The Making of the Modern Self

The Making of the Modern Self
Author: Dror Wahrman
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2004-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0300102518

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Wahrman argues that toward the end of the 18th century there was a radical change in notions of self & personal identity - a sudden transformation that was a revolution in the understanding of selfhood & of identity categories including race, gender, & class.

Sources of the Self

Sources of the Self
Author: Charles Taylor
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 628
Release: 1992-03-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674257049

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In this extensive inquiry into the sources of modern selfhood, Charles Taylor demonstrates just how rich and precious those resources are. The modern turn to subjectivity, with its attendant rejection of an objective order of reason, has led—it seems to many—to mere subjectivism at the mildest and to sheer nihilism at the worst. Many critics believe that the modern order has no moral backbone and has proved corrosive to all that might foster human good. Taylor rejects this view. He argues that, properly understood, our modern notion of the self provides a framework that more than compensates for the abandonment of substantive notions of rationality. The major insight of Sources of the Self is that modern subjectivity, in all its epistemological, aesthetic, and political ramifications, has its roots in ideas of human good. After first arguing that contemporary philosophers have ignored how self and good connect, the author defines the modern identity by describing its genesis. His effort to uncover and map our moral sources leads to novel interpretations of most of the figures and movements in the modern tradition. Taylor shows that the modern turn inward is not disastrous but is in fact the result of our long efforts to define and reach the good. At the heart of this definition he finds what he calls the affirmation of ordinary life, a value which has decisively if not completely replaced an older conception of reason as connected to a hierarchy based on birth and wealth. In telling the story of a revolution whose proponents have been Augustine, Montaigne, Luther, and a host of others, Taylor’s goal is in part to make sure we do not lose sight of their goal and endanger all that has been achieved. Sources of the Self provides a decisive defense of the modern order and a sharp rebuff to its critics.

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self
Author: Carl R. Trueman
Publisher: Crossway
Total Pages: 501
Release: 2020-10-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1433556367

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Modern culture is obsessed with identity. Since the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision in 2015, sexual identity has dominated both public discourse and cultural trends—and yet, no historical phenomenon is its own cause. From Augustine to Marx, various views and perspectives have contributed to the modern understanding of self. In The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl Trueman carefully analyzes the roots and development of the sexual revolution as a symptom, rather than the cause, of the human search for identity. This timely exploration of the history of thought behind the sexual revolution teaches readers about the past, brings clarity to the present, and gives guidance for the future as Christians navigate the culture's ever-changing search for identity.

Global Origins of the Modern Self, from Montaigne to Suzuki

Global Origins of the Modern Self, from Montaigne to Suzuki
Author: Avram Alpert
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2019-04-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438473869

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Explores how writers across five continents and four centuries have debated ideas about what it means to be an individual, and shows that the modern self is an ongoing project of global history. In Global Origins of the Modern Self, from Montaigne to Suzuki, Avram Alpert contends that scholars have yet to fully grasp the constitutive force of global connections in the making of modern selfhood. Alpert argues that canonical moments of self-making from around the world share a surprising origin in the colonial anthropology of Europeans in the Americas. While most intellectual histories of modernity begin with the Cartesian inward turn, Alpert shows how this turn itself was an evasion of the impact of the colonial encounter. He charts a counter-history of the modern self, tracing lines of influence that stretch from Michel de Montaigne’s encounter with the Tupi through the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau into German Idealism, American Transcendentalism, postcolonial critique, and modern Zen. Alpert considers an unusually wide range of thinkers, including Kant, Hegel, Fanon, Emerson, Du Bois, Senghor, and Suzuki. This book not only breaks with disciplinary conventions about period and geography but also argues that these conventions obscure our ability to understand the modern condition. Avram Alpert is Lecturer in the Writing Program at Princeton University.

History and the Making of a Modern Hindu Self

History and the Making of a Modern Hindu Self
Author: Aparna Devare
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2013-04-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136197079

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Taking the contentious debates surrounding historical evidence and history writing between secularists and Hindu nationalists as a starting point, this book seeks to understand the origins of a growing historical consciousness in contemporary India, especially amongst Hindus. The broad question it poses is: Why has ‘history’ become such an important site of identity, conflict and self-definition amongst modern Hindus, especially when Hinduism is known to have been notoriously impervious to history? As modern ideas regarding notions of history came to India with colonialism, it turns to the colonial period as the ‘moment of encounter’ with such ideas. The book examines three distinct moments in the Hindu self through the lives and writings of lower-caste public figure Jotiba Phule, ‘moderate’ nationalist M. G. Ranade and Hindu nationalist V. D. Savarkar. Through a close reading of original writings, speeches and biographical material, it is demonstrated that these three individuals were engaged with a modern historical and rationalist approach. However, the same material is also used to argue that Phule and Ranade viewed religion as living, contemporaneous and capable of informing both their personal and political lives. Savarkar, the ‘explicitly Hindu’ leader, on the contrary, held Hindu practices and traditions in contempt, confining them to historical analysis while denying any role for religion as spirituality or morality in contemporary political life. While providing some historical context, this volume highlights the philosophical/ political ideas and actions of the three individuals discussed. It integrates aspects of their lives as central to understanding their politics.

The Dialectical Self

The Dialectical Self
Author: Jamie Aroosi
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2018-12-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0812250702

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Although Karl Marx and Søren Kierkegaard are both major figures in nineteenth-century Western thought, they are rarely considered in the same conversation. Marx is the great radical economic theorist, the prophet of communist revolution who famously claimed religion was the "opiate of the masses." Kierkegaard is the renowned defender of Christian piety, a forerunner of existentialism, and a critic of mass politics who challenged us to become "the single individual." But by drawing out important themes bequeathed them by their shared predecessor G. W. F. Hegel, Jamie Aroosi shows how they were engaged in parallel projects of making sense of the modern, "dialectical" self, as it realizes itself through a process of social, economic, political, and religious emancipation. In The Dialectical Self, Aroosi illustrates that what is traditionally viewed as opposition is actually a complementary one-sidedness, born of the fact that Marx and Kierkegaard differently imagined the impediments to the self's appropriation of freedom. Specifically, Kierkegaard's concern with the psychological and spiritual nature of the self reflected his belief that the primary impediments to freedom reside in subjectivity, such as in our willing conformity to social norms. Conversely, Marx's concern with the sociopolitical nature of the self reflected his belief that the primary impediments to freedom reside in the objective world, such as in the exploitation of the economic system. However, according to Aroosi, each thinker represents one half of a larger picture of freedom and selfhood, because the subjective and objective impediments to freedom serve to reinforce one another. By synthesizing the writing of these two diametrically opposed figures, Aroosi demonstrates the importance of envisioning emancipation as a subjective, psychological, and spiritual process as well as an objective, sociopolitical, and economic one. The Dialectical Self attests to the importance and continued relevance of Marx and Kierkegaard for the modern imagination.

The Creedal Imperative

The Creedal Imperative
Author: Carl R. Trueman
Publisher: Crossway
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2012-09-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1433521938

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Recent years have seen a number of high profile scholars converting to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy while a trend in the laity expresses an eclectic hunger for tradition. The status and role of confessions stands at the center of the debate within evangelicalism today as many resonate with the call to return to Christianity's ancient roots. Carl Trueman offers an analysis of why creeds and confessions are necessary, how they have developed over time, and how they can function in the church of today and tomorrow. He writes primarily for evangelicals who are not particularly confessional in their thinking yet who belong to confessional churches—Baptists, independents, etc.—so that they will see more clearly the usefulness of the church's tradition.

Making the Modern World

Making the Modern World
Author: Vaclav Smil
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2013-12-16
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1119942535

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How much further should the affluent world push its material consumption? Does relative dematerialization lead to absolute decline in demand for materials? These and many other questions are discussed and answered in Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Over the course of time, the modern world has become dependent on unprecedented flows of materials. Now even the most efficient production processes and the highest practical rates of recycling may not be enough to result in dematerialization rates that would be high enough to negate the rising demand for materials generated by continuing population growth and rising standards of living. This book explores the costs of this dependence and the potential for substantial dematerialization of modern economies. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization considers the principal materials used throughout history, from wood and stone, through to metals, alloys, plastics and silicon, describing their extraction and production as well as their dominant applications. The evolving productivities of material extraction, processing, synthesis, finishing and distribution, and the energy costs and environmental impact of rising material consumption are examined in detail. The book concludes with an outlook for the future, discussing the prospects for dematerialization and potential constrains on materials. This interdisciplinary text provides useful perspectives for readers with backgrounds including resource economics, environmental studies, energy analysis, mineral geology, industrial organization, manufacturing and material science.

The Soul of the American University Revisited

The Soul of the American University Revisited
Author: George M. Marsden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2021-04-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0190073330

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The Soul of the American University is a classic and much discussed account of the changing roles of Christianity in shaping American higher education, presented here in a newly revised edition to offer insights for a modern era. As late as the World War II era, it was not unusual even for state schools to offer chapel services or for leading universities to refer to themselves as “Christian” institutions. From the 1630s through the 1950s, when Protestantism provided an informal religious establishment, colleges were expected to offer religious and moral guidance. Following reactions in the 1960s against the WASP establishment and concerns for diversity, this specifically religious heritage quickly disappeared and various secular viewpoints predominated. In this updated edition of a landmark volume, George Marsden explores the history of the changing roles of Protestantism in relation to other cultural and intellectual factors shaping American higher education. Far from a lament for a lost golden age, Marsden offers a penetrating analysis of the changing ways in which Protestantism intersected with collegiate life, intellectual inquiry, and broader cultural developments. He tells the stories of many of the nation's pace-setting universities at defining moments in their histories. By the late nineteenth-century when modern universities emerged, debates over Darwinism and higher criticism of the Bible were reshaping conceptions of Protestantism; in the twentieth century important concerns regarding diversity and inclusion were leading toward ever-broader conceptions of Christianity; then followed attacks on the traditional WASP establishment which brought dramatic disestablishment of earlier religious privilege. By the late twentieth century, exclusive secular viewpoints had become the gold standard in higher education, while our current era is arguably “post-secular”. The Soul of the American University Revisited deftly examines American higher education as it exists in the twenty-first century.

A Genealogy of the Modern Self

A Genealogy of the Modern Self
Author: Alina Clej
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 460
Release: 1995-08-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0804780765

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As this book's title suggests, its main argument is that Thomas De Quincey's literary output, which is both a symptom and an effect of his addictions to opium and writing, plays an important and mostly unacknowledged role in the development of modern and modernist forms of subjectivity. At the same time, the book shows that intoxication, whether in the strict medical sense or in its less technical meaning ("strong excitement," "trance," "ecstasy"), is central to the ways in which modernity, and literary modernity in particular, functions and defines itself. In both its theoretical and practical implications, intoxication symbolizes and often comes to constitute the condition of the alienated artist in the age of the market. The book also offers new readings of the Confessions and some of De Quincey's posthumous writings, as well as an extended analysis of his relatively neglected diary. The discussion of De Quincey's work also elicits new insights into his relationship with William and Dorothy Wordsworth, as well as his imaginary investment in Coleridge.