Psychoanalysis, Consciousness, and Human Nature: Key Concepts
Freud and Psychoanalysis
The human mind is a complex structure consisting of unconscious, preconscious, and conscious elements. The unconscious elements include various types of drives, primarily life and death drives, as well as repressed desires and memories that are unacceptable to the superego. Ego defense mechanisms are also crucial in this framework.
Criticism of Bergson
Bergson argues that our consciousness operates as a whole, functioning as a unit, and the individual is a unity. Therefore, when we make a decision, it is with full consciousness, with the person fully engaged in the making of that decision.
Sartre: Awareness and Consciousness
What characterizes consciousness, and defines it, is intentionality. Intentional consciousness means that consciousness is always oriented towards something. The content directs the consciousness to have consciousness. Consciousness arises in relation to a phenomenon.
Conscience and Freedom
Within this paradox of consciousness lies the freedom of man. Determinism does not exist in the realm of consciousness.
Essence and Existence in Humans
The fact that man is a free being, and that consciousness itself is nothing, leads to another consequence: man is forced to choose a project to give his life meaning, to be himself.
Socioeconomic Determinism
Socioeconomic determinism holds that the individual is a product of the society in which they live. Human personality is, therefore, shaped by that society.
Critical Socioeconomic Determinism
This perspective views society as a product of the work of men. Instead of economic determinism, there should be talk about the interaction between humans and the socioeconomic system.
Logico-Symbolic Language
Logico-symbolic language allows us to think using representations of things instead of the things themselves. It enables us to create a potentially infinite number of statements. Human existence is housed in a three-level reality:
- A physical reality, cosmic in nature.
- A living body, animal in nature. The living body is the animal aspect of the self.
- A social and cultural reality.
A person is linked to the self, to that which essentially remains after the changes within the man.
Roman Law
In Roman law, a person is the legal subject, the entity about which rights and duties are vested.
Boethius
Boethius defines a person as an individual substance of rational nature.
Practical Rationality
Practical rationality involves projects aimed at developing human life. These projects can be designed to guide the life of the individual, giving rise to ethics, or they may be intended to guide the life of the community, giving rise to political philosophy. Happiness, dignity, excellence or perfection, and justice are key considerations, leading to ethics of happiness, dignity, excellence, and justice.
Aristotle and Happiness
According to Aristotle, the highest form of happiness for humans is achieved through rational knowledge. Happiness, therefore, depends on knowledge. The use of reason is responsible for directing our behavior in relation to desires and passions; Aristotle called this prudence.
Virtue
Virtue is a habit of a positive nature that makes us better, as opposed to vice. These virtues are of two types:
- Purely intellectual virtues: these consist in the habit of using the intellect, reason.
- Moral virtues: these guide the passions, desires, and emotions through prudence, maintaining them in the middle path. For each type of passion, there is a corresponding virtue. The value would be the mean between cowardice and recklessness.
Epicurus and Happiness
Epicurus agrees with Aristotle that the ultimate end of man is happiness. For Epicurus, happiness means, above all, enjoyment.
Types of Pleasures
The pleasure to be found is in a state where there is no pain. Kinetic pleasure is a variation of our state that leads us to eliminate pain or discomfort. Static pleasure is called full body aponia, which means the absence of pain or physical discomfort. Static pleasure of the mind is called ataraxia, which means the total absence of anxiety and disturbance.