Rethinking the Western understanding of the self / Ulrich Steinvorth

Author: Steinvorth, Ulrich
Published: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Physical Description: 1 online resource (vii, 222 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

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Contents

The West and the self -- Basics of philosophical psychology. Heideggerian and Cartesian self -- Free will -- Cartesian, Lockean, and Kantian self -- Extraordinariness and the two stages of rationality -- The Cartesian self in history. The cause and content of modernity -- The second-stage rationality in history -- Economic rationality -- The Cartesian self in the twentieth century -- Value spheres. A diagnosis and therapy for modernity -- Value spheres defined and the state -- The serving spheres -- Technology -- Utilitarian or Cartesian approach -- The media and the professions -- Science -- Art and religion -- Sport -- Latin and absolute love -- A self-understanding not only for the West. Is the core idea of modernity realizable at all? -- Harnessing extraordinariness -- Cartesian modernity -- The undivided, universally developed individual -- The end of history?

Summary

Ulrich Steinvorth offers a fresh analysis and critique of rationality as a defining element in Western thinking. Steinvorth argues that Descartes' understanding of the self offers a more plausible and realistic alternative to the prevailing understanding of the self formed by the Lockean conception and utilitarianism. When freed from Cartesian dualism, such a conceptualization enables us to distinguish between self and subject. Moreover, it enables us to understand why individualism - one of the hallmarks of modernity in the West - became a universal ideal to be granted to every member of society; how acceptance of this notion could peak in the seventeenth century; and why it is now in decline, though not irreversibly so. Most importantly, the Cartesian concept of the self presents a way of saving modernity from the dangers that it now encounters.

Subject(s)

ISBN

9781139175258 (ebook)
9780521762748 (hardback)
9780521757072 (paperback)

Note

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 01 Feb 2016).

View MARC record | catkey: 34843211