In philosophy, a subject is a being which has subjective experiences or a relationship with another entity (or "object"). Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language For other uses of Object see Object. In Philosophy, an object is a thing an Entity, or a Being. A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed. This concept is especially important in Continental philosophy, where 'the Subject' is a central term in debates over human autonomy and the nature of the self. Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe In this tradition of thought, debates over the nature of the Subject play a role comparable to debates over personhood within Anglo-American analytical philosophy. The term person is used in Common sense to mean an individual Human being. Analytic philosophy (sometimes analytical philosophy) is a generic term for a style of Philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century
In critical theory and psychology, subjectivity is also the actions or discourses that produce individuals or 'I'; the 'I' is the subject -- the observer; I/eye -- the bearer of the gaze. In the Humanities and Social sciences, critical theory is the examination and critique of Society and Literature, drawing from knowledge across Psychology (from Greek grc ψῡχή psȳkhē, "breath life soul" and grc -λογία -logia) is an Academic and
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The Subject in German Idealism
Subject as a key-term in thinking about human consciousness began its career with the German Idealists, in response to David Hume's radical skepticism. Consciousness has been defined loosely as a constellation of attributes of Mind such as Subjectivity, Self-awareness, Sentience, and the German idealism was a philosophical movement in Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries David Hume (26 April 1711 25 August 1776 Scottish Philosopher, Economist, and Historian is an important figure in Western philosophy In ordinary usage skepticism or scepticism ( Greek 'σκέπτομαι' skeptomai, to look about to consider see also spelling differences The idealists' starting point was Hume's conclusion that there is nothing to the self over and above a big, fleeting bundle of perceptions. The next step was to ask how this undifferentiated bundle comes to be experienced as a unity - as a single subject. Hume had offered the following proposal:
- ". . . the imagination must by long custom acquire the same method of thinking, and run along the parts of space and time in conceiving its objects.
Kant, Hegel and their successors sought to flesh out the process by which the subject is constituted out of the flow of sense impressions. Hegel, for example, stated in his Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit that a subject is constituted by "the process of reflectively mediating itself with itself. Phänomenologie des Geistes ( 1807) is one of GWF Hegel 's most important philosophical works "
Hegel begins his definition of the subject at a standpoint derived from Aristotelian physics: "the unmoved which is also self-moving" (Preface, pgph. Aristotelianism is a tradition of Philosophy that takes its defining inspiration from the work of Aristotle. 22). That is, what is not moved by an outside force, but which propels itself, has a prima facie case for subjectivity. Hegel's next step, however, is to identify this power to move, this unrest that is the subject, as pure negativity. Subjective self-motion, for Hegel, comes not from any pure or simple kernel of authentic individuality, but rather, it is
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- ". . . the bifurcation of the simple; it is the doubling which sets up opposition, and then again the negation of this indifferent diversity and of its anti-thesis" (Preface, pgph. 18).
The Hegelian subject's modus operandi is therefore cutting, splitting and introducing distinctions by injecting negation into the flow of sense-perceptions. Subjectivity is thus a kind of structural effect - what happens when Nature is diffused, refracted around a field of negativity and the "unity of the subject" for Hegel, is in fact a second-order effect, a "negation of negation". The subject experiences itself as a unity only by purposively negating the very diversity it itself had produced. The Hegelian subject may therefore be characterized either as "self-restoring sameness" or else as "reflection in otherness within itself" (ibid. )
Postmodern Subjects
The thinking of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud provided a point of departure for questioning the notion of a unitary, autonomous Subject, which for many thinkers in the Continental tradition is seen as the foundation of the liberal theory of the social contract. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15 1844 August 25 1900 ( was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist Sigmund Freud (ˈziːkmʊnt ˈfʁɔʏt born Sigismund Shlomo Freud (May 6 1856 &ndash September 23 1939 was an Austrian Psychiatrist who founded Liberalism is a broad array of related ideas and theories of Government that consider individual Liberty to be the most important political goal Social contract describes a broad class of republican theories whose subjects are implied agreements by which people form Nations and maintain a Social order These thinkers opened up the way for the deconstruction of the subject as a core-concept of metaphysics. Deconstruction is a term used in Philosophy, Literary criticism, and the Social sciences, popularised through its usage by Jacques Derrida in Metaphysics is the branch of Philosophy investigating principles of reality transcending those of any particular science
Nietzsche critiqued the groundworks of subjectivity, stating that the subject was a "grammatical fiction"; "there is no doer behind the doing". Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (October 15 1844 August 25 1900 ( was a nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist The term critique derives from the Greek term kritik, meaning "disgusting judgment" usually of the value of something
Sigmund Freud's explorations of the unconscious mind added up to a wholesale indictment of Enlightenment notions of subjectivity. Many observers throughout history have argued that there are influences on Consciousness from other parts of the Mind. The Age of Enlightenment or The Enlightenment is a term used to describe a phase in Western philosophy and cultural life centered upon the eighteenth century
Among the most radical re-thinkers of human self-consciousness was Heidegger, whose concept of Dasein or "Being-there" displaces traditional notions of the personal subject altogether. Martin Heidegger ( September 26, 1889 &ndash May 26, 1976) (ˈmaɐ̯tiːn ˈhaɪ̯dɛgɐ was an influential German philosopher Heideggerian terminology Dasein is a German word famously used by Martin Heidegger in his Magnum opus Being
Jacques Lacan, inspired by Heidegger and Saussure, built on Freud's psychoanalytic model of the subject, in which the "split subject" is constituted by a double bind: alienated from jouissance when he or she leaves the Real, enters into the Imaginary (during the mirror stage), and separates from the Other when he or she comes into the realm of language and difference in the Symbolic or the Name of the Father. Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French ʒak lakɑ̃ ( April 13, 1901 &ndash September 9, 1981) was a French Psychoanalyst Martin Heidegger ( September 26, 1889 &ndash May 26, 1976) (ˈmaɐ̯tiːn ˈhaɪ̯dɛgɐ was an influential German philosopher Ferdinand de Saussure (fɛʁdinɑ̃ də soˈsyːʁ ( November 26, 1857 – February 22, 1913) was a Swiss linguist A double bind is a dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group receives two or more conflicting messages and one message denies The French word jouissance means enjoyment particularly in an over-the-top or sexual (i The Real refers to that which is authentic the unchangeable truth in reference both to Being /the Self and the external dimension of experience also referred to as The Mirror stage was the subject of Jacques Lacan 's first official contribution to Psychoanalytic theory (Fourteenth International Psychoanalytical Congress at The Other or constitutive other (also referred to as othering) is a key concept in Continental philosophy, opposed to the Same The Symbolic order is a part of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. The Name-of-the-Father ( French Nom du père) is a concept that Jacques Lacan fully developed starting in his Seminar The Psychoses (1955-1956
Thinkers such as Althusser, Foucault or Bourdieu theorize the subject as a social construction. Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation altuˡseʁ ( October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. Michel Foucault ( (15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984 was a French philosopher, Historian, Intellectual, Critic and Sociologist. Pierre Bourdieu ( August 1, 1930 – January 23, 2002) was an acclaimed French Sociologist and writer known for his A social construction or social construct is any phenomenon "invented" or "constructed" by participants in a particular Culture or Society According to Althusser, the "subject" is an ideological construction (more exactly, constructed by the "Ideological State Apparatuses"). An ideology is a set of beliefs aims and Ideas especially in politics Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation altuˡseʁ ( October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher.
It is constituted through the process of interpellation; according to Foucault, it is the "effect" of power and "disciplines" (See Discipline and Punish: construction of the subject as student, soldier, "criminal", etc. Interpellation is a concept first coined by Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser to describe the process by which ideology addresses the (abstract pre-ideological Power is a measure of a person's ability to control the environment around them including the behavior of other people Disciplinary institutions ( French) is a Concept proposed by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1975 Discipline and Punish The Birth of the Prison is a book written by the philosopher Michel Foucault. ).
Subjectivity in analytic philosophy
In contemporary analytic philosophy, the issue of subject -- and more specifically the "point of view" of the subject, or "subjectivity" -- has received attention as one of the major intractable problems in philosophy of mind (another intractable issue being the mind-body problem). Analytic philosophy (sometimes analytical philosophy) is a generic term for a style of Philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century Computational complexity theory, as a branch of the Theory of computation in Computer science, investigates the problems related to the amounts of resources Philosophy of mind is the branch of Philosophy that studies the nature of the Mind, Mental events Mental functions mental properties Philosophy of mind is the branch of Philosophy that studies the nature of the Mind, Mental events Mental functions mental properties In the essay What is it like to be a bat?, Thomas Nagel famously argued that explaining subjective experience -- the "what it is like" to be something -- is currently beyond the reach of scientific inquiry, because scientific understanding by definition requires an objective perspective, which, according to Nagel, is diametrically opposed to the subjective first-person point of view. Thomas Nagel (born July 4 1937 is an American Philosopher, currently University Professor and Professor of Philosophy and Law These additional features of subjective experience are often referred to as qualia (see Frank Cameron Jackson and Mary's room). " Qualia " (ˈkwɑːliə is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us the ways things seem to us" Frank Cameron Jackson (born 1943 is an Australian philosopher currently Distinguished Professor and former Director Mary's room (also known as Mary the super-scientist) is a philosophical Thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal
See also
- Louis Althusser's conception of Ideological State Apparatuses (I. Louis Pierre Althusser (Pronunciation altuˡseʁ ( October 16, 1918 – October 22, 1990) was a Marxist philosopher. S. A. ) and interpellation of the subject
- Cognitive linguistics
- Ethics
- Donald Davidson's swamp man thought experiment (in "Knowing One Own's Mind", 1987 paper)
- Michel Foucault's critique of the subject and the oxymoron "Historical subject"
- List of ethics topics
- Meta-ethics
- Moral relativism
- Neo-Kantianism
- Philosophy
- Subjective experience
- Subject-object problem
- Personhood theory
Philosophers
Endnotes
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