Loving

In search of our highest capacities, cognitive scientists aim to explain things like mathematics, language, and planning (and while explaining them, they often imagine computers at work). But are these really our most sophisticated forms of knowing? In this paper, I point to a different pinnacle of cognition. Our most sophisticated human knowing, I think, lies in how we engage with each other, in our relating. Cognitive science and philosophy of mind have largely ignored the ways of knowing at play here. At the same time, the emphasis on discrete, rational knowing to the detriment of engaged, human knowing pervades societal practices and institutions, often with harmful effects on people and their relations. There are many reasons why we need a new, engaged-or even engaging-epistemology of human knowing. The enactive theory of participatory sense-making takes steps towards this, but it needs deepening. Kym Maclaren's (2002) idea of letting be invites such a deepening. Characterizing knowing as a relationship of letting be provides a nuanced way to deal with the tensions between the knower's being and the being of the known, as they meet in the process of knowing-and-being-known. This meeting of knower and known is not easy to understand. However, there is a mode of relating in which we know it well, and that is: in loving relationships. I propose to look at human knowing through the lens of loving. We then see that both knowing and loving are existential, dialectic ways in which concrete and particular beings engage with each other.

ABSTRACT Egoism, as a view having a deep effect on the Western thought in its intellectual, economical, moral and political traditions, has basically two distinctive claims: Moral egoism as a normative claim and natural/psychological egoism as a descriptive claim. The former is mostly justified on the latter. Hartshorne argues, however, that the latter is also constructed on the assumption that there is an absolute personal identity for human self. He thinks that if this deeper assumption is true, then its inevitable result is already egoism at the outset. But if it is not true, then natural egoism supported by it will be necessarily wrong. This paper first deals with his evidences against the assumption of absolute personal identity and second indicates that his notion of non-substantialist self, which requires a neoclassic metaphysics, has no trouble overcoming the logical obstacle against the idea of loving other as one's self.
ÖZET Batı düşüncesinin entelektüel, ekonomik, ahlaki ve politik geleneğinde derin etkilere sahip bir görüş olarak egoizm genelde iki temel iddiaya sahiptir: Normatif bir iddia olarak ahlaki egoizm ve betimleyici bir iddia olarak doğal egoizm. Normatif iddia çoğu zaman betimleyici iddiaya dayanarak haklı çıkarılmaktadır. Fakat Hartshorne'a göre doğal egoizm de insani benin mahiyetine ilişkin mutlak bir kişisel özdeşlik varsayımı üzerine kurulmuştur. Eğer bu varsayım doğru ise onun kaçınılmaz sonucu zaten egoizmdir; fakat yanlış ise desteklediği doğal egoizmin de yanlış olması gerekir. Bu bildiride Hartshorne'un mutlak kişisel özdeşlik varsayımı aleyhine ortaya koyduğu deliller üzerinde durulmuş ve sonuç olarak onun neoklasik metafiziğinin cevherci olmayan ben anlayışının kişinin bir başkasını kendisi gibi sevmesi önündeki mantıki engeli ortadan kaldırabilecek mahiyette olduğuna işaret edilmiştir.

According to Giroux (2011) we can, through critical pedagogy, engage the world as “an object of critical analysis” and as a place of “hopeful transformation” (p. 14). Giroux’s (2011) approach requires building and maintaining spaces where “the complexity of knowledge, culture, values and social issues can be explored in open and critical dialogue” (p. 124). Through these spaces, he argues, we are able to work to understand and disrupt oppressive power dynamics kept in place by systems of domination and control and move toward struggling for a more socially just world (Giroux, 2011, p. 7). bell hooks’ (2010) understanding that “love matters and that it brings strength and power (pp. 166-167) can contribute to our understanding of these spaces. hooks (2000) contends that “great social movements for freedom and justice” promote “a love ethic”, one in which we “utilize all the dimensions of love-care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge-in our everyday lives” (p. 9...

According to Giroux (2011) we can, through critical pedagogy, engage the world as “an object of critical analysis” and as a place of “hopeful transformation” (p. 14). Giroux’s (2011) approach requires building and maintaining spaces where “the complexity of knowledge, culture, values and social issues can be explored in open and critical dialogue” (p. 124). Through these spaces, he argues, we are able to work to understand and disrupt oppressive power dynamics kept in place by systems of domination and control and move toward struggling for a more socially just world (Giroux, 2011, p. 7). bell hooks’ (2010) understanding that “love matters and that it brings strength and power (pp. 166-167) can contribute to our understanding of these spaces. hooks (2000) contends that “great social movements for freedom and justice” promote “a love ethic”, one in which we “utilize all the dimensions of love-care, commitment, trust, responsibility, respect, and knowledge-in our everyday lives” (p. 94). Ascribing to the critical pedagogical view that education should be a “critical practice” (Freire, 2001, p. 30) in which those involved “make ourselves different tomorrow from what we are today” (Shapiro, 2012, p. 50), “transform the world we live in” (hooks, 2010, p. 188) and employ an understanding of the power and ethic of love as integral to “working for a collective good” (hooks, 2000, p. 214), I argue that we should engage critical pedagogy as living-loving praxis in all the places of lives, including the personal and romantic.

Wat gebeurt er allemaal in relaties?

We raken gefrustreerd wanneer een vriend niet terugbelt. We missen een geliefde die ver weg is. We komen elkaar tegen op straat. We vrijen. We voelen ons eenzaam. Soms terwijl we vrijen.

We voelen ons diep met iemand verbonden. We verwachten veel. We doen ons best om niet te veel te verwachten. Soms lukt dat, en dan kunnen we elkaar echt ontmoeten.

Dit boek gaat over de spanningen die in elke relatie aanwezig zijn. In romantische relaties, maar ook in andere. Je verhoudt je tot de anderen en tot jezelf. Maar je verhoudt je ook tot de verhouding zelf.

Dat is een nieuw idee in de cognitiewetenschappen. Daar gaat het veel vaker over kennen, dan over liefhebben. Maar wat als kennen en liefhebben eigenlijk heel dicht bij elkaar zouden liggen?

In dit boek breekt cognitiefilosoof Hanne De Jaegher een lans om kennen en liefhebben samen te bestuderen. Want allebei zijn het geëngageerde relaties vol spanningen. Zo schrijft de auteur een wonderlijk nieuw hoofdstuk in de filosofie van de liefde.

Hanne De Jaegher is cognitiefilosoof. Ze deed onderzoek aan de universiteiten van Sussex en Heidelberg. Vandaag is ze Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow aan de Universiteit van het Baskenland (San Sebastian).