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Self-Theories: The Construction of Free Will

Carol S Dweck and Daniel C Molden

in Are We Free?: Psychology and Free Will

The nature of free will is a philosophical issue; whether people believe they have it is a psychological one; and whether people actually have it is in the terrain in between. This chapter shows how ... More

The nature of free will is a philosophical issue; whether people believe they have it is a psychological one; and whether people actually have it is in the terrain in between. This chapter shows how people's self-theories — their conceptions of human qualities as fixed or as malleable — create different perceptions and experiences of free will. Interestingly, these different perceptions mirror those of different philosophical traditions. The chapter then shows how self-theories lead people to different psychological solutions for issues allied with free will, such as issues of moral responsibility and blame. How much free will do people actually have? The debate has often turned on whether the physical laws of nature allow for free will. To a psychologist, this seems surprising. Thus, the chapter ends by proposing that the issue of free will may, at least in part, turn on questions of human nature and how best to conceive of it.Less

Scrutinizing Desire: Hermas, Metanoia, and Manliness

B. Diane Lipsett

in Desiring Conversion: Hermas, Thecla, Aseneth

This chapter examines the interplay in The Shepherd of Hermas between desire and self-restraint, and does so as an entrance into the text’s larger concern with metanoia (repentance or conversion), ... More

This chapter examines the interplay in The Shepherd of Hermas between desire and self-restraint, and does so as an entrance into the text’s larger concern with metanoia (repentance or conversion), self-scrutiny, and masculinity. The long, repetitive text evinces a striking array of techniques for self-examination, akin to those Foucault describes as ancient strategies for discursive self-formation. Scattered scenes with images of erotic desire are spread across the three sections of The Shepherd (Visions, Mandates, and Similitudes) and invite close analysis. Yet erotic sins or dangers seem less important than others, particularly economic sins, in the ethical register of this text. Rather, images of desire function metonymically within a broader discourse of virtue. In the end, metanoia and manliness in The Shepherd involve not so much the suppression of desire as the choice of its proper object, and even manly abandonment to holy desires.Less

The Self in the History of Distributed Cognition: A View from the History of Reading

Elspeth Jajdelska

in Distributed Cognition in Enlightenment and Romantic Culture

This chapter looks at relationships between reading and writing, decorous speech and self-formation in the eighteenth century. The process of self-formation is understood by psychologists today to be ... More

This chapter looks at relationships between reading and writing, decorous speech and self-formation in the eighteenth century. The process of self-formation is understood by psychologists today to be a fluid and dynamic one, with the potential to vary across environments. The chapter considers how increasingly novelised forms of diary writing produced a swift oscillation for eighteenth-century diarists between addressing the reader and being the reader. New conceptions of the relationship between writing and print, meanwhile, produced a split between the face to face encounters of lower class readers, and their self-conception as silent readers of political and other topics. These developments meant that self-formation could be distributed between human subjects and the books and documents which they read and wrote.Less

The Conditioning of Care: Intention, Emotion, and Restraint

Felicity Aulino

in Rituals of Care: Karmic Politics in an Aging Thailand

This chapter examines questions of intention, emotion, and self-formation from the vantage point of contemporary interpersonal norms in Thailand and their interestingly direct Pali antecedents. To ... More

This chapter examines questions of intention, emotion, and self-formation from the vantage point of contemporary interpersonal norms in Thailand and their interestingly direct Pali antecedents. To make sense of the patterns found there, it probes notions of intentionality, agency, and (non)self in the writings of Buddhaghosa, a fifth-century commentator on the Theravada Pali Canon. These notions resonate with karmically inflected understandings of care at intra- and interpersonal levels in the contemporary world. In particular, the chapter describes a Theravada “theory of mind” that distinguishes among acts of body, speech, and mind, but locates intention and karma in each. By simultaneously collapsing and expanding the Cartesian mind–body dualism, this tradition puts great importance on subjective experience as a key to wholesome karmic action; and yet, subjective experience itself is not the focus of cultivation. Internal orientation is not promoted or refined in ways one might come to expect through Western confessional “technologies of the self.” Rather, this tradition guides people to refrain from certain actions and states, with ideal practices characterized by the absence of key defilements. What reads at first as a holding in of, or a distraction from, painful emotional states ultimately reflects a highly developed and centuries-old moral psychology with incredible continuities evident throughout contemporary society.Less

Asceticism as Willed Corporeality: Body in Foucault and Heidegger

Edith Wyschogrod

in Crossover Queries: Dwelling with Negatives, Embodying Philosophy's Others

Michel Foucault considers repressive self-formation to be an expression of what he calls “technologies of the self”, modes of imposing conformations of thought upon ... More

Michel Foucault considers repressive self-formation to be an expression of what he calls “technologies of the self”, modes of imposing conformations of thought upon corporeality, especially its sexual expressions. Similarly, for Martin Heidegger thought cannot escape the thinking of Being, even when Being is manifested in calculative representation, its current mode of disclosure, one that constitutes a clear and present danger, in which, however, there resides a saving power. This chapter pursues these lines of inquiry by envisioning each thinker as a questioner of the other. Rather than engage in an exercise in intellectual history, the chapter mentions influences upon and shifts within their thought when these are relevant to the larger narrative. The chapter first discusses the meaning of questioning as a point of orientation, a questioning that includes both existential involvement and distancing from the question. Then it turns to Heidegger's interrogation of Western philosophy's articulation of Being and truth and to Foucault's approaches to philosophical discourse.Less

Conclusion

Judith H. Newman

in Before the Bible: The Liturgical Body and the Formation of Scriptures in early Judaism

Although by no means offering a complete taxonomy of scripture formation, the book considers a wide range of literary genres and practices across the diverse population of Judeans throughout the ... More

Although by no means offering a complete taxonomy of scripture formation, the book considers a wide range of literary genres and practices across the diverse population of Judeans throughout the region. The conclusion draws out some of the implications for understanding the fluid nature of scriptures in the Hellenistic-Roman era. The search for the “original text” of the Bible is a vain one; rather, scriptures were formed through a traditioning process that involved sacralization through the entwinement of prayer practices and textual interpretation. These texts were mediated by learned teachers and leaders in textual communities.Less

Music and Ethical Modification

Banu Şenay

in Musical Ethics and Islam: The Art of Playing the Ney

Engaging with current debates in anthropology around ethics, moral subjectivity, and self-formation, this chapter examines the transformative power of this Islam-infused musical practice to cultivate ... More

Engaging with current debates in anthropology around ethics, moral subjectivity, and self-formation, this chapter examines the transformative power of this Islam-infused musical practice to cultivate in learners not only new artistic but also new ethical perceptions. It discusses the ways in which the process of becoming a skillful ney-player involves much more than technical competence, illustrating how students are socialized into new ways of being as well as into new ways of relating to other selves and to the city. I frame the transformative faculty of this musical enterprise ‘ethical modification’ to avoid over-privileging the efficacy of the skilled practice for fashioning radically different moral selves.Less

“We've told you all about our life”: Conclusions and Implications

in The Opera Fanatic: Ethnography of an Obsession

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the opera fans at the Colón Opera House. It explores the sociological significance of opera and the complex forms of emotional attachment to the ... More

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the opera fans at the Colón Opera House. It explores the sociological significance of opera and the complex forms of emotional attachment to the opera. This chapter also suggests that the work of art can serve as a locus for personal and emotional investment or as a medium for moral self-formation instead of merely being a tool for the maximization of capital.Less

Introduction

Ulrich Demmer

in Towards Another Reason: Identity Politics and Ethical Worlds in South India

The Introduction presents the main arguments and the outline of the book. It describes why postcolonial anthropology, the study of identities, and an anthropology of ethics need another concept of ... More

The Introduction presents the main arguments and the outline of the book. It describes why postcolonial anthropology, the study of identities, and an anthropology of ethics need another concept of reason. It reviews the different conceptions of reason that anthropologists hitherto employed and it outlines an alternative conception of rationality, namely ‘engaged practical reason’. This concept, the study argues, is more appropriate if we wish to study the ways people shape ethically motivated ways of living since it pays tribute to the many voices and practices engaged in such processes of (individual and collective) ethical self-formation. The chapter also outlines the identity politics of becoming rather than being, the notion of the ‘ethico-political’ and reviews the current debates in both postcolonial anthropology and in the anthropology of ethics. It also contains a section on the ethnographic fieldwork which led to the book and it provides an overview of the book.Less

High Participation Society

Anna Smolentseva

in High Participation Systems of Higher Education

The chapter asks the ultimate question about high participation systems (HPS) of higher education: what kind of society is it when the majority of young people have higher education? It reviews ... More

The chapter asks the ultimate question about high participation systems (HPS) of higher education: what kind of society is it when the majority of young people have higher education? It reviews theories and concepts developed in two disciplinary traditions: social sciences (structural functionalism, neo-institutionalism, etc.) and educational philosophy (Bildung and growth theory among others). Those two strands of scholarship highlight two key dimensions in the relations between higher education and society: the social/occupational structure, and socialization as human development/self-formation. The Bildung idea of a dual human nature, both determined by the world and being self-determining, largely corresponds to these two disciplinary approaches and opens up an intellectual space for further cross-disciplinary, multi-dimensional research on the meanings of HPS higher education for individuals and society.Less