Selfhood and the Soul

Selfhood and the Soul
Author: Richard Seaford
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2017-02-16
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0191083038

Selfhood and the Soul is a collection of new and original essays in honour of Christopher Gill, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of Exeter. All of the essays in the volume contribute to a shared project - the exploration of ancient concepts of self and soul, understood in a broad sense - and, as in the work of the honorand himself, they are distinguished by a diversity of approach and subject matter, ranging widely across disciplinary boundaries to cover ancient philosophy, psychology, medical writing, and literary criticism. They can be read separately or together, taking the reader on a journey through topics and themes as varied as money, love, hope, pleasure, rage, free will, metempsychosis, Roman imperialism, cookery, and the Underworld, yet all committed to examining central issues about the experience of being a person and the question of how best to live. The international line-up of contributors includes many established figures in the disciplines of classical literature, ancient philosophy, and ancient medicine, as well as several younger scholars. All have been inspired by Christopher Gill's contributions to scholarly research in these fields and their collective work aspires to honour through imitation his remarkable combination of range with focus.

Selfhood and the Soul

Selfhood and the Soul
Author: Richard Seaford
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198777256

Selfhood and the Soul is a collection of original essays in honor of Christopher Gill, Emeritus Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of Exeter. The contributions cover a wide range of approaches and topics, but all are committed to examining central issues about the experience of being a person and the question of how best to live.

The Soul's Economy

The Soul's Economy
Author: Jeffrey P. Sklansky
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780807853986

Sklansky traces a shift in American social thought as the gradual demise of the household economy rendered proprietary independence an increasingly embattled ideal. Amid the widening class divide, nineteenth-century social theorists devised a new science of American society that reconceived freedom in terms of psychic self-expression instead of economic self-interest, and they redefined democracy in terms of cultural kinship rather than social compact.

William Blake on Self and Soul

William Blake on Self and Soul
Author: Laura Quinney
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2009
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780674035249

It has been clear from the beginning that William Blake was both a political radical and a radical psychologist. In William Blake on Self and Soul, Laura Quinney uses her sensitive, surprising readings of the poet to reveal his innovative ideas about the experience of subjectivity.Blake’s central topic, Quinney shows us, is a contemporary one: the discomfiture of being a self or subject. The greater the insecurity of the “I” Blake believed, the more it tries to swell into a false but mighty “Selfhood.” And the larger the Selfhood bulks, the lonelier it grows. But why is that so? How is the illusion of “Selfhood” created? What damage does it do? How can one break its hold? These questions lead Blake to some of his most original thinking.Quinney contends that Blake’s hostility toward empiricism and Enlightenment philosophy is based on a penetrating psychological critique: Blake demonstrates that the demystifying science of empiricism deepens the self’s incoherence to itself. Though Blake formulates a therapy for the bewilderment of the self, as he goes on he perceives greater and greater obstacles to the remaking of subjectivity. By showing us this progression, Quinney shows us a Blake for our time.

The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self

The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self
Author: Raymond Martin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2006-06-20
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231510675

This book traces the development of theories of the self and personal identity from the ancient Greeks to the present day. From Plato and Aristotle to Freud and Foucault, Raymond Martin and John Barresi explore the works of a wide range of thinkers and reveal the larger intellectual trends, controversies, and ideas that have revolutionized the way we think about ourselves. The authors open with ancient Greece, where the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, and the materialistic atomists laid the groundwork for future theories. They then discuss the ideas of the church fathers and medieval and Renaissance philosophers, including St. Paul, Philo, Augustine, Aquinas, and Montaigne. In their coverage of the emergence of a new mechanistic conception of nature in the seventeenth century, Martin and Barresi note a shift away from religious and purely philosophical notions of self and personal identity to more scientific and social conceptions, a trend that has continued to the present day. They explore modern philosophy and psychology, including the origins of different traditions within each discipline, and explain both the theoretical relevance of feminism and gender and ethnic studies and also the ways that Derrida and other recent thinkers have challenged the very idea that a unified self or personal identity even exists. Martin and Barresi cover a number of issues broached by philosophers and psychologists, such as the existence of a fixed and unchanging self and whether the concept of the soul has a use outside of religious contexts. They address the question of whether notions of the soul and the self are still viable in today's world. Together, they reveal the fascinating ways in which great thinkers have grappled with these and other questions and the astounding impact their ideas have had on the development of self-understanding in the west.

Self

Self
Author: Richard Sorabji
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2008-09-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0226768309

Drawing on classical antiquity and Western and Eastern philosophy, Richard Sorabji tackles in Self the question of whether there is such a thing as the individual self or only a stream of consciousness. According to Sorabji, the self is not an undetectable soul or ego, but an embodied individual whose existence is plain to see. Unlike a mere stream of consciousness, it is something that owns not only a consciousness but also a body. Sorabji traces historically the retreat from a positive idea of self and draws out the implications of these ideas of self on the concepts of life and death, asking: Should we fear death? How should our individuality affect the way we live? Through an astute reading of a huge array of traditions, he helps us come to terms with our uneasiness about the subject of self in an account that will be at the forefront of philosophical debates for years to come. “There has never been a book remotely like this one in its profusion of ancient references on ideas about human identity and selfhood . . . . Readers unfamiliar with the subject also need to know that Sorabji breaks new ground in giving special attention to philosophers such as Epictetus and other Stoics, Plotinus and later Neoplatonists, and the ancient commentators on Aristotle (on the last of whom he is the world's leading authority).”—Anthony A. Long, Times Literary Supplement

Sculpting the Self

Sculpting the Self
Author: Muhammad Umar Faruque
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2021-08-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0472132628

Sculpting the Self addresses “what it means to be human” in a secular, post-Enlightenment world by exploring notions of self and subjectivity in Islamic and non-Islamic philosophical and mystical thought. Alongside detailed analyses of three major Islamic thinkers (Mullā Ṣadrā, Shāh Walī Allāh, and Muhammad Iqbal), this study also situates their writings on selfhood within the wider constellation of related discussions in late modern and contemporary thought, engaging the seminal theoretical insights on the self by William James, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Foucault. This allows the book to develop its inquiry within a spectrum theory of selfhood, incorporating bio-physiological, socio-cultural, and ethico-spiritual modes of discourse and meaning-construction. Weaving together insights from several disciplines such as religious studies, philosophy, anthropology, critical theory, and neuroscience, and arguing against views that narrowly restrict the self to a set of cognitive functions and abilities, this study proposes a multidimensional account of the self that offers new options for addressing central issues in the contemporary world, including spirituality, human flourishing, and meaning in life. This is the first book-length treatment of selfhood in Islamic thought that draws on a wealth of primary source texts in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Greek, and other languages. Muhammad U. Faruque’s interdisciplinary approach makes a significant contribution to the growing field of cross-cultural dialogue, as it opens up the way for engaging premodern and modern Islamic sources from a contemporary perspective by going beyond the exegesis of historical materials. He initiates a critical conversation between new insights into human nature as developed in neuroscience and modern philosophical literature and millennia-old Islamic perspectives on the self, consciousness, and human flourishing as developed in Islamic philosophical, mystical, and literary traditions.

The Concealed Art of the Soul

The Concealed Art of the Soul
Author: Jonardon Ganeri
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2007-07-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191607045

In The Concealed Art of the Soul, Jonardon Ganeri presents a variety of perspectives on the nature of the self as seen by major schools of classical Indian philosophy. For Indian thinkers, a philosophical treatise about the self should not only reveal the truth about the nature of the soul, but should also engage the reader in a process of study and contemplation that will eventually lead to self-transformation. By combining careful attention to philosophical content and sensitivity to literary form, Ganeri deepens our understanding of some of the greatest works in Indian literary history. His magisterial survey includes the Upanisads, the Buddha's discourses, the epic Mahabharata, and the writings of Candrakirti, whose work was later to provide the foundation for Tibetan Buddhism. Ganeri argues that many Western theories of selfhood are not only present in, but are developed to high degree of sophistication in these writings, and that there are other ideas about the self found in the work of classical Indian thinkers which present-day analytic philosophers have not yet begun to explore. Scholars and students of philosophy and religious studies, particularly those with an interest in Indian and Western conceptions of the self, will find this book fascinating reading.

A Brief History of the Soul

A Brief History of the Soul
Author: Stewart Goetz
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2011-05-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1444395920

This book is a clear and concise history of the soul in western philosophy, from Plato to cutting-edge contemporary work in philosophy of mind. Packed with arguments for and against a range of different, historically significant philosophies of the soul Addresses the essential issues, including mind-body interaction, the causal closure of the physical world, and the philosophical implications of the brain sciences for the soul's existence Includes coverage of theories from key figures, such as Plato, Aquinas, Locke, Hume, and Descartes Unique in combining the history of ideas and the development of a powerful case for a non-reductionist, non-materialist account of the soul