Charles W. Harvey

In this essay we show how certain tendencies of theself are enhanced and hindered by technologicallyorganized places. We coordinate a cognitive andbehavioral technology for the control of personalidentity with the technologically totalizedenvironments that we call synthetic sites. Weproceed by describing Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi''sstrategy for intensifying experience and organizingthe self. Walt Disney World is then considered as theexample, par excellence, of a synthetic sitethat promotes ordered experience via self-shrinkage. Finally, we reflect briefly on problems andpossibilities of human life lived in a world that canbe described with increasing accuracy as anarchipelago of synthetic sites.

This essay briefly explicates, criticizes and supplements the work of two sociologists of “postmodern” society, Ulrich Beck and AnthonyGiddens, as their work develops and relates to the ideas of reflexivity and reflectivity with special regards to the self. Each of these writers bases some significant portion of his work on the idea of the inescapable “reflexivity” of contemporary life for both persons and institutions. For each author, the phenomenon of reflexivity has both positive and negative implications that relate to the traditionalenlightenment ideal of self-fashioning, autonomous selfhood; in each, the enlightenment ideal of reflectively grounded selfhood is existentially embedded in everyday reflexivity but it is simultaneously thinned and divested of many of its formerly most valued traits. This essay explores the nature of reflexivity in late modernity especially as it relates to the modernist ideal of deliberative rationality (reflectivity) and attempts to show that the latter is still necessary to complement the former and, indeed, how it is still possibIe for it to do so. I also try to show in what ways both the fact and the ideal of deliberative rationality lives on in what Giddens calls “post-traditional society” and sociological thought.

In this essay, I argue that the deepest roots of Homo sapiens’ propensity towards excessive consumption lie in the emptiness of human awareness, itself possibly rooted in brain plasticity. I attempt to demonstrate how this insight emerged and appeared repeatedly throughout the history of philosophy and religious thought and how industrialized capitalism and consumer culture led to the current domination and envelopment of our lives by the “commodity canopy.” In the final section of the paper, I envision one way that contemporary humanity might use the history of insights about empty, restless awareness and brain plasticity to develop cultures that focus more on doing than having, more on events than on objects.

Responding to claims to the contrary, this essay shows how liberal education, the education of critical exposure, indoctrinates students into a style of belief and belief formation. It argues that a common liberal view about what constitutes freedom from indoctrination is precisely the form of indoctrination feared by many conservative communitarians. While I support the style and procedures of liberal education, I argue that we cannot excise all indoctrinating components from it by semantic, logical or epistemic analyses of what indoctrination or education means.

This paper sketches the history of unethical behavior of Homo sapiens to other forms of life on planet Earth. I ask, and sketch responses to, the question: How and why is it that we, the so-called “ethical animal,” have been the worst of all animals in relation to other life-forms on our planet? In response to the answers to this question, I claim that we know, and have known for a very long time, what it means to be morally good. But in light of the natural bases of our behavior, I wonder if it will ever be possible for us, as a species, to become so.

In this essay Charles Harvey offers a worried reflection on the range, extent, depth, affects, and effects of the perpetual assessment of the person in industrial nations in the contemporary world. Harvey begins his analysis by appealing to the work of Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Jean Baudrillard to provide an interpretive framework of our situation. He then focuses and concretizes these ideas through examples from his own life and, by extension, the readers. Finally, in light of Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the habitus, Harvey speculates on the implications for selfhood in the contemporary world. Throughout the essay, Harvey uses assessment procedures in higher and public education as exemplary instances of his thesis.

In this essay I use personal narrative concerning my father and myself to compare and contrast the Heideggerian/sociological idea of "being-alongside-others" in the public world with the more classical philosophical ideal of inter subjective contact between two selves. I try to show that "being-alongside-others " in the public world does not dissolve the issue of intersubjectivity. To do this, I use narrative vignettes and develop some ideas about the role that intimacy plays in developing the sense of self; in particular, I reflect on this process in terms of the relations of parents and children.

If Bob and Joe switched minds, but kept the same bodies, who would be Bob and who would be Joe? If time has no beginnning, how could it have reached now? Conundrums provides a basic, quick introduction to some key problems of philosophy by asking concise questions that evoke classical philosophical problems in a striking manner. It is written in a lively, engaging style and promotes critical thinking skills. This pocketbook is intended for introductory philosophy courses and may be used to generate class discussion or for essay assignments. Topics covered include mind and reality, self and others, God, space and time, and life and death

Kockelmans' contribution to the philosophy of science stems from ideas in this second chapter, developments and applications of ideas found in Husserl's phenomenology, Heidegger's existential analytic, and Gadamer's hermeneutics. Kockelmans makes the now familiar claim that, as ever placed within the world, human thinking starts from the world, presupposing it, its things, structures, values, and meanings; there is no radically detached cogito. To be done, natural science and its ontology, presupposes human being-in-the-world and the life-world ontology constituted through everyday human interpretive activity. These sciences, in turn, help us discover real things about that world of which our ordinary life-world philosophies may have never dreamt. Philosophy, and in particular philosophy of science, is essentially an ex post facto critical reflection on the lifeworld, its sciences, arts, and meaning-making activities in general. This is a role, Kockelmans argues, that cannot be abridged by the sciences, any more than the sciences can be supplanted by philosophical reflection. In some very nice lines reminiscent of Hegel, Kockelmans writes: "Experience wants to be reason without knowing this explicitly". "Philosophy, therefore, is the reflection of reason on itself". And, "as reason's consciousness of itself, philosophy becomes an element of man's total experience; afterwards it tries to withdraw from this experience in order to give direction in all realms of experience to the processes of rationalization which always are already on their way". Philosophy, then, in Kockelmans' view, resurrects, restores, refines, and maintains the meaning of human endeavor and consequence; further, it can thereby, within limits, articulate future possibilities for these endeavors.

I argue that hopes and claims about the liberating power of liberal education are typically exaggerated, naive and wrong. Reflecting upon and borrowing terms from Jim Shelton's essay on "The Subversive Nature of Liberal Education," I use the work of Ivan Illich, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron to argue that social education—training in efficient and productive consumeristic life—absorbs, muffles and domesticates any radical content liberal arts education may manage to provide. As with virtually all education, liberal education conserves the society from which it emerges.

This essay attempts to understand the search for authenticity in terms of the breakdown of authority in the modern world. The sense of autonomy, I argue, emerges from the need to choose the authorities one will accept. The ever-increasing difficulty of choosing from among authorities is internalized and is experienced as a difficulty of choosing, or “finding” oneself. The shattered authorities on the outside become a fragmented self on the inside. The search for the authentic self, then, is the search for an authority on the inside that has been broken and lost on the outside. The prospects for achieving such selfhood are criticially evaluated.