Other minds embodied

I distinguish three kinds of other minds problems—conceptual, epistemological and empirical. I argue that while Merleau-Ponty believes embodiment helps with tackling the conceptual and epistemological problems, he suggests that it is of no clear use in solving (an important variant of) the empirical problem. I sketch some considerations that could lend support to Merleau-Ponty’s claims about the conceptual and epistemological problems, without claiming that these are conclusive. I then proceed to argue that Merleau-Ponty’s take on the empirical problem is essentially correct.     

Sartre on the ego,friendship and conflict

In both Being and Nothingness and the Notebooks for an Ethics we are told how one needs the Ego to get along in the everyday world, but yet at the same time that it is a psychic phenomenon that easily distorts everyday experience. In this paper, it is shown how, for Sartre, friends can play an important role by helping each other overcome the vested interest in maintaining the experience of a false, set identity that is engendered by the Ego. In addition, reference to the Notebooks will make it clear that support per se is insufficient to enable one to transcend the constraints of an entrenched Ego, and that instead this form of aid must be taken in conjunction with challenge, or a type of positive conflict, if one is going to be able effectively to help a friend for the task in question.     

Kant and Sartre on self-knowledge

Conclusion The similarities between the Copernican and existentialist approach to self-knowledge can be clearly summarized by the combined effect they have on the correspondence model of self-knowledge. The self-knower who holds that knowledge conforms to its object is not only wrong but deceived if his goal is the complete one-to-one correspondence between, on the one hand, objectively validated propositions, and on the other an independently existing, recalcitrant reality (the Self). Both Kant and Sartre hold that we can know ourselves in terms of appearances or quasi-objects, but they both deny that we can know what we really are over and above the empirical, contingent and finite knowledge we have. For Kant, this is because we are, most fundamentally, something unknowable; for Sartre, it is because we are, most fundamentally, nothing. In both cases, the self we purport to know is in an important sense other than itself: in saying I, more is being said than we know — and less. The I is spoken only through and across that which is not I.     

Art, authenticity and appropriation

It is often suggested that artists from one culture (outsiders) cannot successfully employ styles, stories, motifs and other artistic content developed in the context of another culture. I call this suggestion the aesthetic handicap thesis and argue against it. Cultural appropriation can result in works of high aesthetic value. While in China as a visiting scholar in the Department of Philosophy of Beijing Normal University, I gave a series of lectures at leading Chinese universities. This essay is based on a lecture that I gave at Renmin University of China on 17 April 2006.     

Sartre and Ricoeur on Productive Imagination

Commenting on Jean‐Paul Sartre's theory of imagination, Paul Ricoeur argues that Sartre fails to address the productive nature of imaginative acts. According to Ricoeur, Sartre's examples show that he thinks of imagination in mimetic terms, neglecting its innovative and creative dimensions. Imagination, Ricoeur continues, manifests itself most clearly in fiction, wherein new meaning is created. By using fiction as the paradigm of imaginative activity, Ricoeur is able to argue against Sartre that the essence of imagination lies not in its ability to reproduce absent objects, but rather in the ability to transform reality through creative acts. Motivated by the intuition that Sartre the writer could not have forgotten to address such crucial dimensions of imagination, I examine Sartre's philosophical and literary work, showing that not only does he develop a notion of productive imagination, he also puts this notion to work by articulating the relationship between imagination, narrative, and identity formation, well before Ricoeur advanced his narrative‐identity theory. I argue that Sartre, like Ricoeur and MacIntyre, another representative of narrative‐theory whose criticism of Sartre I address in this essay, views imagination and narrativity as necessary conditions for the formation of a coherent and meaningful sense of self.     

Early Sartre on Freedom and Ethics

This paper offers a revisionary interpretation of Sartre's early views on human freedom. Sartre articulates a subtle account of a fundamental sense of human freedom as autonomy, in terms of human consciousness being both reasons‐responsive and in a distinctive sense self‐determining. The aspects of Sartre's theory of human freedom that underpin his early ethics are shown to be based on his phenomenological analysis of consciousness as, in its fundamental mode of self‐presence, not an object in the world (Section 1). Sartre has a multi‐level theory of the reasons‐sensitivity of consciousness. At one level, consciousness's being alive to reasons is a matter of the affective perception of values and disvalues as features of phenomenal objects (Section 2). This part of his theory, a development of Scheler's, is, however, situated within a broader phenomenological analysis resulting in the claim that the ultimate reasons acknowledged by consciousness neither are nor justifiably could be values adequately presentable as intentional objects. Consciousness's ultimate reasons are, in this sense, not given by the world but by itself (Section 3). Section 4 reconstructs and assesses Sartre's argument that consciousness cannot rationally have an ultimate end other than self‐transparent (‘authentic’) freedom itself.     

Rawls,Sartre, and the Question of Camaraderie

In his classic text, A Theory of Justice, John Rawls argues that the structural principles of a society are just when they issue from a procedure that is fair. One crucial feature that makes the procedure fair is that the persons who will be subjected to these principles choose them after they have deliberated together in a condition marked by a certain balance of knowledge and ignorance. In particular, these people know enough to consider principles that are workable, yet converse behind a “veil of ignorance,” unable to predict what their place in society will be and hence discouraged from slanting the principles toward any preferential interests. My paper questions whether this attempt to ensure the disinterestedness of the conversation of justice is feasible. I worry that when we approach this question practically, we discover that the education that furnishes us with the knowledge necessary to choose viable principles must at the same time preclude genuine ignorance about our social position and interests. As an alternative, I suggest that we convene the conversation of justice behind a “veil of existence.” In this condition, people possess knowledge about how their society works and even about their places in it; however, this knowledge does not foster preferential interests because all interests are subjected to the question of their existential meaning. As Jean-Paul Sartre explains in his essay, “Existentialism is a Humanism,” for our interests to be truly meaningful, they must be affirmed as free responses to our thrownness into existence. Yet how do we find the wherewithal to make such responsible choices rather than lapse into paralysis before their essentially arbitrary differences? My positive thesis is that we may do so by acknowledging how all of us in this existential predicament critically and mutually provoke each to commit oneself to depart from the others in specific ways. This process of provocation is thus educational. It broaches a conception of non-instrumental, non-mimetic, liberal study, one which I try to enact in a writing that employs direct address, regular returns to questions that put discourse at a loss, and expanding webs of association. In this manner, I hope to demonstrate that liberal study may deepen our appreciation of our communal nature, our camaraderie, and thus motivate us to participate unselfishly in the conversation of justice.     

Self-focused attention,authenticity, and well-being

The purpose of this study was to examine whether two distinct forms of self-focusing tendencies (i.e., self-rumination and self-reflection) predict authenticity, as well as to determine whether authenticity mediated the relationship between these self-focusing tendencies and both life satisfaction and distress. Data of this study were collected from 619 adults through an online survey. The hypothesized model was examined using structural equation modeling. Supporting the hypotheses of the study, after controlling for gender and age, both self-rumination and self-reflection had significant indirect effects on life satisfaction and distress through authenticity. Specifically, participants with a tendency to engage in self-reflection reported higher levels of authenticity, which then was associated with increased life satisfaction and decreased distress. On the other hand, participants who are inclined to self-ruminate reported lower levels of authenticity, which in turn, mediated the effect of rumination on both life satisfaction and distress.