scholarly journals Philosophy and war: Hegel’s therapeutic movement of the spirit

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-104
Author(s):  
Rastko Jovanov

In addition to Axel Honneth?s thesis on the therapeutic function of the concept of ethical life in Hegel?s philosophy, I want to underline two moments which, to my mind, show Hegel?s views on the therapeutic dimension of both philosophy and the war against the pathology of civil society more clearly. In this context, (a) philosophy performs a corrective function by fostering the individual?s virtue conceived as an ethical duty of care both for oneself and for others. The main aim of Hegel?s practical philosophy is hence to return the individual from abstract subjective concepts to his concrete everyday intersubjective practices, and to show him the way to understand himself and the social world as originally related to each other; (b) one of the main problems for the moral development of individuals consists in their propensity to perceive the good in particularist and selfish terms: in this context events such as natural disasters or wars can be seen as performing a therapeutic function by teaching individuals to view the good in more principled and general terms.

Author(s):  
Wes Furlotte

Chapter ten, therefore, examines the opening section of Hegel’s Rechtphilosophie, “Abstract Right,” in order develop a ‘preliminary sketch’ of the concepts of right and juridical personhood. The chapter historically contextualizes Hegel in relation to the mechanical deterministic conception of the individual (Hobbes) and abstract, though free, conceptions (Rousseau, Kant, Fichte). The chapter then moves to point out Hegel’s uniqueness in this context. Synthesizing Hobbesian and Fichtean standpoints, Hegel argues that the natural dimension of the individual (impulse, drive, and whim) is crucial to the genesis of actual freedom in the social world. Reconstructing Hegel’s analysis, the chapter shows that freedom is not undermined by acting out on one’s desires, impulses etc. but is brought into the world by these very drives. Although these drives are historically and socially conditioned they are, nevertheless, immediate and therefore constitutive of the basal level of juridical personhood. Thereby the chapter argues that a new sense of nature arises within Hegel’s political philosophy. The task, then, is to pursue what nature must mean within the fields constituting the socio-political.


Author(s):  
Anna Leander

The terms habitus and field are useful heuristic devices for thinking about power relations in international studies. Habitus refers to a person’s taken-for-granted, unreflected—hence largely habitual—way of thinking and acting. The habitus is a “structuring structure” shaping understandings, attitudes, behavior, and the body. It is formed through the accumulated experience of people in different fields. Using fields to study the social world is to acknowledge that social life is highly differentiated. A field can be exceedingly varied in scope and scale. A family, a village, a market, an organization, or a profession may be conceptualized as a field provided it develops its own organizing logic around a stake at stake. Each field is marked by its own taken-for-granted understanding of the world, implicit and explicit rules of behavior, and valuation of what confers power onto someone: that is, what counts as “capital.” The analysis of power through the habitus/field makes it possible to transcend the distinctions between the material and the “ideational” as well as between the individual and the structural. Moreover, working with habitus/field in international studies problematizes the role played by central organizing divides, such as the inside/outside and the public/private; and can uncover politics not primarily structured by these divides. Developing research drawing on habitus/field in international studies will be worthwhile for international studies scholars wishing to raise and answer questions about symbolic power/violence.


2012 ◽  
pp. 67-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Lambert ◽  
Eric Pezet

This paper investigates the practices whereby the subject, in an organisational context, carries out systematic practices of self-discipline and becomes a calculative self. In particular, we explore the techniques of conduct developed by management accountants in a French carmaker, which adheres to a neoliberal environment. We show how these management accountants become calculative selves by building the very measurement of their own performance. The organisation thereby emerges as the cauldron in which a Homo liberalis is forged. Homo liberalis is the individual capable of constructing for him/her the political self-discipline establishing his/her relationship with the social world on the basis of measurable performance. The management accountants studied in this article prefigure the Homo liberalis in the self-discipline they develop to act in compliance with the organisation’s goals.


2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 409-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Beer

This E-Special issue brings together a range of articles from the Theory, Culture, & Society archive that directly explore the relations between fiction and social theory. Each article develops a different perspective on these relations, yet they all share a common interest in probing at the different ways in which fiction might enrich and provoke our conceptual imaginations. These articles ask how theory might be used to understand or illuminate fiction, whilst also considering how theory might be extended, challenged or informed by fictional resources. In general terms, the articles take three types of overlapping approach. First, there are those that use fiction to extend the imagination of social theory. Second are the articles that use fiction as a documentary resource and platform for theorizing. And, finally, there are those articles that use theory to reanimate and re-examine fictional forms. In exploring these three intersecting branches the pieces illustrate the different ways in which fiction and social theory might interweave in our thinking. The articles gathered here provide frameworks, ideas and resources through which the reader might continue to think imaginatively and creatively about the social world.


1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Cox ◽  
Albert Bhak

Using a variety of indicators of retirement adjustment most studies have focused on two variables as the critical ones: the kind of work the individual was involved in prior to retirement with its concomitant style of life or the individual's pre-retirement attitudes. Focusing on the latter variable and using a symbolic interaction perspective, it was hypothesized that the individual's significant others are crucial to both the development of his pre-retirement attitudes and his post-retirement adjustment. The data upheld both the predicted relationships, and further suggest that the social world of older people is comprised of both primary groups and proximate others. The Lowenthal and Haven concept of confidants as a major factor in the adjustment of older people, though valuable, too narrowly defines their social world. The broader concept of significant others comprised of both confidants and proximate others seems more realistic.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 257-284
Author(s):  
Margaret Gilbert ◽  

This discussion responds to a collection of papers that relate in one way or another to the author’s work in the philosophy of social phenomena. It focuses on those passages that deal most directly with that work. After making some general points that respond to remarks in several of the papers, it turns to the individual papers. The subjects discussed include coordination, conversation, collective beliefs and emotions, joint commitment, obligations and rights, patriotism, promises, the pronoun “we”, and what it is to tell someone something.


2003 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haim Weinberg

Culture and groups are intertwined. Culture is essential in crystallizing our social identity and provides the common understandings that allow the social world to have a meaning. Culture is constituted from many groups that have common values. The social unconscious of a certain culture is reflected in groups, especially in large groups. This paper explores different aspects of the social unconscious and describes how the individual and the group/society always coexist. The concept of the binocular vision is used to integrate between two approaches to the social unconscious. Groups from different cultures and their unique features are described and entering a group is analyzed as a kind of immigration to a new culture.


2011 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Y. Huang ◽  
John A. Bargh

AbstractSelf-deception may be a natural consequence of active goal operation instead of an adaptation for negotiating the social world. We argue that because autonomous goal programs likely drove human judgment and behavior prior to evolution of a central executive or “self,” these goal programs can operate independently to attain their desired end states and thereby produce outcomes that “deceive” the individual.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle Landry

Beginning with discussion of what constitutes survivor research in Canada, this paper presents the findings of a critical discourse analysis of published accounts of survivor-led research over the last twenty-five years. Though they are varied, these texts demonstrate a rhetorical shift from a focus on the individual mind/body out to the social world experienced by psychiatric consumer/survivors. Findings indicate that survivor-led research engages with recovery discourse in numerous, sometimes problematic ways, in order to push back against dominant biomedical and psychiatric discourses. Further, new language is being generated for understanding madness and distress, rooted in a survivor perspective


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document