In the early twentieth century, Sigmund Freud dealt a serious blow to positivism by postulating that, to a large part, human behaviour is controlled by the unconscious mind. The Enlightenment was driven by a renewed conviction, that, in the words of Immanuel Kant, "Man is distinguished above all animals by his self-consciousness, by which he is a 'rational animal'." In conscious opposition to this tradition during the nineteenth century, Karl Marx defined humans as a "labouring animal" ( animal laborans). René Descartes famously and succinctly proposed: Cogito ergo sum (French: " Je pense donc je suis" English: "I think, therefore I am"), not an assessment of humanity, but certainly reflecting a capacity for reasoning as a characteristic of humans, that potentially, could include individual self-reflection. The thirteenth century pope Innocent III wrote about the essential misery of earthly existence in his "On the misery of the human condition"-a view that was disputed by, for example, Giannozzo Manetti in his treatise "On human dignity". The dominant world-view of medieval Europe, as directed by the Catholic Church, was that human existence is essentially good and created in "original grace", but because of concupiscence, is marred by sin, and that its aim should be to focus on a beatific vision after death. Aristotle described humans as the "communal animal" (ζῶον πολιτικόν), i.e., emphasizing society-building as a central trait of human nature, and being a "thought bearer animal" ( ζῶον λόγον ἔχον, animal rationale), a term that also may have inspired the species taxonomy, Homo sapiens. Socrates advocated the ancient adage for all humans to " Know thyself", and gave the (doubtlessly tongue-in-cheek) definition of humans as, "featherless bipeds" ( Plato, Politicus). Protagoras made the famous claim that humans are "the measure of all things of what is, that it is of what is not, that it is not". A claim of dominance of humanity alongside radical pessimism because of the frailty and brevity of human life is asserted in the Hebrew Bible Genesis 1:28, where dominion of humans is promised, but contrarily, the author of Ecclesiastes, bewails the vanity of all human effort. įrom the third-millennium Old Kingdom of Egypt, belief in an eternal afterlife of the human ka is documented along with the notion that the actions of a person would be assessed to determine the quality of that existence. Greek ἂνθρωπος ( mycenaean *Anthropos) means "low-eyed", again probably contrasting with a divine perspective. Latin homo ( PIE *dʰǵʰm̥mō) means "of the earth, earthling", probably in opposition to "celestial" beings. Notions about the status of humanity may be revealed by the etymology of ancient words for humans. It is also considered a form of thought that generates new meaning and an opportunity to engage with what seemingly appears incongruous. For example, more than 3,000 years ago, " Know thyself" was the first of three Delphic maxims inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The concept of self-reflection is ancient. Self-reflection is related to the philosophy of consciousness, the topic of awareness, and the philosophy of mind. Self-reflection depends upon a range of functions, including introspection and metacognition, which develop from infancy through adolescence, affecting how individuals interact with others, and make decisions. In psychology, other terms used for this self-observation include 'reflective awareness', and 'reflective consciousness', which originate from the work of William James. Self-reflection is the ability to witness and evaluate our own cognitive, emotional, and behavioural processes.
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