[MD] Individual v Collective

[Michael Hamilton]

Ian, Arlo,

Sorry, looks like I went off on one, without relating it back to your questions.

Ian wrote:
> > languages still used "I", "me" "we" "they" "it" concepts before [Descartes]
> > didn't they ?

Yes. You can refer to "I" without necessarily feeling that this "I" is
alienated from nature and society. For instance, in the Middle Ages,
almost everyone believed in all sorts of occult ties between their "I"
and the planets, and between the four elements of nature and the four
'humours' of the body. The planets, the elements and the humours were
not thought of as 'dead' objects, but more as spiritual entities that
influenced or even controlled people's moods and actions.
Self-awareness, the sense of individuality (which I am arguing is
related to the emergence of 'intellect') sees moods and actions as
coming from from one's own individual character, rather than from
nature.

> Arlo wrote:
> > Are you suggesting that people did not have a sense of themselves as
> > "self-aware" before Descartes? Do you not think, for example, that (the
> > original Greek) Phaedrus saw himself as soley an ant in a colony?

You're absolutely right to doubt that Phaedrus saw himSelf as an ant
in a colony. But the Ancient Greeks believed in occult - or in this
case, mythological - influences in the same way as Medieval people did
- and probably to a greater extent. When a Greek said that a poet was
"inspired", he meant that the poet had been "breathed into" by a
divine being, e.g. a Muse. So the Greeks had a kind of self-awareness,
but they were not aware of the self as autonomous, or as a creator, or
as an agent of evolution. The Ancient Greek self and the Medieval self
were still, to a greater or lesser extent, puppets of the cosmos.

Now, I'm not arguing that the self really IS entirely autonomous and
creative, or that moods and actions are entirely produced by the self.
I wouldn't even argue that the self 'really exists' in any
metaphysical way. The individual self is something that's been slowly
constructed over the history of mankind, and in a way we're still all
Meat Puppets. I'm just arguing that the Cartesian, alienated self -
the self with an extreme sense of individuality - was the one which
emerged at around the same time as 'intellect'. I'm also arguing that
alienation isn't a wholly bad thing.

Regards,
Mike