Berkeley and Hobbes

Author(s):  
Stephen H. Daniel

By focusing on the exchange between Descartes and Hobbes on how the self is related to its activities, Berkeley draws attention to how he and Hobbes explain the forensic constitution of human subjectivity and moral/political responsibility in terms of passive obedience and conscientious submission to the laws of the sovereign. Formulated as the language of nature or as pronouncements of the supreme political power, those laws identify moral obligations by locating political subjects within those networks of sensible signs. When thus juxtaposed with Hobbes, Berkeley can be understood as endorsing a theologically inflected version of deontological ethics in which moral laws are linked directly to the constitution of the self.

Author(s):  
Natalia Marandiuc

The chapter places theological anthropologies that focus on the connectedness of the self in dialogue with key findings and claims advanced by attachment theorists. One of the most amply researched and pragmatically employed frameworks in contemporary neuropsychology, attachment theory contends that human subjectivity is the product of human attachments. Attachment figures provide an environment of perceived safety within which and out of which the self can pursue other activities in freedom; should attachment needs remain unmet, human actions would be inhibited. Self-actualization depends upon secure attachments that home the self. In fact, the term “home” is a key technical concept for attachment theory: secure attachments constitute a secure home for the self.


Author(s):  
Giovanni Stanghellini

This chapter argues that at the heart of alterity lies a double paradox. First, alterity speaks of eccentricity, of the non-coincidence of the Self with itself. Most of the philosophical anthropologies of the last hundred years emphasize that the phenomenon of eccentricity is indigenous to human existence, and characterize Man as an eccentric being. Fundamental to the understanding of human subjectivity is clarifying the ways self-awareness is structured as an experience inextricably entangled with an experience of a basic otherness. To be a human being is to be in juxtaposition with, and sometimes to feel in opposition to, a set of given involuntary dispositions in front of which we need to voluntarily take a position.


KronoScope ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 35-48
Author(s):  
Marc Singer

Abstract“Menelaiad,” an experimental short story from John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, consists of a series of multiply nested narratives in which each layer recursively generates the next, chronologically earlier one. The story presents narrative and memory as supplemental processes that look back in time to recover or replace a lost moment of presence and completion. Barth suggests these supplements are imperfect and self-defeating means of recapturing the past, however, as they further separate the narrator from his tale’s irretrievable origins. The story structures human subjectivity along similarly self-deferring lines, portraying the self not as an essential whole but as a sequence of narrative supplements organized around an absence that no supplement can redress. Paralleling contemporary developments in poststructuralist theory yet not inspired by, beholden to, or even necessarily aware of them, “Menelaiad” delivers an original illustration of the recursive and supplemental processes that, Barth believes, define and demarcate the human subject.


1994 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 671-696 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth C. Blanchard

This article examines the contrast between philosophy and sophism in Xenophon's Memorabilia, focusing chiefly on the two dialogues between Socrates and Aristippus. In two crucial respects, Socrates and the sophist appear as opposites. He accepts what the sophist rejects: the obligations and restraints imposed by the city's laws; and he rejects what the sophist accepts: the vulgar notion that everyone knows what the good things are. In the first dialogue, Socrates defends the self-discipline proper to citizen-soldiers against Aristippus' complete rejection of political responsibility. In the second, he points to the substitution of the beautiful for the good as the proper object of philosophical investigation, hi both dialogues, Socrates walks a middle road: he is more political than the sophist, but less so than the politician. Yet he proves to be close to the politician qua philosopher than he is qua citizen.


Author(s):  
Albert O. Hirschman

This chapter showcases one of Hirschman's keynote lectures at the Collège de France. Hirschman had chosen the theme of an enlarged political economy (une économie politique élargie) to show that the idea—the concept—of “interest” had a history and had been the battleground for economists since the seventeenth century. It is linked, however, not just to the concept of the self, but to the idea of political power itself. Through this lecture, Hirschman attempts to show that personal welfare and statecraft were intertwined from the start. The effort to narrow the definition had threatened to separate behaviors and activities from one domain of life from that of another, and distinguish selfish or “interested” motivations from altruistic or “ethical” actions. This trend had drained the concept itself of its great analytical power.


2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 162-174
Author(s):  
Mads Gram Henriksen ◽  
Felipe León ◽  
Dan Zahavi

Abstract In this article, we describe the history and impact of the Center for Subjectivity Research (cfs) since its inception in 2002 and until 2020. From its very beginning, cfs was structured to facilitate and carry out interdisciplinary research on human subjectivity, taking phenomenology as an important source of inspiration. We cover some of the most important research areas in which cfs has had a national and international impact. These include developing the field of existential hermeneutics, opening a dialogue between phenomenology and analytic philosophy, creating a multi-dimensional account of the self, exploring the interrelations between I, you and we, and conceptualizing and assessing self-disorders in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Over the years, research at cfs has demonstrated the vitality of the phenomenological tradition, and shown how phenomenology can contribute to contemporary theoretical and scientific debates.


1988 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 15-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regenia Gagnier

This paper is intended to suggest how an educational system produced a literary community and discursive practice that represented itself as essentially distinct from the realm of political power. My subject is the foundations in the English Public Schools of the modern British literary community and literary value as we have known it from Romanticism through modernism – value measured by the self-consciousness, introspection, individuality, and putative autonomy that are challenged if not already defeated by the forces of post-modernism. But before examining what happened between Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays of 1857 and Cyril Connolly's A Georgian Boyhood of 1938, I shall provide a brief historical summary for readers unfamiliar with the English public schools.


Author(s):  
Marissa Grace Willcox ◽  
Anna Catherine Hickey-Moody

Digital community making through a live entanglement of the self and social media, offers up new pathways for thinking through human and nonhuman divides. Queer activism and feminist art on Instagram has made way for a reframing of what constitutes a ‘digital community’ (boyd 2011, Baym 2015, Oakley 2018). This paper thinks through the materiality of this feminist activist art community through the method of ‘Instagram live interviewing’. Drawing from a larger project that aims to understand the ways activist art practice on Instagram subverts heterosexual norms and patriarchal representation, we argue that the ‘live’ nature (Back, 2012) of the Instagram live interview (Hickey-Moody and Willcox, 2019) mobilizes a new type of queer materiality. By applying Karen Barad’s (2007) feminist new materialist theory of ‘intra-action’ to Rosi Braidotti's thinking about posthuman experience as intra-acting with aspects of the world that she classifys as non-human (2013), we reconceptualize some of the literature around digital community making to account for the needs of those often left out of heteronormative and mainstream narratives. This entanglement of liveness and intra-action in our methodology explores the feeling of ‘community’ as being a feeling that is central to human subjectivity and experience. Through a lens of queer materiality, we suggest that community can therefore be produced by more-than-human assemblages, and argue that a more nuanced account of digital community making which accounts for live Instagram intra-actions, and human to nonhuman relationality is needed.


Author(s):  
Andrei Bespalov

AbstractMainstream political liberals hold that state coercion is legitimate only if it is justified on the grounds of reasons that all may reasonably be expected to accept. Critics argue that this public justification principle (PJP) is self-defeating, because it depends on moral justifications that not all may reasonably be expected to accept. To rebut the self-defeat objection, I elaborate on the following disjunction: one either agrees or disagrees that it is wrong to impose one’s morality on others by the coercive power of the state. Those who disagree reject PJP, they understand politics as war. Those who agree accept PJP, they understand politics as competition. Political competitors abide by PJP to avoid politics as war, by enforcing PJP on political combatants they engage in a war that is unavoidable. In both cases their exercise of political power has a justification that is reasonably acceptable to all.


Author(s):  
ماجدة حمود (Majidah Hamoud)

ملخص البحث:                                                         تعد دراسة صورة الآخر فرعا من فروع الأدب المقارن، وتهدف إلى فهم الذات والآخر الذي هو مختلف عن الأنا بالدين أو العرق أو...الخ. حين نتأمل مؤلفات الجاحظ نجدها منفتحة على الآخر، تقدم له صورة أقرب للموضوعية، وهذا نتيجة الثقافة الإسلامية التي انفتحت على الثقافات الأخرى، ورغم صراعه مع الشعوبية وجدناه يبتعد عن التعميم، وحين تحدث عن البخلاء الفرس، لم نجد صورتهم مشوّهة ومنفّرة، وقد بدا معجباً بحكمة الفرس وبلاغتهم، كما نجده متأثراً بموقف السلطة السياسية في محنة البرامكة.كذلك بدا منفتحاً على الآخر اليهودي والمسيحي، وإن كنا قد لحظنا بعض التأثر بالنسق الاجتماعي في تقديم الآخر الزنجي، لكننا وجدناه أول من أنصفهم في تراثنا، إذ ألف رسالة "فخر السودان على البيضان" فأتاح لهم فرصة التعبير عن ذواتهم؛ لهذا كله بدا لنا مثقفا إسلاميا فاعلا، رسّخ رؤية متوازنة للآخر، تقصي التعصب جانباً، وتؤسس لمجتمع تسوده قيم الإسلام السمحة؛ لهذا كان هذا الهدف ماثلا أمام ناظريه حين ألف كتبه. الكلمات المفتاحية: صورة الآخر –الأنا-مع الشعوبية-أهل الذمة-صورة الزنج. Abstract:The study of the representation of others is an area image of others is a branch of comparative literature, aiming to understand the self and others, which is different from the ego, religion or race, etc. When we read the books of Al-Jāhiẓ we will find them accepting ideas of others, and give them a closer picture to the objective, and this is as a result of Islamic Culture, which opens up to other cultures. Despite his struggle with populism we find him away from overgeneralization, and when he speaking about Scrooges Persians, we do not find their image distorted, offensive, and he seems to admire the wisdom Persians and their language, we find him influenced by the reaction of political power in the plight of Baraamikah. Also he was open to other Jewish and Christians, but we have observed that there is an effect by the social system in delivering the other Negro, also we found him the first scholar whom justice about them in Arab heritage, where he established “the pride of the Sudan at white men"., then he gave them the opportunity to express themselves. For all that he seemed to be an educated Muslim, having a balanced view of the other, fact-intolerance aside, and establish a society where the values of tolerance of Islam, for this was borne this goal in front of him when edited his books.Keywords: The Representation of Others- Ego- Populism- Dhimmis- Negro.  Abstrak:Perlambangan adalah salah satu cabang ilmu dalam sastera perbandingan yang bertujuan untuk memahami diri dan orang lain yang berbeza daripada ketaasuban agama, bangsa atau sebagainya. Jika kita meneliti karya-karya Al-Jahiz kita akan mendapati karyanya bersifat terbuka yang mana ia dapat memberi gambaran yang lebih dekat sesuai dengan matlamat yang ingin dicapai hasil daripada keterbukaan agama islam yang menerima perbezaan budaya-budaya lain. Walaupun Al-Jahiz menentang isu perkauman namun, kita mendapati bahawa beliau masih bersikap adil. Hal ini dapat dilihat apabila beliau menyebut tentang kebakhilan orang-orang Parsi, kita tidak menjumpai gambaran yang buruk atau sonsang tentang mereka, malah Al-Jahiz masih mengkagumi kebijaksanaan dan ketinggian bahasa orang-orang Parsi sepertimana beliau cukup terkesan dengan kuasa politik Parsi dalam menangani isu baramka. Di samping itu, karya Jahiz turut bersifat terbuka terhadap yahudi dan kristian, walaupun kita mendapati bahawa terdapat pengaruh sosial ketika menggambarkan tentang orang-orang Nigeria, akan tetapi beliau merupakan orang yang pertama yang mengangkat isu ini dengan menulis sepucuk surat tentang “Kebanggaan Orang Sudan Terhadap Kulit Putih”. Maka, jelaslah bahawa Al-Jahiz adalah seorang pemikir islam yang sebenar yang mempunyai pandangan sama rata terhadap orang lain, mengenepikan isu perkauman dan melahirkan sebuah masyarakat yang bersifat toleransi. Ia adalah merupakan matlamat utama Al-Jahiz dalam menulis buku ini.Kata kunci: Perlambangan – Keegoaan – Perkauman – Ahli Zimmi – Gambaran Nigeria.  


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