Filosofía
Love of Praise and Love of Praiseworthiness
Love of Praise and Love of Praiseworthiness
A penetrating analysis by Adam Smith on our love of praiseworthiness as distinct from our love of praise. This is a crucial passage from the Theory of Moral Sentiments ("On the Sense of Duty", II):
Chap. II
Of the love of Praise, and of that of Praise-worthiness; and of the dread of Blame, and of that of Blame-worthiness
Of the love of Praise, and of that of Praise-worthiness; and of the dread of Blame, and of that of Blame-worthiness
Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love. He naturally dreads, not only to be hated, but to be hateful; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of hatred. He desires, not only praise, but praise-worthiness; or to be that thing which, though it should be praised by nobody, is, however, the natural and proper object of praise. He dreads, not only blame, but blame-worthiness; or to be that thing which, though it should be blamed by nobody, is, however, the natural and proper object of blame.
The love of praise-worthiness is by no means derived altogether from the love of praise. Those two principles, though they resemble one another, though they are connected, and often blended with one another, are yet, in many respects, distinct and independent of one another.
The love and admiration which we naturally conceive for those whose character and conduct we approve of, necessarily dispose us to desire to become ourselves the objects of the like agreeable sentiments, and to be as amiable and as admirable as those whom we love and admire the most. Emulation, the anxious desire that we ourselves shoul excel, is originally founded in our admiration of the excellence of others. Neither can we be satisfied with being merely admired for what other people are admired. We must at least believe ourselves to be admirable for what they are admirable. But, in order to attain this satisfaction, we must become the impartial spectators of our own character and conduct. We must endeavour to view them with the eyes of other people, or as other people are likely to view them. When seen in this light, if they appear to us as we wish, we are happy and contented. But it greatly confirms this happiness and contentment when we find that other people, viewing them with those very eyes with which we, in imagination only, were endeavouring to view them, see them precisely in the same light in which we ourselves had seen them. Their approbation necessarily confirms our own self-approbation. Their praise necessarily strengthens our own sense of our own praiseworthiness. In this case, so far is the love of praise-worthiness from being derived altogether from that of praise; that the love of praise seems, at least in a great measure, to be derived from that of praise-worthiness.
The most sincere praise can give little pleasure when it cannot be considered as some sort of proof of praise-worthiness. It is by no means sufficient that, from ignorance or mistake, esteem and admiration should, in some way or other, be bestowed upon us. If we are conscious that we do not deserve to be so favourably thought of, and that if the truth were known, we should be regarded with very different sentiments, our satisfaction is far from being complete. The man who applauds us either for actions which we did not perform, or for motives which had no sort of influence upon our conduct, applauds not us, but another person. We can derive no sort of satisfaction from his praises. To us they should be more mortifying than any censure, and should perpetually call to our minds, the most humbling of all reflections, the reflection of what we ought to be, but what we are not. A woman who paints, could derive, one should imagine, but little vanity from the compliments that are paid to her complexion. These, we should expect, ought rather to put her in mind of the sentiments which her real complexion should excite, and mortify her the more by the contrast. To be pleased with such groundless applause is a proof of the most superficial levity and weakness. It is what is properly called vanity, and is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible vices, the vices of affectation and common lying; follies which, if experience did not teach us how common they are, one should imagine the least spark of common sense would save us from. The foolish liar, who endeavours to excite the admiration of the company by the relation of adventures which never had any existence; the important coxcomb, who gives himself airs of rank and distinction which he well knows he has no just pretensions to; are both of them, no doubt, pleased with the applause which they fancy they meet with. But their vanity arises from so gross an illusion of the imagination, that it is difficult to conceive how any rational creature should be imposed upon by it. When they place themselves in the situation of those whom they fancy they have deceived, they are struck with the highest admiration for their own persons. They look upon themselves, not in that light in which, they know, they ought to appear to their companions, but in that in which they believe their companions actually look upon them. Their superficial weakness and trivial folly hinder them from ever turning their eyes inwards, or from seeing themselves in that despicable point of view in which their own consciences must [or should] tell them that they would appear to every body, if the real truth should ever come to be known.
As ignorant and groundless praise can give no solid joy, no satisfaction that will bear any serious examination, so, on the contrary, it often gives ral comfort to reflect, that though no praise should actually be bestowed upon us, our conduct, however, has been such as to deserve it, and has been in every respect suitable to those measures and rules by which praise and approbation are naturally and commonly bestowed. We are pleased, not only with praise, but with having don e what is praise-worthy. We are pleased to think that we have rendered ourselves the natural objects of approbation, though no approbation should ever actually be bestowed upon us: and we are mortified to reflect that we have justly [incurred or] merited the blame of those we live with, though that sentiment should never actually be exerted against us. The man who is conscious to himself that he has exactly observed those measures of conduct which experience informs him are generally agreeable, reflects with satisfaction on the propriety of his own behaviour. When he views it in the light in which the impartial spectator would view it, he thoroughly enters into all the motives which influenced it. He looks back upon every part of it with pleasure and approbation, and though mankind whould never be acquainted with what he has done, he regards himself, not so much according to the light in which they actually regard him, as according to that in which they would regard him if they were better informed. He anticipates the applause and admiration which in this case would be bestowed upon him, and he applauds and admires himself by sympathy with sentiments, which do not indeed actually take place, which he knows are the natural and ordinary effects of such conduct, which his imagination strongly connects with it, and which he has acquired a habit of conceiving as something that naturally and in propriety ought to follow from it. Men have [often] voluntarily thrown away life to acquire after death a renown whih they could no longer enjoy. Their imagination, in the mean-time, anticipated that fame which was in future times to be bestowed upon them. Those applauses which they were never to hear rung in their ears; the thoughts of that admiration, whose effects they were never to feel, played about their hearts, banished from their breasts the strongest of all natural fears, and transported them to perform actions which seem almost beyond the reach of human nature. But in point of reality there is surely no great difference between that approbation which is not to be bestowed till we can no longer enjoy it, and that which, indeed is never to be bestowed, but which would be bestowed, if the world was ever made to understand properly the real circumstances of our behaviour. If the one often produces such violent effects, we cannot wonder taht the other should always be highly regarded.
Nature, when she formed man for society, endowed him with an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favourable, and pain in their unfavourable regard. She rendered their approbation most flattering and most agreeable to him for its own sake; and their disapprobation most mortifying and most offensive.
But this desire of the approbation, and this aversion to the disapprobation of his brethren, would not alone have rendered him fit for that society for which he was made. Nature, accordingly, has endowed him, not only with a desire of being approved of, but with a desire of being what ought to be approved of; or of being what he himself approves of in other men. The first desire could only have made him wish to appear to be fit for society. The second was necessary in order to rrender him anxious to be really fit. The first could only have prompted him to the affectation of virtue, and to the concealment of vice. The second was necessary in order to inspire him with the real love of virtue, and with the real abhorrence of vice. In every well-formed mind this second desire seems to be the strongest of the two. It is only the weakest and most superficial of mankind who can be much delighted with that praise which they themselves know to be altogether unmerited. A weak man may sometimes be pleased with it, but a wise man rejects it upon all occasions. But, though a wise man feels little pleasure from praise where he knows there is no praise-worthiness, he often feels the highest in doing what he knows to be praise-worthy, though he knows equally well that no praise is ever to be bestowed upon it. To obtain the approbation of mankind, where no approbation is due, can never be an object of any importance to him. To obtain that approbation where it is really due, may sometimes be an object of no great importance to him. But to be that thing which deserves approbation, must always be an object of the highest.
To desire, or even to accept of praise, where no praise is due, can be the effect only of the most contemptible vanity. To desire it where it is really due, is to desire no more than that a most essential act of justice should be done to us. The love of just fame, of true glory, even for its own sake, and independent of any advantage which he can derive from it, is not unworthy even of a wise man. He sometimes, however, neglects, and even despises it; and he is never more apt to do o than when he has the most perfect assurance of the perfect propriety of every part ofhis own conduct. His self-approbation, in this case, stands in need of no confirmation from the approbation of other men. It is alone sufficient, and he is contented with it. This self-approbation, if not the only, is at least the principal object, about which he can or ought to be anxious. The love of it, is the love of virtue.
End of quote. (TMS, Oxford UP, 1976, 114-16).
Note Smith’s careful analysis of the role of point of view and of mind-reading in the generation of moral sentiments, in this case those of praise and praiseworthiness. Not only actual or points of view, or other persons’ points of view constructed through our theory of mind, but also virtual, hypothetical, possible (or quite impossible) and non-existent points of view, which have nonetheless an operational psychological role. Social evaluations are constructed in such a way that we shuffle all possible combinations of knowledge about ourselves and about others in order to provide an assessment of our own position and conduct, and of that of our neighbours and peers, should they know about us, for instance, what we know about ourselves. The way they would evaluate us knowing what we know, or the way they would evaluate us were they morally reliable (i.e. their evaluation of our actions as compared to that of an all-seeing God, or a scrupulous conscience). Nobody’s point of view, resulting for instance from a blend of our personal information and of the other person’s values, is a relevant player in the game of perspectives, just like the actual points of view of our misinformed or benighted friends and fellow beings. Social evaluation is a complex game of masks and perspectives, a play in which naked and unmasked virtual actors play their scenes alongside the real ones. The presentation of the self in social life involves this complex imaginative mutual role-taking, and trying-on of perspectives, in a fairground of multiplying and infinitely receding mirrors.
All of which brings to mind this discussion on the motivation of human conduct according to Girard, Bourdieu, and Marcel Mauss: René Girard / Pierre Bourdieu: des affinités méconnues. I summarize: according to the second speaker, we are not driven merely by a desire of emulation, as Girard’s mimetic theory would lead us to think, or by a desire of being distinguished (Bourdieu’s ’la distinction’ owes much in this respect to Veblen’s discussion of status symbols in The Theory of the Leisure Class). We are driven by a desire for the recognition of our contribution to society (whether the contributions are real or sincerely imagined by us, that’s another matter). We want to be valued as value-givers, as creators of positive content, as those who bring a Gift to our peers. That is, we desire to have our praiseworthiness recognized —which is quite congruent with Smith’s view.
It is to be presupposed that the Gift which makes us aspire to praiseworthiness is inherently valuable both in the eyes of the giver, and in those of the recipients. Still, some well-meaning and well-received gifts may nonetheless be, in some cases, poisonous gifts. Ask the Germans if you don’t trust me.
—oOo—
Consciousness as Rationality as Internalized Dramatism
sábado, 9 de julio de 2016
Consciousness as Rationality as Internalized Dramatism
CONSCIOUSNESS AS RATIONALITY AS INTERNALIZED DRAMATISM
From George Herbert Mead's 'Mind, Self, and Society' (§42, 'Summary and Conclusion'), pp. 334-36.
In the closing sections of his book, Mead summarizes his view of human consciousness as disctinct from the wider "ecological" conception of consciousness. A general ecological-interactional approach to consciousness gives us a generalized and emergent conception on consciousness (also espoused by Mead), according to which an organism reacts in a more or less complex way to its environment, and in so reacting creates novel and emergent aspects of the world. Consciousness, then, is not contained "in" the mind, but is inherently relational, a function of the organism's relation to its environment. But (within this general framework) there is a specific mode of consciousness which requires human selves and rationality, and involves the peculiarly human structure of internalized social dramatism, involving taking the role of the other, or putting oneself imaginatively in the other's stance. Which in turn gives rise to a generalized social consciousness, in which we take the attitude of a "generalized other". Such rationality involves a distribution of social parts, and a generalized understanding of what these parts are, and of the choreography and collective stage management of the whole social play, under the virtual direction of the "generalized other." These are the last paragraphs of Mead's section on "Society", before the Supplementary Essays:
"The other conception that I have brought out concerns the particular sort of intelligence that we acscribe to the human animal, so-called 'rational intelligence', or consciousness in another sense of the term. If consciousness is a substance, it can be said that this consciousness is rational perse; and jut by definition the problem of the appearance of what we call rationality is avoided. What I have attempted to do is to bring rationality back to a certain type of conduct, the type of conduct in which the individual puts himself in the attitude of the whole group to which he belongs. This implies that the whole group is involved in some organized activity and that in this organized activity the action of one calls for the action of all the others. What we term 'reason' arises when one of the organisms take into its own response the attitude of the other organisms involved. It is possible for the organism so to assume the attitudes of the group that are involved in its own act within this whole co-operative process. When it does so, it is what we term 'a rational being'. If its conduct has such universality, it has also necessity, that is, the sort of necessity involved in the whole act—if one acts in one way the others must act in another way. Now, if the individual can take the attitude of the others and control his action by these attitudes, and control their action through his own, then we have what we can term "rationality." Rationality is as large as the group which is involved; and that group could be, of course, functionally, potentially, as large as you like. It may include all beings speaking the same language.
Language as such is simply a process by means of which the individual who is engaged in co-operative activity can get the attitude of others involved in the same activity. Through gestures, that is, through the part of his act which calls out the response of others, he can arouse in himself the attitude of the others. Language as a set of significant symbols is simply the set of gestures which the organism employs in calling out the response of others. Those gestures primarily are nothing but parts of the act which do naturally stimulate others engaged in the co-operative process to carry out their parts. Rationality then can be stated in terms of such behavior if we recognize that the gesture can affect the individual as it affects others so as to call out the response which belongs to the other. Mind or reason presupposes social organization and co-operative activity in this social organization. Thinking is simply the reasoning of the individual, the carrying-on of a conversation between what I have termed the 'I' and the 'me'.
In taking the attitude of the group, one has stimulated himself to respond in a certain fashion. His response, the 'I', is the way in which he acts. If he acts in that way he is, so to speak, putting something up to the group, and changing the group. His gesture calls out then a gesture which will be slightly different. The self thus arises in the development of the behavior of the social form that is capable of taking the attitude of others involved in the same co-operative actvity. The pre-condition of such behavior is the development of the nervous system which enables the individual to take the attitude of the others. He could not, of course, take the indefinite number of attitudes of others, even if all the nerve paths were present, if there were not an organized social activity groing on such that the action of one may reproduce the action of an indefinite number of others doing the same thing. Given, however, such an organized activity, one can take the attitude of anyone in the group.
Such are the two conceptions of consciousness that I wanted to bring out, since they seem to me to make possible a development of behaviorism beyond the limits to which it has been carried, and to make it a very suitable approach to the objects of social psychology. With those key concepts one does not have to come back to certain conscious fields lodged inside the individual; one is dealing throughout with the relation of the conduct of the individual to the environment." (334-36)
Thus far Mead. I would only want to add that this description of universal and complete communicability, or of the universal exchangeability of positions, is the description of an ideal model. Actual social behavior, and the concomitant phenomena of consciousness, are just as much dependent on partial, approximative or plainly mistaken moves in the internalized dramatism, as they are on the partial success of an ideally frictionless social conduct.
El ideal de la comunicación universal
The Ideal of Universal Communication
The ideal of universal social communication according to G. H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (§41, "Obstacles and promises in the development of the ideal society", 326-28).
It is possible for the individual to develop his own peculiarities, that which individualizes him, and still be a member of a community, provided that he is able to take the attitude of those whom he affects. Of course, the degree to which that takes place varies tremendously, but a certain amount of it is essential to citizenship in the community.
One may say that the attainment of that functional differentiation and social participation in the full degree is a sort of ideal which lies before the human community. The present stage of it is presented in the ideal of democracy. It is often assumed that democracy is an order of society in which those personalities which are sharply differentiated will be eliminated, that everything will be ironed down to a situation where everyone will be, as far as possible, like everyone else. But of course that is not the implication of democracy: the implication of democracy is rather that the individual can be as highly developed as lies within the possibilities of his own inheritance, and still can enter into the attitudes of the others whom he affects. There can still be leaders, and the community can rejoice in their attitudes just in so far as these superior individuals can themselves enter into the attitudes of the community which they undertake to lead.
How far individuals can take the rôles of other individuals in the community is dependent upon a number of factors. The community may in its size transcend the social organization, may go beyond the social organization which mkes such identification possible. The most striking illustration of that is the economic community. This includes everybody with whom one can trade in any circumstances but it represents a whole in which it would be next to impossible for all to enter into the attitudes of the others. The ideal communities of the universal religions are communities which to some extent may be said to exist, but they imply a degree of identification which the actual organization of the community cannot realize. We often find the existence of castes in a community which make it impossible for persons to enter into the attitude of other people although they are actually affecting and are affected by these other people. The ideal of human society is one which does bring people so closely together in their interrrelationships, so fully develops the necessary system of communication, that the individuals who exercise their own peculiar functions can take the attitude of those whom they affect. The development of communication is not simply a matter of abstract ideas, but is a process of putting one's self in the place of the other person's attitude, communicating through significant symbols. Remember that whiat is essential to a significant symbol is that the gesture which affects others should affect the individual himself in the same way. It is only when the stimulus which one gives another arouses in himself the same or like response that the symbol is a significant symbol. Human communication takes place through such significant symbols, and the problem is one of organizing a community which makes this possible. If that system of communication could be made theoretically perfect, the individual would affect himself as he affects others in every way. That would be the ideal of communication, an ideal attained in logical discourse wherever it is understood. The meaning of that which is said is here the same to one as it is to everybody else. Universal discourse is then the formal ideal of communication. If communication can be carried though and made perfect, then there would exist the kind of democracy to which we have referred, in which each individual would carry just the response in himself that he knows he calls out in the community. That is what makes communication in the significant sense the organizing process in the community. It is not simply a process of transferrring abstract symbols; it is always a gesture in a social act which calls out in the individual himself the tendency to the same act that is called out in others.
What we call the ideal of a human society is approached in some sense by the economic society on the one side and by the universal religions on the other side, but it is not by any means fully realized. Those abstractions can be put together in a single community of the democratic type. As democracy now exists, there is not this development of communication so that individuals can put themselves into the attitudes of those whom they affect. There is a a consequent leveling-down, and an undue recognition of that which is not only common but identical. The ideal of human society cannot exist as long as it is impossible for individuals to enter into the attitudes of those whom they are affecting in the performance of their own peculiar functions.
One may say that the attainment of that functional differentiation and social participation in the full degree is a sort of ideal which lies before the human community. The present stage of it is presented in the ideal of democracy. It is often assumed that democracy is an order of society in which those personalities which are sharply differentiated will be eliminated, that everything will be ironed down to a situation where everyone will be, as far as possible, like everyone else. But of course that is not the implication of democracy: the implication of democracy is rather that the individual can be as highly developed as lies within the possibilities of his own inheritance, and still can enter into the attitudes of the others whom he affects. There can still be leaders, and the community can rejoice in their attitudes just in so far as these superior individuals can themselves enter into the attitudes of the community which they undertake to lead.
How far individuals can take the rôles of other individuals in the community is dependent upon a number of factors. The community may in its size transcend the social organization, may go beyond the social organization which mkes such identification possible. The most striking illustration of that is the economic community. This includes everybody with whom one can trade in any circumstances but it represents a whole in which it would be next to impossible for all to enter into the attitudes of the others. The ideal communities of the universal religions are communities which to some extent may be said to exist, but they imply a degree of identification which the actual organization of the community cannot realize. We often find the existence of castes in a community which make it impossible for persons to enter into the attitude of other people although they are actually affecting and are affected by these other people. The ideal of human society is one which does bring people so closely together in their interrrelationships, so fully develops the necessary system of communication, that the individuals who exercise their own peculiar functions can take the attitude of those whom they affect. The development of communication is not simply a matter of abstract ideas, but is a process of putting one's self in the place of the other person's attitude, communicating through significant symbols. Remember that whiat is essential to a significant symbol is that the gesture which affects others should affect the individual himself in the same way. It is only when the stimulus which one gives another arouses in himself the same or like response that the symbol is a significant symbol. Human communication takes place through such significant symbols, and the problem is one of organizing a community which makes this possible. If that system of communication could be made theoretically perfect, the individual would affect himself as he affects others in every way. That would be the ideal of communication, an ideal attained in logical discourse wherever it is understood. The meaning of that which is said is here the same to one as it is to everybody else. Universal discourse is then the formal ideal of communication. If communication can be carried though and made perfect, then there would exist the kind of democracy to which we have referred, in which each individual would carry just the response in himself that he knows he calls out in the community. That is what makes communication in the significant sense the organizing process in the community. It is not simply a process of transferrring abstract symbols; it is always a gesture in a social act which calls out in the individual himself the tendency to the same act that is called out in others.
What we call the ideal of a human society is approached in some sense by the economic society on the one side and by the universal religions on the other side, but it is not by any means fully realized. Those abstractions can be put together in a single community of the democratic type. As democracy now exists, there is not this development of communication so that individuals can put themselves into the attitudes of those whom they affect. There is a a consequent leveling-down, and an undue recognition of that which is not only common but identical. The ideal of human society cannot exist as long as it is impossible for individuals to enter into the attitudes of those whom they are affecting in the performance of their own peculiar functions.
Parece que este ideal de la comunicación total es sólo eso, un ideal sólo aproximable en una dimensión abstraída de la actividad humana (como es la comunicabilidad universal del dinero) o en pequeñas comunidades de creyentes especialmente integradas y homogéneas. No se ve cómo podría convertirse en un ideal factible en una civilización a nivel mundial, por muchos progresos que hagan la globalización, la estandarización y la alienación. De algunas cuestiones coyunturales a estos "progresos" imaginables hablábamos en nuestro artículo sobre el Apocalipsis de la Comunicación Total. Que no lo veamos, ese Apocalipsis—la comunicación parcial es esencial para el funcionamiento normal (o sea humano), que no digo bueno, de las comunidades humanas. Y los apocalipsis, mejor dejarlos para el fin de la Historia.
—oOo—
Mead on Topsight
viernes, 8 de julio de 2016
Mead on Topsight
From George Herbert Mead's Mind, Self, and Society (§35; "The Fusion of the 'I' and the 'Me' in Social Activities), p. 276-77.
The frequent attitude of the person in social service who is trying to express a fundamental attitude of neighborliness may be compared with the attitude of the engineer, the organizer, which illustrates in extreme form the attitude of team work. The engineer has the attitudes of all the other individuals in the group, and it is because he has that participation that he is able to direct. When the engineer comes out of the machine shop with the bare blue print, the machine does not yet exist; but he must know what the people are to do, how long it should take them, how to measure the processes involved, and how to eliminate waste. That sort of taking the attitudes of everyone else as fully and completely as possible, entering upon one's own action from the standpoint of such a complete taking of the rôle of the others, we may perhaps refer to as the "attitude of the engineer." It is a highly intelligent attitude; and if it can be formed with a profound interest in social team work, it belongs to the high social processes and to the significant experiences. Here the full concreteness of the "me" depends upon a man's capacity to take the attitude of everybody else in the process which he directs. Here is gained the concrete content not found in the bare emotional identification of one'sself with everyone else in the group.
—oOo—
Frames, Roles, and Institutions
Frames, Roles, and Institutions
How role-playing organizes both the individual and society from the inside. Institutions are exteriorizations of our psychological functions, and in turn our social mind is made up of the interiorization of institutions and the relevant roles associated to them. From George Herbert Mead's 'Mind, Self, and Society' (§34, "The Community and the Institution" 260-61):
"There are what I have termed 'generalized social attitudes' which make an organized self possible. In the community there are certain ways of acting under situations which are essentially identical, and these ways of actin on the part of anyone are those which we excite in others when we take certain steps. If we assert our rights, we are calling for a definite response just because they are rights that are universal—a reesponse which everyone whould, and perhaps will, give. Now that response is present in our own nature; in some degree we are ready to take that same attitude toward somebody else if he makes tha appeal. When we call out that response in others, we can take the attitude of the other and then adjust our own conduct to it. There are, then, whole series of such common responses in the community in which we live, and such responses are what we term 'institutions'. The institution represents a common response on the part of all members of the community to a particular situation. This common response is one which, of course, varies with the character of the individual. In the case of theft the response of the sheriff is different from that of the attorney-general, from that of the judge and the jurors, and so forth; and yet they all are responses which maintain property, which involve the recognition of the property right in others. And these variations, as illustrated in the different officials, have an organization which gives unity to the variety of the responses. One appeals to the policeman for assistance, one expects the state's attorney to act, expects the court and its various funcionaries to carry out the process of the trial of the criminal. One does take the attitude of all of these different officials as involved in the very maintenance of property; all of them as an organized process are in some sense found in our own natures. When we arouse such attitudes, we are taking the attitude of what I have termed a 'generalized other'. Such organized sets of response are related to each other; if one calls out one such set of responses, he is implicitly calling out others as well.
Thus the institutions of society are organized forms of group or social activity—forms so organized that the individual members of society can act adequately and socially by taking the attitudes of others toward these activities."
'Inner Dramatization': The Theatre of Interiority in George Herbert Mead
domingo, 3 de julio de 2016
'Inner Dramatization': The Theatre of Interiority in George Herbert Mead
Erving Goffman's dramatistic theory of the self, in which self-experience is constituted through the interiorization of social roles and relationships, is anticipated in George Herbert Mead's book 'Mind, Self, and Society'. Here is an account of the origin of a self and a complex interiority on the basis of the internalization of social interaction (MSS, 172-73)—this is a later phase of more simple organisms relating to their environment; only here the environment includes the self and its social world. Thus, Mead provides a materialist and interactionalist account of the origin of consciousness and the self which is also dramatistic, i.e. reliant on the objectivization and symbolization of roles:
"Through self-consciousness the individual organism enters in some sense into its own environmental field; its own body becomes a part of the set of environmental stimuli to which it responds or reacts. Apart from the context of the social process at its highest levels—those at which it involves conscious communication, conscious conversations of gestures, among the individual organisms interacting with it—the individual organism does not set itself as a whole over against its environment; it does not as a whole become an object to itself (and hence is not self-conscious); it is not as a whole a stimulus to which it reacts. On the contrary, it responds only to parts or separate aspects of itself, and regards them, not as parts or aspects of itself at all, but simply as parts or aspects of the environment in general. Only within the social process at its higher levels,and also in the merely physiological environment or situation which is logically antecedent to and presupposed by the social process of experience and behavior, it does not become an object to itself. In such experience or behavior as may be called self-conscious, we act and react particularly with reference to ourselves, though also with reference to other individuals; and to be self-conscious is essentially to become an object to one's self in virtue of one's social relations to other individuals.
Emphasis should be laid on the central position of thinking when considering the nature of the self. Self-consciousness, rather than affective experience with its motor accompaniments, provides the core and primary structure of the self, which is thus essentially a cognitive rather than an emotional phenomenon. The thinking or intellectual process—the internalization and inner dramatization, by the individual, of the external conversation of significant gestures which constitutes his chief mode of interaction with other individuals belonging to the same society—is the earliest experiential phase in the genesis and development of the self. Cooley and James, it is true, endeavor to find the basis of the self in reflexive affective experiences, i.e., experiences involving 'self-feeling'; but the theory that the nature of the self is to be found in such experiences does not account for the origin of the self, or of the self-feeling which is supposed to characterize such experiences. The individual need not take the attitudes of others toward himself in these experiences, since these experiences merely in themselves do not necessitate his doing so, and unless he does so, he cannot develop a self; and he will not do so in these experiences unless his sellf has already originated otherwise, namely, in the way we have been describing. The essence of the self, as we have said, is cognitive; it lies in the internalized conversation of gestures which constitutes thinking, or in terms of which though or reflection proceeds. And hence the origin and foundations of the self, like those of thinking, are social."
(from ch. 23: "Social attitudes and the physical world"):
"The self is not so much a substance as a process in which the conversation of gestures has been internalized within an organic form. This process does not exist for itself, but is simply a phase of the whole social organization of which the individual is a part. The organization of the social act has been imported into the organism and becomes then the mind of the individual. It still includes the attitudes of others, but now highly organized, so that they become what we call social attitudes rather than rôles of separate individuals. This process of relating one's own organism to the others in the interactions that are going on, in so far as it is imported into the conduct of the individual with the conversation of the 'I' and the 'me' , constitutes the self.
The value of this importation of the conversation of gestures into the conduct of the individual lies in the superior co-ordination gained for society as a whole, and in the increased efficiency of the individual as a member of the group. It is the difference between the process which can take place in a group of rats or ants and bees, and that which can take place in a human community. The social process with its various implications is actually taken up into the experience of the individual so that that which is going on takes place more effectively, because in a certain sense it has been rehearsed in the individual. He not only plays his part better under these conditions but he also reacts back on the organization of which he is a part." (178-79)