Existential Intelligence - by Sevket Benhür Oral (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book develops an ontological approach to understanding existential intelligence and its connections to democracy and education, and argues that it is essential to our capacity for co-existing peacefully and living collectively with human and nonhuman beings.

Book Synopsis

This book develops an ontological approach to understanding existential intelligence and its connections to democracy and education.

Sevket Benhür Oral examines the concept of existential intelligence-hereafter ExistI-on an ontological level. ExistI is not conceived as a psychological aptitude that one can be good at or not like spatial or bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. Rather, it refers to a unitary experience that is riddled with ambiguity. All human beings are potentially open to such experience since we all have the capacity to experience the extraordinary, or better put, the extraordinariness of the ordinary. Although Howard Gardner later identified existential intelligence among other intelligences, his theory of multiple intelligences, while still widely accepted by educators, did not adequately explore this concept, especially in its political, moral, and philosophical dimensions. It is essential that we do since ExistI is ultimately about our capacity for more peaceful ways of co-existing with others, the extraordinariness of living collectively with human and nonhuman beings.

Review Quotes

"This fabulous book introduces an original account of what existential intelligence means and what the irresolvable ambiguities of the real and of pluralistic ontology are about. With its fascinating prose and its path-breaking associations, the book leaves an indelible mark on the reader's memory, while stimulating further thought and nourishing ontological discourse with valuable new concepts and insights." --Marianna Papastefanou, University of Cyprus

About the Author

Sevket Benhür Oral is Senior Researcher at the Vytautas Kavolis Research Institute, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania.