(July 15, 2020 at 6:32 pm)ModusPonens1 Wrote:(July 15, 2020 at 6:30 pm)SUNGULA Wrote: Oh no some people have little ego at all .But a terrible in their unique ways .
How can a person without an ego be terrible? Doesn't a person without an ego do terrible actions but have no terrible character?
For example, isn't a person who has no ego who kills somebody more like a rabid dog than a devil?
Doesn't no ego mean no conscience and doesn't no conscience mean amoral rather than immoral? Despite immoral actions.
Interesting questions!
I suspect that Sungula is using the word "ego" to mean "selfishness." He's thinking of "egotistical" or "egoistic."
You're using it in the more proper sense. It could have the Freudian meaning, to refer to the conscious portion of the psyche -- the part which says "I". And if that's what it means then you're certainly right. An ego is a self, and a person with no self isn't really a person. A "philosophical zombie."
But if we think of the ego as the "self," I think there's a long tradition of seeing it as a block to love and compassion. It is the thing that has to be overcome, in both Western mysticism and Buddhism. The illusion that one's self is separate from other beings, or is somehow special, is the root of all evil. This is why for Dante, pride is the sin which makes all other sins possible -- it allows us to feel special enough to justify our selfishness.
This is from M.H. Abrams' book Natural Supernaturalism:
Quote:This radical cause of separation, hence of evil, Boehme called Selbheit [Selfhood], Winstanley the “selfish” aspect of fallen and fragmented man, and Schelling the finite Ichheit which is “the point of the extremest alienation from God.” “Evil generally,” Hegel said, when it is expressed as concept rather than in the image-thinking of religion, is “the self-centered being-for-itself [das insichseiende Fürsichsein] and good is selfless simplicity [das selbstlose Ein-fache].”
In my view the common desire in America to be a cowboy tough-guy individualist lends itself far too easily to this kind of evil. And allows Trumpism.
We can quote Iris Murdoch, in honor of her 101st birthday today:
“Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”