Culture and the Individual Culture Anthropology and Psychology

Culture and the Individual Culture, Anthropology and Psychology

The Self Historical Background Augustine • Single UNIFIED narrative of a life • Inner fragmentation and spiritual reconstruction of self • View of humans as pilgrims seeking salvation for individual souls • Egalitarian morality, natural rights, personal liberty • Shift from pagan to Christian • Shift from individual as pawn of society • Shift to individuals as shapers of society • FIRST EVIDENCE in historic writings of self discovery, self description, self assessment

The Self Historical Background Greece & Rome • Identity embedded in ancestry • Self defined by family and kinship relationships • Humanness defined by participation in community • Privacy and personal gain indicated failure of the person to be fully human • Greek word that comes closest to self is “psyche”, which translates as mind or soul that leaves the body at death – no word for self.

The Self Historical Background Plato • Introversion as basis for self • Expanded introversion to include lower and higher parts of the self • Reason and intelligence are higher parts • Passion and emotion are lower parts • Humankind as capable of self-mastery and actions based on internal reasoning so that reason controls passion and emotion.

The Self Historical Background The Renaissance (14 th-17 th Century) • Move away from individual as a pawn in the feudal system over which individuals had no control • Worship of creative genius and independent scholarship as individual accomplishment • Shift from marriage as a role and duty in a larger family context to romantic love • Beginning of scientific view of nature as knowable and controllable by humans

The Self Historical Background Multiple Perspectives on Self • Montaigne – contradictory nature of self • Hobbes – self pursuing power through competition and conflict • Descartes – the power of self to think correctly, to control the self through thought • Hume – self as a non-entity, unbounded, contradictory, ruled by habit, sensation and desire • Kant – rationality within self leads to morality

The Self Historical Background Protestant and Capitalist Persectives • Protestant rejection of group oriented, patriarchal church in favor of religious autonomy • Capitalism based on individual competition • Entrepreneurism with focus on individual effort

The Self Historical Background Rousseau • Noble Savages The individual is self sufficient, selfevaluative, self-loving, living in harmony with nature, childlike and pure With the Division of Labor transformed into • Civilized Humans Individual is a slave to the power of others, an imitator of fashion who only knows the self through the eyes of others – all self reflection comes through others

The Self Historical Background Hegel’s Spiral (relational) • • Thesis. . To. . Antithesis. . To. . Synthesis People want to be autonomous and unique People only exist in social interaction and are therefore not either autonomous nor unique The self is thus socially constructed The individual is a fleeting moment in the opposition between personal uniqueness and cultural construction

The Self Historical Background Marx (relational) • Materialism, not idealism, is the real focus of individual identity • Social class determines individual • When the proletariat overthrows the capitalists, then “humanity” (not individual humans) will reach its pinacle

The Self as Autonomous Vs Relational Autonomous Rousseau – humans decay when they focus on the relational self Nietzsche – the selves of individuals are struggling to break free from the controls of others Relational Utilitarianism – individuals must yield their own selves for the good of the group Bentham – athe self is continually exchanging with others to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Hegel – People only exist as they struggle between personal uniqueness and cultural construction Marx – individuals are a reflection of their social class, based on control of resources Weber – selves learn from their society how to view the world Durkheim – individuals only exist as part of a superorganic society and collective consciousness Freur – self is sexually and aggressively defined by relationships with others.