GEORGE HERBERT MEAD'IN SOSYAL AHLAK ANLAYIŞI

Klasik Amerikan pragmatistlerinden George Herbert Mead’a göre benlik, ne salt zihinden ibarettir, ne de ontolojik çatallaşmayı içerir. O, bunun yerine sadece analitik bir ayrım olarak benliği (self) özne benlik (I) ve nesne benlik (me) olarak ifade eder. Ancak ne özne benliği nesne benlik olmaksızın, ne de nesne benliği özne benlik olmaksızın düşünebiliriz. Özne benlik, doğrudan deneyimlerimizde kendisini göstermez, eylemin gerçekleşmesinden sonra biliş alanına girer. O, hafızamızda ve geçmişimiz olarak görülür. Nesne benlik ise dış dünyadan edindiğimiz kabulleri, davranışları ve normları içselleştirmek suretiyle deneyimde görülen benliktir. Ahlak bu benlikler arasındaki bağlantıların ve bir bütün olarak benlikle “öteki” arasındaki bağlantıların farkındalığına dayalı olarak açıklanmalıdır. Bu açıdan hem benlik hem de ahlak kökeni itibarıyla toplumsaldır. Yazımız Mead’da ahlakın temelinin ne salt birey, ne de salt toplum olduğunu ancak herhangi bir üst akıl ya da metafiziksel referans olmaksızın bu iki unsurun da içinde bulunduğu bir ağlar sistemi olduğunu göstermeyi amaçlamaktadır. 

George Herbert Mead’s Understanding Of Social Ethics

According to George Mead, a significant figure in classical American pragmatism, the self neither consists of pure reason, nor does it include an ontological bifurcation. Instead, he expresses an analytical bifurcation of the self as the I (subject self) and the (me) object self. Yet, we cannot think of the two independently. The “I”, does not appear in direct experiences; rather, it enters our cognitive domain after an event has taken place. It exists in our memories and is realized as our past. On the other hand, the “me” consists of internalizing the experiences obtained via assumptions, behaviors, and norms observed in the external world. Ethics should be analyzed based on the awareness of the relations between these two types of self and the relations between the self as a whole and ‘the other’. In this vein, both self and ethics are fundamentally social. This work aims to show that the foundation of ethics is neither merely the self nor just the society, but it is a system of networks including these two elements without any reference to a mastermind or a metaphysical entity.

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