Dalferth / Kimball Self or No-Self?

The Debate about Selflessness and the Sense of Self. Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, Conference 2015
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-3-16-155355-4
Verlag: Mohr Siebeck
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 94, 370 Seiten

Reihe: Religion in Philosophy and Theology

Religious, philosophical, and theological views on the self vary widely. For some the self is seen as the center of human personhood, the ultimate bearer of personal identity and the core mystery of human existence. For others the self is a grammatical error and the sense of self an existential and epistemic delusion. Buddhists contrast the Western understanding of the self as a function of the mind that helps us to organize our experiences to their view of no-self by distinguishing between no-self and not-self or between a solid or 'metaphysical' self that is an illusion and an experiential or psychological self that is not. There may be processes of 'selfing', but there is no permanent self. In Western psychology, philosophy, and theology, on the other hand, the term 'self' is often used as a noun that refers not to the performance of an activity or to a material body per se but rather to a (gendered) organism that represents the presence of something distinct from its materiality. Is this a defensible insight or a misleading representation of human experience? We are aware of ourselves in the first-person manner of our ipse -identity that cannot fully be spelled out in objectifying terms, but we also know ourselves in the third-person manner of our idem -identity, the objectified self-reference to a publicly available entity. This volume documents a critical and constructive debate between critics and defenders of the self or of the no-self that explores the intercultural dimensions of this important topic.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dalferth, Ingolf U.

Kimball, Trevor W.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Cover;1
2;Preface;6
3;Contents;8
4;Ingolf U. Dalferth: Introduction: The Debate about Self and Selflessness;12
5;I. The Making of the Self through Language;18
5.1;Ingolf U. Dalferth: Situated Selves in “Webs of Interlocution”: What Can We Learn from Grammar?;20
5.1.1;1. The ‘self ’ as an operator;20
5.1.2;2. The ‘self ’as a noun;21
5.1.3;3. The ‘self ’ as a verb and an adverb;23
5.1.3.1;3.1 The self as Dasein, Sosein and Wahrsein;23
5.1.3.2;3.2 The self as the relating of a relation;25
5.1.3.3;3.3 Relations, distinctions and the actual infinite;28
5.1.3.4;3.4 The self as activity and mode of relating;29
5.1.3.5;3.5 Two basic questions;32
5.1.4;4. Self-interpreting animals;33
5.1.4.1;4.1 Understanding and interpretation;34
5.1.4.2;4.2 Changing the world by interpreting it;35
5.1.4.3;4.3 Interpretation and self-interpretation;36
5.1.5;5. Selves and situations;36
5.1.5.1;5.1 The relativity and selectivity of situations;36
5.1.5.2;5.2 Shared situations;37
5.1.5.3;5.3 Re-presenting interpretations;38
5.1.6;6. Self-interpretations;39
5.1.7;7. A sense of self;41
5.1.8;8. A perennial problem;43
5.1.9;9. The ‘self ’ as an orienting device;45
5.2;Marlene Block: God, Grammar and the Truing of the Self: A Response to Ingolf Dalferth;48
5.2.1;1. The Utility (or not) of the View from Language;48
5.2.2;2. Reading Ingolf Dalferth Backwards;52
5.2.3;3. Beginning in the Midst of Grammar as Partes Orationis;54
5.2.4;4. Rethinking Language and the Self ‘from the (Indexical) Ground Up’;57
5.2.5;5. Final Thoughts: Theology, Grammar, and the Truing of the Self;60
6;II. The European Legacy;62
6.1;Joseph S. O’Leary: The Self and the One in Plotinus;64
6.1.1;The Autonomy of Soul;66
6.1.2;Elusive Selfhood;69
6.1.3;Does Plotinus Need a Firmer Conception of Self?;72
6.1.4;Overcoming Plotinus’s Metaphysics;75
6.1.5;Conclusion;78
6.2;Marcelo Souza: A Question of Continuity: A Response to Joseph S. O’Leary;80
6.3;W. Ezekiel Goggin: Selfhood and Sacrifice in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit;86
6.3.1;1. An Instructive Disjunction: Self, Not-Self, and the Limits of Reflection;87
6.3.2;2. Desire and the Sacrificial Structure of Recognition;90
6.3.3;3. Unanticipated Tasks? Some Final Remarks;94
6.4;Iben Damgaard: Kierkegaard on Self and Selflessness in Critical Dialogue with MacIntyre’s, Taylor’s and Ricoeur’s Narrative Approach to the Self;98
6.4.1;Introduction;98
6.4.2;1. The Narrative Dimension of Contemporary Hermeneutic Approaches to Selfhood;99
6.4.3;2. Kierkegaard’s Either-Or: To Become Oneself by Choosing Oneself;104
6.4.4;3. Kierkegaard’s Works of Love: To Become Oneself in Selfless Love;117
6.4.5;Closing Words;123
6.5;Raymond Perrier: The Grammar of ‘Self ’: Immediacy and Mediation in Either / Or: A Response to Iben Damgaard;124
6.5.1;1. Being a Self;126
6.5.2;2. Being Oneself;130
6.5.3;3. Dénouement;136
7;III. The Self in Modernity;138
7.1;Kate Kirkpatrick: ‘A Perpetually Deceptive Mirage’: Jean-Paul Sartre and Blaise Pascal on the Sinful (No?)Self;140
7.1.1;Introduction;140
7.1.2;1. Sartre’s lacking-self;141
7.1.3;2. Pascal on the self;145
7.1.4;3. Self or No-Self?;151
7.2;Eleonora Mingarelli: "It is no longer I who lives..." William James and the Process of De-selving;154
7.2.1;I. Breaking Through Continuity;154
7.2.1.1;1. The Teleological Mind;157
7.2.1.2;2. The Religious Self: Interest In Varieties;159
7.2.1.3;3. The Informative Self and The Process of De-Selving;164
7.3;Stephanie Gehring: After the Will: Attention and Selfhood in Simone Weil;170
7.3.1;Introduction;170
7.3.2;1. On Saying “I”;171
7.3.2.1;1.1 On Humanness: Weil and Bergson;173
7.3.2.2;1.2 Attention;174
7.3.3;2. Decreation;175
7.3.3.1;2.1 Decreation’s Dangers;178
7.3.4;3. Love in Weil’s “Prologue”;179
7.3.5;Conclusion;181
7.4;Joseph Prabhu: The Self in Modernity – a Diachronic and Cross-Cultural Critique;182
7.4.1;I. Adventures of Subjectivity from Kant to Nietzsche;183
7.4.2;II. A Tentative Genealogy;189
7.4.3;III. A Non-Dualist Alternative;191
7.4.4;A Concluding Postscript;194
7.5;Friederike Rass: The Divine in Modernity: A Theological Tweak on Joseph Prabhu’s Critique of the Modern Self;198
8;IV. Self and No-Self in Asian Traditions;204
8.1;Alexander McKinley: No Self or Ourselves? Wittgenstein and Language Games of Selfhood in a Sinhala Buddhist Form of Life;206
8.1.1;Life Training and Religious Language;206
8.1.2;Anaphors and Selfhood in a Sinhala Buddhist Form of Life;212
8.1.3;Conclusion – We are Buddhists!;218
8.2;Jonardon Ganeri: Core Selves and Dynamic Attentional Centering: Between Buddhaghosa and Brian O’Shaughnessy;222
8.3;Leah Kalmanson: Like You Mean It: Buddhist Teachings on Selflessness, Sincerity, and the Performative Practice of Liberation;230
8.3.1;Two Examples of the Efficacy of Proper Form;231
8.3.2;Buddhist and Ruist Disagreements over Proper Form;234
8.3.3;Philosophical Context;237
8.3.4;Objections to the Efficacy of Form;238
8.3.5;Further Speculation;241
8.4;Fidel Arnecillo Jr.: Worrisome: Implications of a Buddhist View of Selflessness and Moral Action: A Response to Leah Kalmanson;244
8.5;Gereon Kopf: Self, Selflessness, and the Endless Search for Identity: A Meta-psychology of Human Folly;250
8.5.1;1. Introduction;250
8.5.2;2. The Key to Identity Politics;251
8.5.3;3. Essentialism: The Metaphysics Underling Identity Politics;253
8.5.4;4. A Blueprint of Non-Essentialism;257
8.5.5;5. A Non-Essentialist Vision of Identity Formation;262
8.6;Deena Lin: Probing Identity: Challenging Essentializations of the Self in Ontology. A Response to Gereon Kopf;274
8.6.1;I. Relevance of Drawing from the Concrete;274
8.6.2;II. The “Third”;276
8.6.3;III. A Buddhist Call to Compassion;277
8.7;Sinkwan Cheng: Confucius, Aristotle, and a New “Right” to Connect China to Europe – What Concepts of “Self ” and “Right” We Might Have without the Christian Notion of Original Sin;280
8.7.1;Prologue;280
8.7.2;Preliminary Clarifications;282
8.7.3;Main Text;285
8.7.3.1;1. From Objective Right to Subjective Right: A Brief Semantic History;287
8.7.3.2;2. Subjective Right and the Christian Doctrines of Original Sin and the Fall;290
8.7.3.3;3. Right for Aristotle and Confucius, in contrast to Individual-Based Contractual Theory of Justice;292
8.7.3.3.1;3.1 Relational Selves;293
8.7.3.3.2;3.2 “Right” based on the Notion of Inter-Related Selves;296
8.7.3.3.2.1;3.2.1 Non-Subjective Right – Right being Ad Alterum, or Right as Duty;298
8.7.3.3.2.1.1;3.2.1.1 Aristotle’s “Right” and the Polis;300
8.7.3.3.2.1.1.1;3.2.1.1.1 General Justice;300
8.7.3.3.2.1.1.2;3.2.1.1.2 Particular Justice;302
8.7.3.3.2.1.2;3.2.1.2 Confucius’s “Right” and “Humanity in Grand Togetherness” (??);303
8.7.3.3.2.1.2.1;3.2.1.2.1 Confucius’s Inter-Related Selves;305
8.7.3.3.2.1.2.2;3.2.1.2.2 Ren and Inter-Related Selves;306
8.7.3.4;Conclusion;310
8.8;Robert Overy-Brown: Right Translation and Making Right: A Response to Sinkwan Cheng;312
8.8.1;On Modern Liberalism;312
8.8.2;Questioning Original Sin;314
8.8.3;Universally Seeking the Good;316
8.8.4;Constructing Good Ethics;319
8.8.5;Conclusion;320
9;V. The End of the Self;322
9.1;Dietrich Korsch: The “Fragility of the Self ” and the Immortality of the Soul;324
9.1.1;Introduction;324
9.1.2;I. The fragility of the self;324
9.1.3;II. The Immortality of the Soul;327
9.1.4;III. Immortality and Fragility;330
9.2;Trevor Kimball: Fragile Immortality: A Response to Dietrich Korsch;334
9.3;Yuval Avnur: On Losing Your Self in Your Afterlife;338
9.3.1;1. What matters?;342
9.3.2;2. Our concepts don’t determine what could happen after death (they only determine what we’d call it);346
9.3.3;3. On the coherence of a selfless afterlife that matters (to me) and defective concepts;355
9.3.4;4. Why are we talking about concepts instead of selves?;358
9.4;Duncan Gale: Self-Awareness in the Afterlife: A Response to Yuval Avnur;362
10;Information about Authors;366
11;Index of Names;368
12;Index of Subjects;370

Über Autor(innen)

Dalferth, Ingolf U.
Geboren 1948; 1977 Promotion; 1982 Habilitation; Professor Emeritus für Systematische Theologie, Symbolik und Religionsphilosophie an der Universität Zürich; Danforth Professor Emeritus für Religionsphilosophie an der Claremont Graduate University in Kalifornien.

Kimball, Trevor W.
2010 Bachelor of Arts (Philosophy and Theology), Oxford University; 2012 Master of Studies (Theology - Modern Doctrine), Oxford University; 2019 PhD in Philosophy of Religion and Theology, Claremont Graduate University.