2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A Study of the Isomorphism of the Concepts and Acts of Self-Sacrifice, Self-Alienation, and Love
| Project/Area Number |
14510052
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
History of thought
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| Research Institution | Nagoya University |
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Principal Investigator |
TAMURA Hitoshi Nagoya University, Graduate School of Letters, Professor, 文学研究科, 教授 (40188438)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2002 – 2004
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| Keywords | Self-Sacrifice / Self-Alienation / Love / Ruth Benedict / Autonomy / Theory of Mind / Overvold / Utilitarianism |
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| Research Abstract |
The concepts of self-sacrifice, self-alienation and love have the common ideational structure that consists in the combination of actual self-negation and imaginary self-realization. The paradoxical structure of self-realization through self-negation can be regarded as the basic scheme which lies beneath almost all human social interactions. It is this paradoxical structure that the research was planned to deal with.
In 2002,I tackled the methodological problem of early anthropology. Franz Boas and his disciples were the first anthropologists that tried to understand the structure of human social interaction with the scientific method. I took Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture as the representative of their methodological arrangements. I found that her criticism of the Western civilization and recommendation of cultural relativism was constructed upon the equality, liberty, and autonomy of an individual. In other words, even the Boazian anthropologists could not escape the modern Weste
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rn philosophical myth as long as they took the autonomous individual as the common basis for any human society. The paradoxical relation of self-negation and self-realization could not be grasped unless the analysis of autonomy should be done. It is because the concept of autonomy already contains the paradoxical structure in it.
In 2003,I tackled the problem of development of self-awareness in children. During last two decades, developmental psychologists have been trying to understand the acquisition of the ‘theory of mind' in childhood. One of the most interesting results of their study is the discovery of the fact that most of the children under four-year-old cannot attribute a false belief to people, not only to others but also to themselves. The fact is at odds with the common philosophical assumption that a human being has the privileged access to her own thoughts. The psychologists tell us that at least some aspect of the awareness of one's own mind must be an outcome of one and the same cognitive system that makes it possible for us to understand others' thoughts in their mind. The self consciousness is not a simple entity but a complex one made up of many developmental strands. The paradoxical structure could be brought about through the conflicts between the multiple strata of the self consciousness.
In 2004,I tackled the problem of self-sacrifice. I dealt with Mark Carl Overvold's argument. He shows us that it is inevitable for us to accept the multiplicity of the conception of self unless we like to fall into a contradiction whenever we talk about self-interest and self-sacrifice.
In the light of Overvold's argument, we can give a cogent account for an act of self-sacrifice, for example, the act of Father Maximiliano Kolbe. When he wanted to be killed in place of another prisoner in the Concentration Camp in Auschwitz, he did not look forward to increasing his self-interest in an oblique way but made a truly altruistic act of self-sacrifice. In this case, however, we witness a scene in which the creed of pure altruistic love deprives the man of his own life. It is true that an act of self-sacrifice is an act of love but it is also an act of self-alienation in that the ideal of pure love could alienate a person's life from the very person. The paradoxical structure of self-realization through self-negation emerges from the conflicts between the multiple strata of the conception of self. Less
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