Being in the World as Self-Making: On the Logical Concept of a Personal Life (original) (raw)

Hegel, Heidegger, and the 'I': Preliminary Reflections for a New Paradigm of the Self

Philosophy Today, 2015

In this paper, I contend that both Hegel’s and Heidegger’s philosophies can be regarded as attempts to overcome Cartesian subjectivism and to by-pass traditional oppositions between subjectivist and objectivist accounts of the ‘I’. I explore Hegel’s notion of the ‘I’, stressing how Hegel takes up Kant’s ‘I-think’ freeing Kant’s philosophy from its subjectivism. Then, I submit that Heidegger, in the twentieth century, was similarly concerned with the overcoming of subjectivism, and that an analysis of his notion of mineness (Jemeinigkeit) and its development in the context of Heidegger’s thought can support this argument. Finally, I suggest that Hegel’s and Heidegger’s analyses can be used to elaborate an alternative and more flexible model of the ‘I’, which avoids individualism, allows thinking of the formation of the self as a collective enterprise, and thus provides the conceptual resources to transform our identity without loosing it.

THE DIALECTICS OF SELF-CONSCIOUS LIFE AND THE CONSTITUTION OF SOCIAL PRACTICES IN HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY

Ethics&Politics, 2019

In this contribution I defend the thesis that Hegel's notion of species (Gattung) is not merely the name given to a group of self-reproducing living beings but rather it is at the basis of the Hegelian naturalistic conceptions of self-conscious life, sociality and world history. I maintain that self-reflection and self-referring negativity are the main characteristics of the self-conscious life and they determine the features of both the individual self-consciousness and the entire human species by shaping social practices and world history as acts of actualized freedom. Therefore, the definition of human species goes far beyond the description of its natural features and depends on the fact that self-consciousness is able to determine itself by negating external powers or conditioning. The main argument of this contribution is that human species and its historical evolution can be defined by means of this self-referring negativity and by self-consciousness' capacity to place the external reality under an order of values and concept autonomously yielded.

Freedom through Otherness: Hegel's Lesson on Human Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity

To appear in the collection of essays "Human Diversity in Context" edited by C. Ferrini (ca.2020)

Hegel speaks of human self-knowledge in terms of "self-elevation" above the singularity of sensation to the universality of thought and as addressing human truth and knowledge. However, if we regard his famous injunction "know thyself" as meaning that a self-conscious I must become another for itself, only in order to be able to identify with itself, then our self-knowledge would rest upon a hypertrophy of the subject's sense of identity. For this reason Hegel has been charged with subordinating concrete difference and real alterity to abstract and idealistic self-identity. Is this Hegel's lesson on our subjective identity? To answer this question I examine how the phenomenological path brings to light the awareness of the common rationality of human beings in terms of the subject's capability to know oneself as oneself within the others passing through the necessity of negating the self-sense of one's own natural essential singularity. My aim is to show how Hegel's initially abstract subjective identity (the 'I') is torn out of its simplicity and self-relation (I am I), loses its independent punctual subsistence and, by overcoming the indifference and immediacy of what is other than itself, assumes an inter-subjective and objective dimension. I shall account for the 'I''s phenomenological process of transforming the accidentality, externality and necessity of its outwardness and inwardness into the socially shared spiritual representations, purposes and norms of any historical statal community of human agents. By focusing on the master-serf relationship and on the impact of what appears to be objectified in the serf''s work on the externalization of the master's own inwardness, I highlight Hegel's idea of freedom as intersubjective cognitive and practical actualization. In Hegel's absolute idealism, relational characteristics enter the definition of what is substantial in individuals qua embodied 'I''s, embedded in an interconnected totality.

Young Hegelian sources for a conception of the self

Dissertatio, 2019

Young Hegel’s writings has been a source for many endeavours aiming at extracting edifying resources for contemporary ethical and political debate. In this paper, I focus on Hegel’s earliest writings stemming from the periods of Stuttgart, Tubingen and Bern in search for elements that can propel a conception of self. By endorsing an ethical and political stance of young Hegel’s writings, I oppose those who see in these writings concerning the essence of religion a mystical pantheistic thesis. Instead, I argue that Hegel is more concerned with a Republican view of religion, one that is very close to French political thought, such as Rousseau and Montesquieu. Just as much, the practical grounds for addressing ethical life and assessing Modernity’s capacity for the latter is rooted on a Hellenistic ideal. The Greek sources derive from young H Hegel's reading of the tragedies as comprising three notions: origin, simplicity and exteriority. I explore some features relating the notions of origin and simplicity as dating back to monastic life and the works of Winckelmann and Schiller. These elements are constantly intertwined in Hegel’s opposition to the rationalism of Enlightenment, mainly of Kant, as well as his adherence and reformulation of universal reason. Relying on these sources, I divide the paper into three sections: the enlightened self, the sensible self and the simple self. I conclude with the idea that Hegel envisaged a kind of sensible reason he often referred to by “heart”, by which he meant an originating and simple experience of the world through nature and the community that achieve s universal practical reason by comprising socially shared perceptive, affective and imaginative resources at play at the moment of a putative moral action.

A Heideggerian Approach to Self and Freedom

The purpose of the present paper is to spell out a notion of self that can be found in Heidegger's philosophy. Since contemporary self theorists as well as non-self theorists have more or less reached a consensus that self can hardly be viewed as something substantial in the sense of a Cartesian "res cogitan", the inquiry into the nature of self would then not be one into a particular type of entity called "self" which has its own properties. Rather, in contemporary discussions, the question of self becomes closely related to that of consciousness. The notion of self comes to the fore in the context of discussions regarding the relation of consciousness towards itself. Self is then often formulated in terms of the following questions: What is the structure of self-consciousness? Is there a unified core called self present in the state of consciousness? How is self intimated to itself in an original way? These are questions self theorists are mainly concerned with.

MARTIN HEIDEGGER ON THE QUESTION OF BEING AND HUMAN SELF TRANSCENDENCE

The aim of this paper is to rethink Heidegger's thoughts on the question of Being in the context of man's interactive character. We shall in this in this defined aim investigate into the ‘being’ structure of man. This shall be an exposition of the unique character of man’s being as a finitely free being in contrast to the Being (reality) of things; the what- and how- being, something, nothing and notness; we shall further discuss the ontological structure of the world as an irreducible constituent of man’s way of existing; then, examine man’s being as being- in - the world and inquire into the being of self in relation to the being of other selves, and also articulate the repercussion on one’s own self of being together with others in the world.

Heidegger on Selfhood

The relationship that a person establishes with his or her world—the ways in which the self tries to gain a genuine understanding of itself—is a central question in Heidegger’s thought. “Being and Time” is largely an account of what it means to be a self. Keeping in mind the question of the self, the present essay develops the following three issues: First, the Heideggerian notion of the self is situated in the context of contemporary theories of selfhood. Second, the practical dimension of Dasein’s existence is analyzed. Each individual lives in a significant network of productive relationships that are projected toward the future and are constitutively defined by the structure of care. Third, the phenomenological and existential dimension of Dasein is examined by highlighting the

Hegel Selbstischkeit and the experiential self

Hegel, Selbstischkeit, and the experiential self, 2024

In this essay, I offer a corrective to the standard reading of Hegel as a social constructivist when it comes to matters of the self by shifting the focus from the Phenomenology to his ‘Philosophy of Spirit’ and ‘Anthropology.’ There, a kind-of self or Selbstischkeit is revealed, anticipating the pre-reflective, experiential of the likes of Zahavi and, by extension, Husserl, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty. I argue that Hegel's conception of the self enhances our understanding of the relationship between the pre-reflective, experiential self and the self of self-consciousness, contributing to the discourse on the continuity between biological and mental life. The self, as it emerges in consciousness, traces its origins to a primarily bodily selfness which is foundational to psychical life. Habit emerges as a vital bridge between this selfness and the self of self-consciousness, offering a dynamic, dialectical framework for thinking the development of the self of self-consciousness in and out of its bodily context.