This volume presents a theoretical defense of the potential of ordinary individuals to construct values and through them to become self-empowering, responsible participants in a democratic community. Rather than conceiving of power as domination, the author identifies true power as self-empowerment, a notion based on self-construction. He proposes the vision of an authentically free self filled with a compassion that is a composite of reason and feeling. Such a composite self does not consciously manipulate language, truth, and desire to dominate and subordinate other individuals, but uses them to construct values and norms that can enrich others. To support his argument the author draws on both classical and contemporary philosophers, as well as on literary sources.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“The book's project of exploring the philosophical possibility of social critique and moral progress is admirable. Though the conditions under which people become critical, autonomous thinkers remain to be understood fully, we would do well to start here.”–New Political Science
“Teodros Kiros' seminal study of Habermas, Foucault, Borges, Dostoyevsky, and Thomas Mann is a pleasure to read. Kiros makes theory into an erotic catharsis that informs our everyday sensibility with a reasoned critique of power and domination. His rationality of the heart provides a cathexis among specialized disciplines that sublates many of their best insights, thereby creating a critical theory that is simultaneously appropriation and transcendence.”–George Katsiaficas Professor, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston, Massachusetts Author of the Subversion of Politics
“This wide-ranging book, intelligent and clear, challenges both the mind and the heart.”–Stephen Eric Bronner Professor of Political Science and Comparative Literature Rutgers University
“Self-Construction and the Formation of Human Values: Truth, Language, and Desire develops a political theory that is rooted fundamentally in an admirable ethical concern. Dr. Kiros analyzes the relations between self-empowerment and domination. Like his earlier work, this book displays a substantial philosophical intelligence, shaped both by a wide inter-disciplinary reading and by a deep humanitarian concern.”–K. Anthony Appiah Professor of Afro-American Studies and Philosophy Harvard University
“Kiros' Self-Construction and the Formation of Human Values provides a healthy antidote to postmodern deconstructions of the self and subjectivity, as well as all forms of cultural pessimism and those theories that merely stress domination at the expense of human emancipation and self-development. Kiros, by contrast, provides a philosophically original and strong defense of the construction of human values and selfhood guided by values of emancipation and self-development. He also nicely balances the personal and the political, and the projects of individual and social emancipation and development.”–Douglas Kellner George Kellner Chair in the Philosophy of Education University of California, Los Angeles
“Teodros Kiros' seminal study of Habermas, Foucault, Borges, Dostoyevsky, and Thomas Mann is a pleasure to read. Kiros makes theory into an erotic catharsis that informs our everyday sensibility with a reasoned critique of power and domination. His rationality of the heart provides a cathexis among specialized disciplines that sublates many of their best insights, thereby creating a critical theory that is simultaneously appropriation and transcendence.”–
“This wide-ranging book, intelligent and clear, challenges both the mind and the heart.”–
“Self-Construction and the Formation of Human Values: Truth, Language, and Desire develops a political theory that is rooted fundamentally in an admirable ethical concern. Dr. Kiros analyzes the relations between self-empowerment and domination. Like his earlier work, this book displays a substantial philosophical intelligence, shaped both by a wide inter-disciplinary reading and by a deep humanitarian concern.”–
“Kiros' Self-Construction and the Formation of Human Values provides a healthy antidote to postmodern deconstructions of the self and subjectivity, as well as all forms of cultural pessimism and those theories that merely stress domination at the expense of human emancipation and self-development. Kiros, by contrast, provides a philosophically original and strong defense of the construction of human values and selfhood guided by values of emancipation and self-development. He also nicely balances the personal and the political, and the projects of individual and social emancipation and development.”–
About the Author
TEODROS KIROS is Master Lecturer in Philosophy at Suffolk University and Associate-in-Residence in the Department of Afro-American Studies, Harvard University. He is the author of Toward the Construction of a Theory of Political Action: Antonio Gramsci (1985), Moral Philosophy and Development: The Human Condition in Africa (1992), and numerous journal articles. He is an editor of New Political Science and co-editor of The Promise of Multiculturalism (1998).
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Kiros' Moral Struggle,
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This review is from: Self-Construction and the Formation of Human Values: Truth, Language, and Desire (Paperback)
Above all, this is an expose on the non-dominating power of individuals to build their own character, free of the domineering outside interference of the authoritarians. Dr. Kiros lays out the how of this proposition, as well as the reason it must be undertaken individually.
Intuition, the knowledge of the heart or instinct, feeds desire. Desire is a tool to motivate us along the path to moral character. Proponents of intuition, as equal to or primary over reason, will enjoy this book. Proponents of the individual moral struggle, as opposed to moralist authoritarian domination, will love this book.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Seminal,
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This review is from: Self-Construction and the Formation of Human Values: Truth, Language, and Desire (Contributions in Philosophy) (Hardcover)
The book won the 1999 Michael Harrington outstanding book award
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
Long before Foucault, it was Nietzsche who, with a disarming honesty and astonishing consistency, attributed the very origin of language-the language of human speech-to the ubiquitous concept of power. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
morally evil person, reflective presence, alien hope, existential seriousness, constructing values, desiring beings, wish content, underground man, hegemonic ideas, sexed subjects, novel values, forgotten past, bad desires, inner reason, exceedingly difficult task, pragmatic conception Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Michel Foucault, Chuang Tzu, Hannah Arendt, Seyla Benhabib, Teodros Kiros, John Dewey, Philosophical Discourses, Barry Smart, Michael Kelly, Tonio Kroger, Critical Assessments, Harvard University Press, Richard Rorty, Vintage Books, Nichomachean Ethics, Nicomachean Ethics, Political Liberalism, Situating the Self, Alan Bloom, Jana Sawicki, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, Princeton University Press New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Long before Foucault, it was Nietzsche who, with a disarming honesty and astonishing consistency, attributed the very origin of language-the language of human speech-to the ubiquitous concept of power. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
morally evil person, reflective presence, alien hope, existential seriousness, constructing values, desiring beings, wish content, underground man, hegemonic ideas, sexed subjects, novel values, forgotten past, bad desires, inner reason, exceedingly difficult task, pragmatic conception Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
New York, Michel Foucault, Chuang Tzu, Hannah Arendt, Seyla Benhabib, Teodros Kiros, John Dewey, Philosophical Discourses, Barry Smart, Michael Kelly, Tonio Kroger, Critical Assessments, Harvard University Press, Richard Rorty, Vintage Books, Nichomachean Ethics, Nicomachean Ethics, Political Liberalism, Situating the Self, Alan Bloom, Jana Sawicki, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, Princeton University Press New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 75
books:
See all 75 books this book cites
5
books
cite this book:
- Michel Foucault (Key Sociologists) by Barry Smart on 10 pages
- Michel Foucault I and II: Critical Assessments Complete Set (Critical Assessments of Leading Sociologists) by Barry Smart on 6 pages
- Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics by Seyla Benhabib on 6 pages
- Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Norton Library) by Sigmund Freud on 5 pages
- The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford World's Classics) by Aristotle on 5 pages
See all 75 books this book cites
- Buddhist Epistemology: (Contributions in Philosophy) by S. R. Bhatt in Front Matter
- Partial Reason: Critical and Constructive Transformations of Ethics and Epistemology (Contributions in Philosophy) by Sally E. Talbot in Front Matter
- Freedom Over Servitude: Montaigne, LaBoetie, & Voluntary Servitude by David L. Schaefer in Front Matter
- Liberty: Its Meaning and Scope (Contributions in Philosophy) by Mordecai Roshwald in Front Matter
- The Transient and the Absolute: An Interpretation of the Human Condition and of Human Endeavor (Contributions in Philosophy) by Mordecai Roshwald in Front Matter
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