scholarly journals Phenomenological approaches to personal identity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakub Čapek ◽  
Sophie Loidolt
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
The Self ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Continental Tradition ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Temporal Becoming

AbstractThis special issue addresses the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological viewpoint, especially contemporary phenomenological research on selfhood. In the introduction, we first offer a brief survey of the various classic questions related to personal identity according to Locke’s initial proposal and sketch out key concepts and distinctions of the debate that came after Locke. We then characterize the types of approach represented by post-Hegelian, German and French philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We argue that whereas the Anglophone debates on personal identity were initially formed by the persistence question and the characterization question, the “Continental” tradition included remarkably intense debates on the individual or the self as being unique or “concrete,” deeply temporal and—as claimed by some philosophers, like Sartre and Foucault—unable to have any identity, if not one externally imposed. We describe the Continental line of thinking about the “self” as a reply and an adjustment to the post-Lockean “personal identity” question (as suggested by thinkers such as MacIntyre, Ricœur and Taylor). These observations constitute the backdrop for our presentation of phenomenological approaches to personal identity. These approaches run along three lines: (a) debates on the layers of the self, starting from embodiment and the minimal self and running all the way to the full-fledged concept of person; (b) questions of temporal becoming, change and stability, as illustrated, for instance, by aging or transformative life-experiences; and (c) the constitution of identity in the social, institutional, and normative space. The introduction thus establishes a structure for locating and connecting the different contributions in our special issue, which, as an ensemble, represent a strong and differentiated contribution to the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological perspective.

Das palimpsestische Selbst. Zur Genese, Struktur, Darstellung und Vermittlung von personaler Identität nach Sören Kierkegaard

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-135
Author(s):  
Matthias Engmann
Keyword(s):  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Soren Kierkegaard ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Embeddedness ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Main Thesis ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Key Aspects

AbstractThis article examines the subjective structure and genesis of personal identity in (some of) Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous writings. Based on a structural analysis of self-awareness (here, in particular, the category of existential becoming, the social embeddedness of the individual and the irreducible fact of mediation of personal identity), the main thesis is that, according to Kierkegaard, personal identity can best be described as a constant interweaving of hypertextual and intertextual layers. Accordingly, the central metaphor of palimpsest is used in order to account for the self-relation as an overwriting process, realized by a constant self-reinterpretation of the individual. The article focuses on certain structural, existential, hermeneutic, and semiotic key aspects of such an interpretation.

scholarly journals The Person and Religious Poetry in Malay

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 242-261
Author(s):  
Harry Aveling ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Close Connection ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Human Identity ◽  
Religious Poetry ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
Religion And Poetry

Accepting that there is a close connection between religion and poetry, the paper focuses on the person that is presented in poetry in Malay in response to the Divine. The concept of “the person” used contains three elements: (a) the human identity – our common physiological and psychological qualities; (b) the social identity – arising from our membership in the various groups that make up our particular society; and, (c) the self – the unique personal sense of who I am. It argues that the person in Malay religious poetry is largely a “social identity” the self surrendered to God through membership in the Muslim community. Keywords: religious poetry, person, human identity, social identity, the individual self

Coleridge’s Exile from the Social Contract, 1795–1829

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoe Beenstock
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
Breaking Point ◽  
General Will ◽  
Social Crisis ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Better Than

Coleridge wrote frequently about Rousseau throughout his varied career. His early lectures and letters draw on Rousseau’s critique of luxury and frequently allude to the general will, depicting Rousseau as a Christ-like figure. Coleridge’s subsequent disappointment with Pantisocracy led him to reject Rousseau and the social contract. Comparing Rousseau to Luther in The Friend, Coleridge argues that Rousseau’s unhappiness arises from a conflict between an age of individualism and an ongoing need for community. According to Coleridge, poetry tolerates this conflict better than philosophy. In ‘Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement’ Coleridge suggests that social retreat offers illusory solace from war and social crisis. He critiques the state of nature, sympathy, and even religion for failing to balance the self with its environment. Thematically and formally The Rime of the Ancient Mariner explores this crisis in cohering systems. Through the mariner’s relationship to the albatross, the wedding that frames the poem, and episodes of the supernatural that disrupt the ballad form, Coleridge defines a breaking point between the individual and general wills.

Introduction to the Special Issue on ‘Charisma’

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-114
Author(s):  
Maren Freudenberg ◽  
Tim Weitzel
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conceptual Debate ◽  
The Individual

The introduction to the special issue on ‘charisma’ offers a very brief overview of the development of the concept in the social sciences and various critiques and intersecting debates. It casts a close look at Max Weber’s sometimes contradictory use of the concept and the different ways he conceptualized it in his sociology of religion and his sociology of domination. It then examines alternative theoretical approaches to ‘charisma’ that emerge in the course of the twentieth century before outlining this special issue’s contribution to the conceptual debate and the individual articles’ operationalization of the term by viewing charisma as relational, communicative, procedural, as well as related to ideas, practices, and objects.

scholarly journals Accounting and the Making of Homo Liberalis

2012 ◽  
pp. 67-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Lambert ◽  
Eric Pezet
Keyword(s):  
Social World ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
Organisational Context ◽  
Management Accountants ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual

This paper investigates the practices whereby the subject, in an organisational context, carries out systematic practices of self-discipline and becomes a calculative self. In particular, we explore the techniques of conduct developed by management accountants in a French carmaker, which adheres to a neoliberal environment. We show how these management accountants become calculative selves by building the very measurement of their own performance. The organisation thereby emerges as the cauldron in which a Homo liberalis is forged. Homo liberalis is the individual capable of constructing for him/her the political self-discipline establishing his/her relationship with the social world on the basis of measurable performance. The management accountants studied in this article prefigure the Homo liberalis in the self-discipline they develop to act in compliance with the organisation’s goals.

scholarly journals The Heideggerian critique of Kant’s moral subject

KÜLÖNBSÉG ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gábor Tóth
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Functional Model ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Moral Subject ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Physical Features

The paper discusses Kant’s concept of the subject through Heideger’s critique. Heidegger deconstructs the structure of Kant’s idea of personal identity as the moral subject. In the 13th paragraph of The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927), Heidegger distinguishes three basic aspects of Kant’s idea of the self: the personalitas transcendentalis, the personalitas psychologica, and the personalitas moralis. The personalitas moralis is defined as the sphere of pure morality, the intelligible realm of freedom. This is an aspect of the individual beyond physical features and also beyond the determinism of laws of nature. The causality by freedom forms the basis of practical actions ordered by moral law. Therefore, it acts as the highest level determinism of Being in human existence. Heidegger’s conclusion shows Kant’s failure in delineating a functional model of the moral subject but accepts Kant’s contribution to laying the foundations of such a theory.

scholarly journals Revising Trauma Theory: Trauma as Identity Construction and the Discontented Self in Fadia Faqir’s My Name is Salma (2007)

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Nuha Ahmad Baaqeel
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
Illegitimate Birth ◽  
The Social ◽  
Honour Killing ◽  
The Impact

This essay will examine the concept of traumatic identity in My Name is Salma, exploring theories of traumatic identity and their relationship to the self in Arab Literature, the social context of the text and its historical resonance, and representation and identity via the female traumatic experience. The analysis will seek to reflect upon the impact and convergence of feminism, trauma and post colonialism within issues like the construction of the self, belonging, and the juxtaposition of homeland and exile. This essay argues, in part, that Arab women writers embrace trauma in their texts, while simultaneously critiquing the effects of trauma on the construction of personal identity. In particular, the work of Jordanian author, Fadia Faqir, in her novel, My Name is Salma (2007), provides a first-person narrative of the narrator and protagonist, Salma, who defines her personal identity as constructed from trauma, yet who is unable to process, mediate, or overcome her traumatic past. As she nevertheless attempts to construct a coherent narrative of self, the character of Salma allows readers insights into her thoughts, actions, and the way she views herself. This essay asserts further that the types of trauma that inform Salma’s narrative of self also speak to the experiences of many women in Arab states, such as the social stigmatization of so-called illegitimate birth, the violence of honour killing, racial abuse, Othering, and the dire circumstances and suffering inherent in life as a refugee.

scholarly journals Introduction to the COVID-19 Second Special Issue

2020 ◽  
pp. 002216782096641
Author(s):  
Zenobia Morrill
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Terror Management Theory ◽  
Terror Management ◽  
The Self ◽  
Management Theory ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Collective Meaning

This introduction describes an original collection of articles that advance Existential-Humanistic (EH) psychology in a project of collective meaning-making during the COVID-19 pandemic. From contributions that apply terror management theory to political and ideological division, to those that intricately examine concepts of the self and radical emotional dwelling in psychotherapy, this issue spans a wide range of topics relevant to EH scholars and beyond. This special issue also explores phenomenological questions. The articles within not only reconfigure ways to be that align with humanistic commitments, but challenge readers to examine the social systems that shape these possibilities. For this reason, this introduction connects the applications of EH psychology included in this issue to other disciplines that have intimately analyzed subjectivities related to existential reckoning, injustice, and liberation.

Marks of Identity

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Modern Time ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Philosophical Topic

This chapter begins by looking at a very literal form of marks of identity—fingerprints—then examines the obsession of modern societies with issues of identity. While the notion of identity is not new—especially as a philosophical topic—a widespread concern with one's personal identity, and its relations to “the others” among whom one lives, seems to have emerged with greater intensity with the Enlightenment, and to gain force throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and into modern time. To the extent that a characteristic of modernity is a new valuation of the individual, the obsession with identity follows almost inevitably.

The Psychology of (Pseudo)Science: Cognitive, Social, and Cultural Factors

Pseudoscience ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilio J. C. Lobato ◽  
Corinne Zimmerman
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Psychology Of Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors ◽  
Social Level

We review findings from the psychology of science that are relevant to understanding or explaining peoples’ tendencies to believe both scientific and pseudoscientific claims. We discuss relevant theoretical frameworks and empirical findings to support the proposal that pseudoscientific beliefs arise in much the same way as other scientific and non-scientific beliefs do. In particular, we focus on (a) cognitive and metacognitive factors at the individual level; (b) trust in testimony and judgments of expertise at the social level; and (c) personal identity and the public’s relationship with the scientific community at a cultural level.

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