Dear XMCA-ers-
A month ago we had a discussion about Russian notion of lichnost' . I asked
my friend and colleague Eugene Subbotsky to help with a good reference since
he is a specialist in this area. I remember that he wrote a book on
lichnost' in the USSR. Below is his response with the reference (notice that
lichnost' has been translated in English as "personality").
Translation is a real big problem for such notions because they are
culturally bounded. Recently I was reading an article criticizing work of
Paulo Freire for being too rational and intellectual. The article was
talking about Freire's notion "conscientation" (sp?). I was very surprised
about that critique because for me "conscience" ("sovest'" in Russian) does
not associated with rationalism and intellectualism.
I clarified this issue when I talked with my American and Brazilian graduate
students (thanks Mark and Carolina!) who revealed that these words have very
different meanings in Portuguese and English. As far a I understand them,
Portuguese meaning of the term, like Russian, focused on holistic feelings
of injustice when a person did something wrong or something wrong going in
the world. Here are examples of Russian use of the term of "sovest'"
translated in English as "conscience" from Russian-English dictionary
published in USSR, "smb. has pangs of conscience", "he has a bad/guilty
conscience", "abandon conscience", "conscience began to prick him", "to act
against one's conscience", "with an easy/clear conscience". As I was
explained, English notion of "conscience" connotes with an intellectual
state of being aware of something rather than with a holistic feeling of
injustice. Here is how WorldNet (Princeton University) defines the term:
conscience
n 1: motivation deriving logically from ethical or moral principles that
govern a person's thoughts and actions [syn: scruples, moral sense, sense of
right and wrong] 2: conformity to one's own sense of right conduct: "a
person of unflagging conscience" 3: a feeling of shame when you do something
immoral; "he has no conscience about his cruelty"
Source: WordNet R 1.6, C 1997 Princeton University
This is very far from the Russian notion. For example, Russian tzar Ivan the
Terrible who tortured and killed indiscriminately a lot of people prayed
almost every night because "conscience began to prick him" (according to
some historical account). This holistic personal feeling ("conscience") of
doing wrong was nothing to do with his intellectual state of being aware of
what he was doing wrong. Rather it emerged despite his rationalization and
justification of his murder. My Brazilian student told me that Portuguese
notion of "conscience" is a very similar to Russian (I wish I could speak
Portuguese!). If we have Portuguese (Spanish, French, Italian, German,
iZulu, Japanese, and etc.) speaking people on XMCA I wonder the meaning of
the term "conscience" is in these language.
By the way, both Russian and Brazilian/Portuguese notions of conscience have
a lot to do with Russian notion of "lichnost'" while English version is not.
If our interpretation is correct, what makes situation with Paulo Freire's
writing even more difficult that the English and Portuguese words have the
same Latin root despite different cultural meanings... Without knowing these
cultural different ways of how the term is used, English speaking readers
may lose important ideas of Paulo Freire. What do you think?
It is very quiet at XMCA... I wonder why...
Take care,
Eugene
-----Original Message-----
From: Eugene Subbotsky [mailto:e.subbotsky@lancaster.ac.uk]
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 7:55 AM
To: ematusov@UDel.Edu
Subject: Re: lichnost'/self-actualization
Dear Eugene
I believe the book you mean is "The birth of personality. The
development of independent and moral behaviour in preschool children.
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993. I saw it in the library of the UCSD, San
Diego.
Yours sincerely
Eugene
On Monday, August 11, 2003, at 02:17 am, Eugene Matusov wrote:
> Dear Peter and everybody-
>
> I wonder if Il'enkov wrote on this issue. Also, I remember that Eugene
> Subbotsky wrote a book about development of lichnost'. I wonder if it
> is
> translated in English (Eugene, can you help?).
>
> Take care,
>
> Eugene
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Peter Moxhay [mailto:moxhap@portlandschools.org]
>> Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 1:29 PM
>> To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> Subject: Re: lichnost'/self-actualization
>>
>> Eugene wrote:
>>
>>> I'd define it as "in-world-actualization" (cf. "self-actualization").
>>> In the
>>> concept of lichnost', one has to listen to the world rather than self
>>> to
>>> unfold one's potentials.
>>>
>>
>> I have a recent book with a couple of essays by Dmitrii Leontiev
>> precisely
>> on "self-actualization" (transliterated into Russian). He talks about
>> "self-actualization" of "lichnostei," but has references mostly to
>> Western authors and one to LSV (none to his famous grandfather).
>>
>> I'd be interested, Eugene, to hear if you have written anything on
>> this
>> subject, or
>> if you can point to references that might bridge the concepts of
>> personality, lichnost', self-actualization, in-world-actualization,
>> etc
>> .
>>
>> Peter
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Sep 01 2003 - 01:00:07 PDT