Metaphysics Of Self Research Articles

Resistances to Autobiography: The Indian Experiment with life-writing

The article underlines that the epistemology of the self and the practice of life-writing in India marks a departure from the Western conventions and modes of expression. Although there are resistances to autobiography from the Western theoretical standpoint, the genre meets with a twofold resistance in postcolonial milieu in its negotiation with the Indian metaphysics of self. Autobiography in decolonising India negotiates complex pathways between an ardent adherence to Indian epistemology and a potent resistance to the Western modes of writing the self. In a framework to understand the phenomenon of resistance implicit in autobiography in general and the internal resistances to autobiography manifest in the genre during decolonisation in particular, the article argues that such resistances within the genre have redefined the very idea of the self in writing, generated a nuanced notion of the self in narration, as well as challenged the process of writing the self in decolonisation.

One Drive, Two Deaths in Cormac McCarthy'sChild of God

AbstractThis article will offer a reading of Child of God that integrates the supposedly black and white discourses of theology and psychoanalytic theory. One of the main themes in Child of God is the close relationship between sex and death as drives that shape human action and fate. These drives, as fundamental to human nature, have most notably been theorized by Freud. Accordingly, this article argues that in Child of God McCarthy offers a vision of reality in which the sex and death drives are situated in the greater context of a Christian metaphysics of self, thereby repositioning certain Freudian insights within a view of reality repudiated by Freud.

Self-Bias, Time-Bias, and the Metaphysics of Self and Time

1: Self-Bias It is common to have a slightly exaggerated sense of the significance of your own joys and miseries, but grand self-importance is rare. Louis XIV was grandly selfimportant. He believed that, when he consumed too much foie gras, France suffered gastric pain. When he took satisfaction from the construction of a new fountain in the grounds of Versailles, that feeling would settle over his natural kingdom – from the frigid, poxy docks of Brest to the steaming, cholera-ridden slums of Marseilles. For Louis, self-indulgence was a national mission.

The Phenomenal Woman: Feminist Metaphysics and the Pattern of Identity (review)

Reviewed by: The Phenomenal Woman: Feminist Metaphysics and the Pattern of Identity Andrea Tschemplik (bio) The Phenomenal Woman: Feminist Metaphysics and the Pattern of Identity by Christine Battersby. London: Polity Press; New York: Routledge, 1998. Christine Battersby, author of Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics (1990), undertakes the difficult task of arguing on behalf of metaphysics in the antimetaphysical environment of postmodern and reconstructive feminist theory. In The Phenomenal Woman: Feminist Metaphysics and the Pattern of Identity (1998), Battersby engages ancient, continental, and analytic philosophy, constructing a metaphysics of self and identity, a metaphysical position that takes the female subject position as its norm. Her search for a metaphysics of becoming rather than being is motivated by her observation that much of contemporary feminist theory is ensnared in an epistemological web of strands traceable to Emmanuel Kant's transcendental idealism. According to Battersby, the problem with Kant's philosophy is its dependency on "the other" in construction of the self, the interdependence of the constitution of the transcendental subject and transcendental object. Kant is the "culprit" of modernity, whose metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics—transcendental subject, personhood, the sublime—marginalize, even exclude the female subject position. To rectify that omission, Battersby turns to Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, and Theodor Adorno, and finally to Søren Kierkegaard, to establish a "flowing" concept of self and identity that derives from the female subject position. In the first three chapters of The Phenomenal Woman, Battersby analyzes the features that make the female subject position a unique object of analysis, the [End Page 157] basis for a "new" concept of identity. Stressing natality, birthing, caring—as well as fleshiness and woman's exclusion from the (male) norm when denied personhood, autonomy, and freedom—Battersby has sufficient ammunition to shoot down the metaphysics of substance, which she finds inaugurated by Aristotle, transformed into nominalism by John Locke, and reconstructed by Saul Kripke into natural kinds. In Chapter Four, "Kantian Metaphysics and the Sexed Self," Battersby provides ample textual evidence that Kant's metaphysics leads to a hylomorphic sense of identity, where mind shapes inert matter into essences: a "top-down" way of doing identity. The central role of space leads Kant to differentiate between what is within him and what is outside, creating a chasm between active form and passive matter, shaped into identifiable things by the spontaneous activity of the understanding (67). Kantian metaphysics is consonant with Newtonian physics, but that raises the question of the demands and allowances of the new physics and mathematics for a metaphysics of identity. Battersby does not shy away from current investigations in topology and quantum physics to further her rejection of Kant and to fuel her search for a new metaphysics. As Battersby points out, Kant's philosophy explicitly excludes the female from the moral realm by locating woman halfway between personhood and animality, pointing to a somewhat monstrous status for the female. Kant's greatest shortcomings are his inability to reconcile his metaphysics with biology and his failure to come to terms with sexual difference. In the second section, Battersby gives sweeping critiques of deconstruction and postmodern feminism, showing how some thinkers remain boxed in the subject/object dualism and others treat the entire history of philosophy as homogeneous. Jacques Lacan, she says, still works within the Kantian subject/object antagonism, clearly seen in his treatment of woman as "the other": the unattainable and scary object of desire in need of being overcome and ruled by the law of the father. This, she illustrates through a critique of Lacanian analysis of infant development, where the mother provides the boundless "otherness" whose negation and exclusion ultimately give rise to the conception of the "I." Battersby reinforces her analysis of Lacan's reading of Antigone: "Woman is simply 'the otherness' against which the oedipalized/masculinized self constructs itself as itself" (111-12). Jacques Derrida fares no better: his position can either be construed as an undoing of Martin Heidegger's metaphysics of presence or, in a Lacanian framework, as another way of building identity on the "binary" ground of self/other, where the cut from the feminine constitutes the masculinized self. Battersby accuses Derrida of being afraid or...

Virtual Reality and the Metaphysics of Self, Community and Nature

L'A. etudie les implications philosophiques de la technologie de la realite virtuelle et plus precisement de la sub-culture des donjons a multiples usages (MUD). Ces implications concernent 1) le soi, tel qu'il est etendu au personnage du jeu (le second soi), 2) la communaute virtuelle a laquelle le joueur pense appartenir, 3) la nature, telle qu'elle est denaturee par l'artifice du virtuel

The metaphysics of self and world: toward a humanistic philosophy

Preface 1. Self and World: The Problem 2. The Humanities and Cultural Criticism The Humanities * The Social Character of a Culture * The Structure of Feeling of a Culture * Philosophy and the Cultural Mind * Philosophical Skepticism * Categorial Analysis * Categorial Analysis Illustrated * The Importance of Epistemology * How Metaphysics is Possible * Conclusion 3. Meaning and Subjectivity A Realistic Theory of Meaning and Subjectivity * Representationalism: The Naturalistic Challenge * The Classical Empiricist Theory of Representations * The Modern Functionalist Theory of Representations * Criticism of Modern Functionalism * Functional Theory of Sense Experience * Functional Theory of Propositional Attitudes * Functional Language * The Irreducibility of the Language of Meaning * Conclusion 4. Knowledge and Objectivity Behavioral Knowledge * Rational Knowledge * A Naturalistic Theory of Rational Knowledge * A Humanistic Theory of Rational Knowledge * Behavioral and Rational Knowledge Contrasted Objectivity * Levels of Subjective and Objective Appraisals * The Objectivity of Secondary Qualities * The Spread of Subjectivism * Conclusion 5. Semantic and Epistemic Powers of the Human Mind Grounds of the Culture * Epistemic Encounters * Modes of Epistemic Encounters * Somatic Sensations * Sensory Experience * Affective and Conative Experience * Self-Awareness * Memory * Reflective Awareness and Rational Intuition * Perceptual Understanding * Conclusion 6. The Subjective and Normative Structure of Selfhood Persons * Human Beings * Logic and Selfhood * The Nature of Logic * Logic and the Mental * Logic and the Ethics of Thought * Rationality and the Unconscious * Ethics and Selfhood * The Form of a Moral Life * The Goal of a Moral Life * Principles of Life Criticism * Conclusion 7. Persons and the Normative Structure of Society The Individual and Society * The Normative Structure of Society * Social Organization * Cultural Institutions * Economic Institutions * Political Institutions * Conclusion 8. Toward a Humanistic World-View Summing Up * A Humanistic World-View * Religion, Theology, and Ultimate Reality Notes Index