature, rather than an I-You relationship. Having lost the I-You relationship
with nature, we have, as a society, lost our fundamental motivation for preserving
and nurturing the natural world.
Nadine Gordimer, Living
through that 'last resort.' - protection of human rights (UN
Chronicle, Winter 1998):
Everyone who ponders the Universal Declaration of Human Rights inevitably
will give particular attention to those articles that pertain to circumstances
with which he or she is personally involved.... Article 26 is fundamental
to Article 19: its Clauses 1 and 2 - "Everyone has the right to education",
and "Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality".
Freedom of expression is an empty phrase unless education equips every individual
with freedom of the word, the ability to read and write. No other form of
expression, oral or visual, can compensate for deprivation of these basic
skills in human intercourse, understanding and the development of the intellect.
Although the right to literacy surely is implied in Article 26, it is not
specifically named; I believe it ought to be. This Article brings the hope
of justice to the millions excluded-by ignorance, wirier is no fault of their
own - from participation and benefit in the making of our world.
Mark Harris, Sexuality
is a Rock: The World of Human Intercourse is a Hard Place (Ruminations
on the Report
of the Theological Committee of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church),
2003:
My sense is the Report confuses sexuality, as a general fact of the human
condition, with human sexual intercourse (a specific form of human intercourse),
which can be (but may not be) a gift. All forms of human intercourse are
relational (intercourse being the operant concept here), and all forms of
human intercourse are intentional (human being the operant concept.) We humans
are to be distinguished in part by the intentionality of our intercourse - our
relationships. We do not always exercise that intentionality, but when we
do there arise all sorts of moral questions. Included among them are all
the questions about gift giving.
We give or receive in rather specific ways in sexual intercourse, just as
we do in other forms of intercourse, and we often force or take with ways
just as specific. And it is here, in the relational questions about giving
and receiving, forcing and taking, that we begin to develop rules of behavior,
moral constructs and begin to wonder about God's affirmation of particular
actions.
And what we are talking about here is relational behavior. human intercourse
in all its forms is a hard place. It is a hard place in which to make universal
claims for moral right and wrong. One person's murder is another's
justifiable homicide. One person's loving care is another's smothering
control. One person's delight in taking command of intercourse is another's
coerced shame.
Elizabeth Johann, What
We can Learn from History: The Present Role of Commons in Managing the
Environment. (Presented at "Building the European Commons: From
Open Fields to Open Source," European Regional Meeting of the International
Association for the Study of Common Property (IASCP), Brescia, 2006):
The structure of commons is still evident and can be illustrated
by the following strong points: social fairness, considerable reduction of
the misuse of power by adequate internal rules, economic principles, which
importance are increasingly recognized namely concerning the priority of subsistence
compared to profitability, and the priority of local influencing factors compared
to global ones. The model is based on the participatory intercourse with nature
and makes harmful impacts more difficult.
Leszek Kolakowski, The
Presence of Myth (University of Chicago Press, 2001)
Kolakowski undertakes a philosophy of culture which extends to all realms
of human intercourse--intellectual, artistic, scientific, and emotional.
(Anglican Theological Review)
Piotr Kropotkin, Fields,
Factories and Workshops Tomorrow (1912):
Humanity perceives that there is no advantage for the community in
riveting a human being for all his life to a given spot, in a workshop or a
mine; no gain in depriving him of such work as would bring him into free intercourse with nature, make of him a conscious part of the grand whole, a partner in
the highest enjoyments of science and art, of free work and creation.
Joseph H. Kupfer, Engaging
Nature Aesthetically (Journal of Aesthetic Education,
37, 1, Spring 2003, pp. 77-89):
However, thinking of nature solely or chiefly as an aesthetic scene
to be observed is unnecessarily limiting. Regarding natural phenomena as material
for detached, pictorial observation overlooks the aesthetic features revealed
only through our active intercourse with nature. In what follows, I outline
an active aesthetic of nature appreciation in particular, a series of physical
responses to nature which yield a spectrum of aesthetic possibilities. Our
active relationship toward nature is expressible by the relevant prepositions,
as action can be in or into nature, against or with nature.
Charles Lane, Life
in the Woods (The Dial, April 1844):
Every sense in the primitive forester's frame is integrally preserved.
He holds an immediate intercourse with nature herself, or at least by his unerring
senses and the undeviating objects in nature, he is enabled intuitively to
read off the living volume as it lies open and unpolluted before him. By mere
sight and smell, he is at once inducted into a knowledge of the essential properties
of plants, and can without experience, foretel their operations on the human
system, as unerringly as the native sheep can select its suitable food, or
the untamed wood-dove, can without schooling, essay a winged journey
Quotations M-Z
Karl Marx:
Marx noted that humans must carry on a continuous intercourse with nature
or perish. This intercourse not only alters nature but alters humans too.
Under capitalism alienation of humans from their labor and from nature is
one in the same. The system turns labor and nature into commodities, exploiting
both.... Capitalism is taking us to the brink of a world-wide crisis of agriculture
that will threaten tens of millions with starvation. The growing "metabolic
rift" as Marx called the intercourse between society and nature, is a basic
contradiction that capitalism can't overcome. Human survival depends upon
overcoming this rift. (John Bachtell, Life
in the balance: Capitalism at war with nature and humanity, 2002)
Marx defines production with respect to the intercourse with nature and
other human beings (Marx, 1978a, pp. 149-150).
Marxism not only posits significant social change as men make their history,
but Marx insists that man himself, literally his physical senses, is subject
to alteration. In his intercourse with nature, man changes nature and himself.
Marx writes, "The development of the five senses is the labor of the whole
previous history of the world." The revolution which brings communism will
constitute "a universal act of human self-change." Men will literally be
different from what they have been in the past. ( Charles Elkins, Isaac
Asimov's Foundation Novels: Historical Materialism Distorted into Cyclical
Psycho-History, 1976)
David McNally, The
Moral Problem: Social Attraction in Commercial Society (Political
Economy and the Rise of Capitalism: A Reinterpretation, Berkeley,
University of California Press, 1990):
Hume believed that the forms of human intercourse which characterize commercial
society provide the surest foundation for moral behaviour and justice. It
is through the experience of those forms of interaction and communication
appropriate to an exchange economy that individuals identify the behaviours
which sustain the social bonds upon which they rely. Through the customs
which characterize commercial society, then, they come to appreciate the
necessity for property, law, and justice. They accept the need for -- indeed,
they will -- those institutional arrangements which preserve the social
order. They recognize the usefulness of the social conventions and
institutions which they have created and approve of that which is useful
to society. "Public utility" thus becomes the basis of moral decision. As
Hume put it in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, "every-thing
which contributes to the happiness of society recommends itself directly
to our approbation and good will."
William H. McNeill, What
Do We Mean by the West? (Foreign
Policy Research Institute, April 1997, 5, 7):
One cannot know everything, hence one must make choices. And just as some
facts are more important to know than others, so have certain cultures displayed
skills superior to those of others in every time and place in history. Imagine
living in proximity to a competitor possessed of skills greater than yours.
There is no use asserting that your culture is just as good as his. It palpably
isn't, and you must do something about it.... Superiority and inferiority,
real and perceived, are the substance of human intercourse and the major
stimulus to social change throughout history.... And the principle of selection
is simply this: what do we need to know in order to understand how the world
became what we perceive it to be today?
Feliks Mikhailov, Individual
and Social (Hegel versus Russell) (The Riddle of the Self,
1976):
The education (which Russell speaks of as leading, with some success, to
the depersonalisation of language) was for Hegel the only way of spiritualising
each new individual, the only way of awakening his individual consciousness.
And this aim is achieved when the already educated present the individual
who is entering life, with the forms of culture that provided the ways and
means of intercourse of those who lived before them. Consequently, education
is an integral process of human intercourse spread out in real historical
time (and not only in the space of school premises).
G. E. Moore, The
Ideal (Principia
Ethica, 1903):
By far the most valuable things, which we know or can imagine, are certain
states of consciousness, which may be roughly described as the pleasures of
human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects. No one, probably,
who has asked himself the question, has ever doubted that personal affection
and the appreciation of what is beautiful in Art or Nature, are good in themselves;
nor, if we consider strictly what things are worth having purely for their
own sakes, does it appear probable that any one will think that anything
else has nearly so great a value as the things which are included
under these two heads.
Bertram Morris, Beauty
and Nature (Journal of Philosophy, 34, 24, 1937, pp.
652-660):
From our intimate intercourse with nature we undoubtedly
tend to make it stand for our own sentiments.
John F Morris, Cloning
and Human Dignity (2004):
Indeed, natural human intercourse is the only method of reproduction that fully respects
and promotes the dignity of human beings as persons. Through natural human intercourse, a new human person is generated - not produced. Donum vitae
emphasizes this point well
Aidan Nichols, Epiphany
A Theological Introduction to Catholicism (1996):
The myths, rituals, and proverbs of tribal society frequently carry
an echo of a "high God," a supreme deity, yet his presence is tenuous, distant.
Here the Fall is not so much perceived as humans being driven from paradise
but rather as God disappearing from the world. In his place, the religious
sense operates centrally with the concept of the human organism-tribe, clan,
family - seen as lasting beyond death, and engaged in a complex intercourse with nature.
Bill Rosenblatt, Esther
Dyson's "just society" online (SunWorld, January 1998):
human intercourse today is the result of centuries of limitation. In written
media, it's fairly easy to conceal one's identity, say, when sending a message
(anonymity); fairly hard for that message to be intercepted (security); fairly
hard to misrepresent the creator of the message (authentication); and pretty
hard to make unauthorized copies which are impossible to differentiate from
the original (intellectual property protection). Social and legal expectations
have long been based on these realities. Yet such expectations are being
shattered online, meaning that people must take significant steps to preserve
anonymity, security, et al.
Friedrich Schiller, On
Matthisson's Poems (Translated by John Sigerson, Poet of
Freedom Volume II):
Through his intimate intercourse with nature and with classical models,
his spirit has been nourished, his taste purified, and his moral grace preserved;
his poems are alive with a cheerful, genuine humanity, and the beautiful images
of nature are flawlessly reflected in the becalmed clarity of his mind, as
in a mirror-smooth pool of water. In every one of his works, we observe a discrimination,
a sense of what is fitting, an internal rigor, an untiring quest for the maximum
of beauty. He has already accomplished much, and we might hope, that he has
yet to reach his limits.
Marion M Scott, Beethoven
the Musician (Beethoven)
To Beethoven himself it appeared that he realized his true being
only in music and in the intercourse with nature which was for him an entrance
into the unseen world.
Christopher M. Stahnke (NETFUTURE: Technology
and Human Responsibility for the Future, April 1996):
There is a natural tension between us and our environment. It is erotic.
A good example is a garden, to what degree is it an artifact? I say the garden
is the archetypal "natural" way for man to relate to his environment; it
is a kind of intercourse with nature that is not unlike love-making. In the
sexual act (ideally) we delight in our partner's pleasure and our own, arriving
at a miraculous blend of the two. Distinctions break down. To what degree
does our current technology enable us to have a playful give and take with
our world? I suggest that it leads us to live increasingly in our heads,
in fantasies. Rudolf Steiner, The
Balance in the World and Man, Lucifer and Ahriman (1914):
The Greeks had nothing like theology in our modern sense,
but were very much closer to the wisdom of Nature and the manifestations
of Nature. They approached the wisdom of Nature without theology, and questions
and riddles pressed in upon them. Now the breathing process is much more
intimately connected with Nature than is the nerve-process. That is why the
Greek had such a living feeling of being led on to wisdom by the Sphinx. It
is quite different in the modern age when theology has come upon the scene.
Man no longer believes that direct intercourse with nature brings him near
to the Divine Wisdom of the world, but he sets out to study, to approach
it via the nerve-process, not via the breathing and the blood. The search for
wisdom has become a nerve-process; modern theology is a nerve-proc
Henry David Thoreau:
How important is a constant intercourse with nature and
the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellectual
health! The discipline of the schools or of business can never impart such
serenity to the mind. The philosopher contemplates human affairs as calmly
and from as great a remoteness as he does natural phenomena. The ethical
philosopher needs the discipline of the natural philosopher. He approaches
the study of mankind with great advantages who is accustomed to the study
of nature. (Journal 6 May 1851)
The Indian's intercourse with nature is at least such as admits of
the greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger
in her midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. (Reflections
on the Indians and White Settlement From A Week on the Concord and Merrimack
Rivers, 'Sunday' section, 1849; also Ann Woodlief. Emerson
and Thoreau as American Prophets of Eco-wisdom, 1990)
Intercourse with nature was even more necessary to Thoreau
than intercourse with books. Intercourse with human beings he thought he
did not need, but he was always tramping off to the village for a chat. (The
Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-21).
XVI. Early National Literature, Part II; Later National Literature, Part
I. X. Thoreau. § 9. Walden.)
After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic,
hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with nature, though in her
rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard insensible man
whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse,
insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks,
whose hearts are comparatively soft. (1853)
In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding
about words, but when silence is not understood.
Paul Tillich, Nature
and Sacrament (The Protestant Era):
From the point of view of the magical interpretation of nature,
any reality whatsoever may be holy.... To the prophets the holy is primarily
a demand. Nothing can be holy apart from the fulfillment of the law. Holiness
and purity are brought together. The "unclean" is eliminated from the idea
of the holy. To the extent to which this process takes place the original sacramental
interpretation of nature disappears. The holy is now transformed into an unconditional
demand, transcending any given reality. Nature as such is deprived of its sacred
character and becomes profane. Immediate intercourse with nature no longer
possesses religious significance. Ritualistic demands are transformed into
ethical (and utilitarian) demands. Nevertheless, the sacramental attitude does
not lose its power. Indeed, it can never entirely vanish from the consciousness.
E. B. Titichener, Brentano
and Wundt: empirical and experimental psychology (American
Journal of Psychology, 32, 1921, pp. 108-120)
Brentano has all the advantage that comes with historical continuity.
His doctrine of immanent objectivity goes back to Aristotle and the Schoolmen,
and the classification of psychical acts into ideas, judgments, and phenomena
of love and hate goes back to Descartes. More than this: he can claim kinship
with every psychologist, of whatever school, who has approached his subject
from the technically 'empirical' standpoint. For the 'empirical' psychologist
means to take mind as he finds it; and like the rest of the world, who are
not psychologists, he finds it in use; he finds it actively at work in man's
intercourse with nature and with his fellow-man, as well as in his discourse
with himself.
S F Timashev, Complexity
and Evolutionary Law for Natural Systems: A "New Dialogue" with
Nature: In Looking for a Language as a Means of intercourse with nature.
(Annals
of the New York Academy of Sciences, 879, June 1999, pp. 129-142)
Leo Tolstoy, Life
in the Army (Resurrection, XIII ):
Then he had felt the importance of, and had need of intercourse with,
nature, and with those who had lived and thought and felt before him -- philosophers
and poets.
Vincent van Gogh:
What life I think best, oh, without the least shadow of a doubt it
is a life consisting of long years of intercourse with nature in the country...
One should start with the conviction that one is in need of intercourse with nature, with the conviction that one cannot lose one's way by taking this road,
and that one's course will be straight (Letter
from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh Drenthe, c. 29-2 Oct-Nov 1883)
Thorstein Veblen, The
Divine Right of Nations (The
Vested Interests and the Common Man, 1919):
This sinister fact is patent, that the great war has arisen out of a fateful
entanglement of national pretensions. And it is a fact scarcely less patent
that this fateful status quo ante arose out of the ordinary run of that system
of law and custom which has governed human intercourse among civilised nations
in our time. The underlying principles of this system of law and custom have
continued to govern human intercourse under a new order of material circumstances
which has come into effect since these principles were first installed. These
enlightened principles that go to make up the modern point of view as regards
law and morals are of the eighteenth century, whereas the new order in industry
is of the twentieth, and between these two dates lies an interval of unexampled
change in the material conditions of life.
Satomi Watanabe, My
Expectation toward the Nature Interface from the Viewpoint of a Natural Environment
Formation (WIN Newsletter):
"Coexistence with Nature" is often discussed these days. In order
to attain coexistence with nature, we need to adapt, improve on and innovate
human nature toward coexistence. We need to start by improving our capacity
for intercourse with nature through continuous communication with nature. We
have to create a "naturalistic environment," which will prompt the human being
to communicate with nature and to nourish the human sensibility and mind toward
coexistence.
Joseph H.H. Weiler, Thou
Shalt Not Oppress a Stranger:1 On the Judicial Protection of the Human Rights
of Non-EC Nationals: A Critique (European Journal of International
Law, Vol 3, No 4):
... one of the core ideas of the process of European integration has been
to conceive of Europe as a community which does not only condition discourse
among states but also spills over to the peoples of these states and thus
seeks to influence relations among individuals. Take, for example, the classical
provisions for free movement of workers. On the one hand they have a de-humanizing
element in treating workers as `factors of production' on par with goods,
services and capital. But they are also part of a matrix which prohibits,
for example, discrimination on grounds of nationality, and encourages generally
a rich network of transnational social transactions. They may thus also be
seen as intended not simply to create the optimal conditions for the free
movement of factors of production in the Common Market. They also serve,
echoing Hermann Cohen, to remove nationality and state affiliation of the
individual, so divisive in the past, as the principal referent for transnational
human intercourse.
Kenneth Westhues, The
Humanists: From Lineage to Dynasty (Keynote address at the Eighth
Annual Meeting of the Association for Humanist Sociology, Hartford, 1983):
Crucial though they are, these facts of life are not obvious to children
nor even to adults. Most people experience too little difference in the course
of growing up to recognize the creative power of human intercourse. There
is too much constancy in most biographies, and too little self-initiated
change....No student answers these questions without gaining a better grasp
of how his or her biography connects with history, thus a deeper recognition
that very little in our world, least of all our own identities, is understood
except as a product of indeterminate, willful human intercourse...Hegel argued
in effect that there is nothing in our experience but process, nothing
but an intangibility in human intercourse striving to realize itself.
Alan Woods and Ted Grant, Philosophy
and Religion (Reason in Revolt: Marxism and Modern Science,
1995):
At this stage, religion (magic), art and science were not differentiated.
Lacking the means to gain real power over their environment, early humans attempted
to obtain their ends by means of magical intercourse with nature, and thus
subject it to their will. The attitude of early humans to their spirit-gods
and fetishes was quite practical.
William Wordsworth [intercourse with nature] ****
In his intercourse with the divine spirit, Wordsworth reports: "I felt,
and nothing else; I did not judge / I never thought of judging" (Prelude [1805]
XI, pp. 237-238).
For Wordsworth, too, virtue is a passion which one feels in the limbs, and
which is often renovated and re-impassionedby intercourse with that spirit
which "rolls through all things"
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