Shame as an anthropological, historical and social emotion

Author(s):  
Veronika Magyar-Haas

In her chapter Veronika Magyar-Haas shows that in an anthropological point of view the possibility of the experience of the self in two modes – as a subject and an object, and so the difference between the ‘I’ and ‘Me’ – serves as a structural condition of feeling ashamed. Even if shame in this sense can be defined as a universal human feeling, the historical and cultural relativity of this phenomenon is to be taken into account. The author argues that in shameful situations subjects become objects for others and for themselves, too. She points out that by analysing shame, the existential difference of the self can be presumed – but the sources of shame as well as its intensity and forms of appearance are historically, culturally, and socially varying. It will be argued that in the emotion of shame the self reveals itself as a vulnerable self, which is in various relationships to others and to social norms. With reference to neoliberal expectations and ‘workfare programs’, the chapter illustrates to what extent they generate shame among service users and how shame can be seen as a reproduction of power.

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Rocco De Leo

In today’s “liquid” society, boundaries and limits are shifting or disorienting: belonging to no place, not knowing where ‘home’ is, underlines the sense of uncertainty and in-betweenness experienced by people. This contribution suggests five spatial issues Greek-born Canadian author Smaro Kamboureli has to negotiate with in her ‘poetic diary’ in the second person, where she investigates the duality of the self, displaying the double “I” of the writer’s split subjectivity on a concrete (Greece) as well as abstract (language) place of living. Kamboureli’s account of a duel with and a paradoxical courting of what was and is now for her “the place of language” is related to the awareness of inhabiting a “third” zone of expectations: the difference of origin, of country, of point of view. In conclusion, the different levels of spatial negotiations Kamboureli has had to come to terms with have made her a completely different person. Her life on the border, epitomized in turn by airports, boats, Greece, and the Greek islands, is indeed an endless research of, as well as a conflict with, the ‘Other’, which opens up questions about the relativity of the space/place dichotomy.


Author(s):  
Eva Walther ◽  
Claudia Trasselli

Abstract. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that self-evaluation can serve as a source of interpersonal attitudes. In the first study, self-evaluation was manipulated by means of false feedback. A subsequent learning phase demonstrated that the co-occurrence of the self with another individual influenced the evaluation of this previously neutral target. Whereas evaluative self-target similarity increased under conditions of negative self-evaluation, an opposite effect emerged in the positive self-evaluation group. A second study replicated these findings and showed that the difference between positive and negative self-evaluation conditions disappeared when a load manipulation was applied. The implications of self-evaluation for attitude formation processes are discussed.


1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 226-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Cabanac ◽  
Chantal Pouliot ◽  
James Everett

Previous work has shown that sensory pleasure is both the motor and the sign of optimal behaviors aimed at physiological ends. From an evolutionary psychology point of view it may be postulated that mental pleasure evolved from sensory pleasure. Accordingly, the present work tested empirically the hypothesis that pleasure signals efficacious mental activity. In Experiment 1, ten subjects played video-golf on a Macintosh computer. After each hole they were invited to rate their pleasure or displeasure on a magnitude estimation scale. Their ratings of pleasure correlated negatively with the difference par minus performance, i.e., the better the performance the greater the pleasure reported. In Experiments 2 and 3, the pleasure of reading poems was correlated with comprehension, both rated by two groups of subjects, science students and arts students. In the majority of science students pleasure was significantly correlated with comprehension. Only one arts student showed this relationship; this result suggests that the proposed relationship between pleasure and cognitive efficiency is not tautological. Globally, the results support the hypothesis that pleasure is aroused by the same mechanisms, and follows the same laws, in physiological and cognitive mental tasks and also leads to the optimization of performance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 34-41
Author(s):  
VLADIMIR NIKONOV ◽  
◽  
ANTON ZOBOV ◽  

The construction and selection of a suitable bijective function, that is, substitution, is now becoming an important applied task, particularly for building block encryption systems. Many articles have suggested using different approaches to determining the quality of substitution, but most of them are highly computationally complex. The solution of this problem will significantly expand the range of methods for constructing and analyzing scheme in information protection systems. The purpose of research is to find easily measurable characteristics of substitutions, allowing to evaluate their quality, and also measures of the proximity of a particular substitutions to a random one, or its distance from it. For this purpose, several characteristics were proposed in this work: difference and polynomial, and their mathematical expectation was found, as well as variance for the difference characteristic. This allows us to make a conclusion about its quality by comparing the result of calculating the characteristic for a particular substitution with the calculated mathematical expectation. From a computational point of view, the thesises of the article are of exceptional interest due to the simplicity of the algorithm for quantifying the quality of bijective function substitutions. By its nature, the operation of calculating the difference characteristic carries out a simple summation of integer terms in a fixed and small range. Such an operation, both in the modern and in the prospective element base, is embedded in the logic of a wide range of functional elements, especially when implementing computational actions in the optical range, or on other carriers related to the field of nanotechnology.


2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61
Author(s):  
Dariusz Konrad Sikorski

Summary After 1946, ie. after embracing Christianity, Roman Brandstaetter would often point to the Biblical Jonah as a role model for both his life and his artistic endeavour. In the interwar period, when he was a columnist of Nowy Głos, a New York Polish-Jewish periodical, he used the penname Romanus. The ‘Roman’ Jew appears to have treated his columns as a form of an artistic and civic ‘investigation’ into scandalous cases of breaking the law, destruction of cultural values and violation of social norms. Although it his was hardly ‘a new voice’ with the potential to change the course of history, he did become an intransigent defender of free speech. Brought up on the Bible and the best traditions of Polish literature and culture, Brandstaetter, the self-appointed disciple of Adam Mickiewicz, could not but stand up to the challenge of anti-Semitic aggression.


2010 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-86
Author(s):  
Brigitte Hilmer

Kunst kann dann als reflexiv interpretiert werden, wenn Reflexivität nicht auf propositionalen Gehalt oder sogar sprachliche Artikulation angewiesen ist. Reflexion tritt auf in den Modi der Selbstbeziehung des Lebendigen, des Überlegens und der Selbstreferenz im Symbolischen. Kunst ist ein Reflexionsmedium, das diese Modi beansprucht und miteinander verflicht. Eine spezifisch ästhetische Reflexivität ist von und nach Kant nach dem Vorbild der transzendentalen Reflexion und in Konkurrenz zu ihr etabliert worden. Sie läßt sich als Reflexivität des ästhetischen Urteils, als emphatisches Gemachtsein, als Rückwendung auf Wahrnehmungsvollzüge oder als Begriffsreflexion verstehen. Dabei wird die Unterscheidung von Anschauung und Verstand in deren Zusammenspiel oder Abspaltung vorausgesetzt. Von der Analogie zur transzendentalen Reflexion löst sich aber erst ein Verständnis von ästhetischer Reflexivität, das von den drei Modi und ihrer Verflechtung ausgeht.<br><br>Reflexivity does not presuppose linguistic articulation or even propositional content. If it did, art could not be called reflexive. Reflexivity can be found in the self-contact of the living, in mental reflection or in symbolic self-reference. Art is a medium which claims these different modes of reflexivity and intertwines them. Aesthetic reflexivity as such has been established by Kant and his epigones, following the model of transcendetal reflection. Thus it could be specified as the reflexive structure of aesthetic judgement, or as an emphasis on a work’s being created, or as a reference to perception itself in the process of perceiving, or as a way of reflecting concepts. Aesthetic reflexivity can only be detached from the model of transcendental reflection, if it is seen as oriented towards the interaction among the three modes of reflection mentioned above, leaving aside the difference, interplay or competition between perception and conceptual capacities.


Author(s):  
Angela Dranishnikova

In the article, the author reflects the existing problems of the fight against corruption in the Russian Federation. He focuses on the opacity of the work of state bodies, leading to an increase in bribery and corruption. The topic we have chosen is socially exciting in our days, since its significance is growing on a large scale at all levels of the investigated aspect of our modern life. Democratic institutions are being jeopardized, the difference in the position of social strata of society in society’s access to material goods is growing, and the state of society is suffering from the moral point of view, citizens are losing confidence in the government, and in the top officials of the state.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
С. И. Дудник ◽  
И. Д. Осипов

The article discusses the problems of evolution and the formation of the ideology of an enlightened monarchy in Russia. In this regard, the philosophical and political ideas of Catherine the Great, as well as their theoretical and ideological premises, are analyzed. It is noted that the philosophy of education in Russia was closely connected with the concepts of Voltaire, Didro, Montesquieu, Beccaria, Bentham, their views on natural law and human freedom, humanism and the rule of law. These concepts in the philosophy of Catherine received a specific interpretation, due to the sociocultural conditions of Russia. This was manifested in the famous work of Catherine the Great “The Nakaz”, which recognized Montesquieu's argument in favor of the autocracy, but at the same time, his point of view on the separation of powers was rejected. The specificity of the doctrine of enlightened monarchy lies in the combination of liberal and conservative values, which form eclectic forms. This was the dialectic of the supreme power, the difference between the enlightened monarchy and the ideology of absolutism. The article also notes that education in Russia is associated with fundamental socio-political reforms, processes of secularization of culture. At this time, the natural and human sciences are developing. The changes positively influenced the development of medicine, beautification of towns and public education. Also considered are the views on the autocracy of the opposition nobility intelligentsia: A. N. Radishchev and noted that his criticism of the autocracy was determined by an alternative cultural policy, proceeding from the protection of the interests of the people. The doctrine of enlightened monarchy is characterized by internal worldview inconsistency and political inconsistency, which did not allow solving the pressing social problems of the establishment of legal state, democratization of society and the abolition of serfdom.


Author(s):  
Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska

The article focuses on advertisements as visual and historical sources. The material comes from the German press that appeared immediately after the end of the Second World War. During this time, all kinds of products were scarce. In comparison to this, colorful advertisements of luxury products are more than noteworthy. What do these images tell us about the early post-war years in Germany? The author argues that advertisements are a medium that shapes social norms. Rather than reflecting the historical realities, advertisements construct them. From an aesthetical and cultural point of view, advertisements gave thus a sense of continuity between the pre- and post-war years. The author suggests, therefore, that the advertisements should not be treated as a source for economic history. They are, however, important for studying social developments that occurred in the past.


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