Ego-Alter Ego

German Poetic Realists drew on the Romantic motif of the Double in a manner consistent with the central dictum of Poetic Realism as articulated by its chief theorists, Julian Schmidt and Otto Ludwig. Schmidt and Ludwig argued that contemporary authors should, above all, strive for psychological and aesthetic totality in their narrative representations, turning away from the Romantic fantastic but also avoiding the fragmentary approach to the portrayal of everyday life that Ludwig found in early Naturalism. The 'poetic' presentation of reality adheres to quotidian life but strives to show it in all its many dimensions. While Romantic Doppelgänger are often preternatural figures, the Poetic Realists configure egos and their narrative Others ('alter egos,' who are also sometimes physical Doubles) to portray characters in their psychological comprehensiveness. After offering an overview of the Romantic Double motif and its connections to the theory of Poetic Realism, John Pizer analyzes the work of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Otto Ludwig, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Gottfried Keller, Theodor Storm, and Wilhelm Raabe

Happiness, deprivation and the alter ego

The paper focuses on satisfaction with income and proposes a utility model built on two value systems, the `Ego' system - described as one own income assessment relatively to one own past and future income - and the `Alter' system - described as one own income assessment relatively to a reference group. We show how the union of these two value systems and the use of relative deprivation measures can lead to a model able to accommodate a wide range of theories on income and happiness. The model is then tested using the Consortium of Household Panels for European Socio-economic Research (CHER), a collection of 19 panel surveys including over 1.2 m. individual observations. We find absolute income to sit at the intersection between the `Ego' and the `Alter' systems and to play the most prominent role in explaining satisfaction with income. Relative deprivation is also found to be important for understanding the income-happiness nexus while we find income expectations to be less relevant once we control for absolute income. Overall, the `Alter' system (the cross-section comparison with others) seems to be more relevant in valuing income than the `Ego' system (the longitudinal self-comparison of income).happiness, deprivation, inequality.

Contemporary challenges to dialogicality

In contrast to perspectives fragmenting individuals into elements and studying disengaged cognition, ‘neutral’ and ‘objective’ knowledge, the dialogical approach is holistic, focusing on interactions and interdependencies between the Self and Others (the Ego-Alter). It studies engaged action and experience, daily knowledge, and communication in ordinary life. Interactions involve learning about and acting upon objects. Thus from the Ego-Alter as an irreducible ethical and ontological unit we arrive at the Ego-Alter-Object as an irreducible unit of dialogical epistemology. In this article I discuss two challenges to dialogical epistemology. One concerns the different degrees of commitment within the Ego-Alter-Object relationship. The second challenge refers to the replacement of the epistemological triangle the Ego-Alter-Object of knowledge by the consumerist triangle the Ego-Alter-Thing of desire. I discuss the latter challenge with respect to contemporary bureaucratization of academic and education institutions

Social Networks and Charitable Giving: Trusting, Doing, Asking, and Alter Primacy

This study examines social networks and financial giving to charitable or religious causes. Conventional social capital measures of general social trust and size of social network are studied as predictors of charitable giving. To these traditional measures, we add an examination of particular network aspects of giving: ego giving in relation to network alters who give, solicitations to give by network ties, and ego soliciting alters to give. In addition, the study disaggregates alter effects by alter position. Findings indicate that, net of social trust, social network factors significantly predict likelihood of being a giver. In particular, findings are that egos are especially likely to be donors when their primary alter donates. Three configurations of ego–alter giving and solicitations are significant predictors of ego giving, indicating that ego–alter doing matters more than asking. Theoretical contributions for relational and prosocial studies are discussed, as are practical implications for fundraising professionals

Versions of the alter ego: A study of Joyce, Kushner, and Ellis

This thesis aims to illustrate the value of reading modern literary fiction through the theme of the alter ego. In this thesis, I demonstrate how the writer explores the various meanings of the alter ego in composing intensely imaginative works of fiction that negotiate the creative process in conscious terms. The thesis is indebted to the psychocriticism of Charles Maurron, which enables the domain of the alter ego to be examined in formal and aesthetic terms. In connecting a given work\u27s themes to the alter ego motif, this thesis evaluates the impact of the writer\u27s psychology on his work and pays scrupulous attention to the stylistic and structural choices that are enacted during various phases of composition. The alter ego-themed literary texts chosen for this thesis are James Joyce\u27s novel, Ulysses (with special emphasis on the climactic Ithaca episode), Tony Kushner\u27s two-part play, Angels in America, and Bret Easton Ellis\u27 novel, American Psycho

ЛЯЛЬКИ ЯК "ALTER-EGO" ЛЮДСЬКОЇ ЕКЗИСТЕНЦІЇ. (Dolls as alter-ego of human existence.)

Стаття присвячена філософському аналізу феномену ляльки, розкриваються відносини цього концепту з такими поняттями, як "час", "пам'ять", "екзистенція", "темпоральність". Продемонстровано схему експлікації феномену ляльки в таких вимірах: культовому, метафізичному, прагматичному. (This scientific article is devoted to philosophical analysis of doll phenomenon that presents alter-ego of human existence (life). This theme is reflected by such concepts as time, existence, alter-ego, memory temporality. The levels of explication of doll concept are presented in the article. Three modus are chosen: ritual (archaic), pragmatic (consumer) and metaphysical (reflective) ones. In the article specific characteristics of every modus are demonstrated. Every modus has its own specific characteristics: rituals one - its main elements are: mysticism; tensity of life; sacredness of things and surrounding world; observance of certain taboo ofprimitive society; pragmatic modus analyses the doll phenomenon through the state of object such as fear, temptation, redundancy and reveals the correlation between consciousness and physical world; metaphysical modus is ontological one: it is directed to analysis of human life relations through the categories of temporality, memory, time ( mental and physical); this modus analyses " this is life", that thanks to the doll phenomenon recreates the truth of human utmost facticity ( existence.

Alter Ego

Illustration by Mariam Saeedi