Chapter 2.5

Are we independent and self-sufficient individuals?

Learning objectives:

Describe the idea of an independent and self-sufficient self and explain why it is important to us.

Compare how Aristotle, Hegel, and Taylor challenge the idea

IntroductionWhat is the role of the parent?

teach their children to be independent and self-sufficient, and shun conformity.

they should also be true to themselves, and be free to live their own lives.

Learn to think for themselves, question what’s around them

Examples???

Intro con’tSo what?

Views of parenthood help us understand the assumptions that are made about how we ‘view the self’

The view of that the self is and should be independent of others and self-sufficient has deep cultural roots and is reflected in our ways of thinking and feeling.

The Atomistic Self

These views are all based on the view of the self as atomistic, independent of others, and self-sufficient.

On Marriage Kahlil Gibran

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.But let there be spaces in your togetherness,And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loafSing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.And stand together yet not too near together:For the pillars of the temple stand apart,And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

On Children Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.They come through you but not from you,And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts.You may house their bodies but not their souls,For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your childrenas living arrows are sent forth.The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

The Atomistic Self

For Descartes, for example, the real “me” is interior, and exist independently of others.

Similarly, Kant held that the core of the real self is the ability to choose the moral laws and moral principles by which one should live one’s life.

The Relational Self

Charles Taylor suggests that there is another way of viewing the self; that who I am depends on my relationships; I need others to define who I am.

Aristotle also claimed that humans are social animals

The Relational SelfCriticism

Hegel argued that I cannot be who I am apart from my

relationships to others; a free and independent person is one who can choose what course his life will take, and we cannot develop this capacity unless others recognize and affirm our self-mastery.

Power and Hegel’s View

The key idea, for Hegel, is that who you are ultimately depends on your relationships with others.

The implications of this are profound; that we create strong and weak persons. For example, by the qualities we are willing to recognize in others.

Culture and Self-Identity

Every person has a culture; Hegel argued that a person’s culture is the mirror through which society shows the person who and what she is.

Search for the Real Self

Who is right, then? On the one hand we seem to be only what others make us. On the other hand, we seem to be independent selves with basic qualities that we are born with. Which are we? The choice here is important!

THE END