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Literature and Philosophy (Identity for others ("The…
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"Performative Acts and Gender Construction: an Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory" - Judith Butler
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Descartes uses skepticism to pare knowledge down to its bare minimum, focusing on finding the first principles from which all other knowledge can follow, including knowing the self. He focuses on rationalism for his foundations, influenced by his background in mathematics.
- The cogito, “I think, I exist” is a performative statement, and holds only when one is actively thinking. Thus, existence is a performative act.
- Descartes uses the idea of clear and distinct perceptions as the basis for making judgments, addressing the fact that we are rational beings but do not know everything, like God does.
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Butler rejects the idea that there is substance to the concepts of masculine and feminine, as instead they are continued performative acts with meanings assigned.
- In our identities, both for ourselves and for others, we perform ourselves. These acts are socially shared and historically constituted.
- Further, "'acts' are a shared experience and 'collective action'" (525). Gendered acts are not just identity-defining for the person, but always involve the collective experience.
Locke breaks down knowledge to its smallest building block, atoms in our minds, and the mind down to a blank slate, tabula rasa, and builds up identity from there, tying it to a time, a place, and a thinking being.
- He uses both sensation and reflection to determine what is real, unlike others who reject completely the value of the body for determining truth.
- Consciousness to Locke is memory, and so personal identity is memory, leading to accountability for one's actions. One's self in the past must be the same self in the present for legal situations.
Proust begins his epic tale of Monsieur Swann through the narrator's eyes. The major scenes are the introduction of Swann, and how his appearance at dinner parties signals strife for the narrator, as his mother will deny him his goodnight kiss. In this literary text, memory plays an important role in how an identity is formed.
- M. Swann himself is largely made up of the family's memories of him, rather than his present truth. He is an "envelope" stuffed full of what they already know. New memories are not replacing old ones.
- The narrator's body's memory sometimes must be relied upon when his conscious memory fails, like waking up and not knowing where you are consciously, but your body knowing for you.
Sartre presents a defense of existentialism, which was popularly understood as fashionably hopeless. He goes on to define anguish, freedom, responsibility and what it means to be human.
- Existence precedes essence, meaning that being human is all about making choices, and knowing that we make ourselves, instead of being born with purpose, like a paper-cutter is brought into existence with a pre-planned purpose. Every choice we make has ramifications for how we make up the world.
- Sartre writes in an easy to understand and conversational tone, with many examples.
De Beauvoir, in this widely read and widely influential text, confronts the idea of womanhood, and explores how the category of woman has been developed. Additionally, her writing is not strictly philosophical, as she wrote novels and plays, there is a literary quality in her prose.
- She gives us the idea again that existence precedes essence, in this case as relating to the idea that one is not born a woman, but becomes one.
- She introduces the idea of the other, and women as absolute alterity, but also the importance of recognition from the other for forming self-consciousness, in the master and slave dialectic.
Kafka creates a surreal situation of human transformation into a bug, deeply affecting a family and the way it operates. While Gregor loses mobility and will to live, his family gains their own senses of agency by the end of the story, owing to his changed position in their lives.
- We see the idea of responsibility for others play out both positively and somberly in this story, Gregor having toiled for his father's debt while the rest of his family did nothing. He acted in a way that all mankind should choose to act, but his family only follows him after his transformation, showing that their actions were out of necessity and not responsibility.
- There is also an important scene where Gregor, post-transformation, is falling, and he instinctively protects his head. He values his mind, which is the only thing tying him to his past self, as his body has been changed.
Peele's movie calls attention to many of the injustices of racism, especially racial profiling and stereotyping - the Armitage family deciding to insert their consciousnesses into black bodies because they are seen as "healthier" and the future. Chris is terrorized, tricked, and repressed, leading to very interesting questions about what consciousness is.
- Mind/body dualism is very present in this film, the thought experiment of someone's mind placed in someone else's body, and what is that person's identity? Brain in a vat thought experiment brought to life.
- Racial transgressors are present when Chris notices strange behavior of the black housekeeper and groundkeeper, because their minds are the family's grandparents.
Mill defines and nuances the idea of the greatest happiness principle, or greatest utility, as the moral philosophy everyone should use in making decisions. This is a response to Kant's philosophy, and is consequentialist rather than intentional in nature.
- The view of pleasure being qualitative rather than quantitative is new, and reinforces our difference from animals in that our pleasure is not base, but complex.
- Altruism is also a major factor in his theory, for to unconditionally promote the greatest happiness, one must be willing to sacrifice one's own happiness.
Kant gives his well-reasoned idea for moral philosophy, basing his project on intentions rather than consequences. He fleshes out his theory through thought experiments, but stresses that there is no example one can follow because intentions are not always clear. He gives us the Categorical Imperative, which eventually leads to how every person should conduct themselves.
- Each person should be their own legislator, acting in ways which they would wish every person to act, and not contradict reason in these actions, as would be the case in wishing that everyone would lie.
- Kant lays down what Duty means, coming from goodwill which can be the only unqualifyingly good thing.
Mills gives us a framework for how we see race in other people. Before him, race was not considered a problem for philosopher. He uses the term "quace" and defines all the social realities, giving a simplified understanding of how race could work. Then he goes on to provide the factors determining how someone sees another's race, ending with the idea of racial transgressions, or people who don't fit neatly into every category.
- Racial constructivism is how he defines race, not as foundational but arising out of intersubjectivity. Race is both real and unreal, racial identity forming from a mixture of objective, subjective, and intersubjective factors.
- He gives categories for determining racial identity, but also accepts that these categories are not categorial, and there are situations where they conflict.
In this hybrid text, Du Bois introduces the idea of double consciousness, always looking at oneself through the eyes of others. He then promotes the "unifying ideal of Race," the togetherness which will help them secure freedom.
- The idea of looking at oneself through the eyes of the other introduces antagonism to the need to be recognized as a thinking being by a similar thinking being. What if that gaze is determining, afflicting, triggering?
- Double consciousness also divides the self, splitting one's self identity from ones identity to others.
Le Guin pictures this utopian city, where everyone is blindingly happy and enjoy deep, meaningful lives. However, the catch is that one child must suffer horribly for the continuance of their happiness. The title comes from the ones who choose to leave the city of Omelas.
- The greatest happiness principle seems to be in effect here, with even the quality of pleasure stressed, and yet it is not clear cut whether or not this one child's suffering is in fact lesser than the happiness of the city, especially knowing that every citizen is aware of what their happiness depends on.
- The ones who walk away are portrayed as the noble few, the ones who can give up perfect happiness, but they do nothing to engage the system, just leaving. Perhaps the ones who stay are the free spirits Nietzsche proposes, the ones who can think beyond good and evil.
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Antigone is a Greek play which tells the story of conflict between Antigone and Creon about burial rights. The dead are Antigone's brothers, and she wishes to give proper burials to both, though is labeled traitor by Creon and left to rot. The tragedy ends with Antigone's death and Creon's despair.
- Duty is construed differently by Antigone and Creon, familial duty versus duty to the state, law of the gods versus laws of man.
- Additionally, self preservation versus principles is illustrated by Ismene, who cannot openly do what she feels is right for fear of Creon.
Arendt gives an account of the Eichmann trial, for his crimes under the Nazi regime. Although she agrees with his sentence as guilty, she questions the reasoning behind this judgment. His intentions do matter, and she accuses him of thoughtlessness rather than a hatred of Jewish people.
- Eichmann misunderstood Kant. He believed he was following Kantian morality because he was following the law set down by Nazi leadership, but in fact moral laws are not the same as human laws.
- His thoughtlessness, the banality of evil, brings into question the self. If he was unthinking, how can he have selfhood, after all, according to Descartes and Locke, we are thinking beings.
Oppenheimer presents an interesting film documenting the recreation of horrible acts committed during the Indonesian Mass Killings in 1965-66. The story forces the perpetrators to revisit what they've done, and provides a chilling illustration of they live with themselves.
- The film exposes the self-illusions these men have created in order to deal with their actions - for example, continuing to believe anti-communist propaganda films. Is this thoughtlessness or active self-denial?
- The film addresses the difference between imagining and actually experiencing something, as many of our philosophers are made up of thought experiments and thoughts, not actions.
Nietzsche gives a geneological account of morals, running though many of the past, influential philosophers before arriving at his own vision for the future of philosophy. These are the free spirits who will try new things, attempt new things. His book is advising them on how to act, for the sake of philosophy.
- Nietzsche lauds the act of imagining, telling us that as we falsify the world with our memories, we are actually artists, constantly creating.
- The way that Nietzsche writes is so full of feeling, humor, personal opinion, and more, that his book is beyond just a philosophical text. He admits that he, like all philosophers before him, is writing his personal confession, but in recognizing this, he own it.
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