Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 288-302
Author(s):  
Ashraf H. A. Rushdy

This chapter returns to two key questions about the ways to think about gratitude. One has to do with the question of the sense of self—can humans be independent?—and the ways that someone might approach a benefactor’s generosity with the belief that it curtails her sense of independence. The other has to do with the question of the human sense of obligations—can someone be indebted?—and the ways that someone might approach any benefit as something that oppresses her. The chapter examines how these concepts—dependence and debt—have been described, and how it is possible to construe a very different meaning of what gratitude can be than what these two concepts seem to suggest.

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Pettit

Abstract Michael Tomasello explains the human sense of obligation by the role it plays in negotiating practices of acting jointly and the commitments they underwrite. He draws in his work on two models of joint action, one from Michael Bratman, the other from Margaret Gilbert. But Bratman's makes the explanation too difficult to succeed, and Gilbert's makes it too easy.


Imbizo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Oyeh O. Otu

This article examines how female conditioning and sexual repression affect the woman’s sense of self, womanhood, identity and her place in society. It argues that the woman’s body is at the core of the many sites of gender struggles/ politics. Accordingly, the woman’s body must be decolonised for her to attain true emancipation. On the one hand, this study identifies the grave consequences of sexual repression, how it robs women of their freedom to choose whom to love or marry, the freedom to seek legal redress against sexual abuse and terror, and how it hinders their quest for self-determination. On the other hand, it underscores the need to give women sexual freedom that must be respected and enforced by law for the overall good of society.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
George Pattison

AbstractNoting Heidegger’s critique of Kierkegaard’s way of relating time and eternity, the paper offers an alternative reading of Kierkegaard that suggests Heidegger has overlooked crucial elements in the Kierkegaardian account. Gabriel Marcel and Sharon Krishek are used to counter Heidegger’s minimizing of the deaths of others and to show how the deaths of others may become integral to our sense of self. This prepares the way for revisiting Kierkegaard’s discourse on the work of love in remembering the dead. Against the criticism that this reveals the absence of the other in Kierkegaardian love, the paper argues that, on the contrary, it shows how Kierkegaard conceives the self as inseparable from the core relationships of love that, despite of death, constitute it as the self that it is.


2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-154
Author(s):  
HENRY SPILLER

AbstractThe powerful concept of orientalism has undergone considerable refinement since Edward Said popularized the term with his eponymous book in 1978. Orientalism typically is presented as a totalizing process that creates polar oppositions between a dominating West and a subordinate East. U.S. orientalisms, however, reflect uniquely North American approaches to identity formation that include assimilating characteristics usually associated with the Other. This article explores the complex relationship among three individuals—U.S. composer Charles T. Griffes, Canadian singer Eva Gauthier, and German-trained Dutch East Indies composer Paul J. Seelig—and how they exploited the same Javanese songs to lend legitimacy to their individual artistic projects. A comparison of Griffes's and Seelig's settings of a West Javanese tune (“Kinanti”) provides an especially clear example of how contrasting approaches manifest different orientalisms. Whereas Griffes accompanied the melody with stock orientalist gestures to express his own fascination with the exotic, Seelig used chromatic harmonies and a chorale-like texture to ground the melody in the familiar, translating rather than representing its Otherness. The tunes that bind Griffes, Gauthier, and Seelig are only the raw materials from which they created their own unique orientalisms, each with its own sense of self and its own Javanese others.


Author(s):  
Erel Shvil ◽  
Herbert Krauss ◽  
Elizabeth Midlarsky

The construct “self” appears in diverse forms in theories about what it is to be a person. As the sense of “self” is typically assessed through personal reports, differences in its description undoubtedly reflect significant differences in peoples’ apperception of self. This report describes the development, reliability, and factorial structure of the Experience of Sense of Self (E-SOS), an inventory designed to assess one’s perception of self in relation to the person’s perception of various potential “others.” It does so using Venn diagrams to depict and quantify the experienced overlap between the self and “others.” Participant responses to the instrument were studied through Exploratory Factor Analysis. This yielded a five-factor solution: 1) Experience of Positive Sensation; 2) Experience of Challenges; 3) Experience of Temptations; 4) Experience of Higher Power; and 5) Experience of Family. The items comprising each of these were found to produce reliable subscales. Further research with the E-SOS and suggestions for its use are offered.  DOI:10.2458/azu_jmmss_v4i2_shvil


2020 ◽  
pp. 41-64
Author(s):  
John Lippitt

This chapter explores two key questions: who has the standing to forgive? And who has the standing to be forgiven? Under the first, the question whether third-party forgiveness is ever possible or morally fitting is explored, the argument being that since not all third-party forgiveness is forgiveness on behalf of the victim, in at least some circumstances, third-party forgiveness is indeed possible and fitting. The discussion explores primary, secondary and tertiary victims, and the status of moral bystanders. The second question introduces whether forgiveness should be ‘conditional’ or ‘unconditional’, and if ‘unconditional’ forgiveness can be legitimate (as it is argued that it can), of what kind of unconditional forgiveness is this true? The case is put for the value of distinguishing between two types of unconditional, and two types of conditional, forgiveness. Objections that may legitimately be made against one kind of unconditional forgiveness (associated with, e.g. Derrida) are not taken to apply to the other.


2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-168
Author(s):  
Christopher Hauke

Apart from some mentions in Memories, dreams, reflections, the Red book and its contents have been kept from the public for 96 years until its publication in 2009. This delay may have been influenced by the response (especially that from the psychoanalyst Winnicott) to the revelations of Jung's secret inner life in Memories, dreams, reflections. It is ironic that many times Jung refers to the importance of keeping secrets for a sense of self and the promotion of individuation. The discussion centres around two areas of tension: one is that between keeping and revealing secrets, and the other involves keeping the balance between the needs of an information hungry public and the risk of misunderstanding personal psychological material.


Dialogue ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 737-756
Author(s):  
Kathleen Wider

The central tenet in the ontology Sartre describes and seeks to defend in Being and Nothingness is that being divides into the for-itself and the in-itself. Self-consciousness characterizes being-for-itself and distinguishes it from being-in-itself. What it means for a being to exist for itself is that it is self-conscious. How Sartre characterizes self-consciousness in Being and Nothingness is, however, a question that remains to be asked. There is no simple answer to this question. For Sartre, there are really several levels of self-consciousness: the self-consciousness of consciousness at the pre-reflective level, at the level of reflection (both pure and impure) and at the level of being-for-others. There is a profound difference between the self-consciousness of being-for-others and impure reflection, on the one hand, and the self-consciousness of reflection and pre-reflective consciousness, on the other. With being-for-others and impure reflection, self-consciousness involves the attempt to grasp the self as an object for consciousness. Although the nature of this attempt and the reasons for its ultimate failure differ at each level, these levels are bound together by a common sense of self-consciousness as a consciousness of the self as an object.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-173
Author(s):  
Mukta Kulkarni

The present study examines ritual-driven institutional maintenance, or the reproduction of social order, in a case where ritual attendance is not mandated, conformity to the recurring ritual enactment is not expected, and where the ritual assumes meaning only as it is performed in perfect coordination with an assumed rival. The study is based on the case of the Beating Retreat ritual conducted daily at the India–Pakistan border. Findings indicate that institutional maintenance rests on (a) distantiation, which serves to create physical and social distance between collectives as ritual participants gain a sense of self and the “other,” and (b) interpellation, which serves to reinforce institutional ideologies as ritual participants internalize and profess what is valued. I extend implications of present findings for social relations within work organizations.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Alice Leal

The tension between unity versus multiplicity seems to be at the heart of the European Union (EU) and of translation studies (TS). Indeed, a significant parallel between the two is the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF). The EU appears to be torn between a notion of language as a crucial element of one’s identity on the one hand, and a predominantly instrumental, Lockean view of language, on the other. A similar dynamic appears to take place in TS, an area that is par excellence heterogeneous and in which the notion of difference plays a paramount role. Indeed, at times TS appears to be afflicted by a sense of self-consciousness regarding its lack of unity and homogeneity. According to some, the solution is to foster the standardisation of its methods and terminology. But would proposing standardised terminology in a standardised language for the area not inevitably entail repressing different approaches in different languages? The paper explores this question in the context of the use of English as a lingua franca, and proposes various ways out of the dilemma both for the EU and TS.


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