Philosophical Anthropology and the Interpersonal Theory of the Affect of Shame

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Stewart Rukgaber
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Affective Response ◽  
The Self ◽  
Interpersonal Theory ◽  
Negative Judgment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
Basic Need

Abstract This article argues that shame is fundamentally interpersonal. It is opposed to the leading interpretation of shame in the field of moral psychology, which is the cognitivist, morally rationally, autonomous view of shame as a negative judgment about the self. That view of shame abandons the social and interpersonal essence of shame. I will advance the idea, as developed by the tradition of philosophical anthropology and, in particular, in the works of Helmuth Plessner, Erwin Straus, F. J. J. Buytendijk, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, that shame is a heteronomous affective response that is caused by a breakdown in our fundamental interpersonal connection with others. It is a feeling that comes from the denial of our basic need to live with others in a state of trusting acceptance.

Self-appropriation vs. self-constitution: Social philosophical reflections on the self-relation

Human Affairs ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt C. M. Mertel
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Important Progress

AbstractIt is widely held that reflexivity is the defining feature of selfhood: the ability of the self to stand in a certain relation to itself. The question of how exactly to theorize this self-relation, however, has been the source of ongoing debate. In recent years, Kantian and post-Kantian approaches such as Christine Korsgaard’s constitutivism and Richard Moran’s commitment view, have attempted to establish the priority of the agential over the epistemic self-relation, thereby re-orientating the debate away from metaphysics and epistemology towards ethics and moral psychology. Despite the important progress they make towards a de-alienated and reified understanding of the self-relation, however, I argue that the Kantian paradigm is ultimately inadequate because its methodological individualism makes it incapable of accounting for the irreducibly social dimension of the self-relation and, therefore, of successfully making the transition from ethics to social and political philosophy. In other words, an adequate ontology of the self-relation is possible only as a social ontology. In order to motivate this thesis, I appeal to two examples that expose the “social deficit” of the Kantian approach: Frantz Fanon’s phenomenology of race/racism in “The Lived Experience of the Black” and the phenomenon of cultural collapse in Jonathan Lear’s

Do People Believe That They Are More Deontological Than Others?

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (8) ◽  
pp. 1308-1320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming-Hui Li ◽  
Li-Lin Rao
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Social Exchange ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Construal Level Theory ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Protective Mechanism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Protected Values

The question of how we decide that someone else has done something wrong is at the heart of moral psychology. Little work has been done to investigate whether people believe that others’ moral judgment differs from their own in moral dilemmas. We conducted four experiments using various measures and diverse samples to demonstrate the self–other discrepancy in moral judgment. We found that (a) people were more deontological when they made moral judgments themselves than when they judged a stranger (Studies 1-4) and (b) a protected values (PVs) account outperformed an emotion account and a construal-level theory account in explaining this self–other discrepancy (Studies 3 and 4). We argued that the self–other discrepancy in moral judgment may serve as a protective mechanism co-evolving alongside the social exchange mechanism and may contribute to better understanding the obstacles preventing people from cooperation.

Citizen Subject

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Étienne Balibar ◽  
Emily Apter
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Social Relation ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject

What can the universals of political philosophy offer to those who experience “the living paradox of an inegalitarian construction of egalitarian citizenship”? This title considers the necessary and necessarily antagonistic relation between the categories of citizen and subject. In this book, the question of modernity is framed anew with special attention to the self-enunciation of the subject (in Descartes, Locke, Rousseau, and Derrida), the constitution of the community as “we” (in Hegel, Marx, and Tolstoy), and the aporia of the judgment of self and others (in Foucault, Freud, Kelsen, and Blanchot). After the “humanist controversy” that preoccupied twentieth-century philosophy, the book proposes foundations for philosophical anthropology today, in terms of two contrary movements: the becoming-citizen of the subject and the becoming-subject of the citizen. The citizen-subject who is constituted in the claim to a “right to have rights” (Arendt) cannot exist without an underside that contests and defies it. He—or she, because the text is concerned throughout this volume with questions of sexual difference—figures not only the social relation but also the discontent or the uneasiness at the heart of this relation. The human can be instituted only if it betrays itself by upholding “anthropological differences” that impose normality and identity as conditions of belonging to the community. The violence of “civil” bourgeois universality, the text argues, is greater (and less legitimate, therefore less stable) than that of theological or cosmological universality. Right is thus founded on insubordination, and emancipation derives its force from otherness.

Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–1797)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Khin Zaw
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Justice ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The Social

Wollstonecraft used the rationalist and egalitarian ideas of late eighteenth-century radical liberalism to attack the subjugation of women and to display its roots in the social construction of gender. Her political philosophy draws on Rousseau’s philosophical anthropology, rational religion, and an original moral psychology which integrates reason and feeling in the production of virtue. Relations between men and women are corrupted by artificial gender distinctions, just as political relations are corrupted by artificial distinctions of rank, wealth and power. Conventional, artificial morality distinguishes between male and female virtue; true virtue is gender-neutral, consists in the imitation of God, and depends on the unimpeded development of natural faculties common to both sexes, including both reason and passion. Political justice and private virtue are interdependent: neither can advance without an advance in the other.

Providing Freshmen with a Good “Starting-Block”

2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 69-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikaël De Clercq ◽  
Charlotte Michel ◽  
Sophie Remy ◽  
Benoît Galand
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Student Adjustment ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Pivotal Phase ◽  
Study Program ◽  
Study Task ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Belonging ◽  
Intention To Persist

Abstract. Grounded in social-psychological literature, this experimental study assessed the effects of two so-called “wise” interventions implemented in a student study program. The interventions took place during the very first week at university, a presumed pivotal phase of transition. A group of 375 freshmen in psychology were randomly assigned to three conditions: control, social belonging, and self-affirmation. Following the intervention, students in the social-belonging condition expressed less social apprehension, a higher social integration, and a stronger intention to persist one month later than the other participants. They also relied more on peers as a source of support when confronted with a study task. Students in the self-affirmation condition felt more self-affirmed at the end of the intervention but didn’t benefit from other lasting effects. The results suggest that some well-timed and well-targeted “wise” interventions could provide lasting positive consequences for student adjustment. The respective merits of social-belonging and self-affirmation interventions are also discussed.

Summary

1999 ◽  
pp. 95
Author(s):  
Editorial board Of the Journal
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Self ◽  
Social Teaching ◽  
World Outlook ◽  
The Social

In the 10th issue of the Bulletin “Ukrainian Religious Studies” in the rubric “Scientific Reports and Announcements” there are in particular the following papers: “Religious Studies and Theology” by A.Kolodny, “Activity of the Orthodox Mission in Ukraine on the Turning Point of the XIX-XXth Centuries” by G.Nadtoka, “Religion in the Spiritual Heritage of V.Lypinsky” by L.Kondratyk, “Church as a Factor of the Self-identification of the Nation in the Cultural and Civilization Environment” by O.Nedavnya, “The Problems of Development of The Social Teaching of the Catholicism” by V.Sergyiko, “The God-Thunder Perun in the Pagan World-outlook of the Ancient Rus’” by N.Fatyushyna and other papers

»Gender« and (a-)symmetry

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Schober
Keyword(s):  
Social Condition ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Social ◽  
Institutional Success

In recent years cultural definitions of »gender« have had extraordinary institutional success. This paper analyses visual worlds that have been motivated by constructivist gender concepts that often display a pronounced symmetry. It relates them to competing images which present difference as scandal, as a mirrored form of the self, or as figurations, and which politicize a-symmetrical forms. The study looks into the social condition of publicity that is constituted by such »picture acts«.

Empathy not quarantined: Association between people’s empathy to others and the COVID-19 pandemic situations based on a national survey study (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhibin Jiang ◽  
Fan Yang ◽  
Bu Zhong ◽  
Xuebing Qin
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Social Media ◽  
National Survey ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Affective Response ◽  
Survey Study ◽  
Income Levels ◽  
The Social

BACKGROUND The Covid-19 pandemic had turned the world upside down, but not much is known about how people’s empathy might be affected by the pandemic. OBJECTIVE This study examined 1) how empathy towards others might be influenced by the social support people obtained by using social media; and 2) how the individual demographics (e.g., age, income) may affect empathy. METHODS A national survey (N = 943) was conducted in China in February 2020, in which the participants read three real scenarios about low-income urban workers (Scenario I), small business owners in cities (Scenario II), and farmers in rural areas (Scenario III) who underwent hardship due to COVID-19. After exposure to others’ difficulties in the scenarios, the participants’ empathy and anxiety levels were measured. We also measured the social support they had by using social media. RESULTS Results show that social support not only positively impacted empathy, β = .30, P < .001 for Scenario I, β = .30, P < .001 for Scenario II, and β = .29, P < .001 for Scenario III, but also interacted with anxiety in influencing the degree to which participants could maintain empathy towards others, β = .08, P = .010 for Scenario I, and β = .07, P = .033 for scenario II. Age negatively predicted empathy for Scenario I, β = -.08, P = .018 and Scenario III, β = -.08, P = .009, but not for Scenario II, β = -.03, P = .40. Income levels – low, medium, high – positively predicted empathy for Scenario III, F (2, 940) = 8.10, P < .001, but not for Scenario I, F (2, 940) = 2.14, P = .12, or Scenario II, F (2, 940) = 2.93, P = .06. Participants living in big cities expressed greater empathy towards others for Scenario III, F (2, 940) = 4.03, P =.018, but not for Scenario I, F (2, 940) = .81, P = .45, or Scenario II, F (2, 940) = 1.46, P =.23. CONCLUSIONS This study contributes to the literature by discovering the critical role empathy plays in people’s affective response to others during the pandemic. Anxiety did not decrease empathy. However, those gaining more social support on social media showed more empathy for others. Those who resided in cities with higher income levels were more empathetic during the COVID-19 outbreak. This study reveals that the social support people obtained helped maintain empathy to others, making them resilient in challenging times.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document