Modernity and Subjectivity

Modernity and Subjectivity PDF Author: Harvie Ferguson
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813919669
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Few concepts have come to dominate the human sciences as much as modernity, yet there is very little agreement over what the term actually means. Every aspect of contemporary human reality--modern society, modern life, modern times, modern art, modern science, modern music, the modern world--has been cited as a part of modernity's distinctive and all-embracing presence. But what is the exact nature of the reality to which the term modern refers? Has not such a promiscuous, ill-defined concept come to obscure and confuse rather than clarify a genuine understanding of our experience? Harvie Ferguson proposes a new view of modernity, arguing that, although it may variously be associated with the Renaissance, the European discovery of the New World, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and many other significant ruptures with primitive or premodern society, modernity fails as an idea if it only defines itself against what it replaced. Instead, he writes, modernity finds its clearest definition through an exploration of subjectivity. For the modern world there is no higher authority than experience. No longer is the human world subordinate to a divine reality beyond the capacity of its own senses. This idea finds its greatest expression in the philosophy of doubt originated by Descartes. Doubt seemed the radical starting point from which to found a wholly modern philosophy that makes the distinction between subject and object, but those who came after Descartes soon reached the limits of self-discovery and became trapped in deepening levels of despair. This despair in turn found expression in the concepts of self and other, and eventually in a dialectic of ego and world, which distinguishes and links together the most important social, cultural, and psychological aspects of modernity. Moving beyond these dualities of subject and object, mind and body, ego and world, and replacing them with the triad of body, soul, and spirit, Ferguson redraws the map of contemporary experience, finding links with the premodern world that modernity's self-founding concealed.

Modernity and Subjectivity

Modernity and Subjectivity PDF Author: Harvie Ferguson
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813919669
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Few concepts have come to dominate the human sciences as much as modernity, yet there is very little agreement over what the term actually means. Every aspect of contemporary human reality--modern society, modern life, modern times, modern art, modern science, modern music, the modern world--has been cited as a part of modernity's distinctive and all-embracing presence. But what is the exact nature of the reality to which the term modern refers? Has not such a promiscuous, ill-defined concept come to obscure and confuse rather than clarify a genuine understanding of our experience? Harvie Ferguson proposes a new view of modernity, arguing that, although it may variously be associated with the Renaissance, the European discovery of the New World, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and many other significant ruptures with primitive or premodern society, modernity fails as an idea if it only defines itself against what it replaced. Instead, he writes, modernity finds its clearest definition through an exploration of subjectivity. For the modern world there is no higher authority than experience. No longer is the human world subordinate to a divine reality beyond the capacity of its own senses. This idea finds its greatest expression in the philosophy of doubt originated by Descartes. Doubt seemed the radical starting point from which to found a wholly modern philosophy that makes the distinction between subject and object, but those who came after Descartes soon reached the limits of self-discovery and became trapped in deepening levels of despair. This despair in turn found expression in the concepts of self and other, and eventually in a dialectic of ego and world, which distinguishes and links together the most important social, cultural, and psychological aspects of modernity. Moving beyond these dualities of subject and object, mind and body, ego and world, and replacing them with the triad of body, soul, and spirit, Ferguson redraws the map of contemporary experience, finding links with the premodern world that modernity's self-founding concealed.

Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity

Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity PDF Author: Robert J. Howell
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0199654662
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Robert J. Howell offers a new account of the relationship between conscious experience and the physical world, based on a neo-Cartesian notion of the physical and careful consideration of three anti-materialist arguments. His theory of subjective physicalism reconciles the data of consciousness with the advantages of a monistic, physical ontology.

Investigating Subjectivity

Investigating Subjectivity PDF Author: Carolyn Ellis
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780803944978
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Much has been missed by social researchers in their attempt to understand the human experience as a series of rational, cognitive choices. What comes under the rubric of "lived experience" fits no researcher's model other than, in the words of one of the volume's contributors, "one damned thing after another." Human subjectivity in lived experience, both that of the subject and of the researcher, is the topic of Investigating Subjectivity, an important corrective to the cool, disdainful stance of most previous social research. The dozen contributors examine various aspects of subject--the emotions, the gendered nature of experiences, the body-mind relationship, perceptions of time, place and setting, understanding of the self--and how these elements provide a fuller understanding of the human condition, incorporating subjectivity into research requires a new set of methods--systematic introspection, self-ethnography, staged readings, poetry, stories--many of which are demonstrated in the book. It also requires a focus on mundane (minor ailments, media images, hobbies) and extraordinary (exotic trips, earthquakes, abortion experience), elements, which make up the bulk of lived experience, and how people react to these life events. Investigating Subjectivity stands out from any other books in the field because the emphasis is on research rather than theory or conceptualization. This outstanding volume is quality reading for academicians and undergraduate and graduate students in sociology, cultural studies, qualitative methods. and communication, especially those interested in emotions, narration, textual analysis, and symbolic interaction.

Subjectivity

Subjectivity PDF Author: R. J. Snell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781498513180
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Modern thought is sometimes presented as introducing a "turn to the subject" absent from ancient and medieval thought, although the schools of thought associated with Bernard Lonergan, Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, and the new natural law theory often find subjectivity already operative in the older forms. In this volume, sixteen leading scholars examine the turn to the subject in modern philosophy and consider its historical antecedents in ancient and medieval thought.

Aspects of Grammaticalization

Aspects of Grammaticalization PDF Author: Daniel Olmen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110492342
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 411

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Book Description
This volume advances our understanding of two highly debated aspects of grammaticalization: its relation to (inter)subjectification and its directionality. These aspects are studied with respect to such phenomena as auxiliaries, discourse markers, conjunctions, prepositions and pronouns. Bringing together a wide range of languages, the collection provides insight into the crucial dimensions of grammaticalization research.

Approaches to the concept of Trans-Subjectivity

Approaches to the concept of Trans-Subjectivity PDF Author: Dimitri Ginev
Publisher: CEASGA-Publishing
ISBN: 8494932179
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
Usually, understanding of the world has been divided between objective and subjective. Phenomenology and Philosophy of language also included the intersubjective in this comprehension. Some researchers have detected needing to go further and study a broader concept. The study of trans-subjectivity seeks to fill that gap and delve into a novel concept.

Objectivity and Subjectivity in Social Research

Objectivity and Subjectivity in Social Research PDF Author: Gayle Letherby
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1446271412
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Objectivity and subjectivity are key concepts in social research. This book, written by leading authors in the field, takes a completely new approach to objectivity and subjectivity, no longer treating them as opposed - as many existing texts do - but as logically and methodologically related in social research. The book debates: - the philosophical bases of objectivity and relativity - relationism and dynamic synthesis - situated objectivity - theorised subjectivity - social objects and realism - objectivity and subjectivity in practice The authors explain complex arguments with great clarity for social science students, while also providing the detail and comprehensiveness required to meet the needs of practising researchers and scholars.

Subjectivity and Objectivity

Subjectivity and Objectivity PDF Author: Paul Rosenfels
Publisher: Ninth Street Center
ISBN: 9780932961006
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description


Controversies and Subjectivity

Controversies and Subjectivity PDF Author: Pierluigi Barrotta
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027218810
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
This collective volume focuses on two closely connected issues whose common denominator is the embattled notion of the subject. The first concerns the controversies on the nature of the subject and related notions, such as the concepts of 'I' and 'self'. From both theoretical and historical viewpoints, several of the contributors show how different and incompatible perspectives on the subject can help us understand today's world, its habits, style, power relations, and attitudes. For this purpose, use is made of insights in a broad range of disciplines, such as sociology, psychoanalysis, pragmatics, intellectual history, and anthropology. This interdisciplinary approach helps to clarify the multifaceted character of the subject and the role it plays nowadays as well as over the centuries. The second issue concerns the subject in inter-personal as well as in intra-personal controversies. The enquiry here focuses on the ways in which different aspects of the subject and subjective differences affect the conduct, content, and rationality of controversies with others as well as within oneself on a variety of topics. Among such aspects, the contributors analyse the subject's emotions, cognitive states, argumentative practices, and individual and collective identity. The interaction between the two issues, the controversies on the subject and the subject of controversies, sheds new light on the debate on modernity and its alleged crisis.

What Is Subjectivity?

What Is Subjectivity? PDF Author: Jean-Paul Sartre
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1784781398
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
In 1961, the prolific French intellectual Jean-Paul Sartre was invited to give a talk at the Gramsci Institute in Rome. In attendance were some of Italy's leading Marxist thinkers, such as Enzo Paci, Cesare Luporini, and Galvano Della Volpe, whose contributions to the long and remarkable discussion that followed are collected in this volume, along with the lecture itself. Sartre posed the question "What is subjectivity?" - a question of renewed importance today to contemporary debates concerning "the subject" in critical theory. This work includes a preface by Michel Kail and Raoul Kirchmayr and an afterword by Fredric Jameson, who makes a rousing case for the continued importance of Sartre's philosophy.