Self and Transcendence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v23i2.27504Keywords:
Human Nature, Human Self, Human Flourishing, Human Community, Transcendence, Common Conceptual Ground, Shared HumanityAbstract
This essay is a meditation on our shared humanity. By necessity it is a monologue, a statement largely in a single voice, advocating a particular point of view; nevertheless, what is written here humbly is offered as an invitation to enter into a dialogue. The essay begins with an description of the human self in terms of a naturalistic explanation of human nature, as suggested by two different characterizations of humanism. It then continues, moving from potential to informed practice, first by considering the meaning of freedom and equality and then by suggesting how we may transcend the selfishness, fear, and uncer-tainty that are all too common elements of the human condition. The essay concludes by suggesting how we all may enter into meaningful dialogue with one another from the common conceptual ground that is our shared humanity.
References
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———. 1998. Self-Fulfillment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Quillen, Carol E. 2002. Freedom Bounded. The American Scholar 71(3): 151–153.
Radest, Howard B. 1990. The Devil and Secular Humanism: The Children of the Enlightenment. New York: Praeger Publishers.
———. 1993. Community Service: Encounter with Strangers. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
———. 1996. Humanism With a Human Face: Intimacy and the Enlightenment. New York: Praeger Publishers.
Rasmussen, Douglas B. 1999. Human Flourishing and the Appeal to Human Nature. Social Philosophy and Policy 16(1): 1–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0265052500002235
Raymo, Chet. 1999. Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection between Science and Religion. New York: Walker and Company.
Reese, Curtis W. 1927. Humanist Sermons. Chicago, IL: The Open Court Publishing.
Robin, Corey. 2013. The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rue, Loyal D. 1989. Amythia: Crisis in the Natural History of Western Culture. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.
Saul, John Ralston. 2004. On Equilibrium: Six Qualities of the New Humanism. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows.
Seigel, Jerrold. 2007. The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe Since the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shue, Henry. 1996. Basic Rights. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Solomon, Robert C. 2002. Spirituality for the Skeptic: The Thoughtful Love of Life. New York: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/0195134672.001.0001
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1991. The Meaning and End of Religion. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Spath, Tomas, and Cassandra Dahnke. 2015. www.instituteforcivility.org.
Stone, Jerome A. 1992. The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence: A Naturalist Philosophy of Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Thompson, Michael J. 2007. The Politics of Inequality: A Political History of the Idea of Economic Inequalities in America. New York: Columbia University Press.
Timpanaro, Sabastiano. 1985. On Materialism. New York: Verso.
Todorov, Tzvetan. 2002. Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Tomasello, Michael. 2009. Why We Cooperate. Cambridge, MA: Boston Review (MIT Press).
———. 2010. Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Uslaner, Eric M. 2002. The Moral Foundations of Trust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511614934
Vanier, Jean. 1998. Becoming Human. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
Wiesel, Elie. 1998. “Afterword.” In The Community of the Future, edited by Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, Richard Beckhard, and Richard F. Shubert, 273–276. San Francisco, CA: Jossey–Bass Publishers.
Wilson, Edward O. 2000. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition). Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press.
Archer, Margaret S. 2000. Being Human: The Problem of Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511488733
Arnett, Ronald C., and Pat Arneson. 1999. Dialogic Civility in a Cynical Age: Community, Hope, and Interpersonal Relationships. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Aurelius, Marcus. 2010. Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Charleston, SC: Forgotten Books.
Beach, George Kimmich. 2005. Transforming Liberalism: The Theology of James Luther Adams. Boston, MA: Skinner House Books.
Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton. 1985. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bergmann, Frithjof. 1982. On Being Free. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Bickerton, Derek. 2009. Adam’s Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans. New York: Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Bok, Sissela. 2002. Common Values. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
Bronner, Stephen Eric. 2004. Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement. New York: Columbia University Press.
Buber, Martin. 2002. Between Man and Man. New York: Routledge.
Campbell, Joseph. 1993. Myths to Live By. New York: Arkana (Penguin Books).
Damásio, António. 2003. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Orlando, FL: A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Inc.
Deneen, Patrick J. 2005. Democratic Faith. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dewey, John. 1991. A Common Faith. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Diggins, John Patrick. 2009. “Walter Lippmann’s Quest for Authority.” In A Preface to Morals, by Walter Lippmann, ix–l. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Donald, Merlin. 1991. Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Einstein, Albert. 1999. Autobiographical Notes. Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing Company.
Feuerbach, Ludwig. 1989. The Essence of Christianity. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Press.
Flanagan, Owen. 2003. The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of the Mind and How to Reconcile Them. New York: Basic Books, a Member of the Perseus Books Group.
Foot, Philippa. 2010. Natural Goodness. New York: Oxford University Press Inc.
Frankl, Viktor E. 1992. Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Frederickson, Barbara L. and Marcial F. Losada. 2005. “Positive Affect and Complex Dynamics of Human Flourishing.” American Psychologist 60(7): 678–686. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.60.7.678
Fromm, Erich. 1997. To Have or to Be? New York: Continuum.
Gewirth, Alan. 1981. Reason and Morality. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
———. 1996. The Community of Rights. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
———. 1998. Self-Fulfillment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Goodwyn, Lawrence. 1978. The Populist Movement: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Grayling, A. C. 2006. Humanism, Religion, and Ethics. Debating Humanism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Honohan, Iseult. 2007. Civic Republicanism. New York: Routledge.
Huxley, Julian. 1967. Religion without Revelation. London: C. W. Watts.
Ignatieff, Michael. 2001. The Needs of Strangers. New York: Picador.
Kaufmann, Walter. 2015. The Faith of a Heretic. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9781400866168
Lippmann, Walter. 2009. A Preface to Morals. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
McCarthy, Michael H. 2012. The Political Humanism of Hannah Arendt. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
McMillan, David W., and Davis M. Chavis. 1986. “Sense of Community: A Definition and Theory.” Journal of Community Psychology 14(1): 6–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/1520-6629(198601)14:1%3C6::AID-JCOP2290140103%3E3.0.CO;2-I
McWilliams, Wilson Carey. 2011a. The Democratic Soul: A Wilson Carey McWilliams Reader. Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press.
———. 2011b. Redeeming Democracy in America. Lawrence: The University of Kansas Press.
Muirhead, Russell. 2004. Just Work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Neubauer, Raymond L. 2012. Evolution and the Emergent Self: The Rise of Complexity and Behavioral Versatility in Nature. New York: Columbia University Press.
Nooteboom, Bart. 2012. Beyond Humanism: The Flourishing of Life, Self, and Other. London: Palgrave Macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230371019
Norman, Richard. 2004. On Humanism. London: Routledge.
Norton, David L. 1976. Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 1995. “Aristotle on Human Nature and the Foundation of Ethics.” In World, Mind, and Ethics, edited by J. E. J. Altham and Ross Harrison, 86-131. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511621086.007
Plato. 2007. Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Quillen, Carol E. 2002. Freedom Bounded. The American Scholar 71(3): 151–153.
Radest, Howard B. 1990. The Devil and Secular Humanism: The Children of the Enlightenment. New York: Praeger Publishers.
———. 1993. Community Service: Encounter with Strangers. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
———. 1996. Humanism With a Human Face: Intimacy and the Enlightenment. New York: Praeger Publishers.
Rasmussen, Douglas B. 1999. Human Flourishing and the Appeal to Human Nature. Social Philosophy and Policy 16(1): 1–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0265052500002235
Raymo, Chet. 1999. Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection between Science and Religion. New York: Walker and Company.
Reese, Curtis W. 1927. Humanist Sermons. Chicago, IL: The Open Court Publishing.
Robin, Corey. 2013. The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rue, Loyal D. 1989. Amythia: Crisis in the Natural History of Western Culture. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.
Saul, John Ralston. 2004. On Equilibrium: Six Qualities of the New Humanism. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows.
Seigel, Jerrold. 2007. The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe Since the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shue, Henry. 1996. Basic Rights. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Solomon, Robert C. 2002. Spirituality for the Skeptic: The Thoughtful Love of Life. New York: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/0195134672.001.0001
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1991. The Meaning and End of Religion. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Spath, Tomas, and Cassandra Dahnke. 2015. www.instituteforcivility.org.
Stone, Jerome A. 1992. The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence: A Naturalist Philosophy of Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Thompson, Michael J. 2007. The Politics of Inequality: A Political History of the Idea of Economic Inequalities in America. New York: Columbia University Press.
Timpanaro, Sabastiano. 1985. On Materialism. New York: Verso.
Todorov, Tzvetan. 2002. Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Tomasello, Michael. 2009. Why We Cooperate. Cambridge, MA: Boston Review (MIT Press).
———. 2010. Origins of Human Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Uslaner, Eric M. 2002. The Moral Foundations of Trust. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511614934
Vanier, Jean. 1998. Becoming Human. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
Wiesel, Elie. 1998. “Afterword.” In The Community of the Future, edited by Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, Richard Beckhard, and Richard F. Shubert, 273–276. San Francisco, CA: Jossey–Bass Publishers.
Wilson, Edward O. 2000. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition). Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press.
Published
2016-02-18
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Vail, C. (2016). Self and Transcendence. Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism, 23(2), 235-263. https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v23i2.27504
