How Great Companies Think Differently Essay

This article highlights principles that leading companies employ to differentiate them from other companies that focus only on profits. These leading companies attempt to transcend the short-term bottom line mentality and aim at social involvement that will produce longevity and sustained profits over the long haul. Part of making money in the long term is longevity, and the way to longevity is to build an â€Å"enduring institution†. This is done through being more socially conscious and planning for better quality of life for employees including a healthy work life balance, and to provide a meaningful life purpose for workers that build people and society. The point is to remain financially viable for the long term because that’s the best way to serve society, the employees, and consumers. Key Takeaways 1. Businesses must invest in employee empowerment and engagement, and must adopt the attitude that employees are interested in more than just a paycheck. Companies must balance public interests with financial concerns, and attempt to improve the lives of consumers. Viewing the company as a societal institution and communicating a common purpose provides an identity for employees and helps protect against uncertainty. A larger purpose and vision inspires employees to think bigger and beyond the four walls of the company. 2. Business should have a clear, long term focus on a higher purpose than just financial achievement. This is achieved by investing in â€Å"the human side† of the organization. Listening to the interests of employees and possibly offering opportunities to pursue those under a sort of corporate sponsorship. Doing so should lead to deeper emotional connections to the company, which again supports longevity. 3. Moods are contagious. Moods can transmit institutional values, inspiring positive emotions about the company. It is therefore vital that leadership model the behavior that supports the long term corporate/social vision. If values are clear and well understood, they can be appealing to employees. Having employees who are emotionally engaged with the values gives them a sense of purpose greater than corporate goals, and feeds longevity because employees are bought in to the corporate values rather than a personality. 4. Globalization detaches the company from a single specific society. The global markets require purpose and vision that goes beyond a single company or societal group. This is positive because it feeds innovation and cultural sensitivity to the markets the company serves.

Subvert and Suborn

Subvert and Suborn Subvert and Suborn Subvert and Suborn By Maeve Maddox A reader has asked for a discussion of the words subvert and suborn. Both are verbs and both have been used with meanings no longer common. Deriving ultimately from a Latin word for â€Å"to overturn,† subvert came into English from French subvertir, â€Å"to raze, destroy completely.† The meaning has developed from the literal destruction of a town or building to mean the overturning of an established practice or belief. Example: Critics assert that allowing women to become priests would subvert apostolic teachings regarding the role of women in the Church. Subvert was once used to mean the bringing down of a nation or a state, but now the sense is â€Å"to undermine without necessarily bringing down the established authority.† Example: Efforts are being made by means of sabotage to subvert that country’s efforts to build a war machine. Socrates was accused of subverting youth with his teachings. This sense of subvert is â€Å"to corrupt or pervert a person, or a persons mind, causing the person to turn away from a path or belief regarded as right or proper.† Jazz and rock music have been criticized as subverting youthful morals. Literary critics use the word subvert in terms of challenging and undermining a conventional idea, form, or genre by presenting it in a new way. An example of this use of subvert is the way Joss Whedon took the clichà © of the helpless, usually blonde, beauty who enters an alley to be murdered by a monster, and turned it on its head to create the character of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He â€Å"subverted† the horror genre. Subvert applies principally to the overthrow of ideas. Suborn has to do with causing an individual to commit a crime. Like subvert, suborn entered English by way of French. It meant â€Å"to induce a person to commit a crime, especially to give false testimony.† It now means â€Å"to cause a person to commit perjury.† The fictional ADAs on TV’s Law and Order often use the term â€Å"suborning perjury.† The legal term is defined as â€Å"the criminal offense of procuring another to commit perjury, which is the crime of lying, in a material matter, while under oath.† Note: ADA stands for Assistant District Attorney. In most U.S. jurisdictions, the District Attorney represents the government in prosecuting criminal offenses. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:10 Rules for Writing Numbers and NumeralsGrammar Quiz #21: Restrictive and Nonrestrictive ClausesThe Difference Between "Shade" and "Shadow"

How Meteors Form and What They Are

How Meteors Form and What They Are Experienced stargazers are familiar with meteors. They can fall any time of the day or night, but these bright flashes of light are much easier to see in dim light or darkness. While they are often referred to as falling or shooting stars, these bits of fiery rock actually have nothing to do with stars. Key Takeaways: Meteors Meteors are flashes of light made when bits of space rock speed through our atmosphere and burst into flames.Meteors may be created by comets and asteroids but are not themselves comets and asteroids.A meteorite is a space rock that survives the trip through the atmosphere and lands on the surface of a planet.Meteors can be detected by the sounds they give off as they pass through the atmosphere. Defining Meteors Technically, meteors are flashes of light that occur when a small bit of space debris called a speeds through Earths atmosphere. Meteors may be only about the size of a grain of sand or a pea, although some are small pebbles. The largest can be giant boulders the size of mountains. Most, however, result from tiny bits of space rock that happen to stray across Earth during its orbit.   Looking at an incoming meteor descend through Earths atmosphere, as seen from the International Space Station. NASA How Do Meteors Form? When meteors hurtle through the layer of air surrounding Earth, friction caused by the molecules of gas that make up our planets atmosphere heats them up, and the meteors surface begins warm up and glow. Eventually, the heat and high speed combine to vaporize the meteor usually high above Earths surface.  Larger chunks of debris break apart, showering many pieces down through the sky. Most of those vaporize, too. When that happens, observers can see different colors in the flare surrounding the meteor. The colors are due to the gases in the atmosphere being heated up along with the meteor, as well as from materials inside the debris itself.  Some larger pieces create very large flares in the sky, and are often referred to as bolides. Meteorite Impacts Larger meteors that survive the trip through the atmosphere and and land on the Earths surface, or in bodies of water, are known as meteorites. Meteorites are often very dark, smooth rocks, usually containing iron or a combination of stone and iron. Many pieces of space rock that make it to the ground and are found by meteorite hunters are fairly small and incapable of doing much damage. Only the larger meteoroids will create a crater when they land. Nor are they smoking hot- another common misconception. Meteorite Hunters. NASA Johnson Space Center The piece of space rock that made Meteor Crater in Arizona, was about 160 feet (50 meters) across. The Chelyabinsk impactor that landed in Russia in 2013 was about 66 feet (20 meters) long and caused shock waves that shattered windows across a wide distance. Today, these kinds of large impacts are relatively rare on Earth, but billions of years ago when the Earth was formed, our planet was bombarded by incoming space rocks of all sizes. The fireball created as a superbolide flared over Chelyabinsk, Russia, on February 15, 2013. This was shot with a dashcam. Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY. Meteor Impact and the Death of the Dinosaurs One of the largest and most recent impact events occurred nearly 65,000 years ago when a piece of space rock about 6 to 9 miles (10 to 15 kilometers) across smashed into Earths surface near where the Mexicos Yucatan Peninsula is today. The region is called Chicxulub (pronounced Cheesh-uh-loob) and wasnt discovered until the 1970s. The impact, which may actually have been caused by multiple incoming rocks, had a drastic impact on Earth, including earthquakes, tidal waves, and sudden and extended climate change caused by debris suspended in the atmosphere. The Chicxulub impactor dug out a crater some 93 miles (150 km) in diameter and is widely associated with a huge extinction of life that likely included most dinosaur species.   Fortunately, those kinds of meteoroid impacts are fairly rare on our planet. They still occur on other worlds in the solar system. From those events, planetary scientists get a good idea of how cratering works on solid rock and ice surfaces, as well as in the upper atmospheres of the gas- and ice-giant planets.   Is an Asteroid a Meteor? Though they can be sources of meteors, asteroids are not meteors. They are separate, small bodies in the solar system. Asteroids supply meteor material through collisions, which scatter bits of their rock throughout space. Comets can also generate meteors, by spreading trails of rock and dust as they orbit the Sun. When Earths orbit intersects the orbits of comet trails or asteroid debris, those bits of space material can get swept up. Thats when they start the fiery trip through our atmosphere, vaporizing as they go. If anything survives to reach the ground, thats when they become meteorites.  Ã‚   Asteroid Vesta has supplied some meteorites that landed on Earth. NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA Meteor Showers There are a number of chances for Earth to plow trails of debris left behind by asteroid breakups and cometary orbits. When Earth does encounter a track of space debris, the resulting meteor events are called meteor showers. They can result in anywhere from a few tens of meteors in the sky per hour each night up to nearly a hundred. It all depends on how thick the trail is and how many meteoroids make the final trip through our atmosphere.   A sample of what a meteor shower provides in the night sky. The meteors of the Orionid Meteor shower appear to radiate from the direction of the constellation Orion. They are, in reality, bits of dust from a comet vaporizing in Earths upper atmosphere. Carolyn Collins Petersen

History and Political Science Exam Questions Essay

History and Political Science Exam Questions - Essay Example The case study countries can be said to relatively conform to the ideal model of liberal democracy. The three constitutional forms mentioned above are depicted in the case study countries. Political competitiveness is observed in the U.S, Nigeria, France and Russia. Elections are held after a specified period of time, and constitutional provisions allow for free and fair elections. Spain on the other hand practices democracy through a constitutional monarchy. While such a political process may not be competitive, transparency in governance is provided for by political laws. Q2 The growth and development of the civil society is an important aspect of the larger population within a country or a state. The management of human capital in the civil service is primarily undertaken by the civil society, and it therefore accounts for the major needs of the larger society. The development of the civil society and its influence to the state are intertwined. A developed civil society is one tha t accounts for the diversity and dynamisms realized in the state and one that further seeks to match this trend with the performance of the state. It therefore stands a strong ground to significantly influence the state. Q3 Centralization of legislation is the basis upon which unitary states function. This is form of legislature is however not necessarily the best in the contemporary world. Political systems and governments seek to uphold efficiency and effectiveness of governments, thereby delegating legislation duties. The concentration of authority and power to a single unit of governance is longer deemed as an aspect of democracy. As a result, political systems and governments of the modern times tend to create organs of governance that function just as the overhead arm of government. Decentralized legislature is thus a key defining factor of democracy. EXAM 2 Q1 The Rational Actor Model makes four assumptions that fail to conform to the real world phenomena. As a result, the us e of this model in the evaluation and assessment of foreign relations is limited, and to a more extent unrealistic. The model assumes that governments are unitary in nature, cost and benefit analysis is the mode of policy formulation, actors execute decisions faithfully and ineffective policies are optimized through adjustment (Held, 2006, p.329). These assumptions are unrealistic since they do not account for the ulterior motives of actors in foreign relations. On the same note, policy formulation keep conflicting with other policies already in place, and therefore optimality of policies is not realistic. Q2 Foreign policy making is subject to both rational processes and political influences. The extent to which these two factors affect foreign policy formulation and implementation is crucial in determining whether the goals of foreign policy reflect political interests. Foreign policies are formulated and implemented by states that identify foreign relations issues that need to be addressed by these policies. Due to this aspect, the rationality of foreign policy making is lost. This is due to the fact that the emerging foreign policies reflect collaborative political interests, and are therefore deemed to serve purposes that are beneficial to the formulating agencies even when the rationality of these policies is questionable. EXAM 3 Q1 States are endowed with powers within their jurisdiction to formulate and implement policies, among them

Feminism Blog Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Feminism Blog Analysis - Essay Example The main similarity between the two sites chosen for analysis is the responsibility they take on themselves in regard to what they are writing about. In particular, the content of the blogs suggests that both sites consider treating everyone with equal respect important; also, protecting women and standing up against sexism is in the focus. In a narrower sense, the two sites both agree that women’s reproductive rights should not be restricted. They argue that women should have the ability to choose whether, how, and when they have or not have children. The sites also highlight the idea that women’s reproductive rights are affected at different levels, such as economy, medicine, education, criminal justice, government, community, and others. The use of social media has played a significant role in the modern feminist movement as well as in how it is perceived in the society. In fact, social media gives young women an opportunity to use their voices in a larger audience. Social media makes feminist activism more democratic, which means that anyone can participate in it. It removes geographical barriers and, thus, makes it possible for millions to unite as it facilitates public dialogues independent of the participants’ location. One of the examples of the co-called networked feminism is the wide use of hashtags that gives the possibility to groups messages on the issue and, consequently, to make it easier to get the information and check the messages which include it.

Core Theories on Economics Related To Economic Slowdown Essay

Core Theories on Economics Related To Economic Slowdown - Essay Example The intention of this study is economic slowdown as the condition in which the gross domestic product growth tends to slow down but it does not turn down. One of the ways of looking at the slowdown in the economy is through gauging the downward revisions in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Economic slowdown can also be identified as the difference obtained in the growth rate between two consecutive years of any particular country. An economic downturn demonstrates that the economy of a particular country is entering into recession. The period in which the country suffers from negative economic growths, declining outputs and increasing unemployment is termed as recession. According to the official definition of recession, when the economy suffers from off-putting economic growth for two consecutive years then it is said to be recession. Prior to defining the economic downturn, it is significant to comprehend the main characteristics of economic downturn. A few of the characteristics of economic downturn are rising unemployment, rising additional capacity, low confidence and falling investment, increasing government borrowing, negative or too low economic growth. Certain problems related to recession or economic slowdowns are evident when there is decline in productivity. In such scenario, the production in the economy tends to be reduced which results to lesser real GDP and lower average income. Furthermore, the wage rates may raise either too slowly or may not rise at all. Unemployment is another problem related to economic downturn. (Pettinger, 2011). Since the production is too less during the times of economic slowdown, the demand for the labor also declines thus leading to unemployment. During the times of economic slowdown, the finance of the government tends to worsen. People are not capable of paying much taxes and their spending on the unemployment benefits tends to rise (Pettinger, 2011). This leads to rise in government borrowing and in the rate of i nterest. With the increase in the bond yields, government is forced to reduce budget deficits via cutting the spending and tax rise. This worsens the recession and it becomes difficult for the economy to come out of it. It is often found that throughout the period of economic slowdown, there is devaluation in the exchange rates because during such period people tend to expect lower interest rates and therefore the demand for the

Ethics Of Hans Jonas Philosophy Essay

Ethics Of Hans Jonas Philosophy Essay Science and philosophy though are separate disciplines they co-exist with each other. Hans Jonas a prominent thinker not only has succeeded in bridging the gap of science and philosophy but also has taken science especially the Biology to the realm of philosophy. He has constructed Philosophical Biology. He is also known for his ethics of responsibility. As, one of the most prominent thinkers of 20th century, he has written on diverse topics such as the philosophy of biology, ethics, social philosophy, cosmology, and Jewish theology with a view to understand morality as the root of our moral responsibility to safeguard humanitys future. Jonass greatest work, The Phenomenon of Life sets forth a systematic and comprehensive philosophy of phenomenology and existentialism. In this paper I have tried to adumbrate his thought on life philosophy rather thematically with a special reference to Phenomenon of Life. I have also touched upon his most celebrated ethics of responsibility briefly f ollowed by my own reflections. 1. Life and Biography Hans Jonas was a well-known Jewish thinker, an early and influential biomedical ethicist, and an equally early and influential philosopher of technology. Jonas was born in 1904 in Monchengladbach, studied under Martin Heidegger at the University of Freiburg before Hitler came to power and Heidegger became chancellor of the university. He received his doctorate in 1928 from the University of Marburg. In 1933 he fled Germany and, in 1964, publicly repudiated Heidegger because of his Nazi connections. Jonas taught in Jerusalem and Canada before becoming a professor at the New School for Social Research in New York in 1955, where he was chair of the philosophy department (195763) and Johnson Professor of Philosophy (from 1966 until his retirement in 1976).  [1]  He Died in February, 1993 in New York. Jonass career is generally divided into three periods defined by the three works just mentioned, but in reverse order: studies of Gnosticism, studies of philosophical biology, and ethica l studies.  [2]  Jonass major works in English include:  The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God  and  the Beginnings of Christianity  (1958),  The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology  (1966), and  The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of Ethics for the Technological Age  (1979).  [3]   2. Philosophical Biology in The Phenomenon of Life The Phenomenon of Life is a collection of essays, written over a period of more than fifteen years. The book covers topics ranging from the metabolism of an amoeba to the meaning of immortality. There are discussions of Orphic religion, natural selection, gnosticism, DNA, ancient versus modern mathematics, cybernetics, the relative strengths and weaknesses of seeing, hearing, and tactile-feeling, the being of images, theory versus practice, the images of man and the image of God. In this book he critiques the fundamental assumptions underlying modern philosophy since Descartes, primarily dualism. Jonas is exactly right to argue that life does need a distinct ontological category, and that the neglect of life in the Cartesian dichotomy of matter and mind is an important element in the historical path that leads to modern nihilism.  [4]  The book deals with organic facts of life and self-interpretation of life in human being. The themes dealt are not only of organic world such as m etabolism, sentience, motility, emotion, perception, imagination, mind etc. but also moral and metaphysical themes.  [5]   In the preface of The Phenomenon of Life, Jonas identifies the work as an existential interpretation of the biological facts. This description is significant: Jonas would attempt to carry what was valuable in the existentialist approach forward to interpret an area that philosophers had long neglected: the world of facts about living things; about hunger, about nourishment, about growth and about death. The very proposition that philosophy ought to interpret facts demonstrates Jonass unorthodox orientation. For Jonas, the old division of labor between the natural sciences, on the one hand, which deal in facts about nature, and the humanities, on the other, which concern themselves with values and concepts salient to the mind or spirit-this old division of labor is precisely the problem that must be overcome in order to get nature right. 3. Life, Death and the Body of Being and Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism Jonas says that when human being began to interpret the nature of things he found life everywhere. It means the primitive man found life in everything. Jonas calls for the construction of a philosophy of nature as the Greek philosopher Aristotle did long ago. By this he means that every philosopher must return to fields or to the working land. In this context his questions are: What is the difference between a human being, alive, and a corpse? What is there in man besides chemicals that constitute the human body? Some might be quick to answer, a human being is not just a body; he has a soul. But what is meant by this? Is the soul something to be opposed to the body-a sort of spiritual substance that inhabits a body and lives out its own destiny apart from that body? This was neither Jonass view nor Aristotles before him.  [6]  The position of these philosophers is closer to that which Friedrich Nietzsche expressed with his usual eloquence when he wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Body am I, and soul so speaks a child.  [7]  And why should one not speak like children? But the awakened and knowing say: body am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body. Nietzsche says that the soul is a word for something about the body, we have an idea what that something is-its mortality, its relationship to death. An easy but significant answer to the question what is a living thing? is this: A living thing is something that can and will die. Unlike non-living matter-including the nonliving matter that makes up living bodies-the whole living body has a provisional sort of being. When death arrives, the extinction of an existing thing occurs. What is clearly gone in death is the bodys organization. Extinction of organism equals loss of organization. When the organism is alive, first, it is not a static thing, like the organization of marble into a statue or of wood and iron into a hammer. It is rather, a never ceasing, ongoing pro cess. Biological science calls this process as metabolism. Jonas describes metabolism philosophically: In this remarkable mode of being, the material parts of which the organism consists at a given instant are to the penetrating observer only temporary, passing contents whose joint material identity does not coincide with the identity of the whole which they enter and leave, and which sustains its own identity by the very act of foreign matter passing through its spatial system, the living form. It is never the same materially and yet persists as its same self, by not remaining the same matter.  [8]  Aristotles thought that all living beings nourish themselves, struck the idea of the mode of being as discovered by Jonas. A living thing does not simply exist-it exists by being constantly active, constantly reaching out into the world to capture those material parts it needs to preserve itself. Out of these captured elements, the organism builds itself anew or generates the energy needed for this building. Plants employ roots and leaves, a nimals employ gills, lungs, teeth, stomach-and also, on the hunt, legs and arms, eyes and ears, attention and memory. As Jonas conceives it, life, from the most simple to the most complex, is active and purposeful.  [9]  Organism and environment together form a system which determines the basic concept of life. Jonas remarks that the triumph which materialism achieved in Darwinism contains the germ of its own overcoming. Though by proving Darwins evolutionism it seems that mans metaphysical status is reduced due to his animal descent, in the realm of life as a whole mans dignity is restored. If man was the relative of animals, then animals were the relatives of man, and in degrees bearers of that inwardness of which man, the most advanced of their kin, is conscious in himself.  [10]  But man remains distinct, because of self-consciousness. 4. Is God a Mathematician? The third essay in The Phenomenon of Life considers the meaning of metabolism using the quote of Sir James Jeans. Jonas notes that a living being is one that is never the same from one moment to the next perpetual self-renewal through process. James remarks, From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician.  [11]  Two questions can be asked on this statement: What does it mean and is it true? The question regarding the truth gives rise to another question namely, is the great architect of the universe is also the architect of amoeba. He must be both, or he is neither. For the amoeba is part of the universe and must be accountable for by its creative principle. The observation of James is the continuation of the long tradition from Platos Timaeus to Leibniz. Leibniz observes, Thus it is wonderfully made known to us how in the very origination of things a certain Divine mathematics or metaphysical mechanic s is employed and the determination of the greatest quantity takes place.  [12]  When God calculates and employs thought, the world is made.  [13]  Kepler deeply imbued with the Pythagorean faith in the mathematical essence of things and the consequent harmony in the world, said that God, too kind to remain idle, began to play the game of signatures, signing his likeness into the world, with the result that all nature and the graceful sky are symbolized in the art of geometry. Galileo believed that the great book of the universe is written in mathematical language, using symbols such as triangles, circles and other geometrical figures. Philosophy is written in the book of the universe.  [14]  The final answer to the question, Is God a Mathematician? is a distinct No. 5. Animal vs. Plants Jonas considers what differs from animal to plant i.e., motility, perception and emotion. The ability to move using the evidence of perception leads to the idea of freedom. Plants possess immediacy in life between environment and the organism; animals are more separated than this being required to treat the environment as different from them to some degree at least. For the animal the environment is always at a distance, but for plants the adjacent surroundings in one permanent context forms the environment. Motility, perception, and emotion make it possible for animals to have a genuine relation to a genuinely articulated world. These powers are, in fact, all manifestations of a common principle, tied to a common fact about animal life. The common fact is that the mobile animals live at greater distance from their relevant environments; thereforethe common principleanimal life is mediated life, animal life is rooted in the gap between subject and object, which gap is spanned by the distance-disclosing and distance-bridging powers of perception, locomotion, and appetite. Jonas argues, persuasively, that appetite is the heart of animality, prior to the more externally recognizable powers of perception and locomotion. Distance is requisite for desire, but it is desire which drives motion, guided by perception, to turn the over there into here and the not yet into now. It is desire which, while seeking to efface the spatial and temporal gaps, paradoxically, maintains the gaps (and the objects across them) as matters of interest, even as the gaps are spanned under its spur. Jonas concludes: The great secret of animal life lies precisely in the gap which it is able to maintain between immediate concern and mediate satisfaction.  [15]  Wakefulness and effort, want and fear, suffering and enjoyment give depth to the animal soul. 6. Cybernetics and Purpose According to cybernetics, society is communication network for the transmitting, exchanging, and pooling of information. Jonas analyses the ideas of cybernetics and some differences between machines and organisms noting that machines act by feedback mechanisms whereas organism is concerned in existing, this applies also to society where the cybernetic idea of information is empty. He draws out a crucial implication of the passionate nature of animal life. He shows the error in the efforts of cyberneticians and behaviorists to explain away the apparent goal-directed behavior of animals in terms of mechanical inputs and outputs and self-regulating feedback mechanisms. Exploiting the distinction between serving a purpose and having purpose, and using a marvelous example which compares a so-called self-steering torpedo and the same torpedo manned by a human pilot, he shows that all machine models of purposiveness fail because, unlike living things, machines are not creatures of need. It is the concern of life with its own continued existence that qualifies incoming data as messages, and then only if they are relevant to the organisms purpose; it is only such self-concern that energizes the active response as an action fit to the organic purpose. Concern, or, in the higher animals, desire, appetite, and emotion, is more basic than the outward-looking functions of perception and locomotion which it holds together. Animals, no less than man, are teleological beings; animals, no less than man, aim at their own good.  [16]   7. Image-making and the Freedom of Man Hans Jonas sheds light on philosophical anthropology where he shows the specific difference of human being in the animal kingdom. He deliberates on the properties of an object which determines the image. According to him the properties of image include:  [17]   1. The most obvious property is that of likeness. An image is an object that bears a plainly recognizable likeness to another object. 2. The likeness is produced with intent. It is not the natural resemblances like mirror images, shadows, and the like. 3. The likeness is not complete. It is not duplication. The incompleteness of the likeness must be perceptible. 4. The incompleteness of image-likeness includes omission and selection. 5. Incompleteness also involves dissimilarity and alteration of selected features. 6. The object of representation is visual shape. Vision grants the greatest freedom to the mediacy of representation. 7. The image is inactive and at rest, though it may depict movement and action. There is static presence because the represented, the representation, and the vehicle of representation are different strata in the ontological constitution of the image. The properties required in a subject for the making or beholding of images involve the ability to behold something as an image; and to behold something as an image and not merely as an object means also to be able to produce one. The requirement seems to be the ability to perceive the likeness. Animals perceive either sameness or otherness, but not both in one. Human persons have the apprehension of similitude. 8. Gnosticism, Existentialism and Nihilism The similarity and difference between two positions or movements of thought is: one is conceptual, sophisticated and eminently modern i.e., existentialism and another from misty past, mythological, crude i.e., Gnosticism. Jonas wrote on Gnosticism which was a widespread movement in late antiquity in the early era of Christianity. The Gnostics, often understood to be Christian heretics, held the view that the cosmos is a prison for the human soul; that the world is not Gods creation, but the work of lesser deities intent on keeping the soul imprisoned and apart from God; that all attachments between a human being and the world, his appetites, aspirations and conscience, are expressions of ignorance that must be overcome through true knowledge; and that this knowledge only comes as a gift from the savior beyond the world who can show the soul the way out.  [18]   The movement of modern knowledge called science has by a necessary complementarity eroded the foundations from which norms could be derived; it has destroyed the very idea of norm as such. To make his point fully emphatic, Jonas writes: Now we shiver in the nakedness of a nihilism, in which near-omnipotence is paired with near-emptiness, greatest capacity with knowing least for what ends to use it.  [19]   9. Heidegger and Theology This essay deals with how Martin Heidegger understands of Theology as interpreted by Jonas. Originally the Biblical word was equalized with the Greek logos. Philo Judaeus gives a reflection on Christian Theology through the etymology of the Biblical name Israel. It means He who sees God and Jacobs acquiring this name is said to represent the God-seekers progress from the stage of hearing to that of seeing, made possible by the miraculous conversion of ears into eyes. Philos views on knowing God rests on the Platonic supposition the truest relation to being is intuition, beholding. This eminence of sight gazed from the religious perspective enhances ones relation to God and also to the word of God. Philo quoting Exodus, All the people saw the voice (20: 18) comments: Highly significant, for human voice is to be heard, but Gods voice is in truth to be seen. Why? Because that which God speaks is not words but works, which the eye discriminates better than the ear (De Decalogo, 47).  [ 20]  After Philo the Christian Theology underwent a turn from the original hearing to the call of the living in other words the conversion of ears into eyes When we speak of Heidegger there is much secularized Christianity in his thought. The concepts like guilt, care, anxiety, call of conscience, resolution, authenticity-inauthenticity have a purely ontological meaning. Theology is also a primal thinking though it is derived from a revelation. But for Heidegger Revelation is self-unveiling of being. Heidegger adopts many Judeo-Christian vocabularies in his philosophy such as guilt and conscience and call and voice and hearing and response and mission and shepherd and revelation and thanksgiving etc. He says: Only from the truth of being can essence of the holy be thought. Only from the essence of the holy is the essence of deity to be thought. Only in the light in the essence of deity can that be thought and said which the word God should name.  [21]  Heideggers formulation c an be put in this way, philosophical thinking is to being as theological thinking is to the self-revealing God. Hence theology should be primal thinking concerning God.  [22]   10. Jonass Thought on Biology Organisms are, of course, as much a part of the physical universe as atoms and planets and cosmic nebulae. An organism is a whole and not just a collection of simpler parts. Nature is not a place of purposes but rather of bodies filling the void of empty space.  [23]  A living organism including human being-is a being that must always be at-work in order to stay the whole that it is. What Jonas adds to this account is an existentialist philosophers emphasis on the role of death. The existentialists, including Heidegger, think only about the consciousness of death, the anticipation of death that characterizes mankinds existence. But Jonas thought about death as a biological event. Mankind is not the only creature who walks in the valley of the shadow of death. All life is fragile and provisional; all life is wrested moment by moment from the threat of non-being. The key ontological divide is not between human beings and the rest of nature-it is between living nature and that which does not live and, so, cannot die. The essential feature of all life, then, is, first, the primacy of form over matter-the ontological persistence of an individual through material change-and, second, the purposeful action of the living individual to keep itself in being against the threat of non-being. The imputation of purpose to all life processes is perhaps the core of Jonass heresy. It is essential, for Jonas, those categories which modern philosophers and scientists have consistently applied only to mankind-purpose, intention, interest, care-should be seen as present throughout the organic world. To be alive is to exhibit an interest in continuing to be. Jonas formulates this at one point by saying that, through metabolism, life says yes to itself.  [24]  Jonas characterizes the essential property of all living things as a kind of freedom. Living things are free in that they exist independent of, though not apart from, their material.  [25]   11. The Imperative of Responsibility Jonas is best known for his neo-Kantian ethics of responsible caution in the face of the awesome power of modern technology, especially the power of modern biotechnology, including genetic engineering. He offers answer to the question what makes mankind unique?, Man is the only being known to us who can assume responsibility. The fact that he can assume it means that he is liable to it. This capacity for taking responsibility already signifies that human being is subject to its imperative: the ability itself brings moral obligation with it. But the capacity for taking responsibility, an ethical capacity, lies in mans ontological capability to choose knowingly and willingly between alterative actions. Responsibility, therefore, is complimentary to freedom; it is an acting subjects burden of freedom.  [26]  Jonas tells us: Responsibility exists with or without God and, naturally even more so, with or without an earthly court of justice. Responsibility is sown into the fabric of Bei ng. Jonas argues that it does and that we must learn how to think of the planet that sustains our being and the God-like nature that evolution has-wondrously and mysteriously-realized in our species as vulnerable things that must stay our hand and constrain our choices.  [27]  According to Jonas, we must consult our fears and not our hopes when understanding technological ventures that can have a potentially devastating impact on what it means to be human (and therefore ethical). The Imperative of Responsibility centres on social and ethical problems created by technology. Jonas insists that human survival depends on our efforts to care for our planet and its future. He formulated a new and distinctive supreme principle of morality: Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life.  [28]  Francis Bacon states that nature can be commanded only by being obeyed.  [29]   Critical Remarks and Conclusion Hans Jonas, a pupil of Heidegger, departs from his mentors work and reaches out into the depths of the deeply thinking mans way of understanding The Phenomenon of Life . The philosophy of Jonas is more than challenging in this technological era. I found it relevant for many reasons. a. His division of living and non-living beings is a new thinking which goes beyond anthropocentric division of man and rest of nature. This new aspect brings in the terrain of plants and animals to human life. They are nothing less in terms of living beings. Only non-living beings have neither birth nor death. This thinking paves the way for new ethical imperatives, respect for life and deep ecological concerns. b. His application of philosophy to science especially to biology is relevant. He tries to interpret nature in a holistic sense which upholds the meaning to life, proper use of technology etc. He acknowledges that human existence cannot be grasped without acknowledging radically different kinds of relation. c. The philosophy of Hans Jonas found in The Phenomenon of Life is a hard reading and bit complicated to understand in a first attempt. But as one goes or digs deep there are gems of thought and concrete experiences. The life and thought is worth studying for a present student of philosophy. His philosophy is a clarion call to study and do philosophy as well. It places humans as responsible citizens of cosmos to safeguard nature and surroundings. Thanks to his thought.