Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Fragmentary experience = Holistic life

If I'm correctly reading Joas' (1996) philosophical overview of John Dewey's conceptions of art, religion, action and ideals in Joas' text, then these ideas could be brought to bear on theories of adaptation to the digital and multiple simultaneous presentations of self/identity...

Discussing Dewey's ideas, Joas says "a holistic self tends to sublate the rapid sequence of different scenarios that is our reality into a totality. It is through the creative powers of imagination that human beings gain access to the ideals" (p.143). Again looking through Dewey's conceptions, Joas notes that ideals are a person's "unquestionable binding values" and that they are "not something that we decide freely to set ourselves; rather they take hold of us and are at the root of our individual wishes and goals" (p.143).

Not sure what I'd need of this to make some arguments about the reality of the digital and the whole nature of the human living through that reality...or the conceptions of trust/risk in the digital (my current pre-occupation research and paper-wise) ...but at least by capturing it here, I've thought it out a bit.