Oneself (philosophy)
Self in philosophy will be approached according to two lines: traditional approach of the history of Western philosophy and a consensual approach with spirituality Oneself (spirituality).
Whereas Eastern philosophies refer practically always there, Western philosophy, resulting from the Greek Logos, within the meaning of " Raison" , " discours" , did not constitute the " term; soi" like Concept strictly speaking, i.e. function word (see G. Deleuze) being used to explore a field of knowledge at a given time and at a particular thinker.
One can try nevertheless to encircle the various meanings or corrélats term from the historical point of view. The words travelling geographically and historically, of the precise and contextual definitions will be able to give an outline of the difficulty of speaking about self in philosophy.
Présocratiques
Principles founders of Greek ancient philosophy:- the question of the origin first (Arkhè) and the fundamental law (Logos) of the world like principle of unit.
- topics related to the concept of Alètheia (revealing): the to be, the truth, true knowledge.
- the reflection on the nature of the man and his ethical: the heart, the good ( agathon ), the Virtue ( edge ), the Happiness.
One will be able to see bridges with philosophies and religions Egyptian woman and Eastern, in particular Indian, because the trade supported the circulation of the ideas between the Mediterranean and Asia. Indeed, an order of the cosmic and ethical world, taking part as well of the myth as of the natural principles, points out the supreme principle of the hindouism, Brahman, or, at the Egyptians, Maât, order of the world but also truth. As for the place of the man, just as the Atman or the maât (knowledge right of oneself, i.e. conscience of this universal kind) Egyptian, the heart, the good, the virtue, happiness with the Greek direction, will be able to open out fully only in the recognition about the world, the union with the principle first, in the harmony between the parts and the whole expressed by the concept of " Mesure".
For Heidegger, these thinkers were not diverted Être with the profit of what exists; they “posed the problem of the relations To be it and of being, To be it and of becoming, the bond of being and Nothing and that of the truth defined as opening, revealing and not like logical report/ratio”. ( Présocratiques J. Brown, Which do I know? PUF).
Milésiens
- The philosophers milésiens (Millet, town of Ionie) are the first, in Greek philosophy, has to have directed the reflection towards the Ontologie, the speech towards the being (what there is behind appearance?). They seek the principle originating common to any thing and source in the transformations which one can make the experiment through the phenomena. In their Cosmogony, the natural explanations replace the mythological explanations gradually. Let us specify that the majority of presocratic wrote a work having for title nature .
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For Thalès (624-546 av. J. - C.), the paramount element is water. In its vision of the unit of cosmos, it stresses the life, the fact that nature is alive and that “all is full with hearts” (psychè, vital breath and not heart with the Christian direction, like personal and immortal principle).
- For Anaximandre (610-545 av J. - C.), the paramount element is the infinite one, the unlimited one, the indefinite one (Apeiron); of him the things like oppositions proceed, then, they go back there: the particular substances left by way separation the primitive matter and there will go back after their decomposition. Thus the ex-sistence would be a loss, the abandonment of a primitive source; death, a return to the source of life. The apeiron , the indefinite one, was according to Aristote, qualified the “divine one” by Anaximandre, because “immortal and imperishable” ( Physique , 203, b6). One can announce that S. Ferenczi, the disciple of Freud, has refers to Anaximandre in Thalassa in connection with the fact that any living being seeks to return to a “inorganic peace” aiming at cancelling the birth, the sexual union being the image even of this fundamental desire.
- For Anaximène (585-525), the paramount element is the air and the men take part of this principle insofar as the heart is made of air, which draws a narrow parallelism between microcosm and the macrocosm.
Pythagore
Pythagore lived of 570 with 500 av. J. - C. with Crotona, Italy of the South, it makes number the paramount element. The gasoline of very whole reality is the number because it creates the order of the world by defining and delimiting the indefinite one ( apeiron ). One is held for superior with the other numbers because it is the origin.The ethical is characterized consequently by the research of the harmony. In addition to mathematical and musical research, the school pythagorician illustrates a religious principle and mystic which takes again in India the theory transmigration of the hearts: the heart represents into clean the gasoline of the man (it “oneself”) which must be delivered impurity of the body.
Héraclite
Héraclite lived of 550 with 480 av. J. - C. The paramount element is to become it, the flow of the time, symbolized by fire, the most subtle element. “One cannot enter the same river twice” (Fragment 12). The world is the perpetual exchange of the opposites and from this tension all emerges that is. “This world, the same one for all the beings, none the gods nor of the men has creates it; but it always was and it is, and it will be always an alive fire, igniting with measurement and dying out with measurement. ” (Fragment 30)The hearts are born from divine fire, of the Logos universal, therefore true wisdom consists in melting the individual thought in the universal thought. The Logos is the unit of the opposites thus to know the Logos, to be in harmony with him constitutes wisdom but it is a difficult way: “The word logos, the men never include/understand it, as well front to have intended some to speak as afterwards. ” (Fragment 1). “The thought is the highest virtue; and wisdom consists in saying true things and acting according to nature, by listening to its voice. ” Fragment 112, near to fragment 44: “Wisdom consists of only one thing, to know the thought which controls all and everywhere”. As announces it J. Voilquin, author of the translation and the notes of the collection the Greek Thinkers before Socrate Garnier-Flammarion, “the logos, the universal reason is discovered in Egypt under the name of Mâ-Khérou; it represents the pronounced Word, the creative Voice, inspired by Truth-Justice-Reason (Maât). ”… “the religious spirit of Héraclite, while taking as a starting point the Egyptian myths, introduced spiritualism into the physiology of the Ionian ones. It opens the way with Anaxagore and Socrate and founds the tradition of the idealistic mysticism whose Plato will be the interpreter more qualified like, later, in Alexandria, the Neo-Platonists. ”, p232-233
Héraclite evokes, as Socrate will do it later, the precept of Delphes: “The god whose oracle is in Delphes does not speak, does not dissimulate, it indicates. ” (Fragment 93), followed: “I sought myself. ” (Fragment 101), and further: “To the heart belongs the logos, which increases itself. ” (Fragment 115), way that each and everyone can follow: " To all the men, it is granted to know themselves and to show sagesse." (Fragment 116), even if the first fragment seems to doubt it (see above).
The inspiration héraclitéenne will be found at Hegel but it is especially Nietzsche, in Philosophy at the time tragedy of the Greeks which expresses its admiration for Héraclite explicitly: “The man locked up within his limits sees the things separately from/to each other but does not see them as a whole. That which, like Héraclite, is connected with the contemplative god sees the harmony and the convergence of all that is contradicted. ” (chapter 7). Further, to defend it against those which taxed it with “obscure”: " All that one could possibly learn by questioning the men and all that the other wise ones was endeavoured to obtain imported to him little. … It is myself that I sought and that I tried of interprêter said it itself… what it neither expressed, nor dissimulated here, following the example god of Delphes." (chapter 8). Lastly, its doctrines of the law within becoming it and the play within the need, Nietzsche present it as a “truth which it seizes by intuition without climbing the rung and cable ladder of logic. ” (chapter 9), contrary to Parménide which does not find thanks to the eyes of Nietzsche.
The Eleatic School
- For Xénophane, the paramount element is the idea of a single god.
- This idea is taken again by Parménide (540-470 av. J. - C.) for which the original element is the unit to be it. Consequently, which exists is " without beginning, eternal, homogeneous, immutable, out of time, one, continu." (Parménide, " The way of the vérité" , 8, in Greek Thinkers before Socrate ). It is the misleading experiment of the directions which make us believe that any exchange but it is only one appearance. From where the valorization of the rational knowledge which makes reach to be it authentic, one and immutable.
ANAXAGORE
For Anaxagore (500-425 av. J.C.), the element primorial is made of an infinite number of elements first qualitatively different. Each thing is an original combination of elements. The things are driven by us or Nouç (the spirit, organizing energy) which orders them systematically.
EMPEDOCLE
For Empédocle (492-432 av. J. - C.), the paramount element appears in the shape of the 4 elements (water, air, ground, fire), plus the love (fusion) and hatred (separation) like engines. When these two forces clash, the concrete things are born.
Socrat and Plato
Maieutic
This technique is an evolution of orphic know-how , which was based on the belief in the Réminiscence or " anamnèse" (opposite of amnesia) and practice of the Katharsis. Also let us specify that the mother of Socrate state midwife.The Maïeutique consists, in the context of this time, to make be confined the spirits their knowledge accumulated when the heart, free of the body (// summoned sowed, the tomb), could contemplate the Ideas, the gasolines (see Phèdre and the myth of the winged attachment). The maieutic one thus makes it possible to express a knowledge hidden in oneself , in the divine part of our heart (us).
In the Ménon , one can thus see a young slave, Ménon, “redécouvrir” how can duplicate the surface of a square whereas he believed himself about it unable, not having never studied mathematics. “To know, it is to ressouvenir itself” (Ménon). The reminiscence (the anamnèse) opposite the work of Léthé, the mythological river of the lapse of memory to which drinking the hearts are supposed before réincarner. The etymology of aléthéia , the truth, announces it: has (privative) - Léthéia, which one also translates by revealing. Let us announce finally that noos (spirit, intelligence, to see Nouç) is close to nostos , the return (see " nost-algie" in French).
The Ironie is addressed to the people who claim to know whereas they are in ignorance; the maieutic one is applied to the people who are unaware of an innate provision like the reminiscence, concept inherited the metempsychosis, itself borrowed by Plato from Pythagore and Egypt (these two thinkers remained there), or perhaps to India.
Socrat offers to each one of his interlocutors the secret mirror to perceive an image too ignored of itself and thus " die-couvrir" :
- It can there distinguish contradictions and inconsistencies which make obstacle with a discovery of the interior light. But beside these features if not very pleasant - blindness, vanity, uncontrolled passion, desire of power and pleasure - the mirror reveals also the positive values to which the routing towards the truth can continue. .
As soon as the fog of ignorance and the lethargy tore, naked reality bursts:
- Because, in fact, any individual knows this in question closely and carries that in him; but it cannot, by the only means it has, of extracting from the gangue this natural obviousness, of throwing it in the full light of the experiment and of recognizing the eternal topicality of it. .
Skilful operations are essential to conclude this task. It is the erudite art of the obstetrician - the maieutic one - who will lead to his term the access to reality “such as it is”:
- To tear off its interlocutors with the sleep, to withdraw them from the routines of the thought and the control where they take pleasure, Socrate chooses to apply to each one the technique which is appropriate for its temperament. The socratic thesis according to which the Wise one anything else makes only encourage and help the listener to redécouvrir the secrecy of a lived experiment… As if he had spoken himself with itself, thus it could have concluded a maintenance pushed across the limits from ordinary the Dialectique.