Universal Truth and Psychology Issues - Essay Example

Universal Truth and Psychology of Universal Truth and Psychology The philosophy of the self is a very important aspect of psychology. To understand this philosophy better, it is important that one traces the history of this idea. This research may be a very Eurocentric one; however, much of the psychology today is more or less centered on the discourse that has as their foundation the thought and theories of the mind as put forward by Plato, Aristotle and others in later ages such as Rene Descartes. This paper shall look at the history of this discourse and attempt to trace the individuality that is ascribed to human beings by Western philosophical thought and the discourses of humanism that have shaped the very notions of the self and the other. One can also read into these the notions of the self and the other that came into being as a result of the humanist movements of the Renaissance. The paper shall also look at the distinction between the mind and the body, as was propounded by Rene Descartes. These developments shall be looked into during the course of this paper. The developments that happened in this area have been significant in the development of later theories of the self and the unconscious, especially as they were articulated by the psychoanalysts like Sigmund Freud. Plato’s concept of the self revolved around the notion of the division of the self into the rational, the spirit and the appetitive (Campbell, n.d.). This was accompanied by a privileging of the spirit. According to Plato, there was the level of the idea and the level of the material that needed to be addressed while analyzing the self and its relation to the rest of the cosmos. Everything on the earth had an equivalent in the realm of the idea. For instance, a table on the earth has an equivalent at the level of the idea. The table on earth was a mere copy of the one in the realm of the idea or the spirit and could and would never approach that one in terms of perfection. The self was thus determined in terms of its quality depending on the amount that it had invested in the spiritual aspect of the soul or the self. There is, thus, a privileging of the spirited over the rational whereas the rational is privileged over the appetitive. This division has great relevance for the understanding of the human psyche as it effects a difference in each and every human being on the basis of their dependence on the different aspects of the self. Therefore, it helps one understand that there are no fixed truths that can serve to explain the behavior of every person on the planet. The framework thus believes in the difference between different individuals. This is true even in the case of Aristotle. Aristotle understands the human self in relation to the other. In this sense, it is the other that shapes the sensibilities of the self. There is, however, the fact that the other shapes the self. There is, hence, in this case, an emphasis on the self as the point of reference (Owens, 1988). The world is a collection of such selves that shape the sensibility of others selves. There is, thus, the result of difference that is produced through such a system of thought. Since every self is produced through an external object or a collection of external objects, it would stand to reason that no two selves would be produced through the same configuration of external objects. This is because one person would not influence himself as he would others. There is a constant flux in the self in such a framework of thought, and this leads to the idea of changing selves. There are, thus, different people who may be similar to others but would not be the exact replicas. There are similarities in the works of Aristotle and Plato as Aristotle was the latter’s student. There are also divergences between the thought of the two as can be seen from the above analysis. The two philosophers are a part of a tradition of thought that was then taken forward by others. However, with the breakup and decline of the Greek civilization, there was a break in this tradition, and it was only later, with the emergence of Roger Bacon, that this tradition was revived in the Western world. There was a fusion of thought from the East as well in the works of Bacon. Islam is a prominent influence, and it may be worthwhile to take a look at certain ideas of the East that influenced the Western tradition. The Eastern conception of individual salvation achieved through the force of the individual’s own efforts to connect with the figure of God had a lot to do with the introduction of humanist thoughts. Such thought was often propagated through trade and invaders. The culmination of many of these traditions was the Renaissance that flowered through the intermixing of many strands of thought leading to a questioning of many traditions of the West that had become imprinted on the people. This led to an awakening that led to more thought. Religious traditions had led to a subsumption of the self into the mass. Humanistic thought, however, brought back the emphasis on the individuality of man and made it clear that the status of man on the earth is what needs to matter in an analysis of the mind and the self. It is in this context that one needs to look at a philosopher like Rene Descartes. Descartes talks about the individual man and his own definition of himself. He invested the identity of man in his own thought and proclaimed that man was himself or herself a result of the unique nature of his or her thought. This invests each man and woman with difference in relation to each other, thereby emphasizing the individuality of each person in a society. There is no attempt within this theory to make each person a part of an overarching framework. There is an understanding of the difference in different people in terms of the difference of their processes of thought. There is thus an acceptance of different people in terms of the external objects and their own idiosyncrasies that lead them to thought. Descartes, thus, continues in a tradition of intellectual thought while at the same time introducing changes to it that enabled a better understanding of the human psyche. Descartes also talks of a difference between the body and the mind, a dichotomy that he was unable to completely analyze and theorize upon. It was later taken up by many other theorists to work out theories for an understanding of the human mind. Much of the above analysis is regarding the philosophies of Western philosophical thought. They do, however, have a great impact on the understanding of the human mind. Many of these theories were geared towards affecting an understanding of an individual’s relation with his or her own society, that is, to understand his or her own position in the society and the earth. There is thus a significance that is given to the individual that makes it clear that human beings in general cannot be classified into any single category or frame of thought that would attribute sameness to different people. This system of thought can be seen even in modern theories of psychology where treatment of individuals is recommended. Universal truths are thus not a part of psychology as the mental makeup of each individual is different. References Campbell, S. R. (n.d.). Plato’s Cognitive Psychology. Theory and Practice in Plato’s Psychology of Mathematics Education. Retrieved 8 Nov. 2012, from: http://people.exeter.ac.uk/PErnest/pome18/s_campbell_theory_and_practice_in_plato.htm Owens, J. (1988). The Self in Aristotle. The Review of Metaphysics 41: 4. Retrieved 8 Nov. 2012, from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20128658 Read More