Self Consciousness and Dialogue
One important and inherent aspect of human person as thinking and acting being is self- consciousness |
For this aspect to become more complete, it must recognize itself through another self-consciousness. |
Emerges when communicating each other in a vocative situation or in dialogue. |
The continuous dialogue between “I’s” self- consciousness and the other’s consciousness leads to the establishment of unity of consciousness that pervades in the dialogue. |
Gabriel Marcel
In establishing relation with another person, self-consciousness becomes more aware of itself. |
In the absence of freedom in communicative manifestation, objectification follows. |
Selfhood and Dialogue
Human being’s selfhood is its individuality, self-being, self-realization and well-being |
It does not show itself when one decides to break himself from communicative manifestation of his/her being. |
Karl Jaspers
Selfhood only emerges itself in and through dialogical situation. Dialogue fosters individuality, self-identity and self being of each person in the dialogical situation. |
Freedom and Dialogue
Freedom is a human aspect that he/she becomes conscious of himself/herself. |
However, freedom effects something thing upon human being if it is expressed in a dialogical context. |
The true expression of freedom occurs when it is expressed both for one’s self- being but for the other’s self-being. This freedom is never passive. It summons human being to action and this action presupposes relationship |
R. Tagore
Human freedom can only find its true meaning in relation to the freedom of another human being. |
Truth and Dialogue: Making Present
Truth about one’s self-being is always relational; and it is unveiled through dialogical situation or communicative manifestation. |
It is experienced and shared as human being engages himself/herself in an intersubjective or interhuman or dialogical encounter. |
It is in this encounter the truth of the one’s whole being can possibly emerge. - Buber and Jaspers |
“Truth gives courage: If I have grasped it at any point the urge grows to pursue it relentlessly. Truth gives support: here something indestructible, something linked to being” - Jaspers |
Truth, make you project a true image of who you are; true self emerges. |
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Aristotle
"Man is by nature a political animal" |
Living in a society organized intelligently, such as a city, state or nations, is what makes us human. |
Anybody who lives outside the “city-state” is either a beast or a god |
Man engages in politics to achieve the “common good.” |
In the classical period, humans could not conceive a good life separately from politics. |
At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. |
Thomas Hobbes
people were naturally wicked and could not be trusted to govern, humans are naturally selfish and violent. |
“Leviathan” – is a strong ruler who can give people direction. |
Fear of others in the state of nature prompts people to form governments through a social contract. |
Social Contract – an agreement between individuals held together by the common interest. |
“Morality consists in the set of rules, governing how people are to treat one another, that rational people will agree to accept, for their mutual benefit, on the condition that others follow those rules as well.” |
“Government is necessary, not because man is naturally bad... but because man is by nature more individualistic than social.” |
During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. |
Baron de Montesquieu
Separation of powers would keep any individual or group from gaining total control. |
Legislative, Executive, Judicial |
In the state of nature, indeed, all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the laws. |
it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power. |
To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them. |
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Intersubjectivity
the human person as a subject in relation to another |
the idea of the "subject" as a being who recognizes the other |
The "other" here refers to the other person, such as a neighbor, stranger, or simply another subject than the self |
However, the other does not only pertain to a human being. It could refer to other beings, inanimate or animate, such as animals, plants, or the environment. |
Paul Ricoeur
Man is this plural and collective unity in which the unity of destination and the differences of destinies are to be understood through each other (Ricoeur, 1986) |
French philosopher and historian who studied various linguistic and psychoanalytic theories of interpretation. |
contribution to Hermeneutics or the art of interpretation |
Through hermeneutics, one can be a better version of himself. The realization of the development of the self presupposes that a reader of a text will realize to be a good and responsible person, not only for himself but for others (Ricoeur, 2008). |
Oneself has its title as a self because of the other. |
This thought is not a comparison between the self and the other, rather this is an illustration of the subject and intersubject that, there is an implication that oneself is similar to another or oneself since being other (Ricoeur, 1994). |
If one knows the self well, understands the self, then the act of reaching out for others is not a farfetched reality (Ricoeur, 1994). |
Selfishness can be a temporary phase may lead one to become a selfless human being the moment he/she realizes the other. |
Rene Descartes
philosopher who lived during the Scientific Revolution, the era of rapid advances in the sciences |
“I think, therefore, I am” |
Cogito = Methodic Doubt |
Martin Buber
The content and relation of these two worlds is the theme of I and Thou. The other person, the Thou, is shown to be a reality – that is- it is given to me, but it is not bounded by me. (Martin Buber, 1923) |
I-It relationship |
e existence of the self and its relation to another, which is not necessarily a human being, e.g., plants, animals, and objects |
I-Thou relationship |
existence of the self and its relation to another entity that has a human self, that is, another human being, or simply the "other". |
This existence is heightened by the act of dialogue, leading to the realization of total-presentness. |
Emmanuel Levinas
To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. Therefore, it is to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But this also means: to be taught (Emmanuel Levinas, 1979). |
For Levinas “Ethics is the first philosophy because it is only by acknowledging the command in the ‘face’ of the other that we can account for the sensitivity to the normative distinctions that structure intentional content.” (Crowell, 2015). |
This idea of intersubjectivity presupposes the equality and inclusiveness of every individual. |
Levinas asserts that “the Other's ‘exteriority’ does not consist in the difference between my appearance-systems and his or hers, but in the Other's ability to call me (normatively) into question: ‘The presence of the Other is equivalent to this calling into question of my joyous possession of the world” (Boorse, 2008). |
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