The relation between conciousness and the ego: the question of ethics in Sartre‘s early philosophy /

Download

index.pdf

Date

2014

Author

Afyonoğlu, Meliha Funda

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

239
views

166
downloads

This investigation tries to disclose the meaning of the self and the question of ethics in Sartre’s early philosophy through the relation between consciousness and the ego. For the sake of this aim, this investigation is divided into three argumentative parts. The first part tries to reveal the relation of consciousness and the ego through the question of what it means to be self in Sartre’s philosophy. Sarte conceptualizes consciousness as a non-substantial absolute, spontaneous, autonomous and nihilating power and reveals ego as a free, creative and original product of consciousness. On this ground, Sartre’s identifies consciousness with freedom and nothingness which points out human beings’ free self-determination. Therefore, the first result of the investigation is that we, as conscious being, create who we are freely. However, this free self-determination leads us to discuss the question of ethics, since there seems to be no ground for ethical action. That is also one of the reasons why Sartre is labeled as ethical subjectivist or nihilist. As a result, the second part discusses the possibility of ethics in general, of ethical action in particular in Sartre’s early philosophy. The final part focuses on the existentialist ethics in which freedom and responsibility are the basis of all morality. The existentialist ethics opens us a way to reconsider ethics, and presents freedom as an ultimate value in which we seek freedom for its own sake and promote freedom of others.

Subject Keywords

Consciousness., Self (Philosophy)., Freedom., Philosophy.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12618014/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/24101

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

The growing desert: nihilism and metaphysics in Martin Heidegger's thought Duman, Musa; İnam, Ahmet; Department of Philosophy (2009) In this study, we explore Heidegger’s understanding of nihilism as the essential dimension of metaphysics, of metaphysical experience of Being, and in the following, we address his responses to it. Heidegger takes nihilism as rooted in the metaphysical way of thinking, hence metaphysics and nihilism standing in a primordial identity. Such metaphysical way of thinking as a framework in which Being is experinced and articulated, explicitly or implicitly in all areas of Western culture, from art to science, gi...
The relation of freedom and evil in Kant’s moral philosophy Aydın Bayram, Selma; Turan, Şeref Halil; Department of Philosophy (2006) The purpose of this study is to examine concepts of freedom and evil, and to clarify their relation in terms of Kant’s moral philosophy. In this study, I firstly examine Kant’s understanding of freedom and the problems that this understanding leads to. I also discuss how the concept of freedom can be reconciled with the concept of evil expressed in the form of “propensity to evil”. Additionally, I attempt to show the significance of the notion of evil for Kant’s moral theory. Evil is one of the most critici...
A study of the self in Nietzsche's fatalistic universe of eternal recurrence Canbolat, Argun Abrek; Parkan, Barış; Department of Philosophy (2009) The doctrine of eternal recurrence is not only an aspect of Nietzsche’s philosophy, but a notion that structures the base of his philosophy. The doctrine is analyzed by many interpreters in various ways. The cosmological and the ethical-existential approaches to the doctrine are at the very base wrong. The doctrine’s impact cannot be adequately understood in these terms. Besides, the doctrine of eternal recurrence has multiple problems within it, problems which can be solved if the doctrine is understood an...
The Uses of the World Soul in Plato's Timaeus Evren, Şahan; Bağçe, Samet; Department of Philosophy (2009) The purpose of the present study is to assess the explanatory value of the concept of the World Soul in the cosmological account of Plato’s Timaeus. The World Soul plays a crucial role in the account of the world of Becoming in the Timaeus and in Plato’s philosophy of science. The World Soul explains why there is motion at all in the universe and sustains the regularity and uniformity of the motion of the celestial objects. Its constitution and the way it is generated by the Demiurge endow it an intermediar...
The genealogy of the moral modules Bolender, J (Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2003-05-01) This paper defends a cognitive theory of those emotional reactions which motivate and constrain moral judgment. On this theory, moral emotions result from mental faculties specialized for automatically producing feelings of approval or disapproval in response to mental representations of various social situations and actions. These faculties are modules in Fodor's sense, since they are informationally encapsulated, specialized, and contain innate information about social situations. The paper also tries to ...

Citation Formats

M. F. Afyonoğlu, “The relation between conciousness and the ego: the question of ethics in Sartre‘s early philosophy /,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2014.