11. The Self and the Ideal Human Being in Eastern and Western Philosophical Traditions: Two Types of “Being a Valuable Person”

2018 ◽  
pp. 234-268
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattia Riccardi

This chapter considers Nietzsche’s picture of the ideal human being. It defends the thesis that Nietzsche’s ideal type possesses three essential features: psychological stability (understood as strength of will), psychological unity (understood, roughly, as lack of self-alienation), and the capacity to create one’s own values. The author contends that Nietzsche builds value creation into his picture of the ideal human because of the particular condition of his late-modern European readers, whom he perceives as being in the grip of the values of Judaeo-Christian morality, which causes the self to be divided. Hence, Nietzsche believes that the only way for late-modern Europeans to regain the kind of unity required for them to approximate, if not fully embody, his ideal type consists in rejecting those self-alienating values and creating new ones.


2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey L. Guenther ◽  
Kathryn Applegate ◽  
Steven Svoboda ◽  
Emily Adams

Author(s):  
Milen Dimov

The present study traces the dynamics of personal characteristics in youth and the manifested neurotic symptoms in the training process. These facts are the reason for the low levels of school results in the context of the existing theoretical statements of the problem and the empirical research conducted among the trained teenagers. We suggest that the indicators of neurotic symptomatology in youth – aggression, anxiety, and neuroticism, are the most demonstrated, compared to the other studied indicators of neurotic symptomatology. Studies have proved that there is a difference in the act of neurotic symptoms when tested in different situations, both in terms of expression and content. At the beginning of the school year, neurotic symptoms, more demonstrated in some aspects of aggressiveness, while at the end of school year, psychotism is more demonstrated. The presented summarized results indicate that at the beginning of the school year, neurotic symptoms are strongly associated with aggression. There is a tendency towards a lower level of social responsiveness, both in the self-assessment of real behavior and in the ideal “I”-image of students in the last year of their studies. The neurotic symptomatology, more demonstrated due to specific conditions in the life of young people and in relation to the characteristics of age.


2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 93-100
Author(s):  
Jelena Djuric

The challenge of discovering what is generally important vis-?-vis human being, through dealing with seemingly local topics, was the ideal of a late Serbian philosopher, ethicist and social theorist Prof. Dr. Svetozar Stojanovic, the ideal that he, by his own self-understanding, was persistently explored. The rediscovery of his world-view initiated by his recent passing, has a potential to arouse momentous thinking on the principles of identity transformation.


Adam alemi ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Dina Kazantseva ◽  

The essence of personality potential is one of the important characteristics of understanding a person as an integral being, creating an individual space of personal aspirations and values. The origins of the problem under consideration in various forms are present in the philosophical reflections of many researchers and have a long history. Even Socrates, Plotinus, Cicero, Thomas Aquinas drew attention to the deep foundations and spiritual essence of man, to the presence of virtues in a state of potential stagnation, to the need for their development in order to achieve the ideal of perfection. N. Kuzansky, S. L. Frank, P. I. Tillich noted the presence of latent force unfolding in time in living beings, the rejection of the self and introduction into something higher, the correlation of the divine and the human, the interconnection of things and events, etc. The modern world actualizes the solution to the problem, creating conditions for a deeper understanding of the potential, consideration of its integrity and the essential foundations of maximum realization. The crisis in all spheres of human life, economic, political, social, requires a quantum leap in understanding the potential and building, on the basis of modern studies of the phenomenon, new projects for transforming reality. In this regard, understanding the historical aspect of studying the logic of the genesis of potential makes an invaluable contribution to solving this problem. Understanding the depth of philosophical thought in a historical retrospective about the origin, emergence and existence of potential will allow you to connect the past and the present, as well as qualitatively advance into the future.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Wałczyk

Nikifor Krynicki (Epifaniusz Drowniak, 1895-1968) was one of the most popular non-academic Polish painters worldwide. To show the biblical inspiration in his creative output I chose two categories from various thematic aspects: self-portraits and landscapes with a church. There are plenty of Nikifor’s paintings showing him as a teacher, as a celebrating priest, as a bishop, or even as Christ. A pop­ular way to explain this idea of self-portraits is a psychological one: as a form of auto-therapy. This analysis is aims to show a deeper expla­nation for the biblical anthropology. Nikifor’s self-portraits as a priest celebrating the liturgy are a symbol of creative activity understood as a divine re-creation of the world. Such activity needs divine inspira­tion. Here are two paintings to recall: Potrójny autoportret (The triple self-portrait) and Autoportret w trzech postaciach (Self-portrait in three persons). The proper way to understand the self-identification with Christ needs a reference to biblical anthropology. To achieve our re­al-self we need to identify with Christ, whose death and resurrection bring about our whole humanity. The key impression we may have by showing Nikifor’s landscapes with a church is harmony. The painter used plenty of warm colors. Many of the critics are of the opinion that Nikifor created an imaginary, ideal world in his landscapes, the world he wanted to be there and not the real world. The thesis of this article is that Nikifor created not only the ideal world, but he also showed the source of the harmony – the divine order.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-111
Author(s):  
Carlos Rios Llamas

ABSTRACTFoucault conceived the human being as defined by biopower forces. After that, the industrial society treated the body as an element of the production process, and the care of the self was derived to healthcare institutions. Recently, Paula Sibilia studied the industrial human being from the capitalism on his transformation through technology and digital hybrids. She thinks that the human body could be at the end in the form we know it. But in the perspectives of both Foucault and Sibilia, the body projects could be at their own obsolescence because they leave a key element aside: the obesogenic environment which is implicit into the current modern technological society. This abstract pretends to visualize how body projects and modernity are interconnected and confronted, from their assumptions and fundamentals, against obesity. RESUMENDe acuerdo con Faucault el cuerpo humano es modelado a partir de dispositivos que corresponden con las formas de poder y con las funciones que se le asignan en una sociedad y en una situación espaciotemporal específica. En esta lógica, el cuidado del cuerpo frente a la obesidad como amenaza, se habría de estudiar desde el entorno social y su evolución en las últimas décadas. Así, mientras que a mediados del siglo XX, las sociedades industriales definieron el cuerpo por su utilidad en los procesos de producción, y el cuidado de uno mismo se derivó a las instituciones como garantes del bienestar, en las últimas décadas las hibridaciones tecnológicas y digitales amenazan el cuerpo biológico y cultural en la forma que lo conocemos. Algunos autores indican que esta forma de cuerpo podría llegar a su fin ante la imbricación de nuevos aditamentos como prótesis, dopaje y alteraciones quirúrgicas. En una lectura desde el margen de los avances en el campo tecnocientífico y biopolítico, todos los proyectos de corporeidad encontrarían hoy su propia obsolescencia ante la obesidad que se instituye como pandemia y que amenaza al cuerpo desde la cultura, la medicina, la economía, la política y los estudios ambientales. Es oportuno, entonces, develar los vínculos entre el cuidado del cuerpo y la contemporaneidad, y desde la obesidad como amenaza de los supuestos avances tecnocientíficos. Por eso, en la conceptualización de “ambientes obesogénicos” se abre una posibilidad para analizar el proyecto contemporáneo de cuerpo desde los espacios donde se construye y se modela su cuidado, y a partir de sus formas de resistencia ante los cambios tecnocientíficos.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (23) ◽  
pp. 303-316
Author(s):  
Patrycja Neumann ◽  
Arian R. Kowalski

This article presents the problem of the presence of evil in the person of the Old Testament God in Answer to Job undertaken by the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung. The Swiss researcher of religion wonders in it about the sense of the relationship between Job and his Creator. The concept of Erich Neumann’s ethics is also shown, encouraging man to strive towards psychological wholeness, defined by Jung as the self – an archetype linking the human being with the dimension of Transcendence. In addition, reflection is also undertaken on the concept of mental health, which could define the condition of a person living in the spirit of the ethics of wholeness.


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.


2020 ◽  
pp. 117-144
Author(s):  
Hubert J. M. Hermans

The principle of participation in a democratic self is explored in more detail in this chapter. The psychological case of a client is presented who lacked any form of inner democracy at the beginning of the counseling process. Using this case, the processes of positioning and repositioning are elucidated and the argument is presented that the self can move from one level of inclusiveness to another: from one as an individual to one as a member of a group, to one as a human being, to one as part of the ecological environment and back. The flexible movements between these levels exemplify the workings of inner democracy. In this chapter, two concepts are central that are considered quintessential to developing inner democracy: taking a meta-position that allows us to take a long-term view of our functioning in a democratic society, and developing promoter positions that push the self forward to a largely unknown future.


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