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A facsimile reprint of a seminal work on the relevance of the prenatal experiences on later post-natal psychological, moral, and spiritual development by a 20th-century ORenaissance Man, O whose search led him into realms of understanding that were far ahead of his times. Written in 1960, and long out of print, this text offers deep insight and wisdom about the developmental processes of human life.
In the contemporary (practical) philosophy, recognition is one of the central concepts. Humans are thematized as individuals who recognize one another as moral and legal persons. The central problem of the globalized, multicultural societies is how to harmonize the legal persons (who are free and equal) with moral persons (who may have their unique identity). In The Nature of the Self the thesis is elaborated that, in the contemporary discussion, a central dimension of recognition is lacking. All forms of moral and legal recognition presuppose the recognition at a more fundamental level: the recognition of the body by the mind. The systematic development of this relation can be performed with the help of a critical reconstruction of Hegel ’s project in the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right. This reconstruction results in a differentiated concept of the self: in three forms of the self (corresponding with three forms of recognition) and their institutional embodiment. This concept of the self not only competes with the position of Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth (as it is explicitly elaborated), but also with the one of John Rawls.
Spinoza's doctrine of the uniqueness of substance has been interpreted as absorbing individual self-consciousness into an all-embracing whole.
This integrative volume brings together leading social scientists to present diverse perspectives on the emergence, development, and practical role of self-awareness. Shedding light on the fundamental question of how human beings come to understand who we are--in relation to ourselves, to others, and to the broader world--the book does justice to the complexity of its subject while remaining accessible to readers in a wide range of disciplines. Chapters cover such topics as developmental and evolutionary aspects of self-awareness; the self, consciousness, and theory of mind; and connections between self-awareness and social, affective, academic, and neuropsychological functioning.
Self-organized criticality, the spontaneous development of systems to a critical state, is the first general theory of complex systems with a firm mathematical basis. This theory describes how many seemingly desperate aspects of the world, from stock market crashes to mass extinctions, avalanches to solar flares, all share a set of simple, easily described properties. "...a'must read'...Bak writes with such ease and lucidity, and his ideas are so intriguing...essential reading for those interested in complex systems...it will reward a sufficiently skeptical reader." -NATURE "...presents the theory (self-organized criticality) in a form easily absorbed by the non-mathematically inclined reader." -BOSTON BOOK REVIEW "I picture Bak as a kind of scientific musketeer; flamboyant, touchy, full of swagger and ready to join every fray... His book is written with panache. The style is brisk, the content stimulating. I recommend it as a bracing experience." -NEW SCIENTIST
Using the lens of ecopsychology, Returning the Self to Nature shows that the pervasive and extreme forms of narcissism we find in many modern societies are fundamentally the result of alienation from the natural world. But it doesn't have to be that way. Returning the Self to Nature is written for the person who no longer wishes to function in a world that revolves around selfish, disconnected identity models and yearns to step into healthy relationships with one’s self, one’s community, and our planet. Seeing the suffering of the planet and that of humans as inseparably linked—the ecological crisis as psychological crisis, and vice versa—opens the door to a mutuality of healing between people and nature. At the heart of both chronic and acute forms of narcissism is a socially constructed false self—an isolated, damaged ego in a delusional cycle of selfishness. Through unflinching analysis and meditation practices that encourage visualizing and embodying the wild naturalness of being human, the reader will gain skills to begin experiencing a courageous, pluralistic, and ecological self. This book is an invitation to wake up from the dream of the false self and join the movement toward social and planetary healing.
Recent Western thought has consistently emphasized the individualistic strand in our understanding of persons at the expense of the social strand. Thus, it is generally thought that persons are self-determining and autonomous, where these are understood to be capacities we exercise most fully on our own, apart from others, whose influence on us tends to undermine that autonomy. Love, Friendship, and the Self argues that we must reject a strongly individualistic conception of persons if we are to make sense of significant interpersonal relationships and the importance they can have in our lives. It presents a new account of love as intimate identification and of friendship as a kind of plural agency, in each case grounding and analyzing these notions in terms of interpersonal emotions. At the center of this account is an analysis of how our emotional connectedness with others is essential to our very capacities for autonomy and self-determination: we are rational and autonomous only because of and through our inherently social nature. By focusing on the role that relationships of love and friendship have both in the initial formation of our selves and in the on-going development and maturation of adult persons, Helm significantly alters our understanding of persons and the kind of psychology we persons have as moral and social beings.
Why does the human brain insist on interpreting the world and constructing a narrative? In this ground-breaking work, Michael S. Gazzaniga, one of the world's foremost cognitive neuroscientists, shows how our mind and brain accomplish the amazing feat of constructing our past—a process clearly fraught with errors of perception, memory, and judgment. By showing that the specific systems built into our brain do their work automatically and largely outside of our conscious awareness, Gazzaniga calls into question our everyday notions of self and reality. The implications of his ideas reach deeply into the nature of perception and memory, the profundity of human instinct, and the ways we construct who we are and how we fit into the world around us. Over the past thirty years, the mind sciences have developed a picture not only of how our brains are built but also of what they were built to do. The emerging picture is wonderfully clear and pointed, underlining William James's notion that humans have far more instincts than other animals. Every baby is born with circuits that compute information enabling it to function in the physical world. Even what helps us to establish our understanding of social relations may have grown out of perceptual laws delivered to an infant's brain. Indeed, the ability to transmit culture—an act that is only part of the human repertoire—may stem from our many automatic and unique perceptual-motor processes that give rise to mental capacities such as belief and culture. Gazzaniga explains how the mind interprets data the brain has already processed, making "us" the last to know. He shows how what "we" see is frequently an illusion and not at all what our brain is perceiving. False memories become a part of our experience; autobiography is fiction. In exploring how the brain enables the mind, Gazzaniga points us toward one of the greatest mysteries of human evolution: how we become who we are.
A revelatory look at how the mature work of Caspar David Friedrich engaged with concurrent developments in natural science and philosophy Best known for his atmospheric landscapes featuring contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies and morning mists, Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) came of age alongside a German Romantic philosophical movement that saw nature as an organic and interconnected whole. The naturalists in his circle believed that observations about the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms could lead to conclusions about human life. Many of Friedrich’s often-overlooked later paintings reflect his engagement with these philosophical ideas through a focus on isolated shrubs, trees, and rocks. Others revisit earlier compositions or iconographic motifs but subtly metamorphose the previously distinct human figures into the natural landscape. In this revelatory book, Nina Amstutz combines fresh visual analysis with broad interdisciplinary research to investigate the intersection of landscape painting, self-exploration, and the life sciences in Friedrich’s mature work. Drawing connections between the artist’s anthropomorphic landscape forms and contemporary discussions of biology, anatomy, morphology, death, and decomposition, Amstutz brings Friedrich’s work into the larger discourse surrounding art, nature, and life in the 19th century.
Jonardon Ganeri presents a ground-breaking study of selfhood, drawing on Indian theories of consciousness and mind. He explores the notion of embodiment and the centrality of the emotions to the self, and shows how to harmonize the idea of the first-person perspective with a naturalist worldview which encompasses the normative.