Categories
- Art (356)
- Other (3,632)
- Philosophy (2,814)
- Psychology (4,018)
- Society (1,010)
Recent Questions
- Why did everyone start to hate the Russians if the U.S. did the same thing in Afghanistan, Iraq?
- What needs to be corrected in the management of Russia first?
- Why did Blaise Pascal become a religious man at the end of his life?
- How do I know if a guy likes you?
- When they say "one generation", how many do they mean?
In the European philosophical tradition, the problem of “self-determination”, if we use this word as a concept with its own history and its historical co-formulated meaning, was first raised in classical German philosophy together with the problem of freedom. Man is a free being; this means that human actions are never just a reaction to changes in the external environment. A person can do something that is not caused by immediate circumstances. For example, to create something new (create), or “just” resist these circumstances. Therefore, “freedom” is possible.
So, “self-determination” can be defined as the ability to manage yourself, the choice between different possibilities. Obviously, without the idea of human freedom, the concept of “self-determination” is not necessary. If there is no freedom, there is nothing to “dispose” of in self-determination.
But the other value is more important. What to do with your own life? If, for example, you imagine your life as a whole that can be completed and made beautiful, that is, as a creative work (this idea of life was common among German Romantics, and they were influenced by Immanuel Kant and other philosophers of their time) – then how exactly do you need to live, how to “handle your life” in order to get such a work? How to manage your life “as a whole”. how to build it in order to achieve some goals not “in ” life”, but “about” life? For example, “getting rich” is a goal “in” life, and you can ask: why get rich, what meaning will this wealth have on the scale of your entire life? Thinking about it and making decisions about it is called “self-determination.”
This is not necessarily a “deep philosophy”, although a number of well-known philosophical works are written in the process of self-determination of their authors. As an example, we can recall the “Experiments” of Michel Montaigne (one of the most important examples and samples of the text on life self-determination), or “Treatise on the Improvement of Reason” by Benedict Spinoza.