What do you think?
Rate this book
Being Yourself: Essays on Identity, Action, and Social Life
Being yourself: living a life that is truly your own, that expresses your unique personality and your distinctive values. Many people want to live such a life. Being Yourself asks what it takes to do so. It examines questions about the self the individual who acts together with questions about self-expression the relations between the self and action. It explains self-knowledge and self-direction in terms of a repertory of skills that gives people insight into who they are, who they want to be, and how they want to engage with the world. Unlike other accounts of self and action, Being Yourself takes into account the multidimensionality of the self embodiment, interpersonal ties, nonconscious desires, and enculturation as well as rationality. It accents the ways in which atypical emotional responses, empathy, and oppositional imagery can contribute to moral understanding. It argues that repressive regimes cannot completely crush people's determination to live lives of their own, but it shows why it is vital to seek social changes that dismantle obstacles to this kind of life."
344 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
27 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 12, 2015
Meyers, methinks, has a hard task in front of her. She is arguing for a relational autonomy, but one that preserves the independence of the agent to choose the groups to which s/he will belong. In other words she wants a notion of autonomy that is quite individuated from her relational autonomy (but which is still relational). Amartya Sen has made similar (and I think more coherent) arguments to the same effect, while noting that there are some groups we cannot help but belong to by dint of our birth/sex/social status, etc.
In other words what is really need in this book is a better understanding of ways in which systemic injustice disables people from making choices about their own (group) identities, but instead Meyers prefers to focus on the ways in which individuals can still operate autonomously, even under systems of oppression.
She goes really astray, in my opinion, which she tries to make a distinction between the inauthentic and the authentic self. Naturally she would like to promote the flourishing of the authentic self. But I thought we learned our lesson from Heidegger and don't make these kinds of mistakes anymore? THERE IS NO AUTHENTIC SELF. (In the wake of postmodernism this is yet still a stranger claim). In any case, its unclear to me how--even if we could come up with some thin notion of an authentic self--how ANYONE under a patriarchal system of oppression could even be said to have that kind of "authentic" self. It is trite but true that an oppressed individual may still make at least SOME decisions for her/himself (where to use your WIC money for example). This hardly constitutes an exercise of some authentic self.
In other words what is really need in this book is a better understanding of ways in which systemic injustice disables people from making choices about their own (group) identities, but instead Meyers prefers to focus on the ways in which individuals can still operate autonomously, even under systems of oppression.
She goes really astray, in my opinion, which she tries to make a distinction between the inauthentic and the authentic self. Naturally she would like to promote the flourishing of the authentic self. But I thought we learned our lesson from Heidegger and don't make these kinds of mistakes anymore? THERE IS NO AUTHENTIC SELF. (In the wake of postmodernism this is yet still a stranger claim). In any case, its unclear to me how--even if we could come up with some thin notion of an authentic self--how ANYONE under a patriarchal system of oppression could even be said to have that kind of "authentic" self. It is trite but true that an oppressed individual may still make at least SOME decisions for her/himself (where to use your WIC money for example). This hardly constitutes an exercise of some authentic self.
Displaying 1 of 1 review