The Western Subjectivity Thought

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The Western Subjectivity Thought

Since modern times subjectivity thought has been one of the fundamental contents and the significant achievements of western philosophy. It is faced with many difficulties in its development process and has been declared to "have died", but I think that it indeed still has bright prospects of development.

1. Historical Development of Western Subjectivity Thought

The word "subject" comes from the Latin word " subjectum ", which means something in front, or something constituting the foundations of other things. In Greek philosophy, at least in Aristotle's philosophy, "subject" is not a philosophical category which belongs specially to human being or a person, but something which is opposite to attribute or contingency, and is opposite to predicate of a sentence. Such a subject is also a substance in Aristotle's philosophy. For Aristotle, Socrates is a subject, a dog or a stone also is a subject. Up to Descartes' age, the conception of subject as a philosophy category belonging to human being does not project over the general conception of substance.

In Descartes' philosophy, what is called subject means ego, soul or mind. Ego, soul or mind, like a material body, is a kind of substance, but is different from the latter in essence. The essence of material substance is extension, whereas the essence of ego, soul or mind is thinking. Ego is not only different from the material substance in essence, but also does not come from the latter. What does he call "I think, therefore I am" does mean that. It clearly puts forward the subjectivity question of human being.

However because Descartes puts forward his theory of the subjectivity of human being within the framework of his mind-body dualism, his conception of the subjectivity of human being as such can not possibly contain any further and deeper intention. They are Leibniz, Kant and Husserl and so on who endow it some further and deeper intention.

The monadology of Leibniz not only calls monad as "soul" or "entelechy", and considers the perceptive activity as the essential content of a monad, but also clearly declares that a manod is a center of metaphysical force, it has no any windows but intrinsically possesses a kind of appetition force which promotes the transition of a monad from the state of less clear perception to the state of clearer perception , and it is a mirror of the whole universe. All of these enable the ego (the subject) in Descartes' philosophy to get a kind of new active quality.

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