Nietzsche and Wittgenstein : an anti-metaphysical approach to existential meaning

This thesis aims to analyze the similarity of the change in Nietzsche’s and Wittgenstein’s approaches to the meaning of life. The main argument is that their approach to the meaning of life changed from a metaphysical perspective to an anti-metaphysical one. Nietzsche gave a metaphysical interpretation of the meaning of life in the Birth of Tragedy. In this book Nietzsche conceived of Ancient Greek culture as the ideal culture since it was the product of the union of the two artistic deities: Apollo and Dionysus. This Primordial Unity (Ur-Eine), for Nietzsche, was the metaphysical essence of the world and the meaning of life was to be found in this unity. Nietzsche, later, with his new preface to the Birth of Tragedy called “An Attempt at a Self-Criticism” and Human All Too Human, criticized his earlier metaphysical approach to the meaning of life and shifted to an anti-metaphysical perspective. Wittgenstein had a similar shift in his thought. The Tractatus was written to explore the nature of reality and the world, and explain the relationship between the world and language. The Tractatus gave a metaphysical explanation of the nature of reality by dividing it into two levels, the world —the lower— and the mystical —the higher. Logic, ethics, aesthetics and religion are the mystical which is the scaffolding of the world. Language, on this view, can only state the world—totality of facts— and cannot state what is higher. Ethics is about the meaning of life thus the meaning of life is higher and cannot be attained within the limits of this world. Later Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations argued against this metaphysical interpretation of the meaning of life. From an anti-metaphysical point of view, Wittgenstein argued that the meaning of life can be found within the limits of this world

Participatory Interactive Objectivity in Psychiatry

This paper challenges the exclusion of patients from epistemic practices in psychiatry by examining the creation and revision processes of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a document produced by the American Psychiatric Association that identifies the properties of mental disorders and thereby guides research, diagnosis, treatment, and various administrative tasks. It argues there are epistemic – rather than exclusively social/political – reasons for including patients in the DSM revision process. Individuals with mental disorders are indispensable resources to enhance psychiatric epistemology, especially in the context of the crisis, controversy, and uncertainty surrounding mental health research and treatment

New Directions in Philosophy of Medicine

The purpose of this chapter is to describe what we see as several important new directions for philosophy of medicine. This recent work (i) takes existing discussions in important and promising new directions, (ii) identifies areas that have not received sufficient and deserved attention to date, and/or (iii) brings together philosophy of medicine with other areas of philosophy (including bioethics, philosophy of psychiatry, and social epistemology). To this end, the next part focuses on what we call the “epistemological turn” in recent work in the philosophy of medicine; the third part addresses new developments in medical research that raise interesting questions for philosophy of medicine; the fourth part is a discussion of philosophical issues within the practice of diagnosis; the fifth part focuses on the recent developments in psychiatric classification and scientific and ethical issues therein, and the final part focuses on the objectivity of medical research

“Will I Be Pretty, Will I Be Rich?”: The Missing Self in Antidepressant Commercials

No abstrac

The Missing Self in Hacking's Looping Effects

, Looping Effects, the Self, Psychopatholog

How Does the Self Adjudicate Narratives?

Philosophers and psychologists have advanced a plethora of explanations of the self in relation to narratives, positing varying degrees of connection between them. For some, narratives created by a subject about herself shape her self-constitution (Flanagan 1991; Fivush 1994). For others, they help the subject to participate in social cognition (Hutto 2008). Some represent narratives as merely one basis of personal identity and consider them cognitive tools used by the subject to construct self-concepts (Neisser 1997; Tekin 2011); others render narratives the basis for self-constitution (Dennett 1992; MacIntyre 1981; Schechtman 1996). Some require that the subject create her ‘whole life narrative’ unifying her .

Self-Insight in the Time of Mood Disorders: After The Diagnosis, Beyond the Treatment

© 2015 by The Johns Hopkins University Press. This paper explores the factors that contribute to the degree of a mood disorder patient’s self-insight, defined here as her understanding of the particular contingencies of her life that are responsive to her personal identity, interpersonal relationships, illness symptoms, and the relationship between these three necessary components of her lived experience. I consider three factors: (i) the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), (ii) the DSM culture, and (iii) the cognitive architecture of the self. I argue that the symptom-based descriptions of mood disorders, which eliminate the subjective features of the patient’s illness experience, in conjunction with the features of the DSM culture and the cognitive biases that guide the patient, contribute to the impoverishment of her selfinsight. The resulting impoverished self-insight would prevent her from developing resourceful responses to her interpersonal problems. In analyzing how these factors combine to influence the patient’s self-insight, I distinguish the therapeutic impact of receiving a psychiatric diagnosis, which facilitates patient’s clinical treatment, from its reflective impact, how the diagnosis informs the patient’s reflection on who she is, how her mental disorder is expressed, and how her interpersonal relationships proceed. I substantiate my argument by considering a patient’s memoir of psychopathology