The meaning of life between the self and the normative process of self-realisation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12497701 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Giovanna Caruso (Institute of Philosophy, Campus Landau Universität Koblenz-Landau Bürgerstrasse 23 Landau , Reihnland-Pfalz 76829 Germany, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 489-496 |
| Publication date | 2019-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Human Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1210-3055 • E-ISSN: 1337-401X |
| Publisher | De Gruyter (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/humaff-2019-0044 |
| OpenAlex | W2979323004 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
Self-research becomes a starting point for the question about the human being in contemporary anthropological approaches. Accordingly, human life is not viewed anymore as the theoretical object of philosophical investigation, but as the concrete performative execution of the individual’s life. Following this existential paradigm, this paper shows, on the basis of Heidegger’s ‘analytic of Dasein’ and Angehrn’s ‘hermeneutic of the self,’ that the meaning of life can be identified with the process of self-realization much more than with any possible meaningful achievements, engagements or qualities. In fact, understanding human being as a self-interpreting being, Heidegger grasps human life based on the analysis of the ‘understanding,’ the ‘mineness’ and the ‘potentiality-to-Being’ as one’s own reflexive process of self-reference. Angehrn discloses this process as an endless self-understanding process, during which the self forms itself, and defines it as the process that characterizes human being. In this sense, the human being is ‘condemned to meaning.’ By grasping man as such a process, one fundamental feature is expressed: his constitutive unfathomability. For the task of becoming, the self comes from the self that has to become. This means that the self is constantly in the process of becoming self-existent and exists only as this process and remains unfathomable to man in his completeness. In this infinite process of self-realization, in this task of becoming oneself consists the meaning of life. And here, its normative-reflexive character arises. For the ‘must’ to become self has its origin in the self that has to become
Epistemology · Existentialism · Meaning (existential · Normative · Process (computing · Process philosophy · Realisation · Realization (probability · Reflexivity · Self · Self-realization · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Cybernetics and Technology in Society · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Mathematics · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
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