In order to understand how Schopenhauer comes to the conclusion on what the self is, we first need to look at how he defines the will. The will, for Schopenhauer, is defined as desire, drive, a ‘blind’ striving to be alive. The will is shared by other living creatures such as animals and plants: both want to live, to grow and continue surviving.
The will is arational, it has nothing to do with our ability to reason or understand but our will does interact with our intellect. From this, Schopenhauer suggests 2 ways in which the self comes to be:
In his bleak conclusion, Schopenhauer takes the nature of our will and, therefore, our self-hood and says it is ultimately absurd just as the world is around us. None of us can be in control of our nature, we just have a blind urge to exist which gives way to accepting the illusion that being a human is worthwhile. The world is a meaningless struggle that is better off not existing.
Tags: Identity, Metaphysics, Self
Tags: Self
In a climate where Reason was the prevailing idea and was often underpinned by religious and spiritual doctrine, Rousseau sought to break away from this idea and placed the happiness of the human first.
His conception of the self is all to do with feeling and empathy; the self is distinctly moral and man is naturally good. None of his natural inclinations are bad - they are not harmful, illusory or contradictory. His desires are all proportioned to his needs and his faculties to his desires. And on a still deeper level, he has within himself a fundamental source of contentment and joy in merely existing.
Although man is free and morally good, he becomes corrupted by society. By living as part of a society, he is no longer a free man, he is a citizen, a participant that must adhere to the rules. Man is governed by laws and rules that takes away what it is to be human… “Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains”.
A Shepherd discovers a ring in his field and decides to put it on. When he turns the ring inward, he becomes invisible. Upon realising the power of the ring, he takes advantage by going down to the local market and steals whatever he pleases without consequence. This then escalates to the point where he convinces the king to become a messenger on the king’s behalf, commits adultery with the Queen, attacks the King with the help of the Queen and takes over the kingdom.
Now if a just person were to discover this ring, would they submit to temptation? Or would they continue to act justly even with a supreme power at their disposal?
Tags: Ethics
What is it that makes the individual Just? And, by extension, what makes a just society? To understand this, we must understand how the individual operates and this lies in the tripartite soul. For Plato, justice extends from the “excellence of the soul”
How does he define the soul? He says it is made of 3 parts:
The Reason: is the part attached to knowledge and truth. This is the part the governs over the other 2 parts and should be the highest power. At best - wisdom
The Spirit: Honour/ambition/drive. It’s best form - Courage
The Appetite: desire (thirst, hunger, sex, pleasure). It’s best form - Temperance
Once we achieve harmony in the soul, adhering to the best possible state of each part, we can then know justice.
Plato applies his outline of the just soul to the just state by defining the parts of the state.
Reason = Knowledgeable rulers, that have wisdom. This encompasses ethics also. The spirit = The guardians (soldiers/police) The appetite = the workers
We have 2 options: You must choose to believe in god or not. But before you make your decision, you must consider what is at stake: if you choose God, the infinite heavenly pleasures are awarded to you in the afterlife. If you don’t, eternal damnation. If you choose to believe in God but it turns out not to be true, you’ve merely lost some earthly pleasures. If it is true that God exists and you believe, you receive the ultimate reward. Pascal is saying that considering the balance of risk/reward, it is better to follow religion and believe in God.
Tags: Religion
Pascal shuns the imagination as a ‘deceptive power’ - alongside custom and vanity. Imagination leads to a false perception of truth; it distorts our perception of how things really are, changing the qualities. Pascal takes the example of the artist: “The vanity of painting, which excites admiration through its resemblance to things the originals of which we do not admire!” Pascal considers painting one of the many forms of vanity inspired by the imagination.
Pascal considers custom deceptive because it makes us believe in things that have historically thought to be the case. Moreover, where it is custom in one place, may not be custom at all in another. 'neither angel nor beast' , a creature of 'grandeur' and 'wretchedness', deluded by vanity, custom and imagination, the 'glory and refuse of the universe' Further emphasising the duality of the human condition: "But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his killer, since he knows that he is dying whereas the universe knows nothing of its advantage over him"
Tags: Self
The term passions can be understood as emotions, feelings and/or desires. Hume believes that our passions are the prevailing force in how we go about our lives and places our ability to reason as merely trying to make sense of things
This falls in line with Hume’s belief that reason is not the faculty that allows us to achieve knowledge and aligns with the empiricist notion that knowledge is derived from experiences and sense perceptions (although Hume ultimately believes that we can’t know anything for certain)
In context, the prevailing idea was reason, going as far back as the Stoics, Aristotle, Plato etc. and Hume’s assertion that reason ultimately takes a back seat, unsettling traditional thought at the time.
Hume's explanation is that Humans are essentially animals and are mechanistic in our way of living. Just like any other animal, one of our main objectives is to survive and continue functioning; reasoning isn’t the driving motivation but the faculty to which we make sense of things. The Rationalists, on the other hand, assert the world can be understood when we make logical connections - a way in which we truly come to understand things.
Passions are the ultimate motivation, the goodness and badness of things motivate you regardless of reason e.g. reason tells me I need to study or do chores but I have no desire to do these. However, studying can lead to greater feelings and hence, the bigger motivator.
Tags: Epistemology, Self, Mind
The stoics take on the same ideas as the Cynics (defying social convention and living in accordance with nature), the 2 main rules the stoics follow: detachment from external circumstances and living in harmony with nature. Though defying convention was part of the Stoic fabric, it was adhered to in a more conservative fashion than their Cynic counterparts.
They sought the highest good which is virtue apatheia - A way of living that isn’t burdened by emotions. Achieving apatheia is having rational control of the emotions. The Stoics saw the passions as confused ideas that required reasoning to formulate them into distinct and clear ideas
How does this translate in practice? Reason gives you the ability to handle circumstances beyond your control, you gain a rational detachment to achieve the best possible situation for yourself. Cicero gives the following example, albeit, an extreme one: A virtuous man even while being tortured on the rack, his body mutilated and searing with pain, and isolated from all his family and friends, is maximally happy.
In terms of epistemology, The Stoics also take an empiricist approach and say that all that exists is particulars - there are no immaterial forces, anything we can learn from is material. Just like Hume, the Stoics deny innate ideas and contend that the mind is “tabula rasa”: a blank slate.
Tags: Ancient, Epistemology, Self, Social
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