Modern Philosophies of Human Nature: Their Emergence from Christian ThoughtGeneral Argument My aim is to survey some of the most influential philosophical writers on human nature from the time that Augustine codified Christian belief to the present. During this period philosophical opinions about human nature underwent a transformation from the God-centered views of Augustine and the scholastics to the human-centered ideas of Nietzsche, Freud and Sartre. While one aim has simply been to provide a handy survey, I do have three polemical purposes. One is to oppose the notion that the modernism of more recent writers was produced by methodological innovations. According to both Freud and Sartre, as well as other key figures like Lacan and Heidegger, their views were the product of new methods of investigating human nature, namely those of psychoanalysis and the phenomenological reduction. Psych,oanalysis claimed to use the interpretation of both dreams and the relationship between analyst and patient to penetrate the unconscious. Phenomenology has claimed that trained philosophers are able to obtain a privilege;d view of consciousness by a special act of thought called the phenomenological reduction which enables them to view consciousness without preconceptions. On many issues my sympathies are with Nietzsche rather than with Freud or phenomenology. This is also the case regarding methodology. Nietzsche saw quite clearly that the possibility of popularising the views he himself held came from the decline of ChristianitY. My rejection of exclusive reliance upon the methodologies of psychoanalysis and phenomenology is based on two lines of argument. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
Unreason and SelfDestruction | 25 |
Reason and SelfInterest | 38 |
The Origins of Modernism | 86 |
Nietzsche and Jaspers | 107 |
Freud and his Followers | 123 |
Heidegger and Modern Metaphysics | 167 |
Conclusions | 215 |
Other editions - View all
Modern Philosophies of Human Nature: Their Emergence from Christian Thought P. Langford Limited preview - 2012 |
Modern Philosophies of Human Nature: Their Emergence from Christian Thought P. Langford No preview available - 1986 |
Common terms and phrases
A.J. Ayer achieve action aggression analysis animal appears Aquinas argues Aristotle attitude Augustine Augustinian Baudrillard become behaviour belief Chap Christian claim concept consciousness Critique culture Descartes desire dialectic discussion doctrine dream emphasis existence experience feel for-itself freedom French Freud Freudian Fromm Heidegger Hobbes human nature Hume Husserl Ibid ideas in-itself individual influence instincts intellectual interpretation Jaspers judgement Kant kind Lacan later Leibniz London Marcuse Marx Marxist meaning Merleau-Ponty metaphysics modern moral motives Nietzsche Nietzsche's nineteenth century nothingness objects Oedipus Oedipus complex original original sin ourselves Oxford Paris particularly passions personality phenomenology philosophy pleasure political principle problem produced psychoanalysis psychology R.D. Laing rational realisation reason relation religion religious repression Sartre Sartre's scholastic scholasticism Schopenhauer semiotics sense sexual social society symbolic theory things thought traditional trans unconscious understanding University Press view of human writings York