Kristallivalheita : Itsepetos filosofisen tulkinnan lähtökohtana eräissä draaman klassikoissa

The philosophical problem of self-deception focuses the relation between desire, advantage, evidence and harm. A self-deceptive person is irrational because he or she belives or wants to belive contrary to the available evidence. The study focuses on different forms of self-deception that come out in certain classical Western dramas. The first self-deception forms are: "S knows that ~p but still belives that p because he wants that ~p", "S wants that p and therefore belives that p.", "S belives that p against evidence t because he wants to belive that p.", "S belives that p if t but S would belive that p even if ~t because S wants to belive that p.", "S belives that p (even if there is t that ~p) because S is ignorant of it." and "S belives that p (even if there is t that ~p) because of ignorant of t due to an internal deception." The main sources on self-deception are the views of contemporary researchers of the subject, such as Robert Audi, Marcia Baron, Bas C. van Fraassen, Mark Johnston, Mike W. Martin, Brian MaLaughlin, Alfred Mele, Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, William Ruddick and Stephen L. White. In this study it is claimed that Shakespeare´s Othello presents self-deception as a tragic phenomenom from witch it follows deceptions and murders. Moliére´s Tartuffe deals with a phony hypocrite´s attempts at cheating. Ibsen´s Wild Duck defends the necessity of vital lies. Beckett´s Waiting for Godot deals with the self-deception witch is related to the waiting of the supernatural rescuer. Miller´s The Death of a Salesman tells about a man who, while pursuing the American myth of success, winds both himself and his family into the skeins of self-deception. They are studied with a Barthesian method that emphasizes the autonomy of literary work and its interpretation independently of the author´s personal history and social conditions. Self-deception has been regarded as an immoral way of thinking or way of action. However, vital lies show the necessity or necessity of the self-deception when it brings joy and optimism to the human being and supports his or her self-esteem and does not cause a suffering or damage, either to self or others. In the study, the processual character of self-deception is brought out.

Eron aika : Tyttärien kertomuksia ikääntyneen vanhemman kuolemasta

There is a relative absence of sociological and cultural research on how people deal with the death of a family member in the contemporary western societies. Research on this topic has been dominated by the experts of psychology, psychiatry and therapy, who mention the social context only in passing, if at all. This gives an impression that the white westerners bereavement experience is a purely psychological phenomenon, an inner journey, which follows a natural, universal path. Yet, as Tony Walter (1999) states, ignoring the influence of culture not only impoverishes the understanding of those work with bereaved people, but it also impoverishes sociology and cultural studies by excluding from their domain a key social phenomenon. This study explores the cultural dimension of grief through narratives told by fifteen of recently bereaved Finnish women. Focussing on one sex only, the study rests on the assumption of the gendered nature of bereavement experience. However, the aim of the study is not to pinpoint the gender differences in grief and mourning, but to shed light on women s ways of dealing with the loss of a loved one in a social context. Furthermore, the study focuses on a certain kind of loss: the death of an elderly parent. Due to the growth in the life expectancy rate, this has presumably become the most typical type of bereavement in contemporary, ageing societies. Most of population will face the death of a parent as they reach the middle years of the life course. The data of this study is gathered with interviews, in which the interviewees were invited to tell a narrative of their bereavement. Narrative constitutes a central concept in this study. It refers to a particular form of talk, which is organised around consequential events. But there are also other, deeper layers that have been added to this concept. Several scholars see narratives as the most important way in which we make sense of experience. Personal narratives provide rich material for mapping the interconnections between individual and culture. As a form of thought, narrative marries singular circumstances with shared expectations and understandings that are learned through participation in a specific culture (Garro & Mattingly 2000). This study attempts to capture the cultural dimension of narrative with the concept of script , which originates in cognitive science (Schank & Abelson 1977) and has recently been adopted to narratology (Herman 2002). Script refers to a data structure that informs how events usually unfold in certain situations. Scripts are used in interpreting events and representing them verbally to others. They are based on dominant forms of knowledge that vary according to time and place. The questions that were posed in this study are the following. What kind of experiences bereaved daughters narrate? What kind of cultural scripts they employ as they attempt to make sense of these experiences? How these scripts are used in their narratives? It became apparent that for the most of the daughters interviewed in this study the single most important part of the bereavement narrative was to form an account of how and why the parent died. They produced lengthy and detailed descriptions of the last stage of a parent s life in contrast with the rest of the interview. These stories took their start from a turn in the parent s physical condition, from which the dying process could in retrospect be seen to have started, and which often took place several years before the death. In addition, daughters also talked about their grief reactions and how they have adjusted to a life without the deceased parent. The ways in which the last stage of life was told reflect not only the characteristic features of late modernity but also processes of marginalisation and exclusion. Revivalist script and medical script, identified by Clive Seale as the dominant, competing models for dying well in the late modern societies, were not widely utilised in the narratives. They could only be applied in situations in which the parent had died from cancer and at somewhat younger age than the average. Death that took place in deep old age was told in a different way. The lack of positive models for narrating this kind of death was acknowledged in the study. This can be seen as a symptom of the societal devaluing of the deaths of older people and it affects also daughters accounts of their grief. Several daughters told about situations in which their loss, although subjectively experienced, was nonetheless denied by other people.