The Concept of Self

2020 ◽  
pp. 153-196
Author(s):  
Gopi Chand Narang

One significant aspect of the Urdu ghazal is that it is not simply a lyrical accretion of feelings and emotions—it contains ideas, thoughts, and philosophical viewpoints. This chapter examines the Urdu ghazal in light of various streams of thought about human nature, about personal identity (self), and about human beings’ relationship with God. Besides being a source of enjoyment, the Urdu ghazal also served as a cohesive force for promoting pluralistic culture of India, while at the same time further bonding its intrinsic ethnic multiplicity.

Author(s):  
Christopher Gill

The burgeoning science of human nature recognized the implications for human identity. In the later fifth or early fourth centuries BCE philosophers started to develop a systematically dualistic account of human beings as composites of body and soul. In this view, the body is something that embeds the person in a particular community, and the soul is the true ‘self’, the locus of desires and beliefs which those communities could shape. This article suggests that personal identity is for these thinkers social identity, and it is no coincidence that Plato's utopian designs for a polis in the Republic are largely structured around rethinking the educational curriculum, or, conversely, that Protagoras assigns the central role in moral education to the city as a whole.


2005 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Sibley Towner

The claim of the Priestly writers that the Creator made human beings in the divine image is both audacious and ambiguous. Assuming that among other things “image” means that human beings are able to enter into relationship with God and God's creatures, the concept is also empowering. It suggests that the Old Testament view of human nature is far more positive than our dour stress on human sinfulness has led us to imagine.


Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman

This chapter moves into the political and economic aspects of human nature. Given scarcity and interdependence, what sense has Judaism made of the material well-being necessary for human flourishing? What are Jewish attitudes toward prosperity, market relations, labor, and leisure? What has Judaism had to say about the political dimensions of human nature? If all humans are made in the image of God, what does that original equality imply for political order, authority, and justice? In what kinds of systems can human beings best flourish? It argues that Jewish tradition shows that we act in conformity with our nature when we elevate, improve, and sanctify it. As co-creators of the world with God, we are not just the sport of our biochemistry. We are persons who can select and choose among the traits that comprise our very own natures, cultivating some and weeding out others.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Daniel Strassberg

The insight that human beings are prone to deceive themselves is part of our everyday knowledge of human nature. Even so, if deceiving someone means to deliberately misrepresent something to him, it is difficult to understand how it is possible to deceive yourself. This paper tries to address this difficulty by means of a narrative approach. Self-deception is conceived as a change of the narrative context by means of which the same fact appears in a different light. On these grounds, depending on whether the self-deceiver adopts an ironic attitude to his self-deception or not, it is also possible to distinguish between a morally inexcusable self-deception and a morally indifferent one.


AKADEMIKA ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-221
Author(s):  
Minahul Mubin

A novel titled BumiCinta written by Habiburrahman El-Shirazy takes place in the Russian setting, in which Russia is a country that adopts freedom. Russia with various religions embraced by its people has called for the importance of human freedom. Free sex in Russia is commonplace among its young people. Russia is a country that is free with no rules, no wonder if there have been many not embracing certain religion. In fact, according to data Russia is a country accessing the largest porn sites in the world. Habiburrahman in his Bumi Cinta reveals some religious aspects. He incorporates the concept of religion with social conflicts in Russia. Therefore, the writer reveals two fundamental issues, namely: 1. What is the characters' religiosity in the Habiburrahman El-Shirazy'sBumiCinta? 2. What is the characters' religiosity in the BumiCinta in their relationship with God, fellow human beings, and nature ?. To achieve the objectives, the writer uses the religious literary criticism based on the Qur'an and Hadith. It emphasizes religious values in literature. The writer also uses the arguments of scholars and schools of thought to strengthen this paper. This theory is then used to seek the elements of religiousity in the Habiburrahman El-Shirazy'sBumiCinta. In this novel, the writer explains there are strong religious elements and religious effects of its characters, especially the belief in God, faith and piety


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-49
Author(s):  
Paul Kucharski

My aim in this essay is to advance the state of scholarly discussion on the harms of genocide. The most obvious harms inflicted by every genocide are readily evident: the physical harm inflicted upon the victims of genocide and the moral harm that the perpetrators of genocide inflict upon themselves. Instead, I will focus on a kind of harm inflicted upon those who are neither victims nor perpetrators, on those who are outside observers, so to speak. My thesis will be that when a whole community or culture is eliminated, or even deeply wounded, the world loses an avenue for insight into the human condition. My argument is as follows. In order to understand human nature, and that which promotes its flourishing, we must certainly study individual human beings. But since human beings as rational and linguistic animals are in part constituted by the communities in which they live, the study of human nature should also involve the study of communities and cultures—both those that are well ordered and those that are not. No one community or culture has expressed all that can be said about the human way of existing and flourishing. And given that the unity and wholeness of human nature can only be glimpsed in a variety of communities and cultures, then part of the harm of genocide consists in the removal of a valuable avenue for human beings to better understand themselves.


Author(s):  
Barry Stroud

Hume takes his “naturalistic” study of human nature to show that certain general “principles of the imagination” can explain how human beings come to think, feel, believe, and act in all the ways they do independently of the truth or reasonableness of those responses. This appears to leave the reflective philosopher with no reason for assenting to what he has discovered he cannot help believing anyway. Relief from this unacceptably extreme skepticism is found in acknowledging and acquiescing in those forces of “nature” that inevitably overcome the apparent dictates of “reason” and return the philosopher to the responses and beliefs of everyday life. Living in full recognition of these forces and limitations is what Hume means by the “mitigated scepticism” he accepts.


1992 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-208
Author(s):  
Frank I. Michelman

Prescriptive political and moral theories contain ideas about what human beings are like and about what, correspondingly, is good for them. Conceptions of human “nature” and corresponding human good enter into normative argument by way of support and justification. Of course, it is logically open for the ratiocinative traffic to run the other way. Strongly held convictions about the rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness, of certain social institutions or practices may help condition and shape one's responses to one or another set of propositions about what people are like and what, in consequence, they have reason to value.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 147
Author(s):  
Rosângela Tenório de Carvalho

Este artigo tem como objeto o discurso sobre alteridade em articulação com experiência docente. Pretende-se dar visibilidade à expressão material, conceitual e pedagógica desse discurso em suas relações. A reflexão está sustentada nos estudos pós-colonialistas e pós-estruturalistas. Problematiza-se a interpretação da alteridade como uma possibilidade de acessar a experiência do outro, sentir como o outro em sua essencia, pois entende-se que não há uma natureza humana, mas, sim, humanos produzidos culturalmente e linguisticamente. O enfoque recai sobre a alteridade como uma relação de interdependência permeada por relações de poder, a versão da afirmação da diferença e a dignidade nas relações. AbstractThis article has as its object the discourse on otherness in articulation with teaching experience. It is intended to give visibility to the material, conceptual and pedagogical expression of this discourse in their relations. The reflection is sustained in postcolonialist and poststructuralist studies. The interpretation of otherness as a possibility to access the experience of the other is problematized, to feel as the other in its essence, because is understood that there is no human nature, but human beings produced culturally and linguistically. He focus is on otherness as a relation of interdependence permeated by power relations, the version of affirmation of difference and dignity in relationships.KeywordsOtherness; Cultural difference; Teaching.


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