Considering Others and Satisfying the Self: The Moral and Ethical Dimension of Modern Consumption

2017 ◽  
pp. 213-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Campbell
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Ethical Dimension

Ethics of security: A genealogical introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-71
Author(s):  
Andrea Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The Self ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Pierre Hadot

This article analyses the set of ethical questions underlying the emergence of the modern politics of security, as articulated, in particular, in the work of Thomas Hobbes. An ethic is here understood – in line with its ancient philosophical use and the interpretation advanced by authors such as Michel Foucault and Pierre Hadot – as a domain of reflections and practices related to the cultivation and conversion of the self ( askēsis, metanoia). The article aims to demonstrate that, besides attending to the physical safety of the state and its citizens, modern apparatuses of security are also crucially implicated in the formation of their subjects as ethical and autonomous individuals. To substantiate this thesis, the article first illustrates how, since the first appearance of the term in the vocabulary of Western thought – and in Seneca’s work in particular – theories of security have been intimately tied to the cultivation of the self. It thus interprets Hobbes’s reflections on the subject as the upshot of a substantive, if implicit, re-articulation of Seneca’s ethic of security, by focusing on the two authors’ respective understandings of (a) autonomy, (b) the world, (c) ascesis, and (d) politics. Overall, it is suggested that the differences between the two authors testify to a wider political-historical shift: in modern regimes of governmentality, the ethical dimension of security no longer defines the rightful exercise of political power, but rather appears as an object of social and economic governance.

Conscience: The Most Intimate Alterity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Françoise Dastur ◽  
Robert Vallier
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Fundamental Level

This chapter argues that what makes the character of moral conscience paradigmatic as the experience of alterity and passivity is that the dimension of affirmation originally constitutes it and is inscribed directly on it. It first examines Paul Ricoeur's claim that conscience is “the most deeply hidden passivity” in contrast to other passivities that belong to the experience of the proper body and the relation to the Other. It then considers Emmanuel Levinas's argument that the Other is neither “Being” nor a “being” easily grasped by a concept, along with Martin Heidegger's statement that “ontology” is always “practical,” always “engaged,” and therefore always includes an intrinsically ethical dimension. It also asks whether it is possible to think Being and the Other without opposing them before concluding with an analysis of the dialectic of alterity and ipseity that constitutes the most fundamental level of Ricoeur's hermeneutics of the self.

scholarly journals ‘Mind the gap’: Responding to the indeterminable in migration

2020 ◽  
pp. 204382062097596
Author(s):  
Sergei Shubin
Keyword(s):  
Human Geography ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Alternative Response ◽  
Irregular Migrants ◽  
Migration Research ◽  
International Migrants

Prompted by Miriam Tedeschi’s ((2020) On the ethical dimension of irregular migrants’ lives: affect, becoming and information. Dialogues in Human Geography. Epub 17 July 2020. DOI: 10.1177/2043820620940062) article, this commentary attempts to unsettle the dominant understanding of a relation in migration research that prioritises linkages between people, places, and organisations while treating boundaries as limits to overcome. Building on geographers’ earlier engagements with Adorno, Levinas, and extending this conversation to include Blanchot, the analysis attempts to move beyond the hold of mastery on a relation with alterity. This commentary argues for an interruptive non-relation that resists the appropriation and affirms the dispersion of the self by the alterity it cannot internalise. It offers an alternative response to difference in migration that avoids bringing it to unifying continuity. Instead of treating interruptions in migration as gaps to be resolved through language, I consider the possibility of a neutral writing that reflects the powerlessness to say the unspeakable. In a movement of inscription and effacement, neutral writing invokes the unspeakable pain and affliction that exceeds the concepts to which it gives rise. The neuter answers for the non-subject of loss and trauma, the nothing often haunting international migrants.

scholarly journals The circle and the maze: Two images of ecosemiotics

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 69-93
Author(s):  
Matthew Clements
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Biology ◽  
The Self ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
The Status ◽  
Jakob Von Uexküll ◽  
Von Uexküll ◽  
Ecological Relations ◽  
Teleological Interpretation

This article compares the work of Jakob von Uexküll and Charles S. Peirce to elucidate two contrasting yet connected images of ecosemiotics. The intent is not simply to oppose their work, but to explore a tension which has implications for the ethical dimension of this emerging discipline. Uexküll’s functional cycle is associated with the image of a circle, which, while emphasizing the integration of organism and environment, is shown to invoke solipsism, and an overly deterministic depiction of ecological relations. Peirce’s drawing of a labyrinth is taken to represent a maze, which, while exemplifying the evolutionary play of ecosystems, may entail a level of unpredictability that is catastrophically chaotic. The root of these diverging depictions is identified with the role of subjectivity in engendering semiotic relations in the work of both Uexküll and Peirce. Where the more regressive aspects of Uexküll’s theoretical biology are mitigated by a teleological interpretation of life’s underlying causality, orientating agency within Peirce’s work depends upon attention to the idea of the self in his philosophy of signs. In conclusion, Eduardo Kohn’s conception of an ‘ecology of selves’ is cited, and the status of the organism as a living symbol of its environment is reaffirmed.

scholarly journals Re-imagining Histories, Re-inventing the Self in Ian McEwan’s Atonement

2019 ◽  
pp. 165-176
Author(s):  
Vanja Vukićević Garić
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Existential Psychology ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Creative Imagination ◽  
Main Assumption ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
Personal Histories ◽  
The Subject

Justifiably classified as an example of postmodern realism, or a “restorative metafiction” (O’Hara), Ian McEwan’s popular and critically acclaimed novel Atonement (2001) in its entirety reasserts its author’s frequently cited statement that “imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity.” Focusing mainly on the metafictional ending, which, as a kind of unusual post-scriptum, introduces a thematic, structural and an ontological twist re-directing the whole story, this paper explores the limits and the power of creative imagination to re-generate, amend and meaningfully extend personal histories, pointing to the fundamentally ethical dimension of the contemporary self-conscious fiction. The phenomenological connection between ars memoria, imagining, (re-)writing and the Self is seen through the main assumption of the existential psychology that the subject is capable of transcending oneself, recreating and re-inventing oneself in and by means of narrating the self as well as others. Analysing Briony Tallis as both a character and an author within the novel, in her narrative of her own as well as others’ histories, this paper will address ethical possibilities of the self-reflective fiction to connect subjectivity to the world questioning at the same time the boundaries of past, present and the idea of reality.

Levinas and ethics: The death of Pope John Paul II

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-179
Author(s):  
Anjum Alvi
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Pope John Paul Ii ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
John Paul Ii

The essay aims to identify the ethical dimension of the relation of the self with the Other/Beyond as an indispensable aspect of human existence that underlies and forms a premise for any cultural phenomenon, and thus constitutes an unavoidable perspective in anthropology. By juxtaposing modern and non-modern perspectives on value, self, and freedom, this essay reclaims the ethical dimension for the cultural dominant of modernity from which, through the imposition of the self, it has been lost from sight. The argument for the ethical dimension is centrally embedded in the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and anchored in different philosophical and theological concepts. It is exemplified by the event of Pope John Paul II's death, which is taken as a synecdoche for his life and work that allows us to redefine the interrelated topics of religion and ritual as statements of ethics.

Problem behavior in autism spectrum disorders: A paradigmatic self-organized perspective of network structures

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucio Tonello ◽  
Luca Giacobbi ◽  
Alberto Pettenon ◽  
Alessandro Scuotto ◽  
Massimo Cocchi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Problem Behaviors ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
The Self ◽  
Network Structures ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Critical Equilibrium ◽  
Self Organized Criticality ◽  
Acute Agitation ◽  
Spectrum Disorders

AbstractAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) subjects can present temporary behaviors of acute agitation and aggressiveness, named problem behaviors. They have been shown to be consistent with the self-organized criticality (SOC), a model wherein occasionally occurring “catastrophic events” are necessary in order to maintain a self-organized “critical equilibrium.” The SOC can represent the psychopathology network structures and additionally suggests that they can be considered as self-organized systems.

The Nature of Rapidly Extracted Phycocyanin from the Blue-Green Alga Plectonema Boryanum

1971 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 366-367
Author(s):  
M. Kessel ◽  
R. MacColl
Keyword(s):  
Self Assembly ◽  
Analytical Ultracentrifugation ◽  
Uranyl Acetate ◽  
The Self ◽  
Major Protein ◽  
Subunit Structure ◽  
Blue Green Alga ◽  
Thin Sections ◽  
Blue Green Algae ◽  
Cacodylate Buffer

The major protein of the blue-green algae is the biliprotein, C-phycocyanin (Amax = 620 nm), which is presumed to exist in the cell in the form of distinct aggregates called phycobilisomes. The self-assembly of C-phycocyanin from monomer to hexamer has been extensively studied, but the proposed next step in the assembly of a phycobilisome, the formation of 19s subunits, is completely unknown. We have used electron microscopy and analytical ultracentrifugation in combination with a method for rapid and gentle extraction of phycocyanin to study its subunit structure and assembly.To establish the existence of phycobilisomes, cells of P. boryanum in the log phase of growth, growing at a light intensity of 200 foot candles, were fixed in 2% glutaraldehyde in 0.1M cacodylate buffer, pH 7.0, for 3 hours at 4°C. The cells were post-fixed in 1% OsO4 in the same buffer overnight. Material was stained for 1 hour in uranyl acetate (1%), dehydrated and embedded in araldite and examined in thin sections.

Interrelationship of the cellular distribution and secretion of regular structure (RS) protein in Bacillus licheniformis nm 105

1992 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 712-713
Author(s):  
Xiaorong Zhu ◽  
Richard McVeigh ◽  
Bijan K. Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Alkaline Phosphatase ◽  
Bacillus Licheniformis ◽  
Self Assembly ◽  
Gel Electrophoresis ◽  
Culture Supernatant ◽  
Regular Structure ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cellular Distribution ◽  
Structural Protein ◽  
Laboratory Cultures

A mutant of Bacillus licheniformis 749/C, NM 105 exhibits some notable properties, e.g., arrest of alkaline phosphatase secretion and overexpression and hypersecretion of RS protein. Although RS is known to be widely distributed in many microbes, it is rarely found, with a few exceptions, in laboratory cultures of microorganisms. RS protein is a structural protein and has the unusual properties to form aggregate. This characteristic may have been responsible for the self assembly of RS into regular tetragonal structures. Another uncommon characteristic of RS is that enhanced synthesis and secretion which occurs when the cells cease to grow. Assembled RS protein with a tetragonal structure is not seen inside cells at any stage of cell growth including cells in the stationary phase of growth. Gel electrophoresis of the culture supernatant shows a very large amount of RS protein in the stationary culture of the B. licheniformis. It seems, Therefore, that the RS protein is cotranslationally secreted and self assembled on the envelope surface.

Self-Compassion and Quality of Life in Adults Who Stutter

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 2097-2108
Author(s):  
Robyn L. Croft ◽  
Courtney T. Byrd
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Social Connectedness ◽  
The Self ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Self Compassion ◽  
Adults Who Stutter ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Impact

Purpose The purpose of this study was to identify levels of self-compassion in adults who do and do not stutter and to determine whether self-compassion predicts the impact of stuttering on quality of life in adults who stutter. Method Participants included 140 adults who do and do not stutter matched for age and gender. All participants completed the Self-Compassion Scale. Adults who stutter also completed the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering. Data were analyzed for self-compassion differences between and within adults who do and do not stutter and to predict self-compassion on quality of life in adults who stutter. Results Adults who do and do not stutter exhibited no significant differences in total self-compassion, regardless of participant gender. A simple linear regression of the total self-compassion score and total Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering score showed a significant, negative linear relationship of self-compassion predicting the impact of stuttering on quality of life. Conclusions Data suggest that higher levels of self-kindness, mindfulness, and social connectedness (i.e., self-compassion) are related to reduced negative reactions to stuttering, an increased participation in daily communication situations, and an improved overall quality of life. Future research should replicate current findings and identify moderators of the self-compassion–quality of life relationship.

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