Whitehead's Theory of Human Agency

Dialogue ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 424-441
Author(s):  
Douglas Browning
Keyword(s):  
Microscopic Theory ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Macroscopic Theory ◽  
Actual Entity ◽  
Adequate Theory ◽  
The Universe

An adequate theory of the self must provide for the fact of human agency. I would like to show that (1) we can put together a theory of human agency from Whitehead's later writings, but that (2) this theory is not satisfactory. This discussion will be, first, expository and then critical of Whitehead's position. An elaboration of Whitehead's theory has two moments. For Whitehead, all factors of the universe are finally derivative from the ultimately actual things, which he calls actual entities. The fact of agency is no exception. The establishment of such agency is the job of what I shall call Whitehead's microscopic theory. We are interested here, however, in the human being as agent. A person, according to Whitehead, is not an actual entity, but a society of actual entities. Whitehead's theory of human agency may be called the macroscopic theory. After an examination of these theories, I shall conclude by briefly criticizing them in two ways. First, for Whitehead there are no acts but only processes. Second, an adequate theory requires a doctrine of the persistence of the agent which Whitehead is unable to provide.

scholarly journals Kritik Atas Modernitas Dalam Novel Bilangan Fu Karya Ayu Utami

ATAVISME ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Bramantio Bramantio
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Tzvetan Todorov ◽  
The Universe

Artikel ini bertujuan untuk mengungkap kritik atas modernitas dalam novel Bilangan Fu karya Ayu Utami. Dengan memanfaatkan naratologi Tzvetan Todorov, dapat dipahami aspek verbal Bilangan Fu, yaitu sudut pandang, pencerita, dan tuturannya. Berdasarkan penceritaannya, novel ini merupakan novel polifonik, karnivalistik, sekaligus metafiksi. Berdasarkan kontennya, novel ini menghadirkan sejumlah kritik atas modernitas, khususnya berkaitan dengan semangat modernitas yang cenderung melihat segala sesuatu secara monodimensional, hanya ada satu kebenaran, dan liyan diabaikan. Bilangan Fu merupakan novel yang merefleksikan zamannya. Novel ini berhasil menyegarkan cara pandang masyarakat Indonesia, atau setidaknya menghadirkan sesuatu untuk dipikirkan dan dipertimbangkan kembali, berkaitan dengan diri, lingkungan, dan semesta raya. Novel ini mengembalikan manusia ke hakikatnya, yaitu kemanusiaan. Abstract: This article aims to reveal criticism on modernity in Ayu Utami’s novel Bilangan Fu. Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of narrative provided a framework to understand the novel’s verbal aspects, which are point of view, narrator, dan its voice. Based on its narrative, this novel is polyphonic, carnivalistic, and metafictional. Based on its content, it presents criticism on modernity, particularly on spirit of modernity that tends to see everything in monodimensional; there is only one truth, and the other is ignored. Bilangan Fu is a novel that reflects its time. It successfully refreshes the perspective of Indonesian society, or at least brings something to think about, related to the self, environment, and the universe. In the end, it brings back human being to their core, their humanity. Key Words: novel; point of view; narrator; criticism; modernity

Whitehead'S Philosophy: Actual Entities

Philosophy ◽  
1941 ◽  
Vol 16 (63) ◽  
pp. 285-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sydney E. Hooper
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
New Creation ◽  
Actual Entity ◽  
Genetic Process ◽  
The World ◽  
Efficient Causation ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
The Universe

I have tried to expound Whitehead's doctrine of Creativity and of actual entities. Nothing remains but to give a brief summary of what has been said in the foregoing notes.Creativity is the ultimate activity and principle of novelty in the Universe.The world is said to consist of “actual entities,” not substances. An actual entity is also called an “actual occasion.” It is essentially a genetic process, having two sides, (I) the process of “becoming,” and (2) the outcome of the process named the “satisfaction.” The satisfaction is the fully determined achievement abstracted from the process. On attaining satisfaction the actual entity viewed as a self-creating subject loses its “final” causation, and as a subject perishes, but the “satisfaction” remains as a potential constituent for the emergence of a new actual entity. This is its “efficient” causation. The potentiality of the satisfaction for a new creation is called its “objective immortality”: in this capacity it functions as an “object” for the self-creation of another actual entity.

‘A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust’: The World and Self in Thomas Hardy's Poems

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
Body Subject

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.

The Crisis of Becoming-Nature in Howard Barker’s Recent Dramas

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-114
Author(s):  
Karoline Gritzner
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Elderly Women ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
The Self ◽  
Love Relationships ◽  
Late Style ◽  
Life Force ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThis article discusses how in Howard Barker’s recent work the idea of the subject’s crisis hinges on the introduction of an impersonal or transpersonal life force that persists beyond human agency. The article considers Barker’s metaphorical treatment of the images of land and stone and their interrelationship with the human body, where the notion of subjective crisis results from an awareness of objective forces that transcend the self. In “Immense Kiss” (2018) and “Critique of Pure Feeling” (2018), the idea of crisis, whilst still dominant, seems to lose its intermittent character of singular rupture and reveals itself as a permanent force of dissolution and reification. In these plays, the evocation of nonhuman nature in the love relationships between young men and elderly women affirms the existence of something that goes beyond the individual, which Barker approaches with a late-style poetic sensibility.

scholarly journals REKONTRUKSI ECORELIGIUS ORANG MELAYU Solusi Penyelamatan Lingkungan

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Husni Thamrin, M.Si
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Deep Ecology ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The People ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Universe

Anthropocentric paradigm has distanced humans from nature, as well as causing the humans themselves become exploitative in attitude and do not really care about the nature. In relation, ecological crisis also can be seen as caused by mechanistic-reductionistic-dualistic of Cartesian science. The perspective of anthropocentric is corrected by biocentrism and ecocentrism ethics, particularly Deep Ecology, to re-look at the nature as an ethical community. The concept of ecoculture is already practiced from the beginning by indigenous or traditional societies in elsewhere. The perspective of the human being as an integral part of the nature, and  the behaviour of full of resposibility, full of respect and care about the sustainability of all life in the universe have become perspectives and behaviours of various traditional people. The majority of local wisdom in the maintenance of the environment is still surviving in the midst of shifting currents waves by a pressure of anthropocentric perspective. There is also in a crisis because a pressure of the  influences of a modernization. While others, drifting and eroding in the modernization and the anthropocentric perspective.In that context, ecoculture, particularly Deep Ecology, support for leaving the anthropocentric perspective, and when a holistic life perspective asks for leaving the anthropocentric perspective, the humans are invited to go back to thelocal wisdom, the old wisdom of the indigenous people. in other words, environmental ethics is to urge and invite the people to go back to the ethics of the indigenous people that are still relevant with the times. The essence of this perspective is back to the nature, back to his true identity as an ecological human in the ecoreligion  perspective.

scholarly journals Verbal realism in a magic world: Carlos Santiago Nino vs. Jorge Luis Borges

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-99
Author(s):  
Katya Kozicki ◽  
Luis Gustavo Cardoso
Keyword(s):  
Jorge Luis Borges ◽  
Common Belief ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
The Common ◽  
Power Of Words ◽  
The Universe

This paper is an investigation of the reference made by Carlos Santiago Nino about Jorge Luis Borges, in the fifth chapter of his “Introduction to Legal Analysis”, in which he introduces the concept of verbal realism. The production by Borges mentioned by Nino is the poem “The Golem”, which tells the story of rabbi Judah Loew, who attempted to create another human being in his rituals. Thus, this study develops new considerations on the power of words to evoke things, and the common belief that words intrinsically relate to what they represent. In order to do that, the first objective of analysis is the immediate reference of Borges, the dialogue “Cratylus”, by Plato, together with other references, such as Goethe’s Faust, which has a similar narrative to the analyzed poem. The question raised is whether verbal realism offers definitions to constitute the universe built up by Borges. Hence, this article concludes that words, in normative contexts, are useful for summoning certain phenomena towards the events, and that verbal realism, then, has a dimension that Carlos Santiago Nino did not explore.

scholarly journals La complejidad del cuidado del cuerpo en ambientes obesogénicos / The Complexity of Pampering Obesogenic Environments

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-111
Author(s):  
Carlos Rios Llamas
Keyword(s):  
Production Process ◽  
Human Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Obesogenic Environment ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Siglo Xx ◽  
Obesogenic Environments

ABSTRACTFoucault conceived the human being as defined by biopower forces. After that, the industrial society treated the body as an element of the production process, and the care of the self was derived to healthcare institutions. Recently, Paula Sibilia studied the industrial human being from the capitalism on his transformation through technology and digital hybrids. She thinks that the human body could be at the end in the form we know it. But in the perspectives of both Foucault and Sibilia, the body projects could be at their own obsolescence because they leave a key element aside: the obesogenic environment which is implicit into the current modern technological society. This abstract pretends to visualize how body projects and modernity are interconnected and confronted, from their assumptions and fundamentals, against obesity. RESUMENDe acuerdo con Faucault el cuerpo humano es modelado a partir de dispositivos que corresponden con las formas de poder y con las funciones que se le asignan en una sociedad y en una situación espaciotemporal específica. En esta lógica, el cuidado del cuerpo frente a la obesidad como amenaza, se habría de estudiar desde el entorno social y su evolución en las últimas décadas. Así, mientras que a mediados del siglo XX, las sociedades industriales definieron el cuerpo por su utilidad en los procesos de producción, y el cuidado de uno mismo se derivó a las instituciones como garantes del bienestar, en las últimas décadas las hibridaciones tecnológicas y digitales amenazan el cuerpo biológico y cultural en la forma que lo conocemos. Algunos autores indican que esta forma de cuerpo podría llegar a su fin ante la imbricación de nuevos aditamentos como prótesis, dopaje y alteraciones quirúrgicas. En una lectura desde el margen de los avances en el campo tecnocientífico y biopolítico, todos los proyectos de corporeidad encontrarían hoy su propia obsolescencia ante la obesidad que se instituye como pandemia y que amenaza al cuerpo desde la cultura, la medicina, la economía, la política y los estudios ambientales. Es oportuno, entonces, develar los vínculos entre el cuidado del cuerpo y la contemporaneidad, y desde la obesidad como amenaza de los supuestos avances tecnocientíficos. Por eso, en la conceptualización de “ambientes obesogénicos” se abre una posibilidad para analizar el proyecto contemporáneo de cuerpo desde los espacios donde se construye y se modela su cuidado, y a partir de sus formas de resistencia ante los cambios tecnocientíficos.

W dialogu z Hiobem: filozofia zła Carla Gustava Junga i etyka całkowitości Ericha Neumanna

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (23) ◽  
pp. 303-316
Author(s):  
Patrycja Neumann ◽  
Arian R. Kowalski
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Analytical Psychology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Carl Gustav Jung ◽  
The Relationship

This article presents the problem of the presence of evil in the person of the Old Testament God in Answer to Job undertaken by the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung. The Swiss researcher of religion wonders in it about the sense of the relationship between Job and his Creator. The concept of Erich Neumann’s ethics is also shown, encouraging man to strive towards psychological wholeness, defined by Jung as the self – an archetype linking the human being with the dimension of Transcendence. In addition, reflection is also undertaken on the concept of mental health, which could define the condition of a person living in the spirit of the ethics of wholeness.

The Identity Paradigm

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Social Contexts ◽  
The Self ◽  
Critical Importance ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Psychoanalytic Discourse ◽  
Point Of Intersection ◽  
The Universe

This epilogue reflects on the critical importance of the identity paradigm—and especially the identificatory paradigm—in culture. To see the identificatory paradigm at work, in a range of cultural and social contexts—in legal settings and debates, in fictions from low and high culture, in confessional and psychoanalytic discourse—is to bring to attention something characteristic and important about people's lives, singly and collectively. To grasp the predominance and the importance of the identity paradigm is to recognize something ineradicable and significant in culture. The chapter then presents something of a contradiction: the self sees itself from the inside as a place of depth, meaning, and as the center of the universe, whereas the self viewed from the outside is merely the point of intersection of impoverished data.

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