Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, K. Wojtyla on Person and Ego

Author(s):  
Mary T. Clark

Today the connection between "person" and the "I" is acknowledged in many respects but not always analyzed. The need to relate it to the reality of the human being has sparked the present investigation of the philosophical anthropology of four thinkers from the late ancient, medieval, and contemporary periods. Although it may seem that the question of the role of the "I" with respect to the human being hinges on the larger problem of objectivity v. subjectivity, this does not seem to be the case. Many topics, however, are necessarily entailed in this investigation such as individuality and universality, soul and body, consciousness and action, substance and history, the self and the other, the metaphysical and the phenomenological, and experience and the ethical. At the end of this study we arrive at more than a grammatical use of the "I." From reflection on the contributions of Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, and Wojtyla, the ontological role of the "I" is identified. In doing so, one realizes that the ontological does not forsake the concrete, but penetrates it more deeply. Indeed, that was what Plotinian philosophy claimed to be doing: recognizing the richness of human reality.

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Feldman

This paper is a contribution to the growing literature on the role of projective identification in understanding couples' dynamics. Projective identification as a defence is well suited to couples, as intimate partners provide an ideal location to deposit unwanted parts of the self. This paper illustrates how projective identification functions differently depending on the psychological health of the couple. It elucidates how healthier couples use projective identification more as a form of communication, whereas disturbed couples are inclined to employ it to invade and control the other, as captured by Meltzer's concept of "intrusive identification". These different uses of projective identification affect couples' capacities to provide what Bion called "containment". In disturbed couples, partners serve as what Meltzer termed "claustrums" whereby projections are not contained, but imprisoned or entombed in the other. Applying the concept of claustrum helps illuminate common feelings these couples express, such as feeling suffocated, stifled, trapped, held hostage, or feeling as if the relationship is killing them. Finally, this paper presents treatment challenges in working with more disturbed couples.


2020 ◽  
pp. 174387212098228
Author(s):  
Stephen Riley

Drawing upon Kant’s analysis of the role of intuitions in our orientation towards knowledge, this paper analyses four points of departure in thinking about dignity: self, other, time and space. Each reveals a core area of normative discourse – authenticity in the self, respect for the other, progress through time and authority as the government of space – along with related grounds of resistance to dignity. The paper concludes with a discussion of the methodological challenge presented by our different dignitarian intuitions, in particular the role of universality in testing and cohering our intuitions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110097
Author(s):  
Jianqin Wang ◽  
Henry Otgaar ◽  
Mark L Howe ◽  
Sen Cheng

Memory is considered to be a flexible and reconstructive system. However, there is little experimental evidence demonstrating how associations are falsely constructed in memory, and even less is known about the role of the self in memory construction. We investigated whether false associations involving non-presented stimuli can be constructed in episodic memory and whether the self plays a role in such memory construction. In two experiments, we paired participants’ own names (i.e., self-reference) or the name “Adele” (i.e., other-reference) with words and pictures from Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM) lists. We found that (1) participants not only falsely remembered the non-presented lure words and pictures as having been presented, but also misremembered that they were paired with their own name or “Adele,” depending on the referenced person of related DRM lists; and (2) there were more critical lure–self associations constructed in the self-reference condition than critical lure–other associations in the other-reference condition for word but not for picture stimuli. These results suggest a self-enhanced constructive effect that might be driven by both relational and item-specific processing. Our results support the spreading-activation account for constructive episodic memory.


2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 805-810
Author(s):  
Baoshan Zhang ◽  
Jun-Yan Zhao ◽  
Guoliang Yu

An examination was carried out of the influences of concealing academic achievement on self-esteem in an academically relevant social interaction based on the assumption that concealing socially devalued characteristics should influence individuals' self-esteem during social interactions. An interview paradigm called for school-aged adolescents who either were or were not low (academic) achievers to play the role of students who were or were not low achievers while answering academically relevant questions. The data suggest that the performance self-esteem of low achievers who played the role of good students was more positive than that of low achievers who played the role of low achievers. On the other hand, participants who played the role of good students had more positive performance self-esteem than did participants who played the role of low achievers.


2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722110530
Author(s):  
Saulo Fernández ◽  
Tamar Saguy ◽  
Elena Gaviria ◽  
Rut Agudo ◽  
Eran Halperin

We examined the role that witnesses play in triggering humiliation. We hypothesized that witnesses trigger humiliation because they intensify the two core appraisals underlying humiliation: unfairness and internalization of a devaluation of the self. However, we further propose that witnesses are not a defining characteristic of humiliating situations. Results of a preliminary study using an event-recall method confirmed that witnesses were as characteristic of humiliating episodes as of those that elicited shame or anger. In Experiments 1 and 2, we manipulated the presence (vs. absence) of witnesses when a professor devalued participants and the hostile tone of this devaluation. As hypothesized, in both experiments, witnesses indirectly increased humiliation via the appraisal of unfairness. Results of Experiment 2 revealed that the presence of witnesses also interacted with hostility, enhancing humiliation. As expected, this moderating effect occurred via the other key appraisal of humiliation (i.e., internalization).


Author(s):  
Luise Li Langergaard

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.


Politeia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 238-260
Author(s):  
Franco Manni ◽  

From the ideas of Aristotle, De Saussure and Wittgenstein, philosopher Herbert McCabe elaborated an original anthropology. 'Meaning' means: the role played by a part towards the whole. Senses are bodily organs and sensations allow an animal to get fragments of the external world which become 'meaningful' for the behaviour of the whole animal Besides sensations, humans are ‘linguistic animals’ because through words they are able to 'communicate', that is, to share a peculiar kind of meanings: concepts. Whereas, sense-images are stored physically in our brain and cannot be shared, even though we can relate to sense-images by words (speech coincides with thought). However, concepts do not belong to the individual human being qua individual, but to an interpersonal entity: the language system. Therefore, on the one hand, to store images is a sense-power and an operation of the brain, whereas the brain (quite paradoxically!) is not in itself the organ of thought. On the other hand, concepts do not exist on their own.


Author(s):  
Yoon Sook Cha

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.


Author(s):  
See Seng Tan

Firstly, this chapter introducesLevinas’ ‘responsibility for the other’ notion as an alternative to the liberal and communitarian conceptions of responsibility and sovereignty. Both liberal and communitarian ethics are problematic because of theirshared assumption that responsibility is first and foremost to the self. The chapter introduces key features of Levinas’ ethics – the place and role of hospitality, reciprocity and justice in the responsibility for the other. It also examines how friendly critiques by interlocutors(Derrida, Ricoeur, Caputo, etc.) help moderate Levinas’ idealism without necessarily taking things in overly pragmatic or realist directions or, worse, blunting its moral force. Secondly, the chapter assesses the relevance of Levinas’ ethics to the questions of responsible sovereignty and the R2Provide in Southeast Asia. With reference to the regional conduct described in Chapters 4, 5 and 6, it is argued that Levinas’ ideas redefine the terms of the relationship between responsible providers and their recipients in three key ways: one, our assumptions and expectations over one’s extension of hospitality to one’s neighbours; two, the rethinking of mutuality and reciprocity between providers and recipients; and three, the ways in which the considerations for justice play out within the Southeast Asian context are concerned.


PMLA ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caryl Emerson

Mikhail Bakhtin's work on Dostoevsky is well known. Less familiar, perhaps, is Bakhtin's attitude toward the other great Russian nineteenth-century novelist, Leo Tolstoy. This essay explores that “Tolstoy connection,” both as a means for interrogating Bakhtin's analytic categories and as a focus for evaluating the larger tradition of “Tolstoy versus Dostoevsky.” Bakhtin is not a particularly good reader of Tolstoy. But he does make provocative use of the familiar binary model to pursue his most insistent concerns: monologism versus dialogism, the relationship of authors to their characters, the role of death in literature and life, and the concept of the self. Bakhtin's comments on these two novelists serve as a good starting point for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the Bakhtinian model in general and suggest ways one might recast the dialogue between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky on somewhat different, more productive ground.


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