Discourse on the Method: a philosopher’s Bildungsroman

2021 ◽  
pp. 168-193
Author(s):  
S. L. Fokin
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Dual Task ◽  
Specific Model ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Humanistic Education ◽  
The One

The problem raised by the article is defined by a paradox: according to Descartes, education is associated with the darkness of preconceptions, truisms, and instilled prejudices that rely exclusively on the authority of tradition as opposed to light, which is the medium of natural intelligence, free of dogmatism and skepticism alike. The article sets out to solve a dual task: on the one hand, to describe the philosopher’s years of learning and the fruits of his enlightenment, and, on the other, to read Discourse on the Method as a prototypical Bildungsroman that challenges the program of humanistic education adopted during the Renaissance and exposes the novelistic imagination of the author’s contemporaries. Following the method of intellectual history, we discover that the autobiographical setting of Discourse on the Method, combined with the figure of the new conceptual character and the self-reflexive element that reproduces the negative genre-specific model of narration, transform one of the most renowned works of world philosophy into a mature Bildungsroman with a main theme best expressed by the question ‘How to become a philosopher?’

Stories and the Self

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Krause ◽  
Markus Appel
Keyword(s):  
Meta Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lower Degree ◽  
Contrast Effects ◽  
Self Perception ◽  
Self Perceptions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Implicit And Explicit

Abstract. Two experiments examined the influence of stories on recipients’ self-perceptions. Extending prior theory and research, our focus was on assimilation effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in line with a protagonist’s traits) as well as on contrast effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in contrast to a protagonist’s traits). In Experiment 1 ( N = 113), implicit and explicit conscientiousness were assessed after participants read a story about either a diligent or a negligent student. Moderation analyses showed that highly transported participants and participants with lower counterarguing scores assimilate the depicted traits of a story protagonist, as indicated by explicit, self-reported conscientiousness ratings. Participants, who were more critical toward a story (i.e., higher counterarguing) and with a lower degree of transportation, showed contrast effects. In Experiment 2 ( N = 103), we manipulated transportation and counterarguing, but we could not identify an effect on participants’ self-ascribed level of conscientiousness. A mini meta-analysis across both experiments revealed significant positive overall associations between transportation and counterarguing on the one hand and story-consistent self-reported conscientiousness on the other hand.

Keeping Company with Sondheim’s Women

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacy Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Musical Theater ◽  
Married Couples ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

This chapter examines the eight female characters inCompany, what they do in the musical, and how they function in the show’s dramaturgy, and argues that they elicit the quintessential challenge of analyzing musical theater from a feminist perspective. On the one hand, the women tend to be stereotypically, even msogynistically portrayed. On the other hand, each character offers the actor a tremendous performance opportunity in portraying a complicated psychology, primarily communicated through richly expressive music and sophisticated lyrics. In this groundbreaking 1970 ensemble musical about a bachelor’s encounters with five married couples and three girlfriends, Sondheim’s female characters occupy a striking range of types within one show. From the bitter, acerbic, thrice-married Joanne to the reluctant bride-to-be Amy, and from the self-described “dumb” “stewardess” April to the free-spirited Marta,Company’s eight women are distillations of femininity, precisely sketched in the short, singular scenes in which they appear.

Traditional Polity and the Dynamics of Change in India

1963 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Bondurant
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
The Other ◽  
The One

The title of this essay begins with the word traditional and it moves towards the idea of change. As is well known, these terms—tradition and change—are not opposites, nor are they to be understood in contradistinction to one another. It is important in this context to avoid the temptation to treat them as contradictory or to draw contrasts between what one considers on the one hand traditional, and on the other, changing. One cannot accurately speak of what was as over against what will be, or what is becoming. Nor can one view the ancient as opposed to that which is modern. Clearly, the opposite of change is permanence and persistence, and is not—at least not necessarily—to be couched in terms of the traditional. One need only to remind oneself that among the most compelling elements in the West's intellectual history is the idea of progress, to understand that there are indeed traditions in which the notion of change itself has played a significant role. And so it does not follow that "traditional Indian polity" is a set of concepts to be placed over against the "dynamics of change"—quite the contrary, as I shall try to show in what follows.

Let the Witness Speak: From Archi-writing to the Community to come

Derrida Today ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-270
Author(s):  
Francesco Vitale
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Tradition ◽  
Metaphysics Of Presence ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
To Come ◽  
The One ◽  
The Sacrifice

The paper aims to present a reading of the question of Testimony rising in Derrida's later works (from Faith and Knowledge to Poetics and Politics of Witnessing): the experience of Testimony as the irreducible condition of the relation to the Other, of every possible link among living human singularities and, thus, of the thinking of a community to come. This thinking is able to divert the community from the economy grounding and structuring it within our political tradition governed by the metaphysics of presence, which demands the sacrifice of the Other in its multiple theoretical and practical forms. We intend to read this proposal and to point out its rich perspectives by bringing it into the articulation of an ethical-political archi-writing. So we suggest going back to Derrida's early analyses of phenomenology and to De la grammatologie in order to present a reading of archi-writing as the irreducible condition of the relation to otherness and, thus, of the experience through which a living human singularity constitutes itself, a singularity different from the one our tradition compels us to think of within the pattern of the absolute presence to the self, free from the relation to the other.

scholarly journals Obrada motiva smrti u nastavi književnosti

2019 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 615-629
Author(s):  
Snežana Božić
Keyword(s):  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Cognitive Limitations ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

The motif of death in teaching literatureThis paper includes a survey of the affective and cognitive limitations in the students’ perception of the motif of death, particularly when it appears as the main theme in literary works analyzed in class. The author explores the frequency of such texts in the curriculum and provides specific psychological-pedagogical findings, which should be considered and applied. Furthermore, the paper contains certain methodological solutions applicable in some stages of interpretation that refer to the analysis of the motif of death. The solutions, on the one hand, take into consideration the values and the significance of the work itself, and on the other hand, the age of students and their individual characteristics such as personality, sensibility, the experience of the death of their loved ones or its lack. The insights and suggestions are related to the results of an online questionnaire conducted among teachers of literature about their approach to the motif of death in teaching, which is presented in this paper.  Aнализ мотивa смерти на уроках литературы в школеВ статье рассматриваются аффективные и когнитивные ограничения в восприятии мотивa смерти школьниками, особенно в том случае, когда этот мотив является одним из ведущих в литературном произведении, анализируемом на уроке литературы. Исследуется количество таких текстов в учебной программе, анализируются определенные психолого-педагогические знания, которые надо учитывать в учебном процессе. Предлагаются методические рекомендации по интерпретации мотива смерти. С одной стороны, эти рекомендации учитывают ценность и значение самого литературного текста, а с другой — возраст и другие индивидуальные характеристики учащихся характер, чувствительность, опыт/отсутствие опыта. Выводы и предложения в статье сопоставляются с результатами проведенного среди преподавателей литературы онлайн-опроса, касающегося методики интерпретации мотива смерти на уроках литературы. В статье представлены результаты проведенного опроса.

scholarly journals „Es war kein Job, es war eine Berufung“ – Gouvernementale Führung, fragmentierte Subjekte und <i>contre-conduite</i> in der nichtstaatlichen Entwicklungspraxis

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-181
Author(s):  
Kirsten Linnemann
Keyword(s):  
Critical Distance ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Development Professionals ◽  
Western Values ◽  
The One ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
Good Cause ◽  
Development Practice

Abstract. With their donation appeals aid organisations procure a polarised worldview of the self and other into our everyday lives and feed on discourses of “development” and “neediness”. This study investigates how the discourse of “development” is embedded in the subjectivities of “development” professionals. By approaching the topic from a governmentality perspective, the paper illustrates how “development” is (re-)produced through internalised Western values and powerful mechanisms of self-conduct. Meanwhile, this form of self-conduct, which is related to a “good cause”, also gives rise to doubts regarding the work, as well as fragmentations and shifts of identity. On the one hand, the paper outlines various coping strategies used by development professionals to maintain a coherent narrative about the self. On the other hand, it also shows how doubts and fragmentations of identity can generate a critical distance to “development” practice, providing a space for resistant and transformative practice in the sense of Foucauldian counter-conduct.

scholarly journals Computer Gameplay and the Aesthetic Practices of the Self: Game Studies and the Late Work of Michel Foucault

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Computer Games ◽  
The Self ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Work ◽  
Practices Of The Self ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

This paper aims to critically introduce the applicability of Foucault’s late work, on the practices of the self, to the scholarship of contemporary computer games. I argue that the gameplay tasks that we set ourselves, and the patterns of action that they produce, can be understood as a form of ‘work on the self’, and that this work is ambivalent between, on the one hand, an aesthetic transformation of the self – as articulated by Foucault in relation to the care or practices of the self – in which we break from the dominant subjectivities imposed upon us, and on the other, a closer tethering of ourselves through our own playful impulses, to a neoliberal subjectivity centred around instrumentally-driven selfimprovement. Game studies’ concern with the effects that computer games have on us stands to gain from an examination of Foucault’s late work for the purposes of analysing and disambiguating between the nature of the transformations at stake. Further, Foucault’s tripartite analysis of ‘power-knowledge-subject’, which might be applied here as ‘game-discourse-player’, foregrounds the imbrication of our gameplay practices – the extent to which they are due to us and the way in which our own volitions make us subject to power, which is particularly pertinent in the domain of play.

scholarly journals STUDY OF THE MILITARY LEADERSHIP CONCEPT IN THE SLOVENIAN ARMED FORCES

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019, 21/4 (Volume 2019/issue 21/4) ◽  
pp. 75-94
Author(s):  
MARJAN HORVAT
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Military Leadership ◽  
The Other ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
The Military

The main theme of the paper is the Concept of Military Leadership in the Slovenian Armed Forces, which currently represents the highest substantive and guiding normative act in the field of military leadership in the Slovenian Armed Forces (hereinafter referred to as the SAF). Due to the enormous importance of this field in working with people and the aim of influencing the change of the concept, the paper analysed and compared the concepts of military leadership in other selected armed forces and looked for similarities and divergences, especially in two segments - substantive and normative. On the one hand, we have shown the substantive obsolescence and inadequate normative rank of the Concept of Military Leadership in the Slovenian Armed Forces and, on the other hand, the necessity of substantive updating with concrete proposals and arguments for the development of the Doctrine of Military Leadership in the SAF. Key words Leadership, armed forces, Concept of Military Leadership in the SAF

Entreprenøren som figur under neoliberalismen - Kapitalisme, individ og velfærdsorganisering

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luise Li Langergaard
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Social Entrepreneurship ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Economic Innovation ◽  
The One ◽  
The Welfare State

The article explores the central role of the entrepreneur in neoliberalism. It demonstrates how a displacement and a broadening of the concept of the entrepreneur occur in the neoliberal interpretation of the entrepreneur compared to Schumpeter’s economic innovation theory. From being a specific economic figure with a particular delimited function the entrepreneur is reinterpreted as, on the one hand, a particular type of subject, the entrepreneur of the self, and on the other, an ism, entrepreneurialism, which permeates individuals, society, and institutions. Entrepreneurialism is discussed as a movement of the economic into previously non-economic domains, such as the welfare state and society. Social entrepreneurship is an example of this in relation to solutions to social welfare problems. This can, on the one hand, be understood as an extension of the neoliberal understanding of the entrepreneur, but it also, in certain interpretations, resists the neoliberal understanding of economy and society.

Uncommon Measure

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoon Sook Cha
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
Relative Power ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Presence ◽  
Special Character ◽  
The One

This chapter, a reading of “L’Iliade ou le poème de la force,” considers Weil’s claim about the special character of force, that in being assumed and redeployed by those whom it subjects, flattens the relative power of humans. The chapter argues that the claim directs us to the possibility of a new relationality that forfeits sovereign modes of power without that forfeiture thereby signifying an equitable power between the self and the other, such as it is in supplication. Referencing Maurice Blanchot, it is argued that supplication establishes an “uncommon measure” between the suppliant and the one supplicated, not by virtue of any power the suppliant has, but by laying bare his human presence. In this context, one’s subjection to force offers a certain opening to the other even as it marks the precariousness of one’s own human being.

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