• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.943-974
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• 2012

This paper aims to suggest the compromising vision of nature and technology as the solution to get out of the globally accelerated technology environment in Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis. This novel intends to emphasize on the importance of physical environment as a precondition for the survival of human. Eric wants to be a posthuman with the cybernetic idea, pursuing to be the digital self in a vast biosphere that integrates both the nature and the technology. His obsessive worship of technology through his quest for the futurity results in the effacement of the humanity and the insulation from the nature. Cosmopolis is DeLillo's first 9/11 novel, which describes a young-billionaire asset manager Eric's one-day life in New York in April 2000. Eric can be the third Twin Tower as a symbol of global economic hegemony. By the allusion of the 9/11 catastrophic event, it can be said that Eric's fall is caused by his hubris and avarice as a global capitalist. Crossing the 47th Street toward the West in his limousine, his journey is revealed as the environmental reflections on his desires to attain the futurity and transcendence by technology. This novel cautions that the abuse of technology can bring out the obsolescence and erasure of the humanity and the nature. DeLillo suggests that the best hope for the evolutionary possibility of posthuman can be realized through the correlation with nature and technology. This future-oriented novel warns that the excessive technology should not lead to the disappearance of community and humanity, and the separation of self and nature. It admonishes that they should not follow pseudo-cosmopolitanism as the greedy world citizens, devoting on the velocity of newest technology. This novel recommends that humans should be the world citizen of global ecosystem, making the ameliorative environment through the correlation with self/environment and technology/nature, and gardening the restorative biosphere and the younger planet.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• no.123
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• pp.61-89
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• 2018

The purpose of this paper is to characterize the reception of Cynicism by Julian, the emperor and Neoplatonist of the late Roman Empire. Julian attempts to restore true Cynicism, while chiding decadent contemporary Cynics. To this end, he idealizes Diogenes as an example of the true Cynic. The main attention is paid to the way in which Julian idealizes Diogenes. First, we introduce the basic features of Cynicism with a focus on the figure of Diogenes. Although Diogenes inherited the ethics of happiness from Socrates and presented the Cynic practices encapsulating - freedom from social customs, self-sufficiency as opposed to vanity and greed, and asceticism - as a shortcut to happiness, he was called a 'Socrates gone mad', owing to his unconventional and shameless words and deeds. Compared to this Diogenes, we try to discern the characteristics of the true Cynic described by Julian. The true Cynic for Julian is a rigorous ascetic like Diogenes, but a Diogenes knowing shame (aidos). He is an intelligent examiner of the opinion of the people like Socrates. However, he is a free man not enslaved to a particular state, but a pious philosopher who defends the divine moral law of the cosmopolis. In the end, it is shown that Julian embraces Cynicism in so far as it can be integrated into Socrates' rationalist moral tradition. We conclude with a brief reflection on the significance of Julian's reception of Cynicism from the perspective of his attempt to unify ancient philosophical traditions in order to protect Hellenism against Christianity.