Sacrificing for

On Sacrifice ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Halbertal
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Potential Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Transcendence

This chapter analyzes how the movement of the self to self-transcendence has been articulated in different ways in the history of philosophy. In his phenomenology of the sacrificial aspect of political violence, Paul Kahn observes that the double aspect of sacrifice—self and other—continues to this day. The chapter considers the potential relationship between self-sacrifice and violence in war by briefly analyzing the laws of war. In addition, it studies how origin narratives of states and political or religious communities sometimes refer to heroic sacrifices performed by the founding generation. A past sacrifice can become a binding political constraint on present-day politicians. With the burden of an earlier sacrifice, the issue is not about withdrawing from a losing situation and maximizing utility but is instead a concern about retroactive desecration.

Substance and Selfhood

Philosophy ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 66 (255) ◽  
pp. 81-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. J. Lowe
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Change ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Substance

How could the self be a substance? There are various ways in which it could be, some familiar from the history of philosophy. I shall be rejecting these more familiar substantivalist approaches, but also the non-substantival theories traditionally opposed to them. I believe that the self is indeed a substance—in fact, that it is a simple or noncomposite substance—and, perhaps more remarkably still, that selves are, in a sense, self-creating substances. Of course, if one thinks of the notion of substance as an outmoded relic of prescientific metaphysics—as the notion of some kind of basic and perhaps ineffable stuff—then the suggestion that the self (or indeed anything) is a substance may appear derisory. Even what we ordinarily call ‘stuffs’—gold and water and butter and the like—are, it seems, more properly conceived of as aggregates of molecules or atoms, while the latter are not appropriately to be thought of as being ‘made’ of any kind of ‘stuff’ at all. But this only goes to show that we need to think in terms of a more sophisticated notion of substance—one which may ultimately be traced back to Aristotle's conception of a ‘primary substance’ in the Categories, and whose heir in modern times is W. E. Johnson's notion of the ‘continuant’. It is the notion, that is, of a concrete individual capable of persisting identically through qualitative change, a subject of alterable predicates that is not itself predicable of any further subject.

scholarly journals Self-Transcendence as a Buffer Against COVID-19 Suffering: The Development and Validation of the Self-Transcendence Measure-B

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul T. P. Wong ◽  
Gökmen Arslan ◽  
Victoria L. Bowers ◽  
Edward J. Peacock ◽  
Oscar Nils Erik Kjell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
True Self ◽  
Transcendence Measure ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Transcendence ◽  
Development And Validation

The age of COVID-19 calls for a different approach toward global well-being and flourishing through the transcendence suffering as advocated by existential positive psychology. In the present study, we primarily explained what self-transcendence is and why it represents the most promising path for human beings to flourish through the transformation of suffering in a difficult and uncertain world. After reviewing the literature on self-transcendence experiences, we concluded that the model of self-transcendence presented by Frankl is able to integrate both of the characteristics associated with self-transcendence. Afterward, we discussed how the self-transcendence paradigm proposed by Wong, an extension of the model by Frankl, may help awaken our innate capacity for connections with the true self, with others, and with God or something larger than oneself. We presented self-transcendence as a less-traveled but more promising route to achieve personal growth and mental health in troubled times. Finally, we presented the history of the development and psychometrics of the Self-Transcendence Measure-Brief (STM-B) and reported the empirical evidence that self-transcendence served as a buffer against COVID-19 suffering. The presented data in the current study suggested that the best way to overcome pandemic suffering and mental health crises is to cultivate self-transcendence.

scholarly journals "Fare filosofia" e "fare storia della filosofia": divorzio o convivenza?

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-28
Author(s):  
Gregorio Piaia
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
History Of

The present work proposes a reflexion about difficulties involved in the distinction between “doing philosophy” and “making history of philosophy”. We support the convenience of this problematic distinction, but in a way that the coexistence of the two perspectives guarantees mutyal enrichment. In particular, we insist that the second perspective promotes an attitude that is more open to understanding the distinct ways in which the human being has tried to acces to the truth, and that avoids the self-sufficiency in which the first risks falling.

Epistrophe and Metanoia in the History of Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-210
Author(s):  
Pierre Hadot ◽  
Andrew Irvine ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Living Organism ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of

Crucial in Pierre Hadot’s account of ancient philosophy as a way of life is the phenomenon of conversion. Well before he encountered some of the decisive influences upon his understanding of philosophy, Hadot already understood ancient philosophy and its long legacy in later thinkers of the West as much more than a formal discourse. Philosophy is an experience, or at least the exploration and articulation of a potential for experience. The energy of this potential originates in a polar tension between epistrophe (return) and metanoia (rebirth). The two poles, which are grounded in primal experiences of the living organism, motivate and model the conversion which must be lived by the philosopher. The genius of Western philosophical experience lies in the effort to synthesize return and rebirth, and thereby recover the self as an ontological point of identification with and origin of the cosmos.

Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zuckert
Keyword(s):  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
History Of

This chapter reviews Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self. The book displays Taylor’s mastery not only of the history of philosophy, but of theology, poetry, and art. He also shares Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s commitment to synthesizing competing and conflicting elements of the culture. Unlike Hegel, however, Taylor does not see philosophy as the highest and truest expression of the human mind or spirit; rather he sees the artists—the poets most especially—as the ones who “can put us in contact with” what we as living and thinking humans need to be in contact with. This chapter examines Taylor’s arguments as articulated in Sources of the Self, especially his view that human beings are self-interpreting and self-misinterpreting animals and that self-interpretation has ontological significance. It also considers what Taylor identifies as a “phenomenology” of human action, his theory of morality and identity, and his concept of the “punctual self.”

scholarly journals East and West in Zakia Khairhoum's the End of My Dangerous Secret

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 73-82
Author(s):  
Youssef EL KAIDI
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Cultural Reality ◽  
History Of Literature

Literature is an arena for cross-cultural representation par excellence. It is in the literature that images produce an awareness of the Self and Other, and of the Here and the Elsewhere, however small that awareness maybe. The accounts of many canonical literary figures in the history of literature featured portrayals and descriptions of radically different people and customs, exotic lands, and far-off places where everything is outlandish and anomalous. Literary representation, therefore, plays a pivotal role in shaping perception, creating historical and textual monoliths, stereotypes, and essentialization about ethnic minorities, race, sexuality, and gender. This article investigates the politics of representation of the Self and the Other in Zakia Khairhoum’s novel The End of My Dangerous Secret (Nihayat Sirri L’khatir, 2008) from a postcolonial feminist’s point of view. I argue that Khairhoum does not only shatter the foundations of patriarchy in the Arab world but also undermines and subverts Western colonial discourse and its claim of supremacy. The novel foregrounds a different pattern of representation that has not yet been sufficiently investigated, which is the denigration of both the Self and the Other and the quest for a third cultural reality that is defined in terms of gender equality, justice, human rights and democracy.

scholarly journals Technological Determinism Goes Aloft: Notes on the Human – Machine Issue in Outer Space Exploration

2020 ◽  
pp. 16-25
Author(s):  
Lika Rodin
Keyword(s):  
Space Exploration ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
The Self ◽  
Technological Determinism ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
National Space ◽  
History Of ◽  
Manned Space ◽  
The Individual

The future of space exploration is unimaginable without broadening the role of technology. Already, the necessity of manned space expeditions is becoming increasingly problematized. This study looks at the role of technology and human – machine relationships unfolding within national space programs through the lens of the 'soft' version of technological determinism suggested by Albert Borgmann. This theoretical tradition recognizes, without neglecting human agency, the shaping effect of technology on human organization, prosperity and actions as well as on individuals' relationships with the self and other. The commodification of technology – economic and ethical – is viewed to be the effects of technological expansion. Ethical commodification is characterized by disattachment of the individual from the natural surrounding and from the self. In the field of space exploration, ethical commodification is associated with the process of automation that developed differently in distinctive national contexts. Thus, if the history of American spaceflight is characterized by the initial struggle against automation, seen to be a means of disempowering astronauts as a professional group, the Russian space program favoured automation from the very beginning. In both contexts, however, automation eventually established itself and continues to shape contemporary perceptions on spaceflight. The accumulated experiences of man-machine interactions are useful for understanding ethical commodification as a social phenomenon. Drawing on the autobiographical narratives of Soviet / Russian cosmonauts, I specify the ways in which ethical commodification of hardware and software manifested itself in spaceflight and how it could be diverted. In conclusion, a perspective that resists alienation is suggested for the enterprise of space exploration at large.

The Self and Its Society

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Moran
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Internal Dialogue ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conversational Partner

Throughout the history of philosophy, relations to oneself have been modeled on intersubjective relations, as the “internalization” of possible relations with others. Plato describes thought itself as a kind of internal dialogue, and Kant grounds normativity on “self-legislation” and the possibility of obligations to oneself. The conscience is pictured as an “internalized other.” This chapter argues for “self-other asymmetries” governing speech and interlocution which limit the sense in which a person can be her own interlocutor, or treat either a part of herself or a temporal stage of herself as such a conversational partner (Korsgaard, Dummett). The chapter revisits the related claims of Anscombe and Cavell that “believing someone” does not have a first-person reflexive form, and develops the idea of the two forms of agency expressed in speech.

Diderot, the Self, and the Science of Dreaming

2021 ◽  
pp. 212-232
Author(s):  
Charly Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Philosophy And Religion ◽  
Science Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dream State ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter presents Denis Diderot’s philosophy of the self in light of debates over the neuroscientific turn in historical research. Recent literature features an ideal of self-ownership that the history of philosophy shows to be radically contingent. Situating Diderot’s articles on dreaming and distraction in the Encyclopédie within the context of eighteenth-century theological and medical reflections on the self’s command over its ideas and actions, the chapter interrogates the relationship between science, philosophy, and religion. The dream state fascinated Diderot precisely because its structure and content allowed his contemporaries to reflect upon the fate of the human subject in a materially determined world.

L’ipséité et non le moi : promesses et potentialités d’un concept

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-156
Author(s):  
Claude Romano
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Inner Core ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Self ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
Intrinsic Connection ◽  
Ontological Approach ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ways Of Being

Does Heidegger really have a “theory of the self ” in the same way as, say, Descartes, Locke or Husserl? This is what has often been concluded bymany interpreters of Being and Time, and it is that view that this paper challenges. Heidegger not only rejects the supposition of a substantial ego, along the lines of Descartes’ conception, but he also repudiates, more generally, any “self ” understood as a present-at-hand being, an inner core of Dasein, as he insists on the intrinsic connection between the “egologies,” from Descartes to Husserl, and “traditional ontology”. The fundamental-ontological approach of Selbstheit and Selbstsein, that is, ipseity and Beingoneself, constitutes rather a complete paradigm-shift in the history of Modern philosophy, and a complete break with the egologies as a whole, since both concepts refer only to “ways of being” or “ways of existing” of Dasein. Insofar as its novelty is acknowledged, the concept of ipseity may thus also be taken as an heuristic tool to investigate the history of philosophy, and especially to reformulate in slightly different terms the problem that was at the centre of the courses on « subjectivity and truth » of the late Foucault

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